Study
Read Romans 1:18–23.
What happens when a person in an unreached people group, who dies without ever hearing the gospel? Does someone who did not encounter the gospel while alive, spend eternity apart from God after they die?
Respond this question. Then look at the end of this lesson for an answer.
Resource:
What happens when a person in an unreached people group, who dies without ever hearing the gospel? Does someone who did not encounter the gospel while alive, spend eternity apart from God after they die?
Respond this question. Then look at the end of this lesson for an answer.
Resource:
- Watch What Happens to Those Who Never Hear (9:35)
View
Watch What is a UPG? (2:59)
- “An unreached people group has too few believers to evangelize and disciple the rest of their people group. Almost three billion people fall into this category.”
What three words would describe what your life would be like today, if no one had been present to evangelize or disciple you. - “Over three thousand of the seven thousand unreached people groups are unengaged, unreached people groups...these people groups have no one actively engaged in reaching them.”
Author David Platt said, “The only thing worse than being lost, is being lost and no one is looking for you.”
Imagine you have been tasked by your church to create a four step strategy to bring the gospel to an unengaged, unreached people group. What are the steps?
What else stood out to you from the video?
Watch Understanding the Remaining Mission Task (6:41)
- "Now is the time to unite what we know with what we do."
What would it look like for the church to do this? Give three observable actions. - What else stood out to you from the video?
Discuss
All excerpts are from The Abrahamic Revolution by Todd Ahrends.
- “God was not interested in me Christianizing my life; He was interested in me crucifying my life.” (location 182–83).
What’s the difference?
- “Salvation has come to us because it’s on its way to someone else.” (location 1106–7).
Do you understand the gospel as a baton handed to you to hand off an unreached people group? Explain.
Learn
Respond
Becoming SOGY. Support others by forming a World Team or go yourself by contacting a mission agency. Describe your process of becoming SOGY
Pray
Take a few moments and look over the content of this study. Share the most important thing you learned at this meeting, and let it serve as a guide as your group prays together
Closing video
Watch The World. (4:38)
Answer
Through creation, God holds everyone accountable to what can be known about Him. Namely, that He is immeasurably glorious, infinitely powerful, eternally existent and inherently good. (Read Romans 1:18-20, Psalm 19:1-6, Acts 14:17) However, everyone suppresses these clear and understandable truths. “Every person has a built-in, natural, compelling desire to…oppose God’s truth.”1 Even though this basic information about God is available to all of us, everyone chooses not to obey Him as our Creator, worship Him for His eternal power, or thank Him for His goodness. We decide to live independent of Him. We substitute the truth about who He is and what He is like with our own version. Depravity ensues as we continue to create our own warped theology about God. We ignore His eternal glory. We worship what He has made instead of the maker Himself. This is true for everyone throughout the world, including unreached peoples. Their condemnation is not based on rejecting a gospel they have not heard. That would be unjust. It is based on sinning against the light they have. That is just. This is why getting the gospel to the unreached is such an urgent priority. Because without it they face eternity apart from Christ.
Through creation, God holds everyone accountable to what can be known about Him. Namely, that He is immeasurably glorious, infinitely powerful, eternally existent and inherently good. (Read Romans 1:18-20, Psalm 19:1-6, Acts 14:17) However, everyone suppresses these clear and understandable truths. “Every person has a built-in, natural, compelling desire to…oppose God’s truth.”1 Even though this basic information about God is available to all of us, everyone chooses not to obey Him as our Creator, worship Him for His eternal power, or thank Him for His goodness. We decide to live independent of Him. We substitute the truth about who He is and what He is like with our own version. Depravity ensues as we continue to create our own warped theology about God. We ignore His eternal glory. We worship what He has made instead of the maker Himself. This is true for everyone throughout the world, including unreached peoples. Their condemnation is not based on rejecting a gospel they have not heard. That would be unjust. It is based on sinning against the light they have. That is just. This is why getting the gospel to the unreached is such an urgent priority. Because without it they face eternity apart from Christ.
1 John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Romans 1-8 (Chicago: Moody, 1991), Olive Tree Bible Study App, Ver. 6.5.4 (2019) Notes on Romans 1:18