Cedarville Magazine, Spring/Summer 2016

Chapel Notes There are more than 2.8 billion people who are unreached. If we’re unreached, we don’t know Christians. We don’t know anybody who believes the Gospel, who would share it with us. We don’t have access to a church where we can see the Gospel on display and hear the Gospel proclaimed. So, if you’re unreached, you’ll be born, you’ll live, you’ll die, and you’ll never hear the Gospel. You’ll never hear how much God loves you and that He sent His Son to die for your sins. There are people today who are breathing their last breath, and they’ve never heard how much God loves them in Christ. What happens to them when they die? Do they go to heaven? Do they go to hell? I’m convinced that most people in churches, maybe even most people in this room, would say, or think, those people go to heaven. If we believed differently, there’s no way we would spend so many resources on ourselves and not get the Gospel to them. Everyone in the world has knowledge of God; Paul makes that very clear in Romans 1:18–20. Creation shouts the character and qualities of God. So whether you are in an Amazon rain forest, the Sub-Saharan desert, Central Asia, or wherever you find yourself, you have knowledge of God. But it doesn’t mean you believe in God. If we’re unreached, we have knowledge of God, but we have rejected God (Rom. 1:21), and we stand guilty in sin before God. There are no innocent people in the world; there are guilty people all over the world. That’s why they need to hear the good news. God chose to pour out your wrath of sin on His Son in your place.Then you, freely by His grace, might be saved from all your sins, forever. That’s good news, the greatest news in all the world. But the Gospel is only good news if it gets there on time. Is it possible to really believe this good news of God’s love and then think, “OK, I’ll coast”? I plead with you students, don’t waste your life like that. Based on God’s great love for you, look to Him and say, “Here’s my life, every part of it: my future, my ambition, my gifts, my talents, my education, everything. Lord, use me to make Your love known to people that have never heard it.” God has chosen you and me to be the means by which this good news goes to them. This Gospel is good. We can’t keep that to ourselves. We’re talking about a cure for eternal cancer. How will they hear if we don’t preach it to them (Rom. 10)? He loves you so much, and He knows so much better than you do what is best for your life. If you can trust Him to save you for eternity, surely you can trust Him to lead you on this earth, but also to satisfy you every step of the way. So, on behalf of a couple billion unreached people in the world, would you put a blank check on the table with your life? David Platt serves as President of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of The New York Times best-seller Radical and is the host of Radical with David Platt on Moody Radio. God’s Love for the Unreached The following is an excerpt from a January 12, 2016, chapel presentation by David Platt. Listen to his full remarks at cedarville.edu/chapel . God has chosen you and me to be the means by which this good news goes to them. This Gospel is good. We can’t keep that to ourselves. We’re talking about a cure for eternal cancer. 36 | Cedarville Magazine