Each year, Southern Baptists kick off December by observing a Week of Prayer for International Missions before the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering emphasis. This week, as believers learn about missionaries serving around the world, the call is to pray for those faithfully sharing the Gospel through international missions.
The church’s call to pray for missionaries spreading the Gospel to the nations and give through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering to enable Gospel transformation among unreached people across the globe reflects God’s heart for the nations. And it’s no coincidence this emphasis on international missions occurs each year in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
The connection between Christmas and the nations is deeper than the general drive for generosity that occurs every year around the holidays—Giving Tuesday initiatives, Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, Angel Tree gifts, change in a Salvation Army bucket.
Generosity and compassion are good. But our prayers and giving to international missions aren’t rooted in a general desire to practice these things. Rather, they find a deep root in the Christmas story itself.
The Christmas story we read in the pages of Scripture clearly calls the church to the nations. A desire to see the Gospel advance to the nations should spring forth from our faithful reflections on the Christmas story this season.
Here are three ways Christmas calls us to the nations:
1. Christmas announces good news for the nations
On the night Jesus was born, a group of shepherds received the most spectacular birth announcement in history—not delivered through a cute or clever social media post but directly from an angel of the Lord.
When the angel appeared and the glory of the Lord shone around them, the shepherds were afraid (seems valid to me!). But the angel quieted these fears and told them the message he was bringing them was good—nothing bad (phew!).
In fact, the message was good news not only for them but for all people. This encounter in the field outside Bethlehem was bigger than the shepherds. The angel said, “I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10, CSB).
All the people. This good news wasn’t just for the shepherds. It wasn’t just for the town of Bethlehem. And it wasn’t just for the Jews. It wasn’t just for men or important people or those with the right skin color or family lineage. Jesus was good news for all people.
Fast-forward 40 days and a man in a different setting proclaimed a similar message. Simeon, a righteous and devout man, immediately recognized Jesus as the Messiah when His parents brought Him to the temple to present Him to the Lord according to the Jewish law. Taking the child in his arms, Simeon broke out in a song of praise to God:
For my eyes have seen your salvation.
You have prepared it
in the presence of all peoples—
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and glory to your people Israel. – Luke 2:30-32 (CSB)
The salvation coming through Jesus was for all people—both Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles had previously been living in darkness, separated from God with no way of entering relationship with Him. But all of that was changing with Jesus. He would be a light for the Gentiles’ darkness. Now, salvation would be for all people. Good news was for the nations.
2. Christmas reminds us God’s heart has always been for the nations
The Christmas story in Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus. One thing this genealogy does is remind us God’s heart has always been for the nations. It may be tempting to begin reading the New Testament and say, “This is where we begin to see God loves all the nations of the earth, that His love extends beyond Israel.” But this is not a faithful reading of the whole of Scripture. When we carefully study both the Old and New Testaments, we can trace God’s heart for the nations from Genesis to Revelation.
In the Christmas story, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus gives a nod to the storyline of God’s love for the nations evident throughout the whole Bible. Present in this list of names are at least two Gentiles—Rahab and Ruth (Matthew 1:5). Rahab was a Gentile prostitute who housed Israelite spies in Jericho (Joshua 2; 6). Ruth was a Moabite woman who left her family to care for her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi (Ruth 1-4).
Women were not typically included in genealogies in Jesus’s time, so the presence of Rahab and Ruth is particularly noticeable, highlighting that Jesus came for all people—Israel and the nations. As Matthew reminds his readers of Israel’s history that led to Jesus’s birth, he spotlights some Gentile women who were a part of Jesus’s family tree.
In doing this, Matthew reminds us of God’s unchanging nature. God didn’t suddenly develop a heart for the nations when Jesus was born. His heart has been for the nations since the beginning, and He loving invited the nations to be a part of Jesus’s lineage.
3. Christmas invites the nations to worship Jesus
Often, when we think of the Christmas story, we also think of the wise men who visited Jesus after His birth. Matthew doesn’t tell us a lot about who these wise men were except that they were “from the east” (Matthew 2:1, CSB). From this, we understand they were Gentiles from a land foreign to Israel.
They were not a part of the Israelite community, but God chose to announce the arrival of His Son to them through the stars He set in the sky. As the wise men studied the stars, they were prompted to go find and worship the Messiah. Arriving in Jerusalem, they began asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2, CSB).
King Herod and the people of Jerusalem had not yet heard of this king of the Jews (Matthew 2:3), yet Gentile foreigners had come to worship Him. When they came to Jesus, the wise men entered the house, saw Jesus and Mary, fell to their knees, and worshiped (Matthew 2:11).
The Jews had not yet recognized their own King, but through the stars of the sky, God invited Gentiles from a foreign land to come and worship. Jesus’s birth initiated the invitation for the nations to worship Him.
Christmas and the nations
As we celebrate the birth of Christ this season, let’s remember how His coming calls us to the nations. As we proclaim that Christmas is about Christ, let’s also proclaim that Christ is about the nations. Jesus’s coming was for all people, and that was God’s plan from the beginning.
God invites the nations to worship Him. How will we join God in His mission to invite the nations to worship Him? The Christmas story calls us to care for the nations and work toward the advancement of the kingdom of God among the nations.
