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Dec 25, 2019 08:00am

Lesson From The Grinch

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One of my favorite subtle movie lines is found in The Grinch (the Jim Carrey edition). In a scene where he’s busy “hating the Whos,” the Grinch runs through his to-do list and one of the items is, “Solve world hunger . . . Tell no one!!”

It’s an oddly funny line that, sadly, echoes what many of us do with the gospel that saved us.

We hold the solution to the world’s biggest problem of all – the root and cause of every kind of evil – sin and God’s judgment upon it. And literally billions of people need that solution today.

Just before Jesus ascended back to the Father, he gave the Great Commission to the church and charged us with the task of going everywhere to every ethnic group on the planet with the good news. So what did the earliest generation of Christians do in response to his instructions?

They stayed put. They remained in Jerusalem where things seemed safe and familiar. God’s response to their lack of response was to allow a wave of persecution to sweep through Judea, which scattered the believers all over the place. And then Luke records this:

Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. ~ Acts 8:4

God wants the good news shared with everyone, and he’s given us the task.

We have to realize that the good news of the gospel is simply too good to keep to ourselves. It has to break out of our church buildings, out of our private study times, out of our households and into the streets, the school systems, our workplaces, the halls of government, and the outlets of entertainment.

We must tell everyone! And not one of us has to do it alone. We’ll work together, as the church, to invite and include more and more lost people in God’s family until as many as possible have heard and have known they are welcome.