What happens to the person who never hears the gospel?

Introduction

And with that in mind, I want to invite your attention to the phrase, the brief part of the passage from Matthew 28 and verse 19 that I put on the slide where Jesus said, Go make disciples of all the nations. In that passage, Jesus gives us what are the marching orders for children of God. We’re to go make disciples. And we talk a lot about that responsibility and about that mission. But for a little while this morning, I want you to focus your minds on the last three words of that phrase to go make disciples of all the nations. This crowd of people that we’re reaching out to that make up all the nations, this crowd of people shares one thing in common. The most important thing.

These are people who are lost, who have not been cleansed from their sins by the blood of the Savior, who desperately need to know the gospel story. But after this one thing they share in common, may I suggest to you today that this crowd of people that we call the lost becomes a very different and diverse group of people. In fact, the truth is they haven’t found their way to God for perhaps many different reasons. For example, some people in this group are just too busy for the Lord. They’re caught up in the business of day-to-day living. They’ve got their life, they’ve got their career, they got their recreation, and they just don’t really take the time to think about God and Jesus and the Bible and serving the Lord.

They don’t have much interest in that kind of stuff because they’re just too busy with other things. But not all lost people are bent that way. In fact, some are very, very religious. The problem is that they’re religiously deceived. They’ve been caught up in denominational error and led to believe that they are that they are right with God, that in fact they’re very close to God when in reality they’re not at all. They’ve been deluded about that. They’re deceived by denominational error. And then there are some people that are completely different than that. They’re not religious at all, in fact, they’re hostile to Christianity. Have you met this guy? I’ve studied with him once or twice. He’s not interested in the Bible at all. In fact, he’s doing everything he can to keep other people from following Jesus.

He thinks it’s all a big lie, a big delusion, and he wants to try to do all he can to oppose Christianity. But there’s still another category of people, different from all three of these. In fact, another category that I think for Christians is the most troubling group of lost people that we might find out there. I don’t think we have too much trouble understanding the ultimate fate of people who are either too busy for the Lord or hostile toward the Lord or caught up in denominational error, often willingly so. But we do struggle with people who don’t know the Lord at all. People who are untaught. We think about the primitive tribesmen in some remote jungle in the Philippines or Brazil or Zimbabwe. He lives his entire life in this little isolated spot on the planet.

He’s born in this little village. He spends his days in this little village. He dies in this little village and maybe never gets beyond a mile or two of this little remote spot on the planet.

He never sees a Bible. He never learns about Jesus.

If he has any religious experience at all, it may be tied up in some ritual superstition of his little culture. What is the fate of this man? Is he lost?

Actually, I don’t know that we need to go to such a remote place to some far-off jungle to find people who are in this predicament, people who’ve never heard. I think we could even go to more populated, connected spots on the planet and find people who grew up with a mom and dad who didn’t care about God or the Bible. Maybe they were atheists. And their circle of friends, the people that they know. Maybe they’re uninterested in God and the Bible and religion. And so really, you don’t have to go to some remote village of Zimbabwe. You might could go off to some place over in Europe and find people who grew up in some little place there and never really hear about God and the Bible and Jesus.

What is their fate?

And it troubles us a little bit. To think that this primitive tribesman may be lost forever in hell. Is that fair? Other times people like this come up in our studies with those who are lost. In fact, they’re raised as an objection, a way of resisting truth. There are people living in America today who do know about God and the Bible and Jesus who do not believe they’re required to follow the Bible or obey Jesus, because after all, there are people in places in the world that never learn about Jesus, that never read the Bible. And if they’re not accountable to him, then I shouldn’t be either. And so sometimes this man who has not heard, this man who is untaught, becomes a barrier to people obeying the gospel.

And so I want us to spend some time this morning talking a little bit about this man who does not hear and what his fate is. Now I will confess going in that when we’re done, you may say, David, you didn’t answer the question I had about this circumstance. And if that happens, I’ll refer you to Josh after the lesson is over. He has all the answers to the questions that I can’t answer this morning. We went into Starbucks yesterday, and Josh introduced me as his father.

So you can anticipate that we will have some things to say about Josh all we long.

1. He Does Not Change the Facts of Our Faith

That is untaught. But there are some things I think we can know. There are four of those I’d like to highlight this morning. If you have an outline book, I’d encourage you to turn and look with me there. Please feel free to follow along. You might want to jot down some thoughts, maybe some questions that come up as you go through this, and if you’d like, we can talk about them when the service is over. Let’s mention four things we know about this man who does not hear. First of all, we know that he does not change the facts of our faith. And I really want you to carry this thought away with you from the lesson today. He does not change the facts of our faith.

Whatever we conclude about the man who has not heard, it does not alter the things that we believe to be so. It does not negate the truths we know to be true because of the overwhelming evidence that confirms them. Now, someone says, What are you talking about, David? Let me give you four quick things. Number one, this man’s situation in no way changes our belief that God exists. We know that God exists because the evidence for his existence is overwhelming. I’m turning in my Bible into the Old Testament to Psalm chapter 19 and verse 1, where the psalmist says that the heavens are telling the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands day to day pours for speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

We know God exists. We know it because the evidence for his existence is simply overwhelming. We can’t look at the amazing world of design around us. The design in our universe, the design in nature, even the design we see with our own bodies, and believe as the evolutionist does, that this was all just some grand cosmic accident. That can’t be so. It simply defies logic. We know that God exists because this universe had to have an intelligent designer. And so, whatever someone decides about this man who is untaught, this man who has not heard, it does not change what we know to be true, and that is that God exists. But secondly, his situation in no way changes the fact that the Bible is the Word of God.

That’s what the scriptures claim in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16 that all scripture is inspired by God. How do we know that is true? Because of the overwhelming evidence. We could spend all morning talking about that. We could dig into the prophecies of the Old Testament, where these men were able with pinpoint accuracy to speak about future events, events long into the future, not guesses, not predictions, but statements about what can and did happen hundreds and hundreds of years into the future. It is evidence that they knew things that men could not know. They knew things only God could know, and that God certainly revealed to them. And so whatever we decide about the man who is untaught, we know that the Bible is the word of God.

But there’s something else. Notice number three, his predicament does not change the fact that Jesus is still the only Savior. I’m going to turn in my Bible now to Acts chapter 4 and verse 12 if you want to look there. We know that Jesus is the only Savior because God’s book says that he is the only Savior. In Acts chapter 4 and verse 12, Peter says, and there is salvation in no one else. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? For there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. Listen to him. Peter says there is salvation in no one else. Jesus in John 14 and verse 6 said, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.

There’s one way. And that is through Jesus Christ. God’s book tells us that. And so whatever we decide about the fate of the man who has not heard, the man off in that remote village, it does not change the fact that Jesus is still the only Savior. And finally, ladies and gentlemen, let’s add this to the list. That it does not change the fact that to be saved from sin, men must obey the gospel. Jesus made that clear in Matthew 7 in verse 21. Where he says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. But who? Who will enter heaven? Jesus says, the one who does the will of my Father will enter. That means doing what the Father says we must do to be saved.

Passages like Mark 16 and verse 60. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved. These are the facts, the facts of our faith that are laid out in the book that comes to us from God. So understand that no matter what one says about the man in some far-off place who never reads his Bible, reads the Bible, never learns about Jesus, it doesn’t change these things we know to be true. They are supported by overwhelmingly overwhelming evidence and are certainly so. We can’t dismiss these facts. We cannot easily get around them. We’ve got to work with them. Whatever we decide about this man has to be decided within this biblical framework. These are the facts. That’s one thing we can know about this man who has not been taught.

2. He Is Not Innocent

There’s something else we can know as well, though. Consider this. This man who has not been taught, we need to appreciate that he is not innocent. I think that’s another element of the problem we have wrestling with this fellow. Sometimes we have rather pristine images in our mind of primitive cultures. We imagine this man in the far-off village as just a simple person trying to survive with his family. He lives in harmony with nature, trying to draw a meager existence from the land. The people of these little villages live lives that are uncorrupted by the evils of modern culture. Certainly in the villages of the jungles of the Amazon, they don’t wrestle with internet pornography. And so we have these pristine ideas about who they are and how they live.

And I think largely those kind of ideas have been generated by National Geographic Specials on PBS, but please understand they have very little to do with reality. I think there’s some things we need to know about primitive cultures that help us understand them in a more accurate way. First of all, will you appreciate with me that this man who lives in this far-off place has within him the same moral sensibilities that all of us have. You see, ladies and gentlemen, because we are God’s creation, and the Bible says in Genesis that we are made in his image, because that is so, we are possessed from our God with a moral sensibility. Every human being has it. Whether you’re talking about the guy living in New York City, or you’re talking about the fellow that lives in the village of Zimbabwe, he has a moral sensibility about him.

And what I mean by that is that all of us have this idea that certain things are right and certain things are wrong, and this sense that we ought to do the things that are right, and a sense of guilt when we don’t do that. We feel badly when we do the things we know that are wrong. In fact, there’s another interesting curiosity about this moral sensibility that all men possess. We have this sense that we ought to behave a certain way, and do you realize that largely people throughout the world agree on what that way is? Someone says, wait a minute. I know in some of those African villages, they say that a man can have many wives, and that’s so, but they don’t believe he can just have any woman he wants.

Where is the culture, for example, who believes it is the noble thing to turn and run like a coward in the face of battle? The man like that is never honored, not in any culture anywhere. There are some interesting consistencies in what we believe about what is right and what is wrong. At least in the broad picture. We need to understand that this man in this far-off place, he has that moral sense about him, just like you do, and just like I do. Let me tell you something else about him. He violates that sense of morality. Even though he knows some things are right and some things are wrong, and he ought to do what’s right, he still does wrong sometimes. Every person does. In fact, what I don’t think we hear often enough in the National Geographic programs on PBS is that these primitive cultures are often just as violent and corrupt and wicked as our own.

That these people, in fact, are guilty of unimaginable atrocities, just like we see in our culture. We support a number of men who preach the gospel in the southern part of Africa, in South Africa, in Botswana and Zimbabwe. And every two years, we have a group of at least three men who travel to those places and who actually go into the remote villages of Zimbabwe. And what many people do not realize is that in Africa today, even in these very remote villages, the AIDS epidemic is spreading like wildfire, killing literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Because they are behaving immorally and they’re committing fornication. And it’s causing the spread of this disease.

I’m not trying to suggest that the primitive cultures are particularly corrupt. In fact, what I’m suggesting is just the opposite. That they’re a lot like our own. That even in the far-off jumps.