I find it amazing how even the simplest of God’s commands can be so easily ignored by us.

Starting with Adam and Eve, and running all the way through Jesus’ “Great Commission”, we have been told to “go”. And yet – too often – not only do we drag our feet, we refuse to follow the command.

I have been reading Radical by David Platt, wherein he challenges his readers – indeed, all Christians – to follow Jesus’ teaching and truly dedicate ourselves to Him: believing He will do what He has promised – if we do what we are told.

The first command given to mankind was recorded for us in Genesis 1:28

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Before Adam and Eve went anywhere, though, Satan tempted them, and they sinned against God.

A few chapters later, God tells those who have come off the Ark to do something very similar:

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

Yet again we see humanity ignoring God:

It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Upon which He forces them to obey by confusing their language:

“let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.

God’s command wasn’t complicated – it was incredibly simple. But man’s heart was hardened against Him – a remarkably recurrent theme in scripture.

One of the last things Jesus told His disciples (which, by implication includes us who claim to be His followers as well) was to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” {Mark 16:15} (alternatively recorded in Matthew 28 thusly, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you“). We are to GO into the world. We are to preach. And we are to make disciples.

For many of us, the “preaching” (ie, telling others about Christ) isn’t horridly difficult. It is also – typically – relatively simple to make disciples: learning together more and more about the Christ we love and serve.

It’s the “go” bit that we have problems with. We’re comfortable where we are. We claim to have “a heart for my city”. Really? Our city? That’s IT?!? Let’s pick the biggest city (metro area) in the world – Tokyo. That’s roughly 32,450,000 people. There are about 7,000,000,000 people on the planet. And all we claim to “have a heart for” is our city? If our city is Tokyo, that’s one half of one percent of the world’s population. Yes, it’s a lot of people – but it’s nothing like the heart of Christ who wants the world to come to Him.

Jesus’ command, like [almost] all of God’s commands, is simple: go, preach, make. Why don’t we follow it?