What and who are Unreached Peoples?

Psalm 117

Praise the LORD, all nations!

Extol him, all peoples!

For great is his steadfast love toward us,

and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.

Praise the LORD!

Who Are the "Peoples," the Nations?

"Nations" and "peoples" in the Bible don't refer to political states like America, Spain, Brazil, China, but to ethnic or language or cultural groupings in these political states. For example, if you go to the website China Source you will see, for starters, a list of sixty Chinese "peoples" (Hui, Dulong, Li, Lisu, Shui, Salar, Yao, etc.). And in the Bible you read about, "the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites" (Genesis 10:16-18).

So when Psalm 17:1 says, "Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples!" it means, "Praise the Lord, Hui of China! Praise the Lord Bahing of Nepal! Praise the Lord, Baluch of Pakistan! Praise the Lord, Maninka of Guinea! Praise the Lord, Bugis of Indonesia! Praise the Lord, Somali and Dakota of Minneapolis!" These are the kinds of groups Jesus was referring to when He said after his resurrection, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (panta ta ethne, same phrase in Psalm 117:1). These are the groups that Jesus meant when he said, "This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14).

So a huge question for followers of Jesus today is - or should be - how many peoples are there and how many of them are still unreached with the gospel of the kingdom? How many still have no church who obey Psalm 117 and praise the Lord?

Let's just take one reliable research effort, the huge Southern Baptist International Missions Board. For their missionary purposes they calculate 11,227 people groups in the world. Of these, 6,614 have less than 2% evangelical Christians. Of these, 68 peoples have populations over 10 million; 433 populations between 1 and 10 million; 1,452 between 100 thousand and 1 million.

The following video does a good job of explaining the unreached people groups and why we should pray for them. The video can be found at Did You Know? A great place to go to pray daily for an unreached people group is Unreached of the Day

The greatest obstacle to reaching the unreached is the obedience of the church. May we be obedient in prayer, giving and going!!!