Bible Verses About Missions
A girl, maybe ten years old, is sitting cross-legged on her bed with a Bible open on her lap. The comforter is lavender. A stuffed bear is wedged between the pillow and the headboard. Her Sunday school teacher asked the class to find three Bible verses about missions and bring them next week, and she figured she would knock it out in ten minutes. She knew about the Great Commission. She had heard Matthew 28 quoted at every missions conference her church had ever hosted. She thought she would find it, find one or two others nearby, and close her Bible.
She did not expect what happened next.
She started flipping. Genesis. Then Psalms. Then Isaiah. Then a minor prophet she had barely heard of. Then the Gospels. Then Acts. Then a letter from Paul. Then the very last book of the Bible. Everywhere she looked, she found it. God’s heart for every nation, every people, every language, every corner of the earth. It was not tucked into one chapter. It was woven into the whole thing.
This article is a map of what she found. Twenty-five verses, from the first book of the Bible to the last, that reveal the missionary heart of God. If you are teaching kids about world missions, these are the verses to start with. They are not obscure. They are not hidden. They are the backbone of the story Scripture is telling from beginning to end.
John Piper once wrote that missions exists because worship does not. Wherever there are people who do not know the glory of God, there is a reason to go. And the Bible, from its opening pages to its final vision, is the story of God making his glory known among all the peoples of the earth. Not some of them. All of them.
Let’s trace that story together.
Missions Begins in Genesis
The Bible does not wait long to reveal God’s global plan. It begins in Genesis 12, in a conversation between God and a man named Abram who lived in a city called Ur.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3, ESV)
Read that last line again. All the families of the earth. Not just Abram’s descendants. Not just one tribe or one nation. All families. Every clan, every tongue, every people group on the planet. God’s promise to Abram was never just about Abram. It was about everybody.
This is the verse that reframes the entire Old Testament. Everything that follows in the story of Israel, the exodus, the law, the tabernacle, the kingdom, the exile, the return, all of it exists inside this promise. Israel was chosen not because God loved only Israel. Israel was chosen because God loved the world, and he was building a pipeline of blessing that would eventually reach every family on earth.
Six chapters later, God says it again, just in case anyone missed it the first time.
Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. (Genesis 18:18, ESV)
All the nations. The repetition is deliberate. God does not make throwaway promises. When he says “all,” he means all.
And then, in a passage that might surprise you, God reveals his global purpose through an unlikely setting: the plagues of Egypt. When Pharaoh refuses to let Israel go, God says something extraordinary through Moses.
But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:16, ESV)
Even the confrontation with Pharaoh was missionary. God was not simply rescuing one nation. He was putting his power on display so that his name would be known across the earth. The exodus was an act of global proclamation. The nations were watching. God intended them to.
From the very beginning, God’s plan was not local. It was global. The Bible is not a story about one people in one land. It is a story about one God who is determined to be worshiped by every people in every land.
The Psalms Pray for It
If Genesis establishes the mission, the Psalms pray for it. The hymnal of ancient Israel is soaked in global longing. The psalmists did not pray only for Israel’s welfare. They prayed for the nations.
Consider Psalm 2, a royal psalm about the coming King.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. (Psalm 2:8, ESV)
God the Father speaks to his Son and says: Ask. The nations are yours. The ends of the earth are yours. This is not a verse about political conquest. It is a verse about the ultimate reign of Christ over every people group on the planet. When we pray for unreached peoples, we are praying in the direction of this promise.
Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus quoted from the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), does not end in suffering. It ends in global worship.
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. (Psalm 22:27, ESV)
Notice the language: all the ends of the earth, all the families of the nations. This is Genesis 12 language showing up in a worship song. The psalmist is singing about the same promise God made to Abraham, and he is singing it as a certainty. Not “maybe they will turn.” They shall.
Even the familiar words of Psalm 46 carry a missions dimension that most people miss.
“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10, ESV)
We often read this verse as a personal comfort. Be still. Breathe. But in its context, it is a declaration of global sovereignty. God will be exalted among the nations. That is not a hope. It is a settled fact. It is going to happen. The only question is whether we will participate in it.
Then there is Psalm 67, which may be the most explicitly missionary psalm in the entire collection.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. (Psalm 67:1-2, ESV)
Read that carefully. The psalmist asks for God’s blessing, but not for Israel’s sake alone. He asks for blessing so that God’s way may be known on earth. The blessing has a purpose. It has a direction. It flows outward. Israel is blessed in order to be a conduit of blessing to the nations. This is Genesis 12 in prayer form.
And then Psalm 96, which rings out like a trumpet call.
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! (Psalm 96:3, ESV)
Declare. Go. Tell. Announce. This is not a passive verse. It is a command. God’s glory is not meant to stay inside the walls of the temple. It is meant to be declared among the nations, spoken aloud among all peoples.
The Psalms are not just worship songs. They are missionary prayers. When your family sings praise, you are joining a tradition that has always had the nations in view.
The Prophets Announce It
If the Psalms pray for God’s global purpose, the prophets announce it with blazing specificity. They look forward to a day when God’s salvation will reach every corner of the earth, and they do not whisper about it. They shout.
Isaiah is the most missionary of the prophets. In chapter 6, the young prophet sees a vision of God on his throne, high and lifted up, the train of his robe filling the temple, seraphim crying “Holy, holy, holy.” And then God asks a question.
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8, ESV)
This is the verse carved into the hearts of missionaries around the world. God asks. Isaiah answers. The call is personal, direct, and voluntary. God does not conscript. He invites. And the right response, the only response that matches the vision of God’s holiness, is: Here I am. Send me.
Later in Isaiah, God describes the mission of his Servant (a figure that the New Testament identifies as Jesus) in explicitly global terms.
I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. (Isaiah 42:6, ESV)
A light for the nations. Not a light for Israel alone. The Servant’s mission extends beyond the borders of one people to illuminate the whole world. And in case the scope was unclear, God says it even more directly a few chapters later.
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. (Isaiah 49:6, ESV)
Too light a thing. As if God is saying: You think I sent my Servant just for Israel? That is too small a vision. My salvation is heading for the ends of the earth.
The prophet Habakkuk, writing during one of the darkest periods in Israel’s history, sees past the destruction to a future that defies imagination.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14, ESV)
As the waters cover the sea. Think about that image. Water does not cover part of the sea. It covers all of it, every inch, every depth, every surface. That is how thoroughly the knowledge of God’s glory will saturate the earth. There will be no corner untouched, no people group unreached, no nation left in darkness.
This is the future the prophets saw. And it is the future toward which every act of missions, every prayer for the nations, every family that studies these verses together, is reaching.
Jonah Runs from It
If the prophets announce God’s global purpose, Jonah runs from it. And that is exactly why his story is in the Bible.
God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, Israel’s most hated enemy. Jonah does not want the Ninevites to repent. He does not want God to show them mercy. He wants them destroyed. So he boards a ship going the opposite direction.
You know the rest. The storm, the fish, three days in the belly of the deep, and then Jonah on the beach, covered in seaweed, with the same commission still ringing in his ears: Go to Nineveh.
He goes. He preaches. The entire city repents. And Jonah is furious. He sits on a hillside outside the city and pouts, and God asks him a question that cuts to the heart of every person who has ever thought God’s mercy was only for people like them.
And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:11, ESV)
Should I not pity Nineveh? God’s compassion is not limited by our prejudices. His mercy does not stop at the borders of the people we like. He looks at a city full of confused, lost, wicked people, and he feels pity. He wants them to know him. He sent a reluctant prophet across the sea to reach them.
Jonah’s story is a warning for every believer who quietly hopes that God’s love stays close to home. It does not. God’s heart breaks for the Ninevehs of this world, the places that seem too far gone, too hostile, too different. And he sends his people there, even when they would rather run.
If you want to know what unreached people groups are and why they matter, Nineveh is the prototype. They are the peoples nobody wants to go to. And God says: Should I not pity them?
Jesus Commands It
Everything the Old Testament promises, Jesus fulfills. And his instructions to his followers are unmistakably, relentlessly global.
It starts with his compassion. In Matthew 9, Jesus looks at the crowds and sees not a nuisance but a harvest.
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38, ESV)
The harvest is plentiful. There are people ready to hear, people longing for truth, people the Spirit has already been preparing. The problem is not the harvest. The problem is the workforce. And the first thing Jesus tells us to do about it is pray. Before you go, pray. Before you give, pray. Before you do anything, ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers.
Later, Jesus connects the global proclamation of the gospel to the very end of history.
And 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, ESV)
This verse is staggering. Jesus ties the completion of world evangelization to the return of Christ. The gospel will be proclaimed to all nations. Then the end will come. Missions is not just a good idea. It is the agenda that precedes the culmination of all things.
And then, after the resurrection, Jesus gives the command that has launched more missionaries than any other words in history.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV)
All authority. All nations. All that I have commanded. Always. The Great Commission is built on the word “all.” It is comprehensive, total, and non-negotiable. Jesus does not suggest that his followers consider going. He commands it. And the command rests on the most solid foundation imaginable: all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him. We go because he reigns.
For a deeper study of this passage and how to teach it to kids, see our article on great commission Bible verses.
Luke records a similar commission, with a slightly different emphasis.
And that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47, ESV)
Beginning from Jerusalem. The mission starts local and goes global. It starts in your own home, your own neighborhood, your own church. But it does not end there. It moves outward, across borders and oceans and language barriers, until it has reached all nations.
And behind it all is the most famous verse in the Bible, the one that explains why any of this matters.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)
God so loved the world. Not one nation. Not one ethnic group. Not the people who already had the Scriptures. The world. The whole thing. Every people, every tribe, every family that Genesis 12 promised would be blessed. God’s love is the engine of missions. He loved the world, and so he sent his Son. And his Son, in turn, sends us.
The Early Church Lives It
The book of Acts is the story of the Great Commission being obeyed. It opens with one final word from Jesus before his ascension, a word that becomes the outline for the entire book.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8, ESV)
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the end of the earth. That is the trajectory. And if you read Acts straight through, that is exactly what happens. The gospel starts in Jerusalem (chapters 1 through 7), spreads to Judea and Samaria (chapters 8 through 12), and then explodes outward to the ends of the earth through Paul’s missionary journeys (chapters 13 through 28). Acts 1:8 is both a promise and a table of contents.
In Acts 13, when Paul and Barnabas are set apart as missionaries by the church in Antioch, they anchor their calling in the same Old Testament promise we have been tracing.
For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 13:47, ESV)
Paul quotes Isaiah 49:6. The same verse. The same promise. The light for the nations that Isaiah prophesied is now being carried by a tentmaker from Tarsus into the cities of the Roman Empire. The Old Testament and the New Testament are telling the same story.
Paul later reflects on the logical chain that makes missions necessary, and his words in Romans are among the most important missionary verses ever written.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:14-15, ESV)
This passage is a series of questions, each one building on the last. People cannot call on Jesus if they do not believe. They cannot believe if they have not heard. They cannot hear if no one preaches. And no one preaches unless they are sent. The chain has four links: sending, preaching, hearing, believing. Remove any one of them, and the chain breaks. Missions is not optional. It is the mechanism by which the gospel reaches the unreached.
And Paul himself was driven by a specific ambition that shaped his entire ministry.
And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation. (Romans 15:20, ESV)
Paul was not interested in going where the church was already established. He wanted to go where Christ had never been named. He was a frontier missionary, pushing into territory where no one had yet proclaimed the gospel. This is the spirit that still drives missionaries today to leave comfortable places and go to the hardest, most unreached corners of the world.
If you want to learn how your family can pray for unreached people groups, start with Romans 10 and Romans 15. They will reshape how you pray.
Revelation Celebrates It
The Bible ends where God always said it would: with people from every nation, every tribe, every language, and every people worshiping the Lamb together.
In Revelation 5, John sees a vision of heaven. A scroll is sealed, and no one is worthy to open it. John weeps. Then a voice says: The Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. And the Lamb steps forward, and the hosts of heaven sing a new song.
And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9, ESV)
From every tribe and language and people and nation. This is not a hope. It is a settled fact viewed from the throne room of heaven. Christ has already ransomed people from every people group. The mission will succeed. The question is not whether it will happen but when the last tribe will hear.
Two chapters later, the scene expands.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands. (Revelation 7:9, ESV)
A great multitude that no one could number. This is the finish line. This is what every missionary prayer, every gospel proclamation, every family that studies God’s Word together is moving toward. A crowd so vast it cannot be counted, so diverse it includes every nation and tribe and people and language, standing together before the throne, worshiping the Lamb.
Genesis 12 promised it. The Psalms prayed for it. The prophets announced it. Jonah ran from it. Jesus commanded it. The early church lived it. And Revelation shows us the completed picture: every nation represented, every promise kept, every tongue singing the same song.
Peter, writing near the end of his life, gives us one more verse that helps us understand why the story is still unfolding, why Christ has not yet returned.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:9, ESV)
God is patient. He is waiting. Not because he is indifferent, but because he is compassionate. He does not wish that any should perish. Every day that history continues is another day of mercy, another day for the gospel to reach one more family, one more village, one more people group that has never heard the name of Jesus.
That patience is not passive. It is purposeful. And it calls us to urgency. The harvest is plentiful. The laborers are few. And every nation must hear before the end comes.
How to Study These Verses as a Family
You have just read twenty-five verses that span the entire Bible, from the call of Abraham to the throne room of heaven. That is a lot of ground to cover. So how do you bring these verses into your home, your dinner table, your bedtime routine, in a way that sticks?
Here are five practical approaches.
One verse per day for a month. Print or write out each of the twenty-five verses on index cards. Read one at dinner each night. Ask three questions: What did God say? Who did he say it to? What does this tell us about God’s heart for the world? You will finish in less than a month, and your family will have walked through the entire biblical storyline of missions.
Map it. Get a world map (a paper one you can write on, not the one on your phone). Each time you read a verse, mark the location it mentions or points toward. Genesis 12: Ur, then Canaan. Jonah 4: Nineveh. Acts 1:8: Jerusalem, then outward. Revelation 7:9: the whole map. By the end, your map will be covered in marks, and your kids will see, visually, that the Bible’s story is a global story.
Group by theme. Spend one week on the Old Testament promise verses (Genesis, Exodus). Spend the next week on the Psalms. Then the prophets. Then the Gospels. Then Acts and the letters. Then Revelation. This follows the structure of this article, and it helps kids see how the same theme develops across the whole Bible.
Memorize the anchor verses. You do not need to memorize all twenty-five. Pick five. Genesis 12:3 (the promise), Psalm 96:3 (the command to declare), Isaiah 6:8 (the call), Matthew 28:19-20 (the Great Commission), and Revelation 7:9 (the vision). If your children carry these five verses into adulthood, they will carry the storyline of the whole Bible with them.
Pray the verses. Turn each verse into a prayer. Psalm 67 makes this easy: “God, be gracious to us and bless us, so that your way may be known on earth.” Romans 10:14-15 becomes: “Lord, send workers to the places where people have never heard about Jesus.” Matthew 9:37-38 is already a prayer. Jesus told us to pray it. So pray it. Around the dinner table, at bedtime, in the car on the way to school. Let these verses become the words your family uses to talk to God about the world.
For a more detailed guide to studying Scripture together as a family, see our article on family Bible study. It walks you through the rhythms, the questions to ask, and the mindset that makes it work, even with very young children.
The Girl and Her Sticky Notes
Remember the girl on the bed? The one with the lavender comforter and the stuffed bear, the one whose Sunday school teacher asked her to find three verses about missions?
She has been sitting there for over an hour now. Her Bible looks different than it did when she started. Sticky notes jut out from the pages, yellow and pink and green, bristling like the feathers of some exotic bird. She started with Matthew 28 because everyone knows Matthew 28. Then she found something in Acts. Then Romans. Then she flipped backward and found the Psalms, and that is when she realized something was happening.
She found missions in Genesis. She found it in Exodus. She found it in a psalm she had read a dozen times without noticing. She found it in Isaiah, tucked between verses about suffering and verses about light. She found it in a book called Habakkuk, which she had to look up in the table of contents because she could not remember where it was. She found it in the story of Jonah, which she had always thought was just about a fish but was actually about a God who pitied a city that did not know its right hand from its left.
She found it in the words of Jesus, not in one place but in four. She found it in the logic of Paul, who asked how anyone could believe in someone they had never heard of. She found it in the very last book of the Bible, in a vision of a crowd so big nobody could count it, from every nation and every language, standing together and singing.
Three verses. Her teacher asked for three.
She has twenty-five sticky notes in her Bible, and she has barely scratched the surface.
She closes the Bible and holds it on her lap for a moment, feeling the weight of it. It is heavier than she remembered. Not physically. But it feels like it contains more than she thought. Like every page is connected to every other page by an invisible thread, and the thread is this: God loves the world. All of it. And he has been saying so since the very first book.
She will bring her twenty-five verses to class on Sunday. Her teacher asked for three. She will bring twenty-five, because she could not stop finding them. Because the Bible, it turns out, is not a book that mentions missions in a few places. It is a missions book. The whole thing. From beginning to end.
She pulls a fresh sticky note from the pack on her nightstand and writes one word on it in purple marker: all. Then she sticks it on the cover of her Bible, right in the center.
All the families of the earth. All the nations. All the ends of the earth. All authority. All peoples. Always.
That is the word the Bible will not stop saying. And now she hears it everywhere.
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