Let The Nations Be Glad (John Piper)

an email from January 2006

Well everyone... just like I promised here’s the second of my book summaries. I figured Sunday afternoon was a good time to sit down and ponder over what this book has been teaching me. I read “Let The Nations Be Glad – The Supremacy of God in Missions” by John Piper in first year too but it was such a good book that we as a Servant Team at Campus Crusade decided to read and discuss it together as a small group.

The book starts off with quite the start! Listen to this...

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. (pg 17)

As Piper continues he makes numerous references to many of the missionaries who have gone on before us.

William Carey, the father of modern missions, who set sail for India from England in 1793, said this: “though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God’s cause will triumph.” (pg 20)

Amen!!! God’s cause WILL triumph!!

John Dawson, a leader in Youth With A Mission [has said] “Don’t wait for a feeling of love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of a compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.” (pg 42)

There will always be people who argue that the doctrine of election makes missions unnecessary. But they are wrong. It does not make missions unnecessary; it makes missions hopeful. John Alexander, a former president of InterVaristy Christian Fellowship, said in a message at Urbana ’67 (a decisive event in my own life), “At the beginning of my missionary career I said that if predestination were true I could not be a missionary. Now after twenty some years of struggling with the hardness of the human heart, I say I could never be a missionary unless I believe in the doctrine of predestination.” (pg 55)

A couple quotes of John Piper’s that he mentions in most of his books are these:

The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever. (pg 28)

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. (pg 31)

He then moves on to talk about the role of prayer in the life of the Christian saying:

Life is war. That’s not all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief. It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den... The one who gives the power gets the glory. (pg 45)

Prayer is not a domestic intercom to increase the temporal comforts of the saints. (pg 67)

Then he chooses to turn his attention to the sufferings of the church and the persecution that we will have to endure.

So we must not water down the call to suffer. We must not domesticate the New Testament teaching on affliction and persecution just because our lives are so smooth. (pg 76)

God uses the suffering of his missionaries to awaken others out of their slumbers of indifference and make them bold. (pg 90)

The point is that an $80 000 or a $180 000 salary does not have to be accompanied by an $80 000 or a $180 000 lifestyle. God is calling us to be conduits of his grace, not cul-de-sacs. Our great danger today is thinking that the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn’t. Copper will do. No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is good; it will make people think that our god is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of his worth. (pg 102)

This next story made me think and really put the New Testament parable about the old widow giving her offering a new perspective.

A church in Haiti was having a Thanksgiving festival, and each Christian was invited to bring a love offering. One envelope from a Haitian man named Edmund held $13. That amount was three months’ income for a working man there. Stanford Kelly was as surprised as those counting a Sunday offering in the United States might be to get a $6 000 cash gift. He looked around for Edmund but could not see him. Later Kelly met him in the village and questioned him. He pressed him for an explanation and found that Edmund had sold his horse in order to give the $13 gift to God. But why hadn’t he come to the festival? He hesitated and didn’t want to answer. Finally, Edmund said, “I had no shirt to wear.” (pg 103)

The next few points were some things that we as a Servant Team with Campus Crusade really liked :)...

It is a stunning New Testament truth, that since the incarnation of the Son of God, all saving faith must henceforth fix on him. (pg 111)

Shouldn’t every denomination and church have some vital group that is recruiting, equipping, sending and supporting Paul-type missionaries to more and more unreached peoples? (pg 196)

Can anyone say “WIN, BUILD, SEND!” :)

Now he is commissioning Spirit-filled messengers to preach to them, and he is speaking through these messengers with power, and calling the lost effectually to faith and keeping them by his almighty power. (pg 153)

And the final comments that John Piper makes were about how the church should operate in regards to missions.

Charles Hodge is right that “the solemn question, implied in the language of the apostle, ‘how can they believe without a preacher?’ should sound day and night in the ears of the churches.” (pg 154)

There are only two ways for us to respond to the truth we have been considering about the supremacy of God in missions. We must either go out for the sake of his name, or we must send and support such people who do. (pg 235)

God is not glorified when our missionaries are simply a name on the back of the church bulletin or a line item in the budget. Sending is something to be done diligently. (pg 236)

If you love what Jesus Christ came to accomplish, you love missions. (pg 208)

I hope that this encouraged and challenged you as much as it did me! Let’s not just be the type of people who see our missionaries as only a name in the bulletin, but let us be zealous senders!!! And may we also consider the role that we play in advancing His kingdom here on earth...