God’s Fame and Global Missions

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, you recently tweeted Joshua 424 which reads, "He dried up the Jordan that

00:00:10.500 | all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty."

00:00:14.160 | And then you added the word "missions" to the tweet.

00:00:16.760 | How does Joshua 424 relate to global missions?

00:00:20.520 | Well, I'm glad for the question because I love to talk about this.

00:00:26.960 | Let me read the text that I was quoting.

00:00:29.480 | This is Joshua 423-24.

00:00:33.640 | For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over

00:00:40.840 | as the Lord your God did the Red Sea.

00:00:43.480 | So you get the splitting of the Jordan and the splitting of the Red Sea as one big, great,

00:00:50.480 | miraculous way God is dealing with his people.

00:00:53.520 | Which he dried up for us until we passed over so that...

00:00:56.720 | Now here's the purpose clause.

00:00:58.840 | Why did God split the Red Sea?

00:01:00.760 | Why did God split the Jordan in such a stunning and miraculous way?

00:01:05.000 | So that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.

00:01:12.920 | That you may fear the Lord your God forever.

00:01:16.680 | So what that text says is one of God's purposes in the Exodus and in the entrance into the

00:01:24.940 | land with a stretching forth of his mighty arm in dividing the seas was so that the news

00:01:33.320 | would spread everywhere among all the nations.

00:01:37.400 | Yahweh, the God of Israel, is supremely mighty.

00:01:42.760 | Now that's what I mean by missions.

00:01:45.560 | We read in Psalm 96, "Declare his glory among the nations."

00:01:53.640 | That becomes the theme of many missions conferences.

00:01:56.000 | Well here it is.

00:01:57.360 | God is declaring his glory among the nations.

00:02:00.560 | God is a missionary God.

00:02:02.320 | And so what I would do to expand it and explain it would be to say, "From the very beginning

00:02:09.320 | when man fell and God inaugurated a plan of redemption, God had the nations in view."

00:02:17.600 | Even when he chose Israel to focus on for 2,000 years, he had the nations in view because

00:02:24.880 | he said to Abraham, "I'll make you a great nation and in you all the families of the

00:02:31.400 | earth will be blessed."

00:02:32.640 | Genesis 12.

00:02:35.080 | So when he chose Israel and began to do his mighty works in and for Israel, he was doing

00:02:41.680 | them always on the stage of the world with a view that the nations would see his glory.

00:02:49.080 | So if you go back to Exodus 14 where they're coming out of Egypt, he says in chapter 14,

00:02:58.000 | verse 4, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them and I will get glory over

00:03:04.780 | Pharaoh and all his hosts and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord."

00:03:11.600 | Now here's the question.

00:03:13.040 | When he did that, when he put his glory on display for the Egyptians, is that the only

00:03:20.040 | thing he had in mind?

00:03:22.880 | Or did he have also in mind that this news is going to spread everywhere and people are

00:03:29.360 | going to know Yahweh is the true God and some of them by grace may turn to the true God

00:03:36.440 | and be saved and that's what missions would be.

00:03:40.160 | And what I had in the back of my mind when I wrote that tweet was Rahab.

00:03:46.000 | Probably nobody knew that's what's in my mind, but Hebrews 11, 13 says, "By faith Rahab,

00:03:53.920 | the prostitute," she's in Jericho about to be destroyed as they cross the Jordan there,

00:04:01.080 | "By faith she did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly

00:04:08.940 | welcome to the spies."

00:04:11.000 | That's Hebrews 11, 31.

00:04:12.000 | Now my question is, why did she do that?

00:04:14.720 | Why did she do that?

00:04:17.280 | And here's the answer, Joshua 2, 9.

00:04:20.280 | "Rahab said to the men, 'I know that Yahweh has given you the land and that the fear of

00:04:29.760 | you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land melt before you.'"

00:04:35.200 | How did she know that?

00:04:37.000 | Verse 10, "For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you

00:04:44.880 | when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the kings of the Amorites, to Sihon and

00:04:50.960 | Og whom you devoted to destruction."

00:04:53.160 | So God had Rahab's salvation in mind when he split the Red Sea.

00:05:02.080 | That's what I mean.

00:05:03.640 | When I say that God's exaltation of his own glory in the salvation of his people is a

00:05:12.840 | missionary act, I mean the reputation that he's going to get from this is going to lead

00:05:19.040 | people like Rahab to humble themselves before Yahweh, stop putting up their rebellion against

00:05:27.640 | the true God, and embrace him and be saved.

00:05:32.280 | So when I said, the tweet said, "Mission's period, he dried up the Jordan that all the

00:05:38.480 | peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty," that's what I meant.

00:05:44.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

00:05:46.720 | At DesiringGod.org, you will find a related sermon, which is titled "The Spirit Wants

00:05:51.360 | the World for Christ," and there you can find thousands of other free books, articles, sermons,

00:05:55.480 | and other resources from John Piper's 32-plus years of ministry.

00:05:59.600 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.

00:06:00.600 | Thanks for listening.

00:06:01.240 | [END]

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God’s Fame and Global Missions

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