How Did Your Vision for Missions Develop?

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00:00:05.000 | Joshua from Fort Collins, Colorado writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, where did you

00:00:08.880 | get your foundations for such a global vision of ministry and missions?"

00:00:13.620 | My father's prayers, when I was a little boy, were laden with the glory of God.

00:00:21.720 | And I give thanks to my dad to this day, or thanks to God for him to this day.

00:00:30.200 | His life was a witness to the nature of the universe as the fallen creation of God in

00:00:37.680 | desperate need of rescue by the gospel.

00:00:41.720 | In other words, I grew up in a home with big things going on.

00:00:48.320 | You know, the home was not about the latest TV show.

00:00:51.840 | It wasn't about the latest political shenanigans.

00:00:55.260 | It was about the latest rescue from hell for heaven for a glorious God who made the universe,

00:01:02.960 | who exists for his glory.

00:01:05.380 | And so I absorbed these things little.

00:01:09.120 | And then comes, in my 20s, Jonathan Edwards' book, The End for Which God Created the World.

00:01:16.160 | Oh man.

00:01:19.440 | And that book just simply blew me away with the God-centeredness of God's purpose in this

00:01:28.320 | universe.

00:01:30.580 | So from creation on, bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone

00:01:36.960 | who's called by my name, whom I created for my glory.

00:01:42.560 | And then I began to see it everywhere from eternity to the second coming.

00:01:47.440 | Ephesians 1, 6, predestined to the praise of his glory.

00:01:52.800 | The incarnation, John 12, "Father, for this purpose I have come to this hour.

00:01:58.120 | Glorify your name."

00:01:59.420 | Or the propitiation on the cross in Romans 3.

00:02:03.280 | This is to demonstrate God's righteousness or the giving of the Holy Spirit.

00:02:09.520 | He will glorify me, Jesus said.

00:02:13.320 | Or the living of the Christian life.

00:02:15.480 | Let your light shine that then may see your good deeds and glorify your Father.

00:02:20.280 | Or dying in this world, Philippians 1, 21.

00:02:23.720 | I want my Christ to be magnified in my body when I die.

00:02:29.440 | Or the second coming of Christ, when he comes on that day, to be glorified in his saints

00:02:35.040 | and to be marveled at in all who have believed.

00:02:38.640 | So all over the Bible, I just began to see it everywhere after reading Edwards that God

00:02:44.440 | is God-centered.

00:02:45.440 | God does everything for the glory of God from eternity to eternity.

00:02:53.280 | In the new heavens and the new earth, God himself is going to be the sun and the lamb

00:02:59.640 | will be the lamp.

00:03:02.360 | So Edwards expanded, just blew up my view of God to its proportions where it belongs

00:03:09.640 | and brought, ironically, brought the world to its appropriate tiny size.

00:03:15.840 | "Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are counted as dust in the scales."

00:03:22.520 | So the key to a global vision of Christianity is not to think much about Christianity, but

00:03:29.640 | to think much about God.

00:03:32.400 | And then came, then came the connection between God's passion for his glory and the nations

00:03:41.360 | and my Christian hedonism.

00:03:44.320 | Back in 1983, I was preaching the series of messages that became Desiring God, and the

00:03:51.080 | church asked me to preach the message on missions for the first time.

00:03:54.920 | I'd been there three years.

00:03:56.040 | I'd never preached on missions.

00:03:57.520 | Shame on me.

00:03:59.400 | I took the challenge.

00:04:00.680 | I called the message, "Missions, the Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism," and everything

00:04:06.080 | came together at that moment between God's pursuit of his own glory, my pursuit of my

00:04:11.760 | joy, God's pursuit of the nations and how that would be the capstone to have all the

00:04:17.480 | nations worshiping him and all the nations satisfied in him.

00:04:21.920 | And for the next 10 years then, Tony, from '83 to '93, I just threw myself into working

00:04:29.040 | out the global dimensions of this, and finally in 1993, published a book, Let the Nations

00:04:36.240 | Be Glad.

00:04:38.120 | And what I saw in that process was that there was a primal aim in choosing Israel that they

00:04:45.800 | would, in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

00:04:49.440 | And then there were promises all over the Psalms and all over the prophets, "All the

00:04:53.240 | ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.

00:04:55.960 | All the families of the nations shall worship the Lord."

00:04:59.600 | And then there was the accomplishment of that on the cross where Jesus ransoms people for

00:05:07.760 | God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, Revelation 5.

00:05:12.120 | And then we get our marching orders after the cross, "Go with all authority, make disciples

00:05:17.160 | of all the nations."

00:05:19.000 | And then we get a rock-solid promise from Jesus that this gospel will be preached throughout

00:05:24.500 | all the nations, and then the end will come.

00:05:27.520 | I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

00:05:32.760 | So it seems to me that unless or until your life is grafted into this global purpose of

00:05:42.920 | God to be glorified through the worship of all the peoples, you're missing one great,

00:05:49.920 | joyful reason for your existence.

00:05:52.480 | This is not just for an elite group of frontline missionaries.

00:05:56.380 | This is for every Christian to be linked into in one way or the other, be drawing strength

00:06:00.580 | from and pouring prayers and money and time and effort and love into.

00:06:06.320 | So very practically, Tony, I would say to those folks who care about this or need to

00:06:11.900 | care about this, get a copy of Patrick Johnstone's "The Church is Bigger Than You Think," and

00:06:17.620 | let your vision just be blown wide open.

00:06:21.060 | That book just blew me away a few years ago when I read it, and I think it's still in

00:06:24.940 | print.

00:06:25.940 | "The Church is Bigger Than You Think," and get a copy of Jason Mandrake's "Operation

00:06:30.460 | World," and begin to pray through all the nations of the world.

00:06:34.940 | I prayed for Nepal this morning as I worked my way through this and saw the stunning work

00:06:40.700 | of God that he did.

00:06:41.940 | I think there were about 20 Christians in Nepal back in the early '60s.

00:06:45.700 | Today, there are over 800,000 Christians in Nepal under this Maoist kind of government.

00:06:52.140 | God is doing stunning things in the world, and so add that to all the theological foundations.

00:07:00.580 | Those are amazing stats.

00:07:01.900 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:07:03.180 | And you can find more information about Pastor John's two books mentioned here, "Desiring

00:07:07.180 | God" and "Let the Nations Be Glad," and you can find more information on those at DesiringGod.org.

00:07:11.820 | You can also listen to that original sermon recorded on November 13, 1983, under the title

00:07:17.060 | "Missions, the Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism," and close out this podcast.

00:07:20.940 | Here's a short clip from that message.

00:07:24.140 | Missionaries are not heroes who can boast in great sacrifices for God.

00:07:30.660 | They are the true Christian hedonists.

00:07:36.420 | They are the ones who know that the battle cry of Christian hedonism is "Missions!"

00:07:45.400 | They are the ones who have discovered the simple truth that there is 100 times more

00:07:53.600 | joy, 100 times more satisfaction in leaving home for Christ and the gospel than a life

00:08:05.560 | devoted to security, comfort, and worldly advancements.

00:08:13.400 | I do not appeal to you this morning to screw up your courage and make any sacrifice for

00:08:19.640 | Jesus Christ.

00:08:20.640 | I had enough of that preaching when I was young that said constantly, "Do God's will,

00:08:26.040 | not your will," and never told me that my will might be thrilled to obey God, which

00:08:31.560 | it is today.

00:08:33.120 | I appeal to you to renounce everything in order to have the pearl of pearls.

00:08:40.160 | I appeal to you to count everything as rubbish for the surpassing value of standing in the

00:08:45.800 | service of the King of Kings.

00:08:48.820 | I appeal to you to give up all your tattered store-bought clothes in order to clothe yourself

00:08:56.080 | with the royal robes of the ambassador of the King.

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How Did Your Vision for Missions Develop?

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