It's Monday on the podcast, but it's Tuesday in real time for us because we're in Nashville right now at the Sing Global 2022 Getty Music Worship Conference, recording this before a live studio audience. Let me hear you. That was good. We have been recently on the podcast talking a lot about spiritual gifts, and speaking of spiritual gifts, if anyone here has any inclination whatsoever towards missions, you've probably heard about or even read John Piper's book, Let the Nations Be Glad.

That book turns 30 years old this summer, with over 300,000 copies sold. To celebrate, we just released a 30th anniversary edition, an expanded hardcover of that book. For those of you who want to read it again, or maybe you haven't read it before, this is a good time to do it.

Let the Nations Be Glad. Pastor John, looking back now on 30 years of what God has done with that book, what thoughts do you have on that book and missions going forward? It's the most surprising book that I've written, surprising in its effect, because it has been used to strengthen the hands of veteran missionaries and awaken a desire for missions among aspiring missionaries, and it has been used to clarify what we're doing among younger missionaries.

And so I've been amazed. And what's surprising is that I've never been a missionary. I've never crossed a culture, learned a new language, embedded myself in a people, and given my life to growing Christ Church there. I've never done that. I've been a pastor of a local church all those years when that book was coming into being.

And so it has stunned me that a person with no, no missionary experience could write a book that God would use in mission. So that's the first thing that strikes me is why would that be? I think the answer is it's Bible-saturated, and Bible has its own power. You don't have to be anybody if you speak the Word of God faithfully.

So that's the first thought. The second thought is I was just trying in those early years, during the '80s, the book I think came out in '91 or '92, since this is 30 years. I was just trying to bring my big God theology, Calvinism, Reform theology, to bear on the local church and to be consistent with it in all that we did.

And one of the things we wanted to be was a platform for the sending of missionaries. And I had to come to terms with, okay, what's the relationship between being radically God-centered, believing in the absolute sovereignty of God and the saving of sinners, and that launching pad? And it emerged as perfect because the book, the subtitle is called "The Supremacy of God in Missions," and the title is called "Let the Nations Be Glad." So my Reform theology comes out in the subtitle, and my Christian hedonism comes out in the title.

And Christian hedonism simply means that God is most glorified among the nations when the nations are most satisfied in God. And that's what Psalm 67 says. "Let the nations be glad. Let the peoples praise him, O Lord. Let the peoples praise you." So the gladness of the nations and the glory of God came together perfectly in my theology.

I thought there's nothing more obvious than that we should be a missionary sending church and that I should do everything I can to mobilize people for the cause of missions. And during those years of trying to mobilize people, thought after thought after thought came that moved towards a book.

And some of those thoughts included, "Are people really lost?" So many people today don't--they're all into other issues besides rescuing lost people from perishing. Are people going to hell? So I had to answer that, give good, solid, exegetical foundations for that heartbreaking reality. And then, do you have to hear about Jesus in order to be saved?

Lots of evangelicals are inclusivists and say, "No, you don't have to hear about it." He did it, yes, and purchased salvation, but you don't have to hear about it in order to benefit from it. So I had to write about that. And then the last one was peoples versus people.

I mean, that was a real red-hot issue that nobody thought about when I was growing up. I never used the word people with an S on the end when I was growing up, ever. I remember using it one time, and a little girl said to me, "People is already plural.

You don't say peoples, you say people." She corrected me. That's very sharp. But now she needs to be taught missiology because there are thousands of peoples, and the Bible talks about them, and that missions is reaching all those peoples, not saving every soul. Jesus is going to come back when people are not yet saved, but I don't think He's coming back until the mission is finished, and the mission includes reaching the peoples.

So we had to deal with the whole issue of peoples versus people. So those are the pieces that came together. And the last thing I would say is it's the only book I have written, I think, from which people remember one sentence. "Missions exist because worship doesn't." I was just talking to a guy in the restroom 20 minutes ago, all right?

And he was asking me a question about my talk yesterday, and he said, "You gave the impression that eternity is going to be an endless worship service." I said, "Wrong impression." And you're right. I probably did leave that impression. I didn't mean to because I think worship from the heart, corporately, is more than worship services.

It's all that you do, according to Romans 12, 1 and 2. You laid on your whole life in your vocation and your hobbies and everything when it does from the heart. And I said, "Most people, when they read that sentence, first sentence in the book, 'Missions exist because worship doesn't,' misunderstand it by thinking, 'I mean, missions exist because worship services don't exist.' That's not what I mean." And so I clarified it in later editions.

I mean, people are not living out of a supreme valuing of God above all things. - Amen. We recorded this episode live in Nashville with a bunch of you who showed up and showed up alive and showed up engaged. It was a great memory. If you were there, thank you for your enthusiasm and your presence.

It was great meeting so many of you after the session at the book signing. Four other episodes came from this recording session, and we're going to start 2023 off with them. So stay tuned for more episodes from our live recording in Nashville. In the 30th anniversary re-release of "Let the Nations Be Glad" is available in a newly expanded hardcover.

Get it at a discount right now at Westminster Books. Go to WTSBooks.com. That's WTSBooks.com to find it. Next time we have a special episode on a topic that I've wanted to bring up for a long time, particularly over that question, "How do we approach God during seasons when we feel our brokenness, particularly when that brokenness is a brokenness over the guilt and shame of our own sin?" How then do we approach God?

That question gets answered robustly in two full chapters in Nehemiah, chapters 9 and 10. Pastor John is going to walk us through those next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. 1 Nehemiah 2 Nehemiah 3 Nehemiah 4 Nehemiah 5