Everlasting Joy For All Peoples - Part 3 — John Piper

Christianity’s Shift from the West to the Non-Western World

I'll read it to you. The twentieth century has seen the greatest recession from the Christian faith. That means people leaving the Christian faith. Has seen the great recession of the Christian faith in the West.

That means Europe and America, basically. There has been an equally massive accession to that faith in the non-Western world. At the beginning of the twentieth century, that's 103 years ago, well over 80 of those who professed Christianity lived in Europe or North America.

Think of it. 80 of all Christians lived in Europe or North America in 1900. Now, approaching 60 live in the southern continents of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. And that proportion, the proportion grows annually.

Christianity began the twentieth century as a Western religion, and indeed the Western religion. It ended the twentieth century as a non-Western religion on track to become progressively more so. Implication, we are not at the center anymore.

We are at the margin increasingly. Wear this. Feel the implication of this for the centuries to come if Jesus tarries. Oh, let it land on us with mixed sorrow and joy, right? Mixed sorrow because what is becoming of us has become of Europe.

Resisting Post-Christian Secularism

There's a different feel to Europe and America, but America's moving that way. The secularism and the godlessness and the absence from any pretension of religiosity, at least Christian type. There are more Muslims in England than there are Presbyterians in Scotland.

The home of Presbyterianism. 400 people a day. No, I think they said a week leave the church of Scotland. And it may or may not happen here. My prayer is that we would pour our lives out here. And other churches would to say, No!

We will not concede to the post-Christianizing of our denomination or our church or our city or our nation. We will preach Christ, live Christ, be radical for Christ here and sin with all our might in the hopes that God might make us useful for a few more centuries.

God’s Work Through Faithful Believers Among the Nations

But, let's be glad that God is at work around the world. And if He leaves us behind, so be it. He will get His work done. He will get His work done with the third world, simple, uneducated, daring saints.

He'll get His work done. The changes today are amazing. Let me give you an example. You just got to feel the force of this. The debate in the Anglican church, both sides of the Atlantic, over homosexual clergy.

Big deal. A really big deal. I've been watching it in the news. There are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England and America put together. And guess what? They believe the Bible. And guess what that means for a world synod?

They thought that 30 years ago, just 30 years ago, liberal Anglican bishops with power in England or America could be called to account biblically by the power structures of Anglicanism in Nigeria. Who would have thought such?

What an amazing shift is happening in the world. And I am very happy to be on the margins of such faithfulness to Scripture if our country goes the way of liberal unbelief. Well, those are my reflections on the words peoples.

God’s Purpose for All Peoples

And I have two other points. One, I mean two, the purpose of the nations or the purpose of the peoples. God's purpose for them, I mean. That's real clear in verse 1. Psalm 117. 1. Praise the Lord, all nations.

Extol Him, all peoples. That's God's purpose. That He be praised by all the peoples, 11 ,200 plus or whatever number you use. That every one of those peoples has a gathering of believers out of them who are praising the Lord in indigenous language and music, authentically from the heart.

Missions as a Cross-Cultural Call to Treasure God

So here's my definition of missions in view of that simple verse. Missions is a cross-cultural movement aimed at helping people stop making much of themselves and start making much of God. Or here's another definition of missions.

Missions is a cross-cultural effort to transform people's hearts so that they see and feel God as more praiseworthy than sports. Say soccer, World Cup, or a movie star, or the latest technological advance, or whatever it is that's competing with God.

The missionary is after a miracle happening through his ministry. Namely, oh that hearts would be so changed that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would be seen as more to be praised than anything in creation.

Or here's a third definition. Missions is a cross-cultural endeavor to help people experience God as their treasure above all treasures. It's a life and death struggle to give people eternal life. And you know how the Bible defines eternal life?

This is eternal life. That they might know me and my Father who sent me with joy. Missions is telling the nations to praise God and then giving them reasons for why it's a good thing to do. Of what he's like, how he got involved in history, a little bit about the Israel background, a lot about Jesus Christ, his Son who came to live, to die, to bear their sins.

He rose from the dead, triumph over all the things that bring them into bondage. He reigns at God's right hand, he can answer their prayers, he will give them eternal life. Trust him, trust him, all you peoples, and begin to praise him as the most praiseworthy person in the universe.

That's what missions is for. Missionaries don't just say Psalm 117 verse 1, namely, praise the Lord, all peoples. Missionaries say Psalm 147 verse 1, which goes like this, Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, it is pleasant.

That's what missionaries say. They give Christian hedonist reasons for why they ought to praise the Lord. So let's just stop here and face the problem. Talk about Christian hedonism, that's the solution to the problem.

The Problem of Worship Without God as the Supreme Treasure

Here's the problem. I read it in the Financial Times in London last year. Somebody gave it to me when I was over there. And I read a book review by Michael Prowse, and here's what he said. Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand.