Everlasting Joy For All Peoples - Part 1 — John Piper

Oh Father in Heaven, we have a burden for Your name, Your glory, Your renown in all the earth. And we long that You would come now and breathe upon it, intensify it, deepen it at this church. I pray that You would spread among us and then out from us a passion for Your supremacy in all things, for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the dominion and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Lord, one of the things that we pray will happen and expect to happen in this service is that people will hear a call from You confirmed in their life to be a goer in missions and others a revived, intensified, committed sender.

So Lord grant, I pray, that whether the call is to go or whether the call is to be an intentional, aggressive, intelligent, praying, giving, supporting, rope-holding sender, we would either be the one or the other and not disobedient.

May no one say, global missions, cross-cultural missions is not my thing. Whatever their calling, may this be a part of it. I pray in Jesus' name. If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Psalm 117, and I'll be reading the text this morning.

I mean, tonight, here and there in the morning. It's only two verses, which is why I asked to read it. Psalm 117, shortest chapter in the Bible. Praise the Lord, all nations, extol Him, all peoples, for great is the Lord, for great is the steadfast love of the Lord toward us.

And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. Let's begin with the term nations or peoples, and think about these two words for just a moment. A few years ago, there was a family who had a little girl, and she came up to me after preaching on missions one Sunday, and she said, Is peoples a word?

The Biblical Meaning of “Peoples” and “Nations”

She knew people was plural, and you don't need to add an S to this word, because there are already a lot of people in people, and so why would you put an S on people, because it's already plural. Now, that's a very important missiological question.

Is peoples a word? On that banner up there, it's here in this text, which is more important than the banner, extol Him, all peoples, 234 times in the Bible. The reason that people can be made plural is the same reason group can be made plural.

Nobody stumbles over groups. The reason group can be made plural is because there are a bunch of people in groups, but something unites them into a kind of oneness or unity, and that's the reason people can be made plural.

Because biblically, if you think of a people as being united by some cultural things like language or customs or ethnic or even physical features, then it would make sense to say there's more than one of them, and so what do we call them?

We call them peoples, just like there are groups. Or if you don't like peoples, call them people groups, which is what a lot of people do. What unites these folks in the Bible is not politics. So let's clarify this.

When you read of nations, here, goyim in Hebrew, ethne in Greek, don't think Germany, China, Indonesia, America, Australia, Argentina. What you see when you go to the webpage China Source and read 60 peoples who are Chinese.

Dulong, Salar, Yao. These are peoples in the nation, the way we use nation today, but the Bible would say they are nations. Have the term in English, the Cherokee nation. That's the way it's used in the Bible.

Ethnic Nations Throughout the Old and New Testaments

In the Bible, you read Genesis 10, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemurites, Hamathites, and on and on and on. Peoples, nations in the Bible. So, when you read in Psalm 17, Praise the Lord, all nations, extol Him, all peoples.

It means, praise Him, Baluch of Pakistan. Praise Him, Maninka of Guinea. Praise Him, Bugis of Indonesia, where Beth is gone. Praise Him, Hua of China, who we heard a little bit about on Wednesday night and how the Kachin might be strategically involved in that movement to Christ.

Praise Him, Somali and Dakota of Minneapolis. Same thing Jesus meant when He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. That's what He meant.

It didn't mean Germany and America. He meant all those peoples, those ethno-linguistic groups that are out there, distinct in the world, being cut off from each other, some measured by language, some measured by customs, some by ancient hostilities that make it very hard to cross a border two miles away.

The Gospel’s Advance Among All Peoples

It's what Jesus meant when He said, This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. So, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament, when you read nations or peoples, think groups of people who have a language usually, who have customs that are distinct.

The Missionary Question: Which Peoples Remain Unreached?

Now, it should be a huge question for us then as a church. How many of them are there? And, how reached are they with the gospel? Because if you're supposed to go make disciples of all these peoples, which ones don't have any disciples in them yet?

That's the missionary question. The missionary question is not the evangelistic question. Like, how many people in Minneapolis don't know Jesus? Absolutely crucial question for everybody in this church.

Not the missionary question. The question is, are there any people groups in Minneapolis who have no disciples in them? Who have no church planted in them? Or other countries and cities of the world? So, to answer that question, what do you do?

Counting and Identifying Unreached Peoples

Well, some people devote their lives to answering this question. The biggest mission agency in the world, I think, is the Southern Baptist International Board of Missions, Missions Board. Go to the website.

I-M-B.