I invite you to open your Bibles to Psalm
67. Let the Nations Be Glad as a title came from
this Psalm, and you’ll hear it. I’ll read the seven verses of this Psalm. May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, That your way may be known upon the earth,
your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us;
let all the ends of the earth fear him! Amen. So what I want to do is go back in history
a few hundred years for a few minutes, then go out to the world and update us on what
God has done since that historical moment, and then go into this text and listen to the
Word of the Lord concerning the nations of the world. So let’s go back first a few hundred years. The missionary endeavor of the Protestants
in England burst forth out of the soil of a very rich Reformed, Puritan theology. You remember the Puritans. They were the pastors and the teachers between
1560 and 1660 who wanted to purify the Church of England in accord with the theological
and practical teachings of the Reformation. They had a view of Biblical authority and
God’s sovereignty that produced an undaunted hope for the world. They were deeply stirred with a passion for
God’s coming kingdom. They really believed in Psalm 86:8 and 9. It goes like this. There is none like You among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like Yours. All the nations that You have made shall come
and bow down before You, O Lord. They shall glorify Your name. They were gripped by this total confidence
that one day God would take possession of all the nations, and they would bow before
Him. It was a tremendous confidence in their hearts,
and that was the confidence that gave birth to the Modern Missionary Movement. But the Puritans were 150 years before the
Modern Missionary Movement. And we usually think of the Modern Missionary
Movement beginning with William Carey, 1792. But there were things happening among the
Puritans with regard to missions 150 years before this. I want to give you a glimpse of one of those
people namely John Eliot in America. Between the years 1627 and 1640, so over 150
years earlier, between 1627 and 1640, 15,000 people, most of them Puritans, emigrated from
England to America. On the seal – I don’t know if you knew
this or not – but on the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there was a picture of a native
American and out of his mouth like this, written coming out of his mouth were the words of
Acts 16, verse 9, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Now that tells a huge story about the thinking
of the first settlers, the Puritans from England coming to America, and they created a seal
on the Massachusetts Bay Colony and on the seal a picture of an Indian and out of his
mouth coming, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” The mindset the vast majority of the Pilgrims
who came from England to America was we’re on an errand into the wilderness to advance
the kingdom of God and to reach the nations the Algonquin and the Cherokee and Iroquois
and the dozens and dozens of tribes that were in America, the unreached peoples, the frontiers,
the place where the gospel was going to bring victory among the nations. Now one of those pastors, one of those people
on the boat was John Eliot. He crossed the Atlantic in 1631. He was 27 years old, and a year later he became
the pastor of the first church in Roxbury, which is now is part of Boston, then a town
about a mile away from Boston. And something happened during his first 13
years of ministry that changed him forever. Cotton Mather, who wrote the history of those
early days, pointed out that there were 20 tribes. He explicitly called them nations, nations
of Indians in that vicinity to link up with the Biblical term “all the nations shall
come and bow down before You.” And there were 20 of these within a stone’s
throw of Roxbury where John Eliot was ministering. And Eliot entered into a kind of crisis period
in his ministry where he felt, I believe in the infallible Scriptures. I believe that the infallible Scriptures teach
an absolutely sovereign God. I believe that this sovereign God has promised
that all the nations of America and of the world will one day bow the knee. And he could not escape the implication, so
that at age 40… Now I want to do a little survey here. Raise your hand if you’re 40 or over. I just want to see who we are. Okay, that’s a lot of you. So this is for you. At age 40, he set himself to learn the Algonquin
language. This was an extremely difficult language. I’ve seen words. There are words in this language that are
27 letters long, and it sounds like Hawaiian. You know, if I try to pronounce it, wa-wa-wa-wa-wa. And he mastered it. And before he died at age 84, so that’s
44 years later, working till his last breath, he had translated the entire Scriptures into
Algonquin. He had translated Richard Baxter’s Call
to the Unconverted and several other books. He had established a network of churches. There were trained Indian pastors in these
churches before this story came to an end. And his motto for life was, “Prayers and
pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.” And one of the great tragedies of our land
is that was completely destroyed. We have much to grieve over with regard to
our history. But what I want to say is that the earliest,
risk taking, pains taking, prayer soaked, missionary adventure into the unreached nations
of the world among Puritans was driven by a profound confidence in the sovereignty of
God and a rich and robust Reformed theology. Because I think a lot of people do not associate
Reformed theology with a passion for the nations, one of the great obstacles among many groups
of having them even seriously consider the implications of God’s sovereignty is that
they blow it off as non-missionary, which in certain groups it has been but not historically,
not historically. So when 1793 comes, you not only have William
Carey driven by this very same Reformed vision of God’s triumph in the world because of
His sovereign promises, but you have David Brainerd, you have Adoniram Judson, you have
Alexander Duff, David Livingstone. They’re all driven by the same theology. They’re all Reformed. They’re all Calvinistic. They’re all lovers of God’s sovereignty,
and they’re all giving their lives away at great pain for the sake of bringing the
nations into the kingdom of Christ. I just want you to feel that historically
the Modern Missionary Movement sprang up in the soil of Ligonier theology, Desiring God
theology, Biblical, rich, robust, sovereign God theology. There’s nothing at odds. In fact, it’s the opposite between such
theology and a passion for the nations. So I’m eager to have you put the two together
because that kind of theology, I think, is the only kind that produces really radical
obedience and intense worship and durable persevering, fruitful commitment to world
missions. Now, that’s the glance, the glance backward. Now what’s… what’s happened in the last
200 years plus? Let’s look out for a moment, and if you’re
not aware of what I’m about to say, I hope you will purchase, for example, Philip Jenkins’
books on the situation now. He created the term global south, and it’s
a term that refers to Latin America, Africa, Asia and the stunning shift of the center
of gravity of the Christian church from Europe to America to the south, that is below the
equator by and large. Let me give you some statistics to show you
what has happened. At the beginning of the 20th century, Europeans
dominated the world church – 70.6% of the world’s Christian population was European
or European descent. By the end of the 20th century, so 11 years
ago, the European percentage of world Christianity had shrunk from 70% to 28% of the total, and
Latin America and Africa alone, without Asia, combined made 43% of the world’s Christians. That is astonishing. In 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians,
representing 10% of its population. One hundred years later, the year 2000, this
figure had grown to 360 million, from 10 million, representing half of the continent’s population. So quantitatively this may be, Jenkins says,
the largest shift in religious affiliation that has ever occurred anywhere in the history
of the world. Mark Noll has a new book called The New Shape
of World Christianity, published 2009. I recommend it. Here are some excerpts. The number of practicing Christians in China
may be approaching the number in the United States. Live bodies in church are far more numerous
in Kenya than in Canada. More believers worship together in church
Sunday by Sunday in Nagaland than in Norway. More Christian workers from Brazil are active
in cross cultural ministry outside their homeland than those from Britain and Canada put together. Last Sunday more Christian believers attended
church in China than in all of so-called Christian Europe. The past Sunday more Anglicans attended church
in each, each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and
Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined. Last Sunday more Presbyterians were in church
in Ghana than in Scotland. How would John Knox feel about that? This past week in Great Britain at least 15,000
Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the local British, most
of these missionaries from Africa and Asia. “In a word,” to quote Noll, “In a word,
the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last 50
years than in any comparable period in history with the exception of the very earliest years
of church history.” So take a deep breath and let those things
sink in of what God is up to in these days. When you hear statistics like that be careful
that you do not draw false inferences like the day of missions or the day of Western
missions is over. There are people talking that way, and it
is horrific, I think. To say, for example, just send your money
to third world missions because they can do it better, and we’re not needed anymore,
here’s the way I translate that philosophy. Let them shed their blood, not us. We’ll just give money. We nice, comfortable, secure Americans, we’ll
just send our money and then go to Disney World. We’re not going to put our necks on the
line anymore in Saudi Arabia or North India or Thailand or Myanmar or Indonesia. It is not only theologically and spiritually
evil to think that way. It is missiologically mistaken because it
is, number one, not true that there are third world Christians in all the people groups
that need to be reached because the meaning of unreached is that they aren’t there. There are, as we speak – I updated this
from the joshuaproject.net yesterday, who keep week by week tabs on these statistics
– there are, as we speak, 6,872 unreached peoples. So you can go to their website – joshuaproject.net
– and see the precise definition of unreached, representing 41% of the population of the
world in those peoples. That’s out of a total of peoples. This is ethno-linguistic unique things that
the Bible calls nations. “You were slain and by Your blood, You ransomed
people for God from every tribe, tongue, people, nation.” Those four things overlap and are hard to
define, but they are not… they are not countries. The 221 some countries of the world is not
what that’s talking about. That’s Hittites, Jebusites, Cherokee, Iroquois,
Hausa, Fulani. There are 16,000 plus peoples like this around
the world and 6,872 of them with so few Christians or none that they cannot evangelize themselves. There’s nobody to send money to. And the second reason it’s missiologically
flawed is that it isn’t obvious that strategically and tactically the nearer tribes, who are
Christianized, can reach the neighboring peoples because of age old hostilities, which a person
from Brazil might overcome in Indonesia. It’s not obvious. Let God be God here. We… If your heart burns in this message, this
is what I’ve dreamed of all my life. I just needed somebody to push me over the
edge. I’m here to do that, so that you leave wherever
you are and spend the rest of your days from age 70 to 80 in Indonesia, or 40 to 90, or
wherever. I really do recommend that you do some research
at joshuaproject.net, or finishingthetask.com is another regularly…. I went there yesterday. It was updated as of February 12, this year. They keep tabs on the unengaged peoples, not
just unreached, but unengaged. Unengaged means nobody is engaging them missiologically. They’re not even there yet. There is no missionary, no tribe, no… nobody
is there. And they’ve got that all documented – who
they are, who’s planning to go, who’s not yet planning to go. So that’s my look outward. I want you to feel both hope and challenge. When you look back, I want you to feel hope
and challenge. When you look out at what God is doing, there
is no… there is no hope in my Bible or in any theological principle I know that America
is… that America is guaranteed to be anything other than a footnote in some history book. And this nation could be Islam… Muslim someday as far as I know. We have a season. We’re a very young nation. We’re the wealthiest nation in the world. Why? And with that I turn… I turn to the text. Let me read it again. This is Psalm 67. “May God be gracious to us,” and what
I just said is going to… is going to set this up wrong if I don’t correct. This Psalm is not about America. The us here is not America. It’s the people of God, and there are millions
and millions of us in America, and we are filthy rich. Look at this building. And you all paid whatever to come to this
conference. And all of us are wealthy. We are wealthy. By whatever standards in America you may feel
you’re not wealthy, you’re wealthy. And there’s a reason that the people of
God have been blessed, and that’s what this Psalm is about. It’s not about America. It’s about the church, as I think I’ll
be able to show you hermeneutically before we’re done. “May God be gracious to us,” and oh, how
He has been in so many ways. May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, That your way may be known upon the earth,
your saving power – (your salvation) – among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its increase; Oh, has it ever. Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota is the breadbasket
of the world. We could feed the whole world with three states. God has blessed our soil in Minnesota. You drive through Minnesota and look at that
corn and that soil, and you say anything could grow here. It’s so black. It’s so rich. It’s so awesomely blessed. Who did that? Why? God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us;
let all the ends of the earth fear him! Now three big questions to ask of this Psalm,
and I’ll take them one at a time. Number one, what is the great purpose of God
revealed in this prayer. It’s a prayer. What is the purpose of God? And it is clear. The purpose of God in this prayer – this
is the way you pray when you’re praying “Thy kingdom come,” this is the way you
pray – God’s purpose is to be known, praised, enjoyed, and feared. Those are the four purposes of God in this
Psalm. Let’s just look at them. Number one, God’s purpose is to be known. Verse 2, “That Thy way may be known upon
the earth, Thy saving power upon all the nations.” So purpose number one, God means to be known
by these 16,000 nations. God will not rest until He is known, the true
God is known among all those nations. Number two, His purpose is to be praised. Verse 3, “Let all the peoples praise Thee,
O God. Let all the peoples praise Thee.” Verse 5, “Let the peoples praise Thee, O
God. Let all the peoples praise Thee.” We should not rest until we see every people
group praising the true God. This is a beautiful picture in your mind,
all the languages of the world praising the Lord. Number three, God’s purpose is to be enjoyed
among the peoples. Verse 4, “Let the nations be glad and sing
for joy.” God is not content until all the nations are
glad in God, glad in God, not just praising God, not just knowing God, but rejoicing in
God. And number four, feared, reverenced. Verse 7, “Let all the ends of the earth
fear Him.” So the purpose of God is clear – to be known,
praised, enjoyed and reverenced among all the peoples. So just take yesterday’s message and add
at the end of every sentence, “all the nations,” all of them. Now, most of you don’t know who J. Campbell
White is probably. But I’m going to quote from him, and then
in a minute tell you who he was. Here’s what he said, “Most men,” I think
he meant men and women, “are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives.” I think that’s true. “Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of
Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He
came to redeem. Fame, pleasure, riches are but husks and ashes
in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment
of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s
undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.” And I think that’s implied in our text. If we are children of God, then the only thing
that will bring true and lasting satisfaction is to throw our lives into the purpose of
our Father. And the purpose of our Father is to be known
and praised and enjoyed and reverenced among all the nations. Now, at that point if I were you, I’d start
to get restless and say, “So are you saying that only missionaries can have a fully satisfied
life? And that by implication, all of us should
stop what we’re doing and do that?” – that is be a cross cultural home leaving missionary. And my answer to that is “no.” It’s a Biblical “no.” But let’s answer it first by saying who
J. Campbell White was. He was not a missionary. He was a businessman. And in 1906, he and others founded the Laymen’s
Missionary Movement because they watched what God was doing among students, the student
volunteer movement, in which thousands of young people were dedicating themselves to
world evangelization and leaving their homes and going to the hardest places of the world
to spread the gospel and plant the church. And these laymen said, “We can’t miss
out on this.” So they formed the Laymen’s Missionary Movement
precisely to stay at home and get behind it with all their might. They wrote their mission statement like this:
“Investigation, agitation, and organization. The investigation by laymen of missionary
conditions, the agitation of laymen for adequate missionary policy, the organization of laymen
to cooperate with the ministries and missionary boards in enlisting the whole church in a
supreme and saving work for the world.” That’s the way J. Campbell White was thinking. So when I say by implication this Psalm is
saying and J. Campbell White is articulating that you can’t… you just can’t rest
until you’re engaged with this, I don’t mean you are a goer. There are three kinds of people we like to
say at Bethlehem – goers, senders, and disobedient. And there aren’t any other kind. And so I do not expect you nor want all of
you to go. When Paul was heading for Spain, and he wrote
his missionary letter called Romans to get support. “I want you to speed me on my journey.” He meant don’t go with me. That’s what he said. Speed me on. Give me what I need. Hold up my hands. Supply me. You’re not called to go to Spain. I’m called to go to Spain. Send me. We don’t let any missionaries go out from
our church – we have about 100 missionary units go out – we don’t let any of them
go unless they have a Barnabas team we call it. And these are people that are gathered, I
said, “We are holding this rope as you go down over the cliff. If you fail, it’s our problem. And we’re in your life for the duration.” You can’t do missions if people don’t
stay. So don’t hear me saying that, but I am calling
for engagement of thinking, of study, an investigation, organization, agitation kind of engagement
in your local church. Who’s the advocate there for the unreached
peoples? Not just vague missions like send some kids
to Haiti, I’m talking unreached peoples that don’t have anything and are in places
all of which today don’t want you to come almost. The hardest places that are left are places
where it’s very difficult to go. But there are no closed countries. You can get in. You just can’t get out. The concept of a closed country would have
been unintelligible to Paul who spent every other weekend in jail. No, I don’t expect all of you to go. So question number one to this text is, what’s
the purpose of God in this prayer? And the answer is to be known, to be praised,
to be enjoyed among the peoples of the world, and to be feared. The second question, what is it that God aims
to make known about Himself among the nations? What does this Psalm say God wants to be known? If He says, “I want to be known and praised,”
what do You want to be known and what do You want people praising You for according to
this Psalm? There are four answers. Number one, God aims to be known as the One
and only true living God. And I gather this from the fact that an inspired
Israelite poet is praying for His God, Yahweh, to be know among the peoples where a pantheon
of pagan gods are already worshipped. So when he says, “Let all the peoples praise
You, O God,” he means let all of them turn from the false gods to the true and living
God. That’s number one. God wants to be known among the nations as
the only true and living God. Number two, God aims to be known that He is
a God of justice, that He does what’s right. Look at verse 4, “Let the nations be glad
and sing for joy for You judge the peoples with equity.” So let them be glad because You the judge
the peoples with equity. I want to be known as the One who judges the
peoples with equity. What does that mean? When the judgment of the nations comes, God
will not be partial. No one will be condemned for the color of
his skin. No one will be condemned for the size of his
brain or the place of his birth. No bribes will be taken or considered. No sophisticated plea bargaining from any
people group whatsoever. All will proceed on the basis of impeccable
righteousness. Let this be known to all the peoples of the
earth. They will stand on equal footing with every
other nation before God, including Israel, and they will all be judged by one standard
of justice, God, His truth in revelation generally if they have had that or specially if they
have had that. God is a God of equity. He is a God of justice, and He wants to be
known among the nations that He’s that kind of God. Number three, God aims to be known that He
is a God of sovereign power. I think we Reformed people should realize
we have an edge with Islam. Wimpy gods are going to go nowhere in Islam. Big, strong, sovereign, all-knowing, all-controlling,
evangelical, Christ exalting God will go. We are called to engage with a people whose
God for them is absolutely sovereign. So number three, God aims to be known as a
God of sovereign power. Verse 4, “Let the nations be glad and sing
for joy, for You judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth.” What does that mean? God guides the nations on the earth. Many nations call themselves sovereign states. Ha, the Lord laughs. He sits in heaven and laughs at the puny claims
to sovereignty in rulers like Gadhafi. He laughs at their presumption and nations
that think they are making their own way in the world like the United States of America. Acts, chapter 17, verse 26, “Their boundaries
and their time periods are determined by the Lord. He allots them all.” Proverbs 21, “The king’s heart is a stream
of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He wills.” Daniel 2:21, “He removes kings and sets
up kings.” Daniel 4:35, “He does according to His will
in the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. None can stay His hand or say to Him, ‘What
are You doing?’” God aims to be known as the One who runs the
world and guides the nations on the earth. They are not sovereign. One is sovereign, and He sets the destiny
of every nation, and He wants them to know that. When you pray for rulers of the world, which
you should do regularly according to First Timothy, you should pray that they know they
are not God. Humble them, humble them, O God, bring them
to their faces, bring the President of the United States to his face, bring Moammar Gadhafi
to his face before the living God, and may he say like Nebuchadnezzar, “I was an ox
until I discovered that God rules the nations. I ate grass. My fingernails were like eagles’ claws,
and I didn’t know which way was up until my reason returned to me, and I knew God is
God and raises up kings and puts down kings.” Pray that for the nations. God wants to be known among all the rulers
of the world and all the nations of the world that He guides the nations. And number four, God aims to be known as the
gracious God. This is the gospel now. God aims to be known as a gracious God. Verse 1, “May God be gracious to us.” Yes, it does say us at this point. “And bless us, and make His face to shine
upon us that Thy way may be known on the earth, Thy salvation to all… among all the nations.” He wants to be known as a gracious God. And first He’s gracious to Israel. But why? Not only to Israel, but that His salvation
may be known. And you might think, but could that mean Israel’s
salvation should be known? Ha-ah, Israel is saved. You know it now. Sorry. Is that the meaning here? No, it’s not the meaning because he says
in verse 4, “Let the nations be glad.” That would not make the nations glad, like
I just inform you the church is saved, and you can go to hell. That doesn’t make the nations glad. When it says that salvation may be known among
all nations, he means that Israel’s blessing should go to the nations and make them glad. This is the old Puritan hope, these four great
truths about God. There is one true and living God. He is infinitely just and holy. He is sovereign over all the nations. And He is gracious to all who will believe. And that’s what He wants to be known among
all the nations of the world. That was true for Israel then. It’s true for us now. Question number three, why does God bless
His people and make His face to shine upon them? That’s us now, I’m going to argue. And the answer is really clear. You know, I said yesterday my favorite phrase
in the Bible is “in order that,” because I’m a purpose guy, just got to know. I’ve got to know why blessings would come
to John Piper, born into a Christian home. I could have been born into a Hindu home. My parents never wanted for a meal. I had what I regard as the best education
I could have had at every step of the way. I got a job without having to have a year
of unemployment after I finished school. And God has blessed Bethlehem, but why? What’s the point of all the blessings here? “May God be gracious to us.” It’s not wrong to pray that. You ought to pray that. “And bless us everyway.” Got no problem, make as much money as you
can and just live on a tenth of it or whatever. Just keep it simple and give the rest away. Invest, invest, invest, invest, make your
life an investment. Don’t lay up treasures on earth where moth
and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. Lay up treasures in heaven. Make friends for yourselves in heaven. We have money for a reason, and here it comes. “May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make His face shine on us that…” There it is, a little shortened form. “That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your saving power.” God has blessed us for the sake of the world. I’m tempted to generalize for America, providentially
speaking, but let’s just keep it to the church. And here’s the hermeneutical movement. I said I would try to help you hermeneutically
get from this Psalm to your local church. Genesis, chapter 12, verses 2 and 3 is the
promise behind this prayer. This is a prayer that God would bless Israel
for the sake of the nations. Now Genesis 12 is behind that. And you know… you know these verses. I’ll read them to you. God promises to Abraham, “I will make you
a great nation, and I will bless you.” So this Psalm is just praying that. “I will bless you and make your name great,
so that,” same logic, “so that you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse,
and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” What a spectacular promise made to Israel,
Israel. All the families, 16,000 people groups, can
be blessed because of Israel, because of Abraham, the covenant of Abraham, this rich root of
the olive tree. This promise is picked up in Isaiah 49, verse
6, “I will give you,” Israel, “I will give you as a light to the nations that My
salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” And where is that quoted in the New Testament? It’s quoted by Paul and Barnabas in Acts
13:47, as their mission when they’re kicked out of the synagogue. They quote Isaiah 49:6, which is picking up
on Genesis 12:2 and 3, which is prayed in Psalm 67, and their point is the church’s
mission to the gentiles, the nations, is the extension of the Abrahamic covenant to those
for whom it was intended. Who are the children of Abraham? Those who have the faith of Abraham are the
children of Abraham. Wild olive branches are all over the world
ready to be grafted in to this magnificent tree to which you Johnny-come-latelies were
grafted in when the branches were broken off, until the full number of the Gentiles come
in. And when they come in, all Israel will be
saved. This is what we’re after. We want to see this thing wrapped up. And it’s wrapped up through world missions. This gospel will be preached as a testimony
to all the nations, and then the end will come. It’s what we want. It’s what we pray for. “Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on the earth the way the
angels do it in heaven,” perfectly, totally. So my closing stress is that the reason we’re
blessed is in the little word that in verse 2 of Psalm 67. “May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make His face shine on us that Your way may be known.” So I just think every time you reach into
your pocket and pull out this thing or into your purse and find one of these, won’t
you just, you say, “Why? Why? Why does these [sic] keep coming into my life,
buying me a house and a car and food?” And that you will now think among all the
other right things to do with your money, this is one huge thing. Blessing is on the church in America for the
sake of the nations. And even though the center of gravity has
moved from Europe to America and now to the global south, my prayer is I’m simply… I’m in God’s face about this. No, no, no, no, no, no, the church in North
America will not be left behind in this process. We will not hand over our mission to the global
south. Don’t leave us. [applause] Don’t take the blessing from
us of being a means of advancing your kingdom. We really, really, at least thousands, millions
of us want to be spent and spend ourselves for the sake of the nations. So I think the purpose is pretty clear here
that we are blessed in order to be a blessing for the nations, and that doesn’t mean you
all go, but it does mean you all go or send, that you’re engaged in some way. So let me close with a quote from 1648. This is written by the Parliament concerning
the Indian peoples of New England, the Parliament of England. “The utmost ends of the earth are designed
and promised to be in time the possessions of Christ. The ends of the earth shall see His glory,
and the kingdoms of the world shall come… become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His
Christ. And if the dawn of the morning be so delightful,
what will be the clear day. If some beginnings be so full of joy, what
will it be when God shall perform His whole work, when the whole earth shall be full of
the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea, and east and west shall sing together
the song of the Lamb.” God is going to get this done, so I just encourage
you. Don’t miss out. Join this invincible purpose of God. So Father, I pray now that You would move
in power and You would awaken in this room and all these people touch, a passion for
your supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Amen. [applause]
