Missions Resources - Bibliography
Let the Nations be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions
Authors: Piper, John
ISBN: 0-8010-7124-0
Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
“If the pursuit of God’s glory is not ordered above the pursuit of man’s good in the affections of the heart and the priorities of the church, man will not be well served and God will not be duly honored. I am not pleading for a diminishing of missions but for a magnifying of God. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God’s true worth, the light of missions will shine to the most remote peoples on earth…where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak.”
-John Piper
Let the Nations Be Glad, by John Piper, inverts the mainstream Christian conception of missions. More often than not, we hear the call to missions out of compassion for the lost, which is admittedly a vital part of missions. But the true heart of missions, according to Piper, is not compassion, but worship. The Great Commission isn’t the final goal of the church, worship is. Piper writes, “missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is the ultimate (goal of the church), not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.” (page 11)
Piper is one of the most God-centered writers of our day. Everything in this book returns to the supremacy of God, for the ultimate glory of God. This book will give you a desire to better know your Creator, but this desire might well be connected to agony over sin. We proclaim to the nations that God is good because we have experienced and understood that God is a good and forgiving God. Our every actions and very lives should express worship, and our desire to see the lost saved should come out of our passion for the Lord.
To read Pipers passionate appeal for the necessity of the centrality and glory of God in our daily lives, is likely to feel convicted and enlightened. We should not be evangelizing only because we read the command of the Lord in his Word to do so, we should be spreading the good news because we can’t help ourselves. We have had such a revelation of the glory of God that our very being shouts out “oh magnify the Lord with me” and “taste and see that the Lord is good”! It is this sort of appeal to the lost that causes them to want to know the God that could bring such joy in the midst of any and every situation.
Piper explains further that “worship isn’t the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. Missionaries will never call out “let the nations be glad!” who cannot say from the heart, “I rejoice in the Lord…I will be glad and exult in thee, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High” (Psalm 104:34; 9:2) Missions begins and ends in worship.” (page 11) Missions isn’t fueled by worship, missions is worship; “the goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.”
Missions is for God's glory, and “the ultimate foundation for our passion to see God glorified is his own passion to be glorified.” (page 15) “God’s passion for God is unmistakable” (21) It is idolatry for us to glory in anything or anyone other than the Lord, for there is none greater than He is. In the same way, “God is righteous. This means that he recognizes, welcomes, loves and upholds with infinite jealousy and energy what is infinitely valuable, namely, the worth of God.” (16)
“The most crucial issue in missions is the centrality of God in the life of the church. Where people are not stunned by the greatness of God, how can they be sent with the ringing message, 'Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all Gods!' Missions is not first and ultimate: God is.” (14) This book is not only for those who feel called to the foreign mission fields, or for those who are already there. This book is for the believer. This book is for the one who desires to know the Lord better and desires that their life be a living, breathing example to others of the joy of the Lord.
“The power of the missionary enterprise is to be caught up into God’s fuel and God’s goal. And that means being caught up in worship.”
John Piper, 31
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