Latest / Reformed Thinking / Missions: The Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism | John Piper

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Missions: The Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism | John Piper · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. Today we're doing a deep dive
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  into a topic that's really at the very heart of the gospel
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  Global Missions. It really is, and we've got a
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  stack of sources here that get into the real strategy of it
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  all. The what, the why, and maybe
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  most surprisingly, at the how. Yeah, the how?
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  Because our mission for this conversation is to give you a
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  clear framework for thinking about this.
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  We want to sort through the difference between general
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  evangelism and pioneering missions.
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  A huge difference and one that changes everything.
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  It does. We also want to understand the
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  scale of what's left to do, this idea of people groups and get to
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  the bottom of this, this incredible claim from guys like
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  David Livingstone, who said I never made a sacrifice.
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  That just seems, on the face of it, unbelievable.
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  It does, but it's central to the whole motivation.
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  To get there, though, we have to start with the terms.
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  We have to be super clear on what we're talking about.
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  If we mix up two different jobs, we can't ever, you know, plan
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  properly or even know when we're done.
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  OK, so let's start there. Let's unpack this distinction
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  that the sources make between missions, specifically frontier
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  missions and evangelism. I think most of us use those
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  words pretty much interchangeably.
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  We do, and that's the problem. Strategically, they're not the
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  same at all, and it all hinges on whether the job is, well,
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  finishable. OK.
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  So which one is which? Let's start with evangelism,
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  because that's what most of us are familiar with.
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  Evangelism is the ongoing work of sharing the gospel inside a
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  culture where a church is already up and running.
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  Right. So you've got local churches,
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  you've got pastors who speak the language, you have a Christian
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  community that exists. Exactly.
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  Think about North America or Europe or South Korea.
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  The church is there. It might be small, it might be
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  struggling, but it exists. And because new people are
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  always being born and they're always unbelievers in that
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  culture. The work is never done.
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  It's never done. It's a continuous task.
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  You might you have a huge revival, but you still have to
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  share the gospel with the next generation.
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  That work continues right up until Christ returns.
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  So that's evangelism, the ongoing work of an established
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  local church. Right.
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  But Frontier Missions is a totally different animal.
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  It has a unique strategic purpose to cross barriers,
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  language barriers, cultural barriers, to get into a people
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  group where there is no church and to plant 1.
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  So it's about starting from scratch.
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  It's pioneering work. It's about establishing a beach
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  head for the gospel where none exists, so that an indigenous
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  church can then take over that continuous task of evangelism we
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  just talked about. Ah.
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  OK, so that distinction, that's what lets us talk about
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  something called closure in missions, the idea that the job
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  could actually be completed. That's it.
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  And you see this perfectly with the Apostle Paul.
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  I mean, he was the model pioneer.
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  Right. If he was just a general
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  evangelist, he would have just stayed in one place, right?
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  Like Corinth, where he saw a ton of success.
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  Exactly. He would have stayed there for
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  40 years trying to convert every last person, but that's not what
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  he did. He had a different goal.
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  He lays it out in Romans 15. He says his ambition was to
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  preach the gospel where Christ wasn't known so he wouldn't be
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  building on someone else's foundation.
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  Think about that. He's a strategist, he's looking
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  at the map and then he says something that's just, it's an
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  incredible statement. He says that from Jerusalem all
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  the way to Illyricum, that's modern day Albania.
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  He has fulfilled the ministry of the Gospel.
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  Which is just a massive area of land in so many different
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  cultures. How could he possibly say it was
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  fulfilled? I mean, there must have been
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  thousands, maybe millions of people there who still didn't
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  believe of. Course there were.
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  He didn't mean every single person was saved.
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  He meant the pioneering task was done.
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  The planting. The planting was done.
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  He had crossed the barriers. He had established functioning
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  churches with local leaders. He had lit the fire.
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  And now those local churches were responsible for fanning the
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  flames. So for him, the mission in that
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  region was complete. He could actually say I have no
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  more room for work here and start planning his next move to
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  Spain. That's the strategic mind of a
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  pioneer. Once a viable evangelizing
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  church is planted, his job there is over.
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  The responsibility shifts to the local believers to do the
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  ongoing work of evangelism. And that framework changes
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  everything. It means the Great Commission
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  making disciples of all the ethne, all the peoples, is a
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  task that has an end point. It does.
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  Once every people group has a healthy reproducing church, the
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  job of frontier missions is technically over.
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  The work of evangelism, of course, will go on forever, but
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  the specific cross cultural pioneering task will be
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  finished. That reframes the entire effort.
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  It's not a black hole of endless need.
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  It's a specific achievable goal. And that brings us to the next
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  point. If the goal is to plant a church
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  in every ethne, what exactly is an ethne?
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  Right. We've defined the task, now we
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  have to define the target. For a long time, people heard
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  nations in the Great Commission and thought of, well, political
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  countries. Sure.
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  Go to France, go to Japan, go to Brazil.
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  But the sources are really clear that we have to think much
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  smaller, much more specifically than that.
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  From political nations to people groups, why is that shift so
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  vital? Because God's plan of
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  redemption, as you see it in the Bible, is way more detailed than
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  our modern maps. You look at a verse like
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  Revelation 7.9 and the crowd in heaven comes from every nation,
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  from all tribes and peoples and languages so.
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  It's not enough to just have a Christian from India, for
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  example. Not even close.
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  Because India isn't one people. It's it's thousands of distinct
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  people groups, thousands of different languages, castes,
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  tribes, cultures, many of whom have never even heard the gospel
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  even though there's a huge church in other parts of India.
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  So a people group is a distinct cultural or linguistic unit, and
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  that's the real target for frontier missions, not just a
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  spot on a map. Precisely, we're trying to reach
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  every one of those distinct units, but as you can imagine,
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  actually defining and counting them gets, well, it gets really
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  complicated. Yeah, the sources mention that
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  it's not a simple checklist. No, not at all.
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  A guy named Ralph Winter, who is a huge thinker in this area.
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  He pointed out that it's almost impossible to draw these
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  perfect, clean lines between a nation, a tribe, a people and a
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  language. Can you give an example of that?
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  Sure, think about Bible translation.
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  You might create 1 written translation for a language that
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  covers a really big area. And you think OK, great, one
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  people group reached. But then you realize that many
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  of the people in that area don't read.
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  So you decide to make audio recordings of the Bible, and you
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  suddenly discover that to be understood, you don't need one
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  recording, you need 8 because the spoken dialects are that
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  different. Wow, So what looked like one
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  group is actually 8 just based on the barrier to communication.
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  Exactly. The real question is can the
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  gospel spread naturally within that group without hitting a
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  major cultural or language wall? If it can't, you're likely
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  discling with two different people groups.
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  A people group is truly reached only when the local believers
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  can do the evangelism themselves without needing an outside
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  translator or cultural guide. So, given how messy that is, how
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  do we even begin to count the remaining work?
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  What do the numbers look like? Well, the numbers are estimates
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  and they're always being refined as we get more information, just
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  like Winter predicted. But the data we have is it's
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  sobering. Back in 1998, that estimate was
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  around 13,000 distinct ethno linguistic peoples in the world,
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  and of those about 3500 were considered pioneer fields,
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  basically totally unreached. And I'm guessing that number
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  went up as we learned more. It did.
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  By 2010, the total count was over 16,500 people groups, with
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  more than 6800 of them classified as unreached.
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  Over 6800. Yeah.
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  But the really gut wrenching number is the population.
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  We're talking about approximately 2 billion people,
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  2 billion, two billion people who live in groups where there's
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  no indigenous church strong enough to evangelize their own
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  people. They will likely be born, live,
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  and die without ever hearing the name of Christ.
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  That figure 2 billion that should completely reorient how
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  the global church thinks about its resources and its
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  priorities. It should.
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  And what's interesting is that this massive population isn't
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  just spread out evenly across the globe.
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  It's heavily, heavily concentrated in one specific
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  region of the world. The 10:40 window.
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  The 10:40 window. It's crucial for anyone thinking
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  strategically about this to know what that is so.
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  Let's define it. OK, so picture a map of the
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  world. The 10:40 window is a rectangle.
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  It stretches horizontally from West Africa across North Africa
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  through the Middle East all the way to East Asia.
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  And vertically. Vertically, it's the area
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  between 10° and 40° N of the equator.
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  And the people inside that box. They are by and large the least
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  reached people in the world. The populations are primarily
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  Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Animist.
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  This is the heartland of the world's major non Christian
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  religions, and it's where the vast majority of those 6800
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  unreached people groups live. So it provides a focus.
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  It turns this overwhelming global task into a tangible,
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  concentrated challenge. It does, but it's also the area
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  of the world that is historically the most resistant
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  to the gospel. Which makes the task look well,
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  from a human point of view, it looks impossible.
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  How do you look at 2 billion people locked behind these huge
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  cultural and political walls and not just fall into despair?
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  And that, that brings us right to the theological engine that
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  has to drive this whole thing. You have to start with the
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  urgency, but you have to be sustained by something much
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  bigger than human ability. The urgency comes from the
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  belief that this work is, as the sources put it, utterly
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  essential that without the gospel, people are truly without
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  hope. That conviction is the fuel.
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  This isn't just a nice cultural exchange program.
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  The core belief here is that the gospel of Christ is the only
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  thing that can free people from sin.
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  The aim is conversion to Christ because the Bible is
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  uncompromising on this point. Acts 4.12.
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  There is salvation in no one else.
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  And holding to that puts you at odds with some other theological
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  views out there, views that the sources say have really hurt the
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  mission's effort over the years. They've done huge damage because
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  if you lose that sense of urgency, if you lose the
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  conviction that people are lost without Christ, the drive for
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  frontier missions just it evaporates.
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  What kind of views were you talking about?
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  Well, the idea which you find among some leaders in mainline
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  denominations, for instance, that that all people and all
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  religions are sort of already living in God's grace and will
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  be saved by his mercy regardless of what they believe.
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  Sometimes called inclusivism or the idea of the anonymous
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  Christian. Exactly the belief that you can
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  be saved by Christ without ever actually hearing about him or
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  putting your faith in Him. The sources quote one Catholic
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  sister who said the Commission to save souls isn't necessary
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  because they are already in the love and grace of God.
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  If that's true, then the Apostle Paul's entire life was a tragic
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  misunderstanding. Completely.
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  Think of his Commission in Acts 26.
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  He was sent to open their eyes so that they may turn from
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  darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.
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  That's a rescue mission. It implies A radical change of
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  state, a turning from one Kingdom to another.
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  If they're already fine, that mandate is just empty words.
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  And you can see the results of these beliefs in the numbers.
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  The sources note that as these inclusiveness ideas grew in some
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  denominations, their missionary force just plummeted.
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  It did, while at the same time the missionary forces of
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  evangelical groups, the ones holding firmly to the necessity
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  of conversion, grew by over 200%.
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  Your theology dictates your actions.
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  OK, so the urgency is clear, but that's still leaves us with the
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  overwhelming scale. 2 billion people, how do you even begin?
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  That's where the hope has to come from, somewhere else.
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  This is where Reformed theology provides what the sources call
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  the perfect missionary medicine. It's God's sovereignty.
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  It's Jesus's own words in Mark 10.
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  With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are
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  possible with God. The task of converting a heart
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  is not something a human can do anyway.
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  You can't argue someone out of spiritual bondage.
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  You can't. It is a divine supernatural act
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  and the missionaries hope rests on the fact that God himself
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  does what we cannot. He is the one who creates the
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  faith that saves. We often call this the
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  irresistible call or efficacious grace.
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  That's from Romans 8.30. Those whom he called, he also
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  justified. The call isn't just an
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  invitation that could be rejected.
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  It's a creative, powerful summons.
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  It is infallibly effective. The sources use the analogy of
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  Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb.
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  Lazarus was dead. He had zero ability to respond.
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  But when the voice of God said Lazarus come out, that call
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  created the life and the will to obey.
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  So the pressure isn't on the missionaries persuasive ability,
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  the burden is on God's power. Exactly.
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  Which is the antidote to despair.
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  You look at a village that's been resistant for 100 years,
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  and you know that God can change that in an instant.
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  But it's also the antidote to pride.
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  When success comes, the missionary can't take the
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  credit. They can only say what Paul
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  said, that it was what Christ has accomplished through me.
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  This confidence must be what Jesus meant in John 10 when he
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  said, I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must
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  bring them also. That verse is a lifeline for
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  missionaries on Hartfields. Christ is saying I already have
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  chosen people in that unreached group and it is a divine
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  necessity that I gather them. They will listen to my voice.
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  It's the same thing God told Paul in Corinth when he was
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  afraid. I have many in this city who are
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  my people. Yes.
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  It's a guarantee from the commander in chief that the
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  battle is already won. The missionary isn't fighting
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  for victory, they're fighting from victory.
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  That truth that all things are possible with God is what keeps
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  them going. OK, so if God's sovereignty
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  provides the hope and the confidence, let's talk about the
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  motivation. This is where things get really
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  counterintuitive with this idea of Christian hedonism.
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  It is that term itself can really throw people off.
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  Hedonism sounds selfish, right? The pursuit of pleasure.
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  Yeah, exactly. How can you connect that with
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  missions, which seems to be all about giving things up, Comfort,
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  safety, family? Because it redefines what the
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  greatest pleasure actually is. The whole idea is that the
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  deepest, most lasting, most satisfying joy you can ever
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  experience is found by giving your life completely over to
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  God's global cause. So it's not about pursuing cheap
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  worldly pleasure, it's about pursuing the highest pleasure
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  which is found in God's will. That's it.
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  Lottie Moon, the missionary to China, said it perfectly.
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  Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls.
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  It's not a sacrifice, it's a trade up.
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  And this isn't just a clever idea.
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  The sources point directly to Jesus's own teaching on this the
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  hundredfold promise. Right.
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  Peter comes to Jesus and says, you know, with a bit of a
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  sacrificial tone. See, we have left everything and
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  followed you. He's looking for a pat on the
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  back. He.
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  Is and Jesus's response is amazing.
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  He says truly, no one who has left house or family or lands
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  for my sake and the Gospels will fail to receive a hundredfold
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  now in this time. Now not just in heaven.
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  Now. And what do you get?
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  Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and
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  lands with persecutions, and then in the age to come, eternal
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  life. So let's be clear about the
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  compensation. He's not promising that if you
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  give up one house, you'll become a real estate mogul with 100
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  houses. No, absolutely not.
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  The hundredfold return is spiritual and relational.
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  It's found in the fellowship of the global church and above all,
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  in the felt presence of Christ himself.
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  So if you give up the affection of your mother, you gain 100
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  times that affection from Christ and from spiritual mothers all
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  over the world in the family of God.
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  That's the idea. If you lose your sense of a
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  physical home, you gain 100 times the security in knowing
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  that your Lord owns everything and that the entire church is
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  your home. The spiritual gain is
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  exponentially greater than the material loss.
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  And that phrase with persecutions is key.
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  He's not promising an easy life. No, he's including the suffering
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  as part of the deal. But the idea is that it's in the
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  midst of those persecutions that the presence of Christ and the
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  reality of that hundredfold spiritual family becomes most
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  real, most tangible. So self denial isn't about
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  giving things up for the sake of being miserable, It's about
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  denying yourself a lesser good, like temporary comfort for a
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  far, far greater good. It's a joyful calculation.
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  It is. It completely removes self pity
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  from the equation. When a missionary understands
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  this, they can't really talk about sacrifice anymore because
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  they know they're getting the better end of the deal by a long
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  shot. And the proof is in the lives of
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  the missionaries who endured the most.
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  You already mentioned David Livingstone.
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  Livingstone, I mean, the man was sick for years, was attacked,
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  separated from his family, and yet he's the one who says I
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  never made a sacrifice. It's just an astonishing
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  statement. How did he explain that?
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  He saw it as a privilege, he said.
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  The reward was immediate. It was found in the
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  consciousness of doing good, Peace of Mind and a bright hope.
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  The suffering was nothing, he said, compared to the glory and
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  the joy of the work. Then you have someone like John
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  G Patton who lost his wife and child just after arriving on the
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  field. The absolute worst case
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  scenario. And Patton's story is the
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  perfect example of the with persecutions clause.
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  He tells of a time he was hiding up in a tree all night long with
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  hostile natives below looking to kill him.
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  Utterly alone. But he said he wasn't alone.
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  He wrote that Christ was nearer to him in that tree than any
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  human friend had ever been. Alone, yet not alone, alone.
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  That experience of Christ's presence was the hundredfold
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  gain right there in his darkest moment.
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  And Samuel's Weimer in the Middle East, losing two of his
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  daughters to sickness. Yes, and 50 years later, looking
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  back, he said gladly. Would I do it all over again?
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  This isn't denial. This is from a man who had
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  counted the cost and found the gain to be infinitely greater.
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  It's the same logic Paul uses in Philippians 3.
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  He says everything he used to value he now counts as loss
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  because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
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  It's all about that valuation which leads to this other
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  interesting analogy. The sources use the missionary
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  not as a hero, but as an invalid in Christ's sanatorium.
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  OK, that sounds strange and invalid.
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  It's a way to cultivate humility.
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  The missionary doesn't go because they're spiritually
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  strong and they're going to go fix everybody else.
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  They go because they, like all of us, are spiritually sick.
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  And the mission field is the treatment.
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  The mission field is the clinic. All the hardships, the
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  loneliness, the cultural stress, the disappointments, that's the
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  medicine God uses to heal them, to make them more dependent on
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  him, to make them more like Christ.
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  That view, yeah, it prevents pride, doesn't it?
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  Because you know that any success is from God, and even
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  the difficulties are for your own good.
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  It does. It makes them better
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  missionaries because they're not not relying on themselves,
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  they're just recipients of grace, which makes the whole
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  thing a pursuit of their own deepest joy and health.
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  So let's bring this all together.
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  We've defined the task as this finishable, pioneering work.
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  We've grounded the hope and God's sovereignty and the
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  motivation in this hundredfold joyful return.
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  Let's talk about the finish line.
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  Yeah, that's the exciting part. We have this guarantee in
• 19:06
  Matthew 24.14 from Jesus himself.
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  This gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the
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  whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end
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  will come. It's a promise.
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  The task will be finished. For centuries it didn't look
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  that way. Progress was incredibly slow.
• 19:24
  It was, but something shifted dramatically in the second-half
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  of the 20th century. The momentum toward closure
• 19:30
  started to accelerate in a way it never had before.
• 19:33
  Driven by what? A few things.
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  One was that massive increase in evangelical missionaries.
• 19:37
  We talked about the people who really believe this was an
• 19:40
  urgent rescue mission. Another is the explosive growth
• 19:43
  of the church in the Global South.
• 19:45
  So it's not just Westerners going out anymore.
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  Not at all. You have massive sending
• 19:49
  movements from places like South Korea, Brazil, Nigeria and then
• 19:53
  of course you have technology. Bible translation that used to
• 19:56
  take a lifetime can now be done in a fraction of the time.
• 19:59
  And communication allows for training leaders in closed
• 20:03
  countries in ways that were impossible 30 years ago.
• 20:06
  All. Of this is speeding things up
• 20:07
  and this sense of momentum, this idea that the end is insight is
• 20:11
  what led someone like Ralph Winter to challenge our whole
• 20:14
  cultural idea of retirement. He was pretty forceful on this
• 20:17
  point. He called retirement a virulent
• 20:19
  disease. He did.
• 20:21
  His logic was simple. We're in a war.
• 20:24
  You don't take your most experienced soldiers off the
• 20:26
  field in the middle of a war. He asked those piercing
• 20:28
  questions. Did Moses retire?
• 20:30
  Did Paul retire? Peter.
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  John. No, because if the greatest joy
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  is found in serving God's global cause, then to retire from that
• 20:38
  is to retire from joy itself. He urged people, especially
• 20:41
  older believers with a lifetime of experience and resources, to
• 20:43
  pour their final years into finishing the task.
• 20:46
  This kind of glad lifelong obedience has historical models.
• 20:50
  The sources mentioned the Moravians.
• 20:52
  The Moravians are just an incredible story.
• 20:55
  Starting way back in 1732, long before the modern missions
• 20:59
  movement, they just started sending people everywhere with
• 21:02
  what was called utter abandoned. And it wasn't a grim duty for
• 21:05
  them. Not at all.
• 21:06
  It was a joyful, spontaneous overflow of their love for
• 21:09
  Christ. They famously sold themselves
• 21:12
  into slavery just to get access to enslaved populations in the
• 21:16
  West Indies. That's how much they believed in
• 21:18
  the necessity of the task and the joy way of obedience.
• 21:21
  That's a level of dedication that's hard to comprehend.
• 21:24
  It is, and you see that same spirit in someone like Peter
• 21:26
  Cameron Scott, who founded the Africa Inland Mission.
• 21:29
  He went to Africa, got sick, lost his brother and had to go
• 21:32
  home completely discouraged. Ready to give up?
• 21:34
  Ready to give up. But he went to Westminster Abbey
• 21:37
  and knelt at David Livingstone's tomb, and he read the
• 21:40
  inscription there which included the words from John 10.16 Other
• 21:44
  sheep. I have them also.
• 21:46
  I must bring Christ's words, Christ's words, and it hit him.
• 21:50
  This whole enterprise doesn't depend on his health or his
• 21:53
  strength. It depends on Christ's divine
• 21:55
  necessity to gather his people. And he got up, went back to
• 21:59
  Africa and started a mission that reached millions.
• 22:02
  So for us today, what does this look like?
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  Not everyone can go. No, but this is where the
• 22:07
  concept of being a world Christian comes in.
• 22:10
  A term coined by David Bryant. What does that mean?
• 22:13
  It means you reorder your entire life, your budget, your career,
• 22:17
  your free time, your prayers around God's global cause.
• 22:21
  You accept personal responsibility to see that the
• 22:24
  unreached are reached. So you accept the mandate that
• 22:27
  among every people group where there is no vital church, there
• 22:29
  should be one, there must be one, there shall be 1.
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  Yes. And you figure out your role in
• 22:33
  making that happen. Maybe you do go, or maybe you
• 22:36
  become a strategic giver, or you use your professional skills in
• 22:40
  IT or medicine or education to support those on the front
• 22:43
  lines. It means aligning your life with
• 22:46
  God's global purpose. It's about aligning your
• 22:48
  personal pursuit of joy with God's plan for the world.
• 22:52
  That's it. So this deep dive has really
• 22:54
  clarified a few things for us. First, the frontier missions is
• 22:58
  this specific finishable task of planting the church among the
• 23:02
  unreached, which is different from the ongoing work of
• 23:05
  evangelism. And that this humanly impossible
• 23:08
  task is only possible because of God's sovereignty.
• 23:11
  His power to call his other sheep is the only thing that
• 23:14
  gives us confidence when we look at those 2 billion people.
• 23:17
  And finally, that answering this call isn't about sacrifice.
• 23:21
  It's about a rational, joyful pursuit of the greatest
• 23:24
  satisfaction we can know, the hundredfold spiritual return
• 23:28
  that Christ Himself guarantees. The momentum is building, the
• 23:31
  task is doable, and it challenges all of us to rethink
• 23:35
  how we use the time and resources we've been given.
• 23:37
  It really does. It reframes our entire lives,
• 23:40
  not around a courageous sacrifice, but around the
• 23:42
  pursuit of ultimate joy. As you think about your own
• 23:45
  life, your own comforts and goals, maybe the best way to end
• 23:48
  is to weigh them against the calculus of Jim Elliott, who is
• 23:51
  martyred bringing the gospel to the Aqua people in Ecuador.
• 23:54
  His credo was simple, but it changes everything.
• 23:56
  He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he
• 24:00
  cannot lose.