The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God Ministries is available
at www.desiringgod.org.
Romans 15, 7-13.
Wherefore, accept one another, just as Christ also
accepted us to the glory of God.
For I say that Christ has become a
servant to the circumcision on behalf of the
truth of God, to confirm the promises given
to the fathers, and for the Gentiles to
glorify God for His mercy, as it is
written, Therefore I will give praise to thee
among the Gentiles, and I will sing to
thy name.
And again he says, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with
his people.
And again, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples praise him.
And again Isaiah says, There shall come the
root of Jesse, and he who arises to
rule over the Gentiles, in him shall the
Gentiles hope.
Now may the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing that
you may abound in hope by the power
of the Holy Spirit.
Father, I am so thankful that you have
not given me or us a spirit of
slavery to fall back into fear, but a
spirit of sonship whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit
that we are the children of God.
How could I dare to stand here if
that Spirit didn't witness with my spirit that
you were my Father, and that you would
help me?
I pray that that would be the experience
now of every person in this room, that
they would know by the power of the
Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ and faith in
Him, that you are their Father.
If any is not, grant, I pray, that
this service would be a means to the
quickening of faith in Christ.
And would you be pleased to adopt more
children even this morning?
Help me, Father, please, to speak this text
with truth and with affections that are fitting
the nature of the truth, and with an
anointing and a fruitfulness that produces change in
our church and in our lives so that
the city feels the force of love in
Christ and for Christ, and that the nations
are reached, churches are planted, and worship ascends.
Through Jesus Christ we pray.
Amen.
Now in about a week and a half,
on Wednesday week, we will be calling all
of you to, if you're part of Bethlehem,
to a vote on a vision called Education
for Exaltation.
And a piece of it will be an
8.5 million dollar building program, to replace
that old sanctuary over there.
And a piece of it will be a
crazy, radical, debt-free funding proposal.
A piece of it will be growing without
growing, that will require a kind of mindset
change for many of us for the next
ten years or so.
And we want you to say yes to
it before we go for it.
And that's why all this three-ring binder
and focus groups and mailings and my job
has been mainly to put biblical foundations under
it on Sunday morning by preaching first on
education for exaltation in God.
Secondly, in Christ, the Son of God.
Thirdly, in the cross of Christ.
Then in faith in the cross of Christ.
And then in the word that sustains the
faith in Christ, who is the Son of
God.
And along the way, to lift up a
visual reminder of what growing without growing will
mean in sending away Rick Gamache and Randy
Westland and their families and summoning as many
of you as would be willing to go
with them to Grace Church, Richfield.
And we will send them away in two
weeks.
That's my job is to put a biblical
foundation under all those parts of the vision.
And so today we come to another crucial
piece of it.
Namely, education for exaltation among the nations.
And in a nutshell, the point is this.
The building, the children, the curriculum, the debt
-free funding vision, the growing without growing by
another kind of incubator service in that big
multi-purpose thing that will be out there
on the parking lot someday.
The point of all of that is education
for exaltation, not just our exaltation, but the
exaltation among the nations.
Is that mission statement up there on the
wall?
Spreading a passion for the supremacy of God
in all things for the joy of all
peoples.
All we're doing is paraphrasing that with a
catchy phrase.
Education for joy among the nations, for exaltation
among the nations.
So that's the theme this morning.
Bethlehem has been now for 129 years a
church radically devoted to mobilizing missions.
I don't know the pre-1890 Bethlehem very
well.
But beginning with 1890, I know the stories.
And Ola and Minnie Hanson are the biggie
at the turn of the century there who
went to Burma and stayed there and translated
the Bible for 30 years.
And today there are 600,000 K'ichean
believers.
And in 1890, there were none.
And they came to our church to thank
us back in 1990 at their 100th anniversary.
They were seeking out the mother church.
And most of us didn't even know this
story existed.
So we know that for 100 years, God
has been doing it through this church to
mobilize missions.
I just have to stop and tell you
the emotional effect it had on me in
the first service.
A little teeny thing.
I don't know why things happen like this.
I opened up this, getting ready to worship
through it.
And it said there at the prayer of
praise for the nations, Dan Porch, missionary.
And I just was flooded.
That is a great title.
Dan Porch, missionary.
I just hope that that hits you like
it hits me.
Because ambassador for King Jesus among an unreached
people group.
Go declare the amnesty, Dan.
Go tell them if they lay down their
arms of unbelief and swear fealty to King
Jesus, they live forever, Dan.
Missionary.
What a great title.
And what a great prayer.
He prayed to catch us up into God's
presence today.
So.
It's been a great church for 130 years
of missionary mobilization.
We are people who believe that if a
people doesn't know the name of Jesus Christ
and put their faith in him as Savior
and Lord, they are lost and will be
sentenced to everlasting judgment.
We are people who believe that God means
to gather worshipers for himself among all the
peoples and tribes and nations everywhere in the
world.
Therefore, we are people who care about statistics
like these.
This is the January issue of Mission Frontiers.
You can get this magazine free.
Wouldn't cost you anything and keeps you right
up to date with what God is doing
around the world in missions.
Or you go online at Mission Frontiers dot
org and get it there.
But here on page 33 is a list
of peoples and on page 34, 187 peoples.
And what's unique about these 187 peoples who
have populations of over 10,000 is that
none of them.
Not only has a church that is, none
of them has a church, none of them
has Christians in their midst.
But they don't even have any church or
mission agency targeting them to reach.
These are the 187, not just unreached, but
on targeted people groups.
There are several hundred unreached churches besides these
that are being targeted, prayed for, aimed at
and sent mission plant church planting teams to.
But these are the 187 that nobody has
picked yet.
And we are the kind of church, I
pray, that says no, that will not remain.
That cannot stay unattended while we all go
about our business having our nice jobs and
our nice houses and our nice clothes.
And our nice security and our nice comforts
and our nice retirement program.
And we don't even know this.
We're the kind of church that's just not
going to be resting until that changes.
And it is changing.
It's changing fast.
And God is at work mightily in our
day.
When we say education for exaltation, we mean
not just this event on Sunday morning.
Not just exaltation in private devotions.
Not just exaltation in small groups.
Not just exaltation in family altars.
Not just exaltation in churches sent out from
us.
Not just exaltation in your witnessing in your
workplaces.
But exaltation among the nations.
Especially the nations who don't even have a
voice of another Christian speaking the glorious gospel
that is the power of God unto salvation.
It's those people for whom we educate.
And if we don't, let's shut down.
So education for exaltation is exaltation among the
nations.
That's the theme of today's message.
And we will give ourselves no rest until
that changes.
Three points I want to draw out by
way of giving foundation in the Bible to
this passion that we have as a church
at this time.
So go with me now to the text
and let me point out a few things.
The first thing I want to do is
draw out from verse 7 a point from
the flow of the thought.
I want you to feel and see the
flow of thought in verses 7, 8 and
into 9 following.
It's the flow here that I'm focusing on
in point number 1.
It's a flow from the nitty-gritty relational,
personal, inter-church reality to the infinite, the
glorious, the global.
That's the flow.
Now let's look at it.
It says, verse 7, Romans 15, Therefore, accept
one another.
Just stop there and let that penetrate.
Christians love each other.
Accept each other.
Welcome each other.
Be kind to each other.
Be supportive of each other.
Be helpful to one another.
Cut flack for each other.
Be forbearing to one another.
One young woman came up to me after
the service and she said, I wish the
title had been Education for Relationships for Exaltation.
Lest we lose this very point in the
institutionalization of things.
We who have crafted this vision, these 17
elders and the huge vision committee that surrounds
them, I don't think have lost that.
It didn't get into the title because it's
just a nifty little title.
Education for Exaltation.
It's not everything.
So here we have in the text, accept
one another, but now watch the flow.
Watch the flow.
Yes, there must be that.
There must be that.
And then comes just as Christ also accepted
us.
So he lifts this practical internal nitty gritty
relational personal dimension of the Christian life up
into Christ's acceptance of his church.
He doesn't want you to just go from
day to day doing your little horizontal relational
thing.
He wants you to think this has a
significance much bigger than just what's going on
here between two people or 10 people or
800 people.
This is a magnification of the way Jesus
accepted me.
And that's what gives acceptance to love relationships
in the church of Jesus Christ.
It's a portrait of something so much bigger.
It's like marriage is a portrait of something
so much bigger than a man and a
woman.
But he's still not done.
He keeps going.
Watch the flow.
Keep the flow going.
Accept one another just as Christ also accepted
us.
And now he goes a step further to
the glory of God.
So he moves from the personal relational internal
nitty gritty life of the church up into
Christ and his accepting of the church and
then up into the greatest reality of the
universe.
The glory of God.
And he's still not done.
Keep following the flow of thought.
He goes on.
Verse eight.
And he says, Christ, who accepts us to
the glory of God, became a servant to
the circumcised.
That's Jews.
That is, he became incarnate as a Jew
to minister to Jews as Messiah, but not
just to Jews to confirm God's promises to
them.
But verse nine at the beginning for the
Gentiles to glorify God for his mercy.
And now we're at the global Gentile nation
dimension.
So here's the flow that I'm looking at.
Internal relational personal church reality caught up into
Christ, caught up into the glory of God,
extended to the nations.
In fact, notice the parallel between the word
glorify in verse nine and the word glory
in verse seven.
And you'll see how it is that Christ
is receiving us or welcoming us or accepting
us to the glory of God.
He's doing it by coming for us as
a servant, pursuing us in missions and gathering
Gentiles who will now glorify God for his
mercy.
So relate the word glorify in verse nine
to the word glory in verse seven.
And you will see that it's all about
missions here.
He's receiving us by pursuing us and getting
glory for his father, his father's mercy.
So what's the point?
The first point is this.
Oh, Bethlehem.
As you think about education, as you think
about relationships in that education.
And yes, they are essential, absolutely essential.
And as you think about a building and
as you think about debt free radical funding
ideas, and as you think about growing without
growing in strategies to multiply churches.
Let the flow, let the flow of your
thought, let the flow of your life, let
the flow of this vision be like the
flow in this verse.
Internal relational up to Christ, up to the
glory of God, out to the nations for
a global perspective.
That's what I that's my point.
One, let the flow of this thought here
be the flow of education for exaltation, which
is why I say it's exaltation among the
nations, not just exaltation in this room or
in our own little private, happy lives.
I want to give you a couple of
illustrations of this point.
One from my own life and one from
our church life and the whole idea of
how how this vision relates to giving the
missions and mobilizing missions.
First, with regard to my own experience.
I'm I'm finishing up now in the next
few months, my first two decades of ministry
at this church and will be entering a
third decade.
And I'm 54 and it it raises the
question for me, as I presume.
Many of you at different stages of your
life raise.
What do I want to do with the
last 10 years or 20?
But say if you let me minister here
till I'm 65, 10 or 11 years to
go, what would be significant?
I look back over the 20 and they
feel so fast.
And I'm only half that to go now.
And therefore, the issue of investment is really
crucial.
I want to meet King Jesus.
Finishing well.
And so the words of of.
Jake Campbell White come back to me from
where I quoted them in Desiring God 14
years ago in the missions chapter.
He was the secretary of the layman's missionary
movement in the early part of this century.
He's a layman businessman like most of you
are.
So.
Here's what he wrote.
Most men are not satisfied with the permanent
output of their lives.
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.
To which I say that's right.
So I want in my last chapter to
be invested in the biggest possible thing going
for the glory of God, namely the finishing
of the Great Commission.
Therefore, my life hangs on education for exaltation,
being exaltation for the nations.
If that doesn't happen, I'm out of here
because the nations must be reached for God
to get the glory that he means.
He sent his son to die according to
verse nine, that the nations would glorify God
for his mercy.
And we know there's at least 187 of
them who don't even know him.
They've never heard the gospel.
The purpose of the incarnation is temporarily aborting.
This church cannot be indifferent to that.
Absolutely cannot be.
Or many of us are just out of
here.
And I'm thrilled that we are not going
to be indifferent to that.
We've never been indifferent to it.
That's the first illustration.
It really matters to many of us, hundreds
of us, that education for exaltation be for
the exaltation of the unreached peoples of the
world.
Or we are a sham in our prosperity
in this land.
We are so rich and comfortable and secure.
And there's only one reason that we are,
according to Psalm 67.
We read it all together in the worship
folder.
God blesses us, yea, God blesses us that
we may be a blessing.
If we hoard, we die.
If we release our children and our funds
and our prayers and even our lives, we
live.
Here's my other illustration.
Somebody ought to ask, and there always is
somebody who does ask.
You really think you should build an 8
million dollar building?
Why not just have a big fund drive
to raise 8 million dollars for missions?
Why sink 8 million dollars in a building?
Is that the best strategy?
And you know what?
I don't know if that's the best strategy.
But I am not going to be paralyzed
by the inability to discern an A plus
plan when we have a B plus plan
that is prayer saturated and God besotted and
has proven to work in the past.
Let me explain what I mean.
I took myself back yesterday to 1987.
Difficult wrestling days, three services.
We've been into three services for five years
in that old sanctuary and we were wrestling.
Should you build this thing?
Here it is.
We're in it.
This building is here.
It's paid for.
There's no debt in this church at all.
And we didn't know whether to build this
thing or not.
This was the parking lot.
I'm standing where I used to park on
Sunday morning.
Should we have done this?
Or should we have...
This building plus the building we bought down
the street, the Masterworks building, cost 3.8
million dollars in 1991 when we finally bought
it.
I mean moved into it.
3.8 million dollars for the Masterworks and
this building.
In 1991.
Was that a good idea?
Maybe.
To try to find out whether it was
a workable and helpful idea given this passion.
I went back and I took every one
of the annual reports for the last 13
years, 1987 to today, and I simply tabulated
all the mission giving in those 13 years.
And it came to 6.6 million dollars.
Now, that's not all the mission giving that's
gone through this church.
Not by a long shot.
Paul Johnson, our financial secretary, produces a list
at the end of the year of all
the money that has gone around the budget
into mission coffers in this church.
I would guess, I have no idea what
that would be, but a lot more.
So, I say to myself, okay, I don't
know if this is the best plan.
I'm not into A-plus as the only
option in life.
I have for now 20 years sat through
so many staff meetings and so many committee
meetings and so many council meetings where we
are paralyzed by our inability to discern the
A-plus plan when in fact there's a
good, solid B-plus plan on the table
that I simply don't worry about it anymore.
And the main reason theologically I don't is
because of the cross of Jesus Christ.
If I didn't have the cross to cover
my B-minuses and C-minuses and D
-plus life, what would I do?
And so, I got to get out of
this head the thought that we produce A
-plus plans, lay them before Jesus, and he
says, oh, that's good enough.
I'm going to have to do something about
that.
I'll get on board with that.
That is not the way I think.
You know what I think?
I think mercy, mercy, mercy.
God, if we seek him, if we humble
ourselves before him, if we saturate ourselves with
the word and do the best we can
biblically, his mercy covers the whole thing.
So if you ask me, should we be
doing this?
Is it the best plan?
I answer, I don't know if it's the
best, and yes, we should be doing it.
Because we have walked so incredibly eager after
God in it and searched his word so
fully for it.
And our history, this debt-free building where
you right now are hearing the word of
God and giving to missions, I just can't
believe the way you people give.
I can't believe the way you people give.
I opened the star.
I don't get any private communications about the
giving in this church.
The same way you do, I open the
star.
And you gave a week ago $62,000
on one Sunday morning.
I said, how in the world is such
a thing possible?
You are an amazing, amazing group of people.
So, B plus, B whatever, it's mercy.
It's mercy all.
I'm excited about it.
And the last two are shorter.
Here's point number two, very briefly.
Verse eight, Christ became a servant to the
circumcision.
Notice the word servant.
He left heaven.
He's a missionary.
He's leaving all of his security, all of
his comforts, all of his glory, all of
his wealth.
He became poor for your sake that you
might become rich.
And he comes down.
He serves as a Jewish carpenter and then
a teacher and then a Messiah, a dying
lover of our souls.
Why?
Verse nine.
For the Gentiles to glorify God for his
mercy.
What's another word for glorify God?
Exalt in God.
So it's all about exaltation for the nations.
So, all this point does is underline something
in the first point.
Namely, that when we educate for exaltation, not
only is there a flow of thought that
should get us outside of ourselves, but we
need to make crystal clear we are about
producing a certain kind of servant.
Namely, dying servants who live for the glory
of God among the nations.
What do I mean?
Let's just put it real starkly.
Parents, we want your kids.
We want your kids.
For Jesus.
Totally.
Or let's put it more controversially yet.
If in this church, we parents, you, me,
any of us.
I got a 26 year old.
I got a four year old.
So I cover the whole spectrum.
If we parents prefer that our children grow
up, get a nice job, with a nice
house, in a nice neighborhood, and a nice
car, with nice children, giving me nice grandchildren,
and having nice retirement programs, and very accessible
to nice hospitals.
Over, they're becoming missionaries.
You are out of step with this church.
If that's your preference.
You are out of step with this church,
and you're going to have several possibilities.
One, change.
That's my preference for you.
That's why I'm preaching this sermon.
You can change now, as I'm preaching, and
let the word of God land on you,
that you will let goods and kindred go,
goods and kindred, kindred, go, this mortal life
also, and say, if my children were become
missionaries to the hard places of the world,
and I wouldn't see my grandchildren, but once
every four years, I would praise God with
all my heart.
Or, you can stay here and be very
uncomfortable.
Or you can leave the church.
Those are your three options.
You can change, you can stay here and
be uncomfortable, or you can leave.
But you need to know, we want your
kids, we're going after them.
And if you don't want them, you better
leave.
Because we're going after your kids.
And we're going after you.
You see those big signs around the church?
Finishers, finishers, that means people my age, who
have about ten years to go, who have
made enough money, most of you, many of
you, maybe not most, many of you, you
don't need to work anymore.
You're free to do anything you want to
do, and you finish by going to the
hard places of the world, or helping other
people get to the hard places of the
world.
We are going to educate to produce radical,
risk-taking, leave-it-all, joyful, Christ-exalting,
people-loving children, who when they grow up,
will leave this Disney world called America, and
go to the real world where the needs
are.
And we want you on board.
If you just want a comfortable, easy, country
club kind of Christianity, change, or
leave.
Because we don't want it.
It's a disrepute to Jesus.
It's a dishonor to our Father in Heaven.
It's misleading and destructive to your children.
There is no more dangerous place for children
than America.
I speak out a very, very, very good
experience.
We want to produce John Patton's, and parents
like John Patton's parents.
I lectured on John Patton, the missionaries of
the New Hebrides, who lived about 100 years
ago, at the pastor's conference, and so I
want to, I got to give you this,
because it is so powerful.
John Patton felt a call to be a
missionary in Scotland when he was 12.
He went to Glasgow, and for 10 years
he became an urban city missionary until he
was 32.
And then the call came for a replacement
for Williams, and I forget the other missionary's
name, who 17 years earlier had been clubbed
to death on the island of Aramanga, and
eaten by cannibals, and the church was ready
to send another force back in there, and
they asked for volunteers, and he looked around,
and nobody was volunteering, and so he volunteered
himself at 32 to leave his successful city
mission ministry, and everybody thought he was crazy,
you've got a successful ministry, what are you
going to do that for?
You'll be eaten by cannibals, to which he
said, you're going to be eaten by worms.
But he was torn to pieces inside, and
so where did he go?
He went to his father and mother, and
he asked them, what do you think I
should do?
Now 17 years ago, that's 1983, friends eaten
by cannibals.
And your son at 32, with a bride
of a year or so, wants to go
to the island.
No Westerners.
What do you say to him?
Here's what they said.
When you were given to us, your father
and mother laid you upon the altar.
They're first born to be consecrated, if God
saw fit, as a missionary of the cross.
And it has been our constant prayer that
you might be prepared, qualified, and led to
this very decision.
And we pray with all our heart that
the Lord may accept your offering, long spare
you, and give you many souls from the
heathen world for your hire.
That's the kind of parent we want to
breed, and that's the kind of child we
want to breed.
When we say education for exaltation, we mean
become servants, love people, lay down your life,
give up your kindred, give up your house,
give up your securities, go far away from
hospitals, far away from 911, into malaria-infested
places, and risk it all in order that
verse 9 would come true.
The nations would glorify God for his mercy.
So that's my second point, and the last
one is just a word, just an exhortation.
How are you going to get that strength,
parents?
Some of you are feeling real put on
the spot right now, because it isn't in
you.
I had one young woman come up to
me.
She said, thank you for the reaffirmation.
They just made the decision last week to
do a mission thing for a year.
And she said, a year ago I was
sitting here, and I was in the category
of, that's the last thing in my head.
And today, we've made the commitment, my husband
and I, to go.
That can happen.
So it doesn't matter where you are right
now as you're listening.
What matters is whether the Holy Spirit is
at work in your life, and whether you
will yield to his work and begin to
pray and seek.
You know, you've got three possibilities.
You can be a goer, you can be
a sender, or you can be disobedient.
That's all.
There is no other alternative.
You can be a goer, you can be
a sender, and you can be a radical
goer and a radical sender.
Or, you can be disobedient.
So where are you going to get the
strength to be the goer or the sender
radically?
And the answer is verse 13.
Now, may the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing.
So believe this God of hope.
We have a God of hope.
He's a God of hope, and he fills
us with joy and peace in believing, so
that we will abound in hope by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
The key is hope.
The key is joy.
The key is peace.
Oh, the road to missions is a hard
road, not a joyless road.
It's a hard road to the unreached peoples
of the world.
It is not a joyless road.
Just look at all those words in verses
9 following.
Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles.
I will sing your name.
Missionaries are singers to the nations.
Again, he says, rejoice, oh Gentiles, rejoice.
Don't miss that word.
With his people, and again, praise the Lord,
all you Gentiles.
Let the peoples praise him.
The word, the message of missions is, let
the nations be glad.
Psalm 67, 4.
Joy for all the peoples is the point.
We really mean exaltation.
The joy of the Lord, parents, is your
strength.
And the joy comes from hope.
Hope for those kids to have significant lives,
even if they only live 30 years.
Instead of insignificant lives and live for 70
years.
I mean, which do you want?
Really?
You want 70 years of insignificant, posh security?
Really?
Give me a break.
You don't want that.
You want 30 or 40 maybe years or
less of real flat out.
Give it all to God's significance so that
when you stand by their grave, you know
they lived it right.
There are so many parents in this church
who at the funerals of their 50 or
60 year old kids have to know they've
just been carnal.
Sure they're secure.
Sure they're well off.
Sure they've got grandkids.
And it'll mean anything.
It's so carnal.
It's so worldly.
You don't want that.
So get on board with the radical kind
of education for exaltation that will change your
kids and change your life.
That's our heart's cry, Lord, in education for
exaltation.
To spread, to spread, to spread through all
the earth abroad, to all the 187 untargeted
people groups.
And all the hundreds of unreached people groups,
as well as all the neighborhoods and all
the families.
The glory of thy name.
Lord, please, in mercy cover our B-plus
plan.
Prosper the work of our hands.
And all the people said, Amen.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Feel free to make copies of this message
to give to others, but please do not
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