Piper on Missions
I've had the most mundane data-entry job in the world for the past week... so i thought i'd put my new phone/mp3 player to some use. I've downloaded a few of Piper's sermons and i've been listening to them whilst copying people's credit details from one file to another.
I listened to an exposition of Romans 15 today - majoring on verses 20-23 (which I'd previously never understood) where Paul says
"It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that i would not be building on someone elses foundation. Rather as it is written: 'Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard about him will understand.' This is why I have so often been hindered from coming to you.
"But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions..."
What the dickens is the Evangelist Paul saying ... there is no more work for him between italy and jerusalem?? There have to have been thousands of people who hadn't heard the gospel in that corner of the world.
Maybe Paul is making a distinction between evangelism and missions? Maybe the idea of planting a church in a culture which has no evangelical church is fundementally different from telling your friends about Jesus? What would happen to a culture if there is no Christian presence located within it?
Piper believes, and i concur, that God is calling hundreds of young Christians from our comfortable churches to preach Christ where he is not known. Of course there are non-Christians in our society. That's blindingly obvious... Timothy's job in Ephasus was to do evangelism in a society which already had a church - of course that's a valid job. BUT. But it is not the same as taking the gospel to a society which has never heard it.
If God promts you to go thousands of miles to be the first person to speak about Jesus in a sub-culture in Iran, do not listen to the people who say that there is work to be done here first! For my part, i don't feel called overseas right now. I feel called to cross cultural barriers with the gospel in England, i know i am called of God to encourage the believers with my life and my teaching.
What is your holy ambition? Is it to see God glorified in mission in southern Russia? Is it to see a professing church in Algeria? Is it to see shed loads of Indians praising God? Every church has people whom God would set aside for Missions (with a capital M) ...is that you?
I listened to an exposition of Romans 15 today - majoring on verses 20-23 (which I'd previously never understood) where Paul says
"It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that i would not be building on someone elses foundation. Rather as it is written: 'Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard about him will understand.' This is why I have so often been hindered from coming to you.
"But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions..."
What the dickens is the Evangelist Paul saying ... there is no more work for him between italy and jerusalem?? There have to have been thousands of people who hadn't heard the gospel in that corner of the world.
Maybe Paul is making a distinction between evangelism and missions? Maybe the idea of planting a church in a culture which has no evangelical church is fundementally different from telling your friends about Jesus? What would happen to a culture if there is no Christian presence located within it?
Piper believes, and i concur, that God is calling hundreds of young Christians from our comfortable churches to preach Christ where he is not known. Of course there are non-Christians in our society. That's blindingly obvious... Timothy's job in Ephasus was to do evangelism in a society which already had a church - of course that's a valid job. BUT. But it is not the same as taking the gospel to a society which has never heard it.
If God promts you to go thousands of miles to be the first person to speak about Jesus in a sub-culture in Iran, do not listen to the people who say that there is work to be done here first! For my part, i don't feel called overseas right now. I feel called to cross cultural barriers with the gospel in England, i know i am called of God to encourage the believers with my life and my teaching.
What is your holy ambition? Is it to see God glorified in mission in southern Russia? Is it to see a professing church in Algeria? Is it to see shed loads of Indians praising God? Every church has people whom God would set aside for Missions (with a capital M) ...is that you?
posted by Dan | 3:25 PM
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