Welcome to the Friday Gospel Podcast where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Coffee and whether you're tuning in on our YouTube channel or you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, I'm grateful that you've joined me for this episode. We're concluding our summer sermon series today, and we have journeyed through some powerful messages that have encouraged and challenged us in our walk with Christ. And this week we're concluding with a profound message from John Hyper. It's titled God's Passion for His Glory. And there's no better way to finish this particular series to land the plane on summer and to fix our eyes on the glory and majesty of God. In history, a draft after Hyper delves into the heart of God and his purpose in creation and redemption. All of this is about his glory. He emphasizes God's ultimate aim being the manifestation of his glory, and we want to reflect on that. Initial lesson, I want you to consider is your life centered on God's glory? Are you living with a passion that mirrors God? Do you understand what the glory of God even is? And are you living each day with that in mind? Prepare to be inspired and challenged as we finish things up, and let's dive in now to this impactful message from John Piper titled God's Passion for His Glory.
SPEAKER_00I have three uh aims, one of which is predominant. One aim is to set the direction of your little boat, the boat of your life, toward the completion of world evangelization or missions, and to help you build a mast on the top of the boat of great purpose, and to stretch out the sails and let them drop and see them filled with the wind of the Spirit. The second aim is I would like to put ballast in your boat. You know what ballast is? It makes the boat heavier, it draws more water, and it's therefore harder to tip over. And the last thing I would like to do is be a means of that Holy Spirit wind filling those sails, and that's obviously God's work. In fact, it's all God's work. I can't do any of those three without Him. And so let's start with just another word of prayer for His help. So would you pray with me? Father in heaven, I I need you. I have things I want to impart. I believe they could make a lifelong difference for your great name and for the joy of these young people and for the good of the nations. And so come and fill me with your Holy Spirit, I pray. You have manifestly been here as we've exalted your great love. And now we want light to shine in this room on our hearts, the kind of light that reveals the glory of Christ and your magnificence to come and help us, I pray. Through Jesus Christ, I ask it. Amen. So the main one is number two. I I want to put ballast in your boat. Conferences, this is this is an amazing year. You've got about a half a dozen of these Campus Crusade conferences. You've got Urbana, you've got Passion. I would guess that probably across the country, a hundred thousand students plus are in conferences, not unlike this one. And one of the things that conferences can do is erect on the top of your little boat a pretty tall mast and stretch out amazing sails of expectancy and fill them with the wind of enthusiasm that makes your boat race across smooth waters. And then comes a cross wind. And this huge mast with broad sails and a hard wind and no keel and no ballast is over and in the sea, and you're trying to figure out what happened. The conference was so powerful. And here you are lying in the sea, and this thing is too big to get back up again. So I want to put ballast in your boat. I would like that not to happen. I would like you to race across the water towards the goal of God in your life. I would like there to be wide sails filled with the wind, not just of enthusiasm, but with the Holy Spirit. And I would like you not to tip over when the first cross wind comes. I want you to finish well. I'm 63 years old, and I want desperately to finish well. I don't want to coast. I don't want to dawdle. I don't want to putz around in the garage for the last decade or two of my life. I don't want to retire in any meaningless way. I want to say with the Apostle Paul, I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I might finish my course and complete the ministry that he has given me to preach the gospel of the grace of Christ. That's what I want. I don't want to quit. And I don't want you to quit. You're 18 or 20 or 22. Just think of it. You might have a year to live, or you might have 60. Amazing. I mean, from my vantage point, to think of living 60 years, that would be amazing. You have in front of you something absolutely amazing. And I don't want you to come to your first job and tip over because you're falling in love with money all of a sudden. I don't want you to come to 41.5 years old and have the statistical midlife crisis and buy a sailboat and leave your spouse. And I don't want you to come to 63 and get on a glide path that's coming in for some nice, warmer, less humid, sunny, western state. I don't want that to happen to you. I would like you to go out of this place with enough ballast in your boat so that yes, it's drawing more water, can't be as fancy and it's moves as if there were no keel and no ballast, but you're not easy to knock over. Lots of winds can cross you and they will cross you. Especially if you pour yourself out like you did this afternoon. They will cross you and it will make this thing lean so far you will wonder, how am I not tipping over? And you won't, because there's been enough ballast in your boat. So what's the ballast? The ballast is God's passion for his glory. The title I gave to this talk. I read in my devotions this morning from Malachi these words. In other words, I find this everywhere. I wasn't expecting to put this in, but there I am, finishing the Old Testament in my year through the Bible and finishing Malachi, knowing that I'm gonna tell you God is passionate for his glory. He's committed to upholding his glory. He is jealous that he be the supreme treasure in your life above everything else, the most dear things that you have or know. And I read this in Malachi 1.14. I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. If you will not listen, if you will not take to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Now that's incredible. Who can get away with talking like that? Who can talk like that and expect anybody to like him? This is so outrageously self-exalting. This is the ballast I want to put in your boat. And I have found over the 30 or 40 years I've been saying this one thing, so all I ever say anywhere I go is that it lands on a lot of people as bad news. A God who's passionately committed to exalting himself doesn't feel like the God they got to know in Sunday school, and it's a crisis for them. And I so want it to move through crisis for you into a deeply, joyfully embraced ballast in your boat so that even though it's weighty, even though it's heavy, even though it's not the light, simple thing we usually toss around, it's there for your survival, for your good, for your usefulness of your sailing to the unreached peoples of the world and doing the hard things in this country. So that's where I'm going. That's what I saw again, felt like a real confirmation from the Lord this morning in my own devotional Bible reading. God is calling you to see his passion for his glory and to share it, to be caught up into it, to feel it, to own it, to do it with him. If he is passionate for his glory and jealous for his supremacy, then we ought to just be swept up into that same passion and that same jealousy. Now, before I stack some of that ballast from the Bible in your boat, I want to orient you on where we are in the Christian world today. Perhaps statistics that you know, maybe not. Philip Jenkins, professor of history of religious studies at Penn State, has clarified this situation more than anybody in the last ten years or so. He's introduced, along with others, the phrase the global south, in regard to the spread of Christianity. And what the global south refers to is the astonishing growth of the Christian church in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, while the formerly dominant Christian lands like Europe are fading in their significance, it seems. And I say this with great hesitation. I just got back from Germany and Russia, and I saw such hopeful signs. I don't think God's done with the old Christian lands, and I pray that some of you will be a part of that renewal. Here's what he said. Actually, this was another man uh writing in a similar vein. At the beginning of the 20th century, Europeans dominated the world church with approximately 70.6% of the world's Christian population. So 70% of the Christians in the world a century ago were in Europe. Yet by the end of the 20th century, the European percentage of world Christianity had shrunk to 28%, 70 to 28 percent, Latin America and Africa combined to provide 43% of the world's Christians. Here's another quote. This one comes from Jenkins. In 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians, representing about 10% of the population. By 2,000, 100 years later, this figure had grown to 360 million from 10, representing about half the population. Quantitatively, this may be the largest shift in religious affiliation that had ever occurred anywhere. Mark Knoll, uh historian at Notre Dame, has written a book just published this year called The New Shape of World Christianity. Here's some bullets from his book. 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 homelands than from Britain or from Canada. Last Sunday, more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called Christian Europe. This past Sunday, more Anglicans, get this, this is kind of tricky, more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain, Canada, and Episcopalians in the United States combined. Last Sunday, more Presbyterians were in church in Ghana than in Scotland. This past week, in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia. Now, concluding quotation from Mark Noel. In a word, the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last 50 years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history. Now that is all a cause for rejoicing in our great global sovereign God. However, how many believers around the world, especially in the West, are drawing mistaken inferences from that truth. They are concluding that the day of Western missions, so you leaving here to go there, is over. And it not only is over, it should be over. You begin to pick this up and you listen around the world that we don't need America, we don't need Canada, we don't need Europe because every group is touched, and it's better for the locals to do the evangelizing anyway because it's cheaper and culturally more effective. And besides, the West is fading. Just yesterday, I read a review of a new book by Robert Wuthno of Princeton called Boundless Faith, The Global Outreach of American Churches. And his aim is to correct some of these mistakes. Here's what he says. The United States, actually, this is written by the reviewer, the United States is sending out more missionaries than it ever has before. And this does not take into account the explosion of American short-term mission volunteers whose number may approach two million per year. But worse than the mistake that the Day of Missions from the West is over, is the mistake that it should be. That there is some new development that because of the incredible global presence of Christians, that going a long way, like five or ten or fifteen thousand miles, and having to spend $70,000, 80, $100,000 to get you and your family there, then learn a different language and learn a culture, is somehow over. It's based on a misapprehension of the dynamic of the situation. When you talk about unreached peoples being evangelized by the locals, there aren't any locals. That's the meaning of unreached. There are cultural, linguistic, historic identities to this people group, and those who live 50 or 100 miles away don't share those languages. They don't share those cultures. And in fact, there may be historic animosities between these two local people that would make it way better in Africa for a Filipino to come or a Canadian or an American or a Scot to come than for somebody 50 miles away. It isn't that simple. So don't you make that mistake. Don't you listen to these statistics and say, oh, it's real expensive to send somebody, they could do it for $25 a month. No, they can't. Not necessarily. Now I'm not ruling out that we should partner all over the world with every evangelical effort to reach the unreached peoples of the world. And if somebody can do it more inexpensively from a local place and more effectively, God bless them, let's help them. But it's a huge mistake to think that what's left to be done in the world doesn't need you. That's a huge mistake. And if you just do a little research, you will see that that's the case. The Joshuaproject.net is the place to go to get the statistics on the unreached peoples of the world. As I speak to you, consulting that website yesterday afternoon, there are 6,647 unreached people groups out of a total of 16,349 ethnolinguistic peoples. And you can read there what the definition of unreached is. Of those 6,647 unreached peoples, usually meaning fewer than 2% evangelical, in other words, so few that they can't, without outside help, put in place a sustained evangelistic movement among their own culture. Among those 6,000 plus, 1,662 of these are listed as unengaged. Unengaged is different from unreached. Unreached may mean there are missionaries and they've been working there maybe 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and there's hardly any church yet that can carry the day. The unengaged means nobody's there. Nobody's telling the gospel. I'm going to share one of those testimonies tomorrow evening, Lord willing, about somebody sent me an email a few days ago about where he is and what he sees and his attitude toward this whole Western phenomenon. Into this situation. Christians all over the world, unreached peoples by the thousands still yet to be reached. Many of them unengaged with any missionary from any culture at all into that situation. Jesus says, All authority in heaven and on earth is mine. Go make disciples of all the nations. That has never been rescinded. And it stands tonight. His authority is as great tonight as it has ever been, and the need is as great tonight as it has ever been. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. So the mast of your boat begins to be erected with a purpose, a zeal, so that, yes, I get a direction from my boat. I see I'm going to be a passionate sacrificial goer, or I'm going to be a passionate sacrificial sender. I don't entertain any third possibility that's worth talking about. I'm going to let my sails drop. I'm going to pray that God fill it with the wind of the Spirit. And I'm going to put some ballast in my boat so that when the cross winds blow, I won't tip over, not till I'm 43 or 63 or 83, till I drop. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to keep sailing toward this goal that God, I pray, will make clear now in this conference for many of you. In fact, I was praying with David who came with me tonight before that several hundred out of these couple thousand will be able to in ten years write to me. If I'm still alive, write to me an email from a very difficult place and say, because of the speakers here and the music here and the spirit coming here, it got clear. And you're there because of this. I would like to hear that. I get those, and they mean a great deal to me. So I want to put ballast in your boat. So here we go. Some biblical ballast in the bottom of your boat. And the main thing I want to put there, and it's obviously not the only thing, just this. God is utterly passionate, utterly passionate. He is infinitely passionate. He is invincibly jealous for the glory of his name, and that it be known and treasured above all things in the heart of humanity. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, God promises in Habakkuk 2.14. The earth will be filled with the knowledge, and I think he means embracing awareness of, understanding, and love of. That the purpose of humanity is to know this glory and treasure this glory above all things and reflect this glory in the universe. Let's talk about beginning and let's talk about ending. Listen to Ephesians chapter 1, verses 4 through 6. This is talking about the beginning before creation. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace. Do you see where it ends? Do you see what the goal of His choosing us is? His predestining us for adoption is, His redeeming us through Jesus Christ is election, predestination, adoption to the praise of the glory of his grace. He's doing all that so that his glorious grace would be praised. So from the very beginning, his mind was, I will be praised. That was his mind. Nobody else can talk like this. That's the reason it sounds so strange to us. I will be praised from before eternity or from before creation into eternity. God's mind was: I will do a history, I will do a story of redemption, and the goal of the story will be the praise of the glory of my grace. Now, here we start to get a hint of why this is good news. The apex of the glory of God, which he means to be praised, is grace. You hear it? This is verse 6 of Ephesians 1. Unto the praise of the glory, not just any glory. He didn't say the glory of his wrath is the main thing to be praised. It will be praised. But it's the penultimate thing, and the ultimate thing is grace. Unto the praise of the glory of his grace. So the reason that God's self-exaltation can come to us sinners as good news is that it secures grace. Grace is the thing he wants to be praised most. So he's going to devote this history in a way that grace will be predominant. Now, what about the end? If that's the way the beginning was, before creation, the mind of God was, I will be known, I will be loved, I will be praised, I will be treasured above all things. That's why I make the world. If that's the way it all began, where's it all going? John chapter 17 is one of my favorite places, and verse 24 is my favorite verse in John 17. And you remember what John 17 is? John 17 is Jesus' longest prayer for you. And I say for you very carefully because he's praying for his disciples, and then he says, And I pray for those who will believe on me through their word. That's you. This is awesome. I mean, think about it. There you sit. And Jesus prayed this for you. The capstone of the prayer is verse 24, and it goes like this. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory. That you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. What's the best thing that Jesus could pray for you? He prayed lots of things. The best thing is this, the most ultimate thing is this, the eternal thing is this. Father, I ask for those whom you have given me that they would be with me. And why? So that they could see me. Because I am the most glorious reality in the universe. And if they are not allowed to see me, they will be denied their highest joy. And I don't want them to be denied their highest joy. Their souls were made to be satisfied by beholding infinite glory and beauty, and I'm it, Jesus said. So, Father, my love is overflowing to my people right now. And I am exalting myself supremely right now, and those two goals of mine are one. Do you hear this? I love my people. I am the most glorious being. I will be lifted up, and I'm asking that they will see me. One other thing that needs to be said about this. You right now see him through a glass darkly, pretty poorly. That's why you sin so much. If you could see him more clearly, you'd follow him more nearly, love him more dearly. We wouldn't sin so much if we didn't have such obscure sights. And he doesn't excite you very much, lots of time, and pornography does, or money does, or friends do, or job does, or whatever, is competing for glory. But the Bible says that when we see him, we will be like him because we will see him as he is. And what that means is that we will be granted a transformation, I think, both physically with new bodies and spiritually with new capacities, so that when we look upon his infinite glory, we won't be incinerated. We will reach the destiny for which we were made. We were made for almost infinite joy. Joy that will increase forever and ever because it can't be infinite because we're not God, and yet it can grow forever because we're going to see God in Christ. So from beginning, predestination, election, plans for adoption, redemption, all worked out before creation, unto the praise of the glory of his grace. And now the end, I want them to be with me so that they might see my glory. That's why I keep lifting up my glory. That's why I keep exalting myself. It is their life. It's their hope, it's their joy, it's the satisfaction of their souls. If God were not self-exalting, he would not be loving. One more text. Namely, Romans 3, 23 to 26. The reason I choose this is because between the beginning and the ending, there's a center of history, and it's the cross. It's Christ crucified in the place of sinners and rising triumphantly over the devil and hell and sin and death. So let me read Romans 3, 23 to 26, and you be listening. Is God self-exalting in his giving Christ for me? The provocative way I like to ask this is Did Jesus die for us or for God? You answer. This is verse 23 of Romans 3. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And are justified by his grace as a gift. It's a gift. Set right, declared righteous. You don't make this happen. You don't buy this, you don't earn this. Being right with God, justified, is a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So Jesus did something so that I could be declared right with God when I'm not right. This is the best news in the world for sinners, right? Verse 25. Whom, referring to Christ, God put forward as a propitiation. That means a sacrifice that removes wrath. So the wrath of God is absorbed by Christ when he dies in our place. So propitiation is the removal of the wrath of God off of us, though we deserve it. Whom God purported as a propitiation by his blood, so his death, to be received by faith. That's how you receive a gift. Faith is a receiving, it's not a doing. This was to show God's righteousness. Oh, really? Really? This putting Christ forward is to show God's righteousness. Because in his divine forbearance, patience, he has passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. I don't think there's a more important paragraph in the Bible than that right there. I mean, there may be some competing. That's just about as close to the sinner as you can get. Take it apart for just a few minutes with me. God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood. Romans 8, 3. What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did. Sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. Whose sin? Tell me. Mine. Whose flesh? Christ's. You got it. That's an amazing statement. Condemnation happened at the cross. Whose mine? In whose flesh not mine. This is propitiation. Propitiation is the drawing away of condemnation from me. How can this be? How can it go there? It belongs here. Or Galatians 3, 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. Whose curse? God's curse. He's the one that backs up the law. The law is his word. If there's a curse in the law on me, it's coming from God. And Jesus becomes my curse. So all that to say yes to propitiation. Don't translate it some other way. Don't use expiation, which simply means the removal of guilt. Don't translate it merely living sacrifice or sacrificial offering. It's the removal of God Almighty's just, holy condemnation and wrath, which belongs to me. Because I have what? Why did he need to do this? Verse twenty five. Let me not go there yet. Why did he need to do it that way? Why did Christ need to die in order to placate God's wrath? Verse 25 in the middle. This was to show God's righteousness. So Christ died. God put him forward to die. This was to show God's righteousness. Why did he need to show his righteousness? That's a pretty high price for a demonstration of righteousness. Why did he need to show his righteousness? End of verse twenty five. Because in his divine forbearance he passed over former sins. Well, why does passing over sin make it necessary to demonstrate righteousness? Now we're ready to see verse 23 in the nature of sin. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I don't know if you've ever felt like I want you to feel the connection between sin and the glory of God. All have sin and fall short. Fall short is an old-fashioned translation. The literal meaning is they lack. They're without. In what way without? In chapter 1 of Romans verse 23, it says, we have exchanged the glory of God for the glory of created things. So we had it, it was our treasure. When Adam and Eve were created, it was our treasure. We loved God, we cherished God, we esteemed God, we respected God, we were in awe of God and worshipped God and praised God and glorified God, and then we treated God. And you've all done it. You do it every day. And we embrace other values, other treasures, other desires that are so much more strong in our hearts than God is. We've traded Him, and so we lack God's glory. It's not our treasure. We've just thrown it away. And sin is anything you do in that process. Anything that reflects that God is not your treasure is sin. So all have sinned and lack, throw away, exchange, demean, belittle, trample the infinite value of the glory of God now. Why does that call the righteousness of God into question when he passes over such sin? Because when God, as he does for all of his people, passes over, does not condemn sinners who have trampled his glory and demean his glory every single day of our lives. It looks as though he thinks that's no big deal. To trample the glory of God is no big deal. Be like a judge sitting at a bench who's got a murder and a rapist in front of him. He says, we'll just let it go. We'll just pass over the murder and the rape this time. We'll just pass over it. And everybody in the courtroom would say, no way. You can't do that and sit on that bench and be a just judge and say, you're just gonna pass over this thing. And so God knows that he would be unrighteous. He would be wrong, unjust, if he treated his glory as though it were so worthless as to just pass over the trampling of his glory in his people. And so he doesn't just pass over it. He sends his son into the world to demonstrate his righteousness. You see? What happened at the cross was the loudest statement imaginable. If you understand Romans 3, 23 to 26, the loudest statement from heaven imaginable, I love my glory. And in that very moment of upholding his glory, God made it possible to save sinners. And the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus. So from beginning to ending, Ephesians 1.6 to the praise of the glory of his grace. John 17, 24, I want them to see me. I want them to see me. Risen, triumphant, glorious, all satisfying in my glory, so that my glory will continue to be exalted forever and their joy would be full. And at the center, the cross, making that possible for sinners. As God says, I put my Son forward to demonstrate my righteousness. My righteousness is my unwavering commitment always and everywhere to uphold the infinite worth of my glory. And if I am bent on saving sinners who have trampled my glory, which I most certainly am, I will not do it in any way that calls my love for my glory into question. I will do the absolutely unthinkable. I will put my son on the gibbet, and he will be tortured, and he will bear my wrath to make plain I don't sweep God belittling sins under the rug of the universe when I save sinners. This is the best news in all the world. It's ballast. I promise you. I have walked through some significant deep waters. I think the deeper ones are yet to come. These are not, for some of you, easy things to hear. You are wired in a way to be unhelped by this. And I care about you. I want you to know that when this ballast is in your boat and it's drawing water up to an inch, and the wind is blowing, Christ is there. Christ is there. And what a friend he is. Oh yes, a self-exalting friend, because you'll never be happy until you're happy in his glory. But a friend nonetheless who will care deeply for you. So now your boat is fixed towards the nations. And so many of them are unreached. No light, no witness. The mast of purpose is lifted high in your boat. The sails of faith are unfurling at this conference. I'm praying, others are that the Holy Spirit will begin to blow and fill those sails, and you will begin to move across the sea of life towards God's purposes in you. And there will be, oh God, let there be enough ballast in your boat so that you will not tip over at your first job at 41 or at 63 or 83. Let's pray. Gracious Father in heaven. I want very much for my own children not to waste their lives. And I pray, oh God, that these young people would own your passion for your glory. And they would own it not as bad news, but as the best news in the world. Because it emerges in its fullest form at the very moment at the center of history where you were saving them at the greatest cost to yourself. So come. Make your self known, treasured, praised, and joyfully served among the nations. I pray through Christ. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for joining us for this week's episode, Hear It for the Gospel, and thank you for joining us all summer long. I hope that these messages have brought you back to the centrality of the gospel, Christ, and the glory of God in your life and also through your life. I love this tradition. Hopefully, it continues. I'm imagining that it will. I enjoy it. I know your feedback has been helpful, letting us know how much it blesses your road trips and your summer rhythms. Next week, I'm starting a brand new series to kick off the fall season, and I believe it's going to be timely and useful, maybe clarifying or challenging for some of you to think biblically and more balanced about the all-important subject of eschatology. Yes, we're going where few want to go, but it's important to discuss these things from a biblical standpoint. Wherever you land, I'm excited to challenge you and the exchange with you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thank you for sharing and thank you for supporting all of what we do here at For the Gospel. For weekly video teachings, be sure to subscribe here on YouTube. And for daily encouragement, follow on all social media platforms. And for more information about For the Gospel or to partner with us, you can go to for thegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.