Desiring God - Part 15
I am continuing to read Desiring God by John Piper. Today my post is on Piper’s chapter about missions.
Piper calls missions the battle cry of Christian Hedonism.
Piper starts off by discussing retirement and that the concept is not in the Bible. He talks about Paul and how Paul was not planning for retirement. Paul was older and had served the church well but was still hoping to press on toward Spain. We never retire from our Christian service. In fact, when we retire from our secular job, that is a great opportunity to pour more time and resources into the Lord’s work.
Piper’s main focus on missions is taking the gospel to people groups who have not yet heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Piper states that at the time of writing that there are about 2 billion people that are unevangelized. On the encouraging side, Piper tells us how the number of unreached people groups is dwindling.
I like a distinction that Piper makes in this chapter. He makes a distinction between missions and evangelism. He calls missions unreached people groups. He says that missions is a completable task. Evangelism is sharing the gospel with individuals and is never complete.
Piper next makes 3 points about John 10:16. (I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.)
- Christ does indeed have other sheep outside the present fold.
- Christ is under divine necessity to gather His own sheep.
- The sheep Christ calls will surely come.
I will continue more about missions in my next post.