MY WIFE AND I HAD A NINE-HOUR DELAY in the Newark Airport a few months ago on our way back from a conference in Spain. Our connecting flight to Orlando was canceled because of some bad weather, so we spent a long time waiting. And as we waited, I watched the people. There were hundreds and hundreds of people moving through the halls of just that one part of the airport. There were people of all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors and nationalities. I saw a Coptic monk, a few Hasidic Jews, people from India, Japan, China, the Middle East, and the Philippines. There were overweight people, skinny people, tattooed people, old people, young people. There were happy people and angry people, no doubt angry about canceled flights. So many, many people — all going somewhere as fast as they could walk.
It reminded me of an ant farm. Maybe you’ve seen those glass-sided thin boxes of sand full of ants. The ants make tunnels along the glass and all the ants on one side of the box decide they have to be on the other side, so back and forth they go as fast as they can.
I wondered, “Is this what it’s like for God to watch people?” Then I thought, “How can God possibly know all these people?” And there are millions more crawling around in places other than airports all around the world right now. Do we look like ants racing back and forth in an ant farm to God?
How many people do you know? That probably depends on how you define the word “know.” If “know” means that I’ve seen them somewhere before, I know a lot of people. I recognize their faces. I’ve seen them in a store somewhere or on the street. But I don’t know all their names.
The circle of people you know by name is smaller: friends, family members, people you work with. You know more about them. You’ve shared experiences with them.
But how many people do you really know well? For how many can you describe what they want most in life or what stirs their hearts? How many of them do you know well enough to know how they’ll respond in a given situation or what they are afraid of or what has grieved them? In this category, there are probably very few you really “know.”
Because we can only know and care for a limited number of people, we can’t imagine God knowing and caring for an unlimited number of people. But God’s capacity for relationships is infinite — it has no limitations of time, distance or knowledge. He doesn’t depend on what people tell him about themselves for what he knows about them. He knows everything about every single human being who has lived or ever will live.
The Psalmist said, “O LORD, you have searched me and know me” (Psalm 139). He knows your thoughts – even before you think them. And the psalmist says that kind of knowledge is “too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain it.” That God knows me better than I know myself is an amazing thought. But to realize that God knows every human being with that kind of complete knowledge is beyond me — I can’t begin to comprehend that kind of knowledge.
Maybe the bigger questions are: “Why would God want to know all those people? And why would God care about all of them?” But then again, maybe those questions reveal more about me than they reveal about God. Honestly, I don’t want to know all those people I see in the airport. I don’t care about them. And since I don’t care about them, I think, why would God?
God desires relationships
The good news is that God is not like me. For that matter, he’s not like you, either.
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
It’s an amazing thing that the God who created the vastness of space with its billions of stars and planets, would care about human beings on this small planet. It’s not just that God cares about human beings in general. God’s desire for relationship is vast, and his capacity for relationships is infinite. He actually wants to know a vast number of people.
And God invites us to join in his passion for gathering a people from the nations of this world for his own possession, for his everlasting glory.
Psalm 96:1-3: “Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.”
The command is to proclaim, to declare the glory and greatness of God among all the nations. But it starts with a command to sing. You can’t invite people to sing to the LORD if you are not singing, that is, if you are not excited and moved by who God is and what he has done.
“Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Psalm 96:3-6).
God calls us to proclaim the truth. Tell the nations and peoples of the earth the truth about who God is. Show them his surpassing greatness. The things they are trusting are empty and worthless, but power and beauty belong to God. The gods people worship and trust are powerless to do anything in their lives. They will not save them. They are unable to help them. There is no beauty in false gods.
We are to tell people about the marvelous things God has done not only in creation and providence, but in the work of redemption. This is not a boring message. It’s not just religious information. We are to declare the majesty and glory of God and to tell about his marvelous works.
And we are to invite them to join in the praise of God
“Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.” (Psalm 96:7-10).
We are also to warn the nations of coming judgment:
“Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness” (Psalm 96:10-13).
God claims the allegiance of all people, in every imaginable culture and place. Every human being will stand before God in the end, so how they respond to God now matters eternally.
As you read the Psalms, looking for what you can learn about prayer, it’s easy to focus on things like:
- Giving thanks.
- Confessing your sin to God, coming in honest repentance.
- Expressing your needs and asking for wisdom. You can tell God what is confusing to you about the way he works in your life.
- Delighting your soul in God, meditating on his words and works…
God’s heart for nations
There is a lot you can find in the psalms about how you should relate to God. But the psalms also show us what God cares about and invite us to share a passion for what is on God’s heart.
This is what God reveals about himself: he is not a kind of tribal deity, just the God of Abraham and his descendants, content to have one people group that belongs to him. God’s heart for the families and tribes and nations and peoples of this world is clear all through the Bible.
When he called Abraham to faith and entered into a covenant with Abraham, one of the promises God gave to Abraham was: “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b).
Psalm 2 is a messianic psalm that also affirms God’s heart for the nations:
“You are my Son; today I have begotten you….Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
“All” who take refuge in him means who? All the Jewish people through the centuries who heard these words read in the Temple or the synagogue? No, all from the nations of the world who take refuge in him; all who “kiss the Son” by submitting to him, honoring him as LORD; all who find God to be their Refuge.
God’s heart for the nations that is declared so often in the psalms echoes through the pages of the whole Bible.
Isaiah tells us what is on the heart of the coming Messiah, the Servant of the LORD:
“…and now the LORD says – he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength – he says, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:5-6).
“…On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces. It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation’” (Isaiah 25:6-9).
Several centuries later, the apostle Paul explained to the people of Athens:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should SEEK GOD, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us… (Acts 17:24-27).
Nations and people groups are divided by cultural differences and language barriers. There was a time when everyone spoke a common language. Genesis 11 tells the story of God scattering the people around the world and confusing their languages. So God created all the diversity of language and race and culture that we find around the world. God determined when individual people would live and where they would live. Ethnic differences are something God created, Paul tells the people of Athens, with a desire that people would seek him and find him.
It was not that some people might seek for God eventually and maybe they would find him. God’s intention has always been to gather a people for himself from all these races and tribes and language groups. God longs to see people come to repentance.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance” (II Peter 3:9).
God’s incredible patience
Peter actually tells us in that passage that God patiently delays the return of Jesus because God is unwilling to let people perish. He intends to save more before the final day.
When Peter says, “he is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance,” what does he mean by “willing?” The Bible talks about the sovereign will of God by which God accomplishes whatever he determines to accomplish. Whatever God “wills” in this sense comes to pass. But that can’t be what Peter means in II Peter 3, or he would be saying God is sovereignly determining that everyone will be saved. That’s not what the rest of Scripture teaches.
So the English Standard Version, for example, has tried to capture the meaning by saying “not wishing” that any should perish. That means God takes no delight in people being lost, he longs for all kinds of people to come to repentance.
As you try to reconcile the sovereignty of God in salvation and the free will of people in choosing whether or not to trust in Christ, don’t downplay the vastness of the missionary heart of God that is expressed in that sentence. God actually desires a vast number of people to be saved from all the tribes and language groups and people groups and nations of this world. And that’s why he has delayed the return ofJesus and the Day of Judgment.
Psalm 96: “Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.”
When the psalmist calls us to declare God’s glory among the nations, he is calling us to share in God’s passion for missions. Part of our joy as redeemed and loved people, who know the grace and mercy of God in Christ Jesus is to see people from other nations and people groups come to salvation.
Passion for people
My wife, Margaret, and I had the opportunity to spend a week in Spain with the World Harvest Mission family where she serves on the board of directors. Every three years they gather all their missionaries from all the various places where they are serving for a week of reflection, restoration, encouragement, training and fellowship.
World Harvest Mission is a small mission organization (they have around one hundred and seventy missionaries) and this is just one mission organization among many from North America. There were about four hundred people there as part of the conference, and I was glad for name-tags.
At dinner the first night, I said to Margaret (who is the definition of an extrovert), “This is an extrovert’s dream and an introvert’s nightmare.” I am an introvert. I could see it in her eyes – she felt compelled to meet every one of those four hundred people. I, on the other hand, thought, “I really don’t want to meet any of these people.” (Remember, I’m the one in the airport who didn’t want to know any of those people or care about them, either.)
I did pretty well for an introvert. I met a lot of people and heard a lot of great stories about what God was doing in people’s lives. It was not just fun, it was very moving.
Some of those missionaries have served with World Harvest Mission for thirty years (from the time Jack Miller went to Uganda and started the mission organization). But most of the missionaries were young – in their twenties and thirties. There was a group of five or six doctors and their families who have moved to Burundi to serve in a hospital. The team leader is in his fifties, but all the rest of the doctors are young. There was a group of men who could make a good living in the United States who have chosen to raise support, go to language school for a year to learn French, and move their families to the middle of Africa to serve a poor community in the name of Christ.
I listened one afternoon to the report from a group of young singles and couples who have chosen to go to Islamic countries as doctors, dentists, and artists. They have moved their families into areas that are highly resistant to the gospel. Having spent a week in Cairo, Egypt a couple of years ago, I can’t imagine choosing to live in that kind of culture.
I had lunch one day with a clinical psychologist and his wife, a man who has taught on the university level, who is now raising support to go to Vienna (very appropriate for a psychologist – that’s where Freud was from). They told me the reason they wanted to move to Vienna is that less than one percent of the population in Vienna is Christian.
I met a young couple who recently moved to a remote town near the Himalayan border in India. They talked about large numbers of people who are asking about Christianity. They are seeing a tremendous hunger for the gospel.
But I thought many times during those days, “What compels young people to give up the American dream to give their lives to missions?” I think it’s a conviction that what Psalm 96:5 says is absolutely true:
“For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”
The reason people are willing to give up a comfortable life in a culture that has abundance are convictions like these:
- People are lost and without hope apart from Christ.
- As God’s Word is proclaimed, he will draw people to faith.
- God really does intend to gather people from all the nations and peoples.
- God calls his people to declare his glory among the nations.
“Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.” (Psalm 96:3).
Declare his glory
“Declare his glory” is another way of describing the task of proclamation. How will anyone hear the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ unless someone tells them? And how can anyone tell them unless some are sent with the message? God’s people are sent by God to the nations, to all the peoples of the world with the message of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ.
How will we do that? How will we, in our church families, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples?
Through the years God has raised up people from our church family who felt God was calling them to go to another people group in a distant nation to declare God’s glory:
- Craig and Debbie Rice left a dental practice to serve in New Guinea. Joe and Elise Armfield went with Wycliffe
- James and Joyce Repp went to Japan.
- Carolyn and RJ March went to London.
- Brett and Taylor Rayl went to Japan. Jamie Amick went to Ireland.
- John and Cathy Drobnick took an early retirement to serve with New Tribes Mission.
- Many others have gone on short term mission trips.
Some of us will be called by God to go to another nation or people group, to learn a new language, to become part of a different culture in order to declare God’s glory to people who haven’t heard about Jesus. But most of us will assist in declaring God’s glory to the nations by giving in order to send those God calls to go.
Going and Sending
In terms of the command — “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples” — some will be called to go. Most of us will be part of sending. But is that it? Let me suggest a couple more things. Missions isn’t just about what happens in other places. God is bringing the nations to us.
In our community, hundreds of Chinese students come to the University of Central Florida every year. At nearby Port Canaveral there is a ministry to people from all over the world who work on freighters and cruise ships who can’t get off those ships because they don’t have passports or visas. In our small town we have people from South and Central America, India, Brazil, the Middle East, and many more places. And there are lots of plain old Americans who are not yet singing God’s praises because their hearts are given to false gods.
You can have a part in reaching people with the gospel of God’s grace by befriending people. And you can pray about God’s glory among the nations. Maybe you are good about praying for missions and about interceding for missionaries you help support. But most of us, when we think, “What should I pray for?” don’t often think about missions or God’s passion for the nations. I want to urge you to learn from the psalms to pray for the nations, for the peoples, and for God’s glory among the nations.
God ordains the end — the salvation of a vast number of people from every tribe, language, people, and nation — and God ordains the means for this saving work by providing someone to tell them about Christ. God saves people through the proclamation of the gospel as people are sent with the message. And God ordains to do all this through the prayers of his people.
John Piper in his excellent book on missions, “Let the Nations Be Glad” says this:
“…Not only has God made the accomplishment of his purposes hang on the preaching of the word; he has also made the success of that preaching hang on prayer. God’s goal to be glorified will not succeed without the powerful proclamation of the gospel. And that gospel will not be proclaimed in power to all the nations without the prevailing, earnest, faith-filled prayers of God’s people.”
Many years ago, a man named A.T. Pierson said:
“Every new Pentecost has had its preparatory period of supplication…God has compelled his saints to seek Him at the throne of grace, so that every new advance might be so plainly due to His power that even the unbeliever might be constrained to confess: ‘Surely this is the finger of God’.”
And again, John Piper:
“When missions moves forward by prayer it magnifies the power of God. When it moves forward by human management it magnifies man.”
I urge you to pray for missionaries. Ask God to place them on your heart and remind you to pray. Pray what? In general, you can pray these kinds of things as you think about missions and missionaries:
- For an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that city, that culture, that nation, an outpouring like Pentecost.
- For encouragement in the gospel for that missionary family.
- For boldness (that’s what Paul asked people to pray for on his behalf).
- For protection, especially for those serving in places that are hostile to Christianity.
- For a growing heart for God’s glory as the driving motivation for mission.
- For daily bread.
- For rest and restoration.
- For a supernatural ability to love the unlovely.
Pray for your church
Ask God to give you eyes to see the peoples he has brought to your church. Ask God for opportunities to make friends with people from different ethnic backgrounds. Pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on your hometown. Pray for boldness for your church family in declaring the gospel. Pray for a heart for God’s glory. Ask God to give you eyes to see people as God sees them — harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Ask for an ability to love the unlovely. Ask God to do what you are powerless to do. You can’t convince people to believe the gospel, but you can pray and ask God to bring them to faith through the proclamation of His Word.
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
I can’t explain why God cares about people the way he does. It’s an amazing thing that the God who created the vastness of space with its billions of stars and planets, would care about human beings on this small planet. But he does. And he invites us to share in his passion for gathering a people for his glory from all the nations.