The first missionary endeavor of Protestantism in England burst forth from the soil of Puritan hope. Now, you remember who the Puritans were. The Puritans were those pastors and teachers from about 1560 to 1660 in England, and then in New England, who had the goal of purifying (hence the name “Puritan”) the Church of England so as to bring it into alignment with the great doctrines and practices of the Reformation. They had a view of biblical authority and the sovereignty of God that filled them with hope for the triumph of the gospel among all the nations and the world. And they were deeply stirred by a passion of God’s kingdom coming to the nations. They really believed Psalm 86:8–9, where it says:

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
     nor are there any works like yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
     and worship before you, O Lord,
     and shall glorify your name.

They had a tremendous confidence that would happen, that all the nations of the earth would glorify his name, that they would come and bow down. And the earliest Protestant missionary movement in England took its start from that tremendous theologically-rooted confidence. Let me give you an example of that.

An Extraordinary Work of God

One-hundred and fifty years before the birth of the modern missionary movement, which is usually identified with William Carey in 1793, there was an extraordinary work of God in missions. Between the years 1627 and 1640, 15,000 people emigrated to the new world. It was the beginning of our country. It is an amazing thing that our country is as young as it is. The first 15,000 immigrants, not counting the Native Americans who I’ll talk about in just a moment, came to this country between 1627 and 1640. And their motive, contrary to what most people know about today, was missionary.

One of the evidences for this is that the state seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had on it a Native American, an Indian, with words coming out of his mouth quoting Acts 16:9, “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” That was the self-understanding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And most of those 15,000 Puritans who came to this country saw it as the providence of God maneuvering peoples. They didn’t so much think of themselves as missionaries crossing the culture as much as whole societies being maneuvered to other parts of the world so that the kingdom of God could be planted there. Now one of those people was John Eliot, and he came in 1631 when he was 27 years old, and he became the pastor of the church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, about a mile from Boston, which is now folded into Boston.

According to Cotton Mather, surrounding Boston in those days there were 21 tribes of Indians. He called them specifically “nations”. And that’s very important because he called them nations precisely to pick up on the biblical word nations. You need to understand that these flags here do not represent biblical nations. They represent, as you heard already this morning, if you were listening carefully, political geographic entities. The Bible never ever called one of those a nation. The Greek word ethnos referred to people like the Hittites or the Jebusites. Those were the kinds of people that were nations — the Cherokee nation, the Ojibwe nation. There are tens of thousands of nations in the world, not 212. So you need to know that when I say the word “nations”, and when missionaries today usually say the word “nations”, they have in mind people groups with identifiable cultures, languages, and so on that are distinct from what’s behind these flags.

Eliot’s Work Among the Native Americans

Well, there were 21 of those around Boston, and John Elliot was among these great Puritan believers in the Bible and in the sovereignty of God. And over 13 years, his theology began to grip him in a very powerful way — namely, he thought, “If the Bible is true, and if God Almighty is sovereign, and if the Bible says that all the nations will come and bow down, then it is very likely that if a man like me were to go to these nations God would probably, according to his word and by his Spirit, be pleased to use me to win those nations to himself around Boston and plant his church there.

Therefore, at age 40 he began. Now, mark this 40 year olds. I’m on a crusade here at Park Cities this weekend. I’ll just confess it wide open. I’m on a crusade to recruit martyrs and recruit other kinds of missionaries from people age 6 through 96, because I want to blast out of the water every possible conception you may have in your mind that only one kind of person gets called to do missionary work. So here he is, 40 years old, and he decides to be a missionary to the Indians and he learns Algonquin and he studies Algonquin. There are words in Algonquin that are longer than our alphabet — 27 letters long in the Algonquin language. And he learned this language and he translated the whole Bible into Algonquin and he translated Joseph Allein’s An Alarm to the Unconverted. Can you believe he translated this Puritan work into this Indian language?

He planted numerous churches. He founded an Indian Bible Institute. These churches were pastored by Indians. By the time he was 84, there was an Indian Bible Institute and there were churches pastored by Indians, and it’s only owing to some of the horrible policies and practices of our nation regarding Native Americans that there’s no evidence of that today in New England. It’s a lost story. He said “prayers and pains through faith in Christ will do anything.” Oh, I hope that some of you middle-aged folks and younger folks and older folks just have that burn in your heart — prayers and pains through Jesus Christ can do and will do anything. What God has in store for some of you 54-year-old people, that’s how old I am, is simply stunning. I am so excited about the rest of my life I can hardly stand it, even if it only lasts for a year or so.

I don’t know how long it may last, but I am so glad to be a Christian and to be a pastor and to know the gospel and to yet have a voice, though it’s not in the shape I would like it to be this morning. I want you to catch this vision for the sovereignty of God begetting a Puritan hope from which a John Eliot from age 40 to age 84 did an amazing work.

Blessed for the Sake of the Nations

The reason I chose Psalm 67 from which to speak this morning is that it is the way people pray who are driven by this kind of hope. So let’s go to our Bibles. If you closed it, please open it again. Psalm 67 was read to us earlier. Let me make two main points, but I will add a third one here at the beginning, while you’re turning there. The Psalm begins with a word to Park Cities Presbyterian church. You’re a wealthy church. You are a wealthy church in a wealthy part of Dallas. And this psalm is all about you. It’s all about you. It’s why you exist. It’s why you exist here in Park Cities. That’s no accident. You are here for a reason. It’s stated in Psalm 67:1–2. Here it is:

May God be gracious to us and bless us . . .

Well, that’s already happened, so you don’t need to pray that over and over except to continue it on into the next verse. And there are other blessings of course that you don’t have that you would want to ask for. But here’s the big one:

May God be gracious to us and bless us
     and make his face to shine upon us . . .

Oh, has he done it? Praise him for it. But here’s the reason. Notice the next word — that. It’s a purpose clause. Why has he done this to you? It is that God’ way may be known upon the earth and his saving power, or literally his salvation, be known among all the nations (Psalm 67:2). Let’s say it very simply. God has blessed this church so that his salvation would reach the unreached peoples of the world.

That’s why you have a blessing. If you don’t turn your blessing into that purpose, you will be cursed. You exist, and my church exists, to turn this glorious blessing outward for the sake of the nations. No church exists in this Disneyland called America for any other reason than to multiply our blessing for the sake of the spiritually, physically, and educationally destitute peoples of the world, and mainly spiritually. They’re lost without Jesus. So it’s very clear, the first point of this psalm is that you have been blessed in order to be a blessing. The fact that Skip Ryan and others in this church have led this church to have conferences like this shows you’re not unaware of that, and I thank God for it. I’m just here to breathe on it, bless it, fan the flame, and say, “Amen, keep on.”

God’s Great Purpose

Now, here’s the first of my two main points I want to draw out of this. Let’s ask two questions. Question number one: what is the great purpose of God revealed in Psalm 67? What’s the great purpose of God that this church and all the churches represented here from other places, perhaps, should join God in? The answer is four things. According to this psalm, God’s purpose is to be known, praised, enjoyed and feared among all the nations of the world. I want you to feel the fourth of these four purposes of God from this text, not from me, but from the text. So let’s just note each of them.

Number one: God’s will is to be known among the nations. Psalm 67:2 says:

That your way may be known on earth,
     your saving power among all nations.

God intends to be known on the earth among all the nations. If he’s not known there, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have not yet finished joining him in his purpose.

Number two: he means to be praised. His purpose is to be praised among the nations. Psalm 67:3 says:

Let the peoples praise you, O God;
     let all the peoples praise you!

And then Psalm 67:5 says:

Let the peoples praise you, O God;
     let all the peoples praise you!

Our God is seeking worshipers from all the peoples of the world in Spirit and in truth. If he is not being duly worshiped in any people group on the face of the earth, we have work to do according to his sovereign purpose.

Number three: his purpose is to be enjoyed among all the peoples of the world. Psalm 67:4 says:

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy . . .

Missionaries should be the happiest people in the world because their whole business is joy. The church exists to rejoice in God and be glad, and the church exists to spread that joy. Here’s the mission statement of our church, Bethlehem Baptist:

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.

That’s our mission statement, and it comes straight out of texts like this and I believe you know that. And oh, I wish I had one hour to talk about the relationship between the second and third point that I just gave you. God’s purpose is to be praised and God’s purpose is to be enjoyed. I could take an hour to show you that God’s purpose in seeking his own praise and seeking your joy are one, but I don’t have any time to do it. So read [a book] *(https://www.desiringgod.org/books/desiring-god) or two. I don’t get any of those royalties, but God does, and they really get multiplied back into ministry. So yes, it would make me happy if you bought those books.

Number four: God’s purpose is to be feared. Psalm 67:7 says:

Let all the ends of the earth fear him!

Lest that sounds contradictory to joy to you, do you remember a text like “I delight to fear thy name” (Nehemiah 1:11)? Or do you remember a text like, “With you there is forgiveness that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:4)? Strange. The fear of God is a strange thing. It’s a trembling joy in the presence of an infinitely awesome, holy God that you don’t trifle with. But when you know him as Father, it is delightful to fear him.

The Sweetest and Most Priceless Rewards

So there is the fourfold purpose of God — to be known, to be praised, to be enjoyed, and to be reverenced, or feared, among all the peoples. That’s why you exist as a church. Not many of you know who Jay Campbell White is. Before I tell you who he is, let me read you a quote from him from about a hundred years ago. He wrote this. Now heads up, laymen, laywomen, businessmen, and businesswomen:

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can satisfy us except joining him and adopting his purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure, and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of it life’s sweetest and most priceless rewards.

His undertaking is to be known and praised and enjoyed and feared as he really is among all the peoples of the world. Now, you should ask at this moment, “Well, did that quote mean that only missionaries can have deep and abiding and sweet and precious satisfaction in life?” To answer that question, I’ll tell you who Jay Campbell White was. He was a layman and a businessman who was the head of the laymen’s missionary movement that he founded in 1906. These businessmen looked out on the student volunteer movement where God was moving so mightily at the beginning of the last century, 1906, that they said, “If these students have this much energy and this much zeal and this much sense of call and this much willingness to sacrifice, then surely we businessmen ought to do everything we possibly can to get behind them and fund this enterprise.”

And so he said, “If the layman of North America could see the world as these students are seeing it, they would rise up in their strength and provide all the funds needed for the enterprise.” So the answer is no, it is not merely missionaries who can enjoy deep, profound involvement in the purposes of God to be known and praised and enjoyed among the peoples. You may be satisfied by participating in other ways. However, you won’t be satisfied if you just go on with life as usual, make your money, do your work, give your tithes, eat, sleep, play, watch TV, surf the internet, and do a little job at church. That will not do it. That won’t do it. There must be from the heart a sense of, “I’m engaged. I’m engaged with a world enterprise. I’m engaged with reaching the nations.”

So my counsel to you — young, old, and middle-aged — is to take a few days and get away with a Bible, a pad of paper, a hymn book, and not much else. Go to a hotel, go to a cabin, go out at a park somewhere, and sit down alone and say, “God, is this it? Is this it? CPA, banker, teacher, doctor, lawyer, computer, designer, programmer, is this it? I’ve got a life. I’m making good money. I have a house and a server. I have a car and I have a family. I do the same thing every day, day in and day out. Is this it?” And my guess is God is going to say, “No.” And then ask him, “What more, Lord. What more? An adjustment of this or a total change?” Just do that would you? Take a break, take a mid-course, third-way course, two-thirds way course break and ask him, “Lord, is this?”

It may be that he’ll say, “You’re exactly where I want you. Hold the course and stoke the engines.” That may be it, but it also may be that there’s been, as you’ve come into this conference, a restlessness, a discontent, and now you’re hearing me address it and you’ve been wondering what it’s been about. And at this moment in your life, I’m telling you what it’s about on his behalf. It’s about God. It’s about world missions. It’s about your peculiar, strategic investment and involvement in ways you may have never dreamed and may find out in a workshop after I speak. I don’t want to imply that all discontent in work is a call of God. If that were true, we would all change jobs every other week.

However, there is an abiding restlessness. There is a recurrent discontent. There is a growing and deepening sense that the roots are being loosened. There is a heightening of dreaming. There is a spirituality that comes in it as you linger over the Bible, and at those moments, something settles on you — you sense God is up to something in your life that is doing something differently than you thought it might be. So maybe you will stay where you are and adjust, and maybe you will not. But know this, God’s purpose for your life is that you engage in his being known and praised and enjoyed and feared among peoples where he is scarcely known, if at all.

Coming Off the Sidelines

He wants you to be engaged. You have three options: go, send, or disobey. That’s all. Are you an engaged sending? Really engaged? Are you thinking, giving, praying, getting educated, moving, traveling, taking your vacations certain ways, and investing your spare time instead of dinking around on the television? You know what I did last night? I’m in a motel room. That’s a huge temptation, right? When you’re in a motel room by yourself for several hours, you can watch pornography if you want to, or you can just fritter it away with silliness on TV. So you know what I did yesterday? I sat at the desk over at the graduate suites and I started a list. I’m going to write this in a newsletter for my church, but I’m writing it for myself first — what a person can accomplish if he doesn’t watch TV. That’s a tremendous discipline.

Start making a list in your life. What could I accomplish if I didn’t watch television? Oh, there’s so much this church could accomplish. If you threw it out the window for one month, what you could accomplish for God would be absolutely stunning. Well, I have to quit. Let me see how I should quit here. Let me quit by summing up four answers to my second question real, real fast.

Making Known the Character of God

Here’s my second question: what is it that God aims to make known about himself in the world? Number one: God aims to make known that he’s the one and only true God. Psalm 67:5 says:

Let the peoples praise you, O God;
     let all the peoples praise you!

Here’s a Jewish poet inspired by God, praying that his God will be known among all the peoples. There is one true God, not many, and we ought to strive to make him known.

Number two: he wants to be known as a God of justice. Psalm 67:4 says:

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
     for you judge the peoples with equity . . .

He wants us to go with a message: God is just, God is righteous, God is equitable. Nobody will be called to account except for what they ought to have done. And the Bible says everybody everywhere among all the peoples of the earth have all the revelation they need to be held accountable to God, and they all, according to Romans 1:18, suppress the truth and therefore they’re lost. We must go and tell them God is just and that God is the only God.

Number three: we must tell them that God is sovereign in power and guides the nations. Again, Psalm 67:4 says:

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
     for you judge the peoples with equity
     and guide the nations upon earth.

Our God is a sovereign God. There are many nations that talk about sovereign states. God laughs. He raises up kings and he puts down kings.

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
     he turns it wherever he will (Proverbs 21:1).

He will decide who gets elected in America the next four weeks, and he will decide who reigns and rules over China, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Australia, and Thailand. He will decide who reigns. And we go with a message of a sovereign God. I’ll tell you, with the Muslims left to be won, we better take a sovereign God and not a namby-pamby, American god, because they’ve got one. If we don’t come with a greater God than the Muslim god, which we do have because of the mingling of sovereignty and mercy, then we don’t have anything to say to Muslim peoples.

Number four: God wants to be known as being gracious, which is found in Psalm 67:1:

May God be gracious to us and bless us
     and make his face to shine upon us,
that your way may be known on earth,
     your saving power among all nations.

Is he gracious to us alone? No, he is gracious so that salvation and grace might be known to the nations. Don’t harbor the grace of God, it will rot in your bones. Rather let your lives become channels of salvation like this verse says.

Worthy Is the Lamb

Let’s end this message by taking a big bow and drawing it over from Psalm 67 to the cross, where that grace in the Old Testament was bought. God knew Jesus was coming and when he was gracious to the nations then as he’s gracious to the nations now, he knew who paid the price. Jesus paid the price. So I leave you with this great, Christ-centered, triumphant word from Revelation 5:9. This has become even more important for me than Matthew 28:19–20 in my missionary understanding. It’s the song, “You, oh Christ, are worthy to open the seals.” Now that means open the seals of history, close the book, and run the rest of history until it’s all done. It says:

Worthy are you to take the scroll
     and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
     from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
     and they shall reign on the earth.

So God means to be known, praised, enjoyed, and feared because he’s a gracious God, a just God, the only God, and a sovereign God. And I welcome you into the great enterprise of pursuing this.