Let All the Peoples Praise Him

Education for Exultation: Among the Nations

Romans 15:7-13 Exultation of the Nations

  Now this morning we take another decisive step in unfolding the vision of Education for Exultation, namely, the announcement that the "exultation" that we are going to be educating for in this new building is the exultation of the nations - especially the unreached, non-Christian nations of the world.

    From the early days ...Baptists has been a world-missions-mobilizing church.

-We are a people who believe that those who do not know and believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will finally perish under the judgment of God.

-We believe that God intends to gather worshippers for his Son Jesus from all the peoples of the world. So we take heed to lists that say –hundreds people groups with 10,000 or more people who not only have no Christian church in their culture, but have no mission agency or church aiming right now to put one there. They are neglected.

   We see this situation and we say: This cannot remain. If Jesus is Lord of the nations and has ransomed men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Revelation 5:9), and has all authority in heaven and on earth and has commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations, and has promised to be with us to the end of the age in this great enterprise, then we will not rest until the mission is done.

    And to that end we will educate. Education for Exultation -among the nations. This vision, this building, is about the glory of Jesus Christ among the unreached nations of the world. To draw out what this means, let's look at the text in Romans 15.

From Church Relations to the Glory of God among the Nations

    The first point I want to make is found in the flow of thought in verse 7 and into verses 8-12. How does the thought flow? It flows from the nitty-gritty personal and relational to the infinite and theological and global. You find this sort of thing all over the New Testament because it is such a God-soaked book. Notice in verse 7 that the issue is at first a very practical and personal one: "Therefore, welcome or accept one another." Christians should accept one another. We should be welcoming and loving and helpful and supportive. That is so down-to-earth. So practical. So personal.

     But now watch the flow of thought as the verse continues: "Therefore, welcome, accept one another," and then it continues, "just as Christ also welcomed or accepted us" - and so the relations between Christians is lifted to the level of Christ's way of accepting. Measure your relationships by the way Christ related to people. So our little relationships are magnified into mirrors of something very great, namely, Christ and his love for us.

   But then there's more. Paul doesn't stop there. He tells us particularly how Christ accepted us, namely, "to the glory of God." "Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God." Now we have lifted our relationships not only to the level of portraying Christ in his love on earth, but even to the greatest reality in the universe, which is the glory of God.

     But that's still not all. Paul goes on now in verses 8-12 and illustrates how Christ accepts us to the glory of God. He does this by becoming a servant to the circumcision, that is, he becomes a Jewish man among Jews (verse 8) - to confirm God's truth and promises in the Old Testament.

   But that's not all; he comes not only for the Jews, but also (in verse 9) for the Gentiles (that is, the nations!). And the wording there is crucial: "for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy."

   Now connect the wording of verse 9 and verse 7. In verse 7, Christ accepted us "to the glory of God." And in verse 9 the reason Christ came was so that the Gentiles might "glorify God for his mercy." So one of the ways Christ accepts or receives, welcomes people, to the glory of God, is by pursuing them among the nations. And then in verses 9-12 he backs this up with five Old Testament quotations about the Gentiles praising God.

   Now here is my first point: Just as the flow of Paul's thought moved from practical, personal church relations to Christ to the glory of God to the global concern for the nations, so let all our practical church relations here at Faith Temple Baptist Church in Poetry Texas, in Education for Exultation so move in this same direction. Let all our relationships and all our structures and all our buildings and all our education flow to Christ to the glory of God to Christ's global commitment to the nations. Let Education for Exultation be exultation among the nations.

    Woe to us if we ever become so fixated on our own personal relationships or our buildings or our own educational strategies that we lose our passion for the glory of God among the nations! Let me illustrate this with a personal word and with a word about our church missions giving.

   As I in my 42 year of life am keenly aware that life is short and there is not much time left as I think about what I want to give my life to, if God continues to give me life?   

    Listen to the words of J. Campbell White, the Secretary of the Laymen's Missionary Movement in 1909, come to me as very powerful: Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ's 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 eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

   I think that's right. And I want to be invested in that global work of finishing the Great Commission for the glory of God among the nations. So I cannot imagine Education for Exultation that is not directed to the nations, the unreached peoples of the world.

The other illustration of this movement - from practical church relations and buildings and education to Christ and to the glory of God and to the nations - has to do with our giving to missions as a church.

   The Question that begs answering here is Why not Give for Missions Instead of for a Building?

    Is building a building a good idea rather than trying to raise dollars for missions? That is a good question. But the answer is not easy. How can we know for sure if building the room we are in now was the best strategy for the sake of world missions? How can we know for sure if building the rooms we are currently constructing now is the best strategy for the sake of world missions? Well, I don't know if it is the absolute best, since there are a hundred variables that we cannot predict. But what I do know is this: God has been willing in his mercy toward us to use this building, and has burdened my heart to use the new building for what happens in it for the cause of world evangelization.

   I added up all the missions budget numbers from 2001 until now. Our missions budget has grown from 0 in 2001 to $600 the year before I came to more than 2000.00 my first year to more than 3000.00 last year. Our Cooperative program giving was up just under 42% in 2004 and sits at a 43.95 % increase through the month of June this year over 2004.

   And the money is only one indicator of God's willingness in his mercy to bless our imperfect efforts. Right now, one of our people is moving toward vocational missions. And we plan short-term mission trips in the years ahead; that’s not counting all the other short-term efforts that many of our people will take part in. There may have been a better way than building, but I think, that what we are planning is a means of something very significant for the nations. Which leads me to the second point from our text. This point simply underlines something in point one.

    Leaving Security to Pursue Exultation in God among the Nations The aim of Christ in coming as a servant into the world was "for the Gentiles to glorify God for his mercy." Verses 8-9: "Christ has become a servant to the circumcision . . . and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy." What is another phrase for "glorify God"? Answer: "Exult in God." "Exultation." Christ took on the incarnation for the sake of bringing exultation in God to the nations. This is what he was pursuing when he became a servant.

My second point is: So should we. In all our education we should be aiming to produce servants who leave the securities and comforts of "heaven" (figuratively speaking of course) and pursue exultation in God among the nations.

   Very practically, what does this mean? Among other things, it means that our vision in Education for Exultation is that our children will be educated with a view to begetting radical, risk-taking, Christ-exalting lovers of people who will give their lives to reach the unreached nations - either by the way they go or by the way they send. There are only three options you have as a Christian: you can be a goer,….you can be a sender, or you can be a disobedient Christian. It’s your choice! What Choice have you made?

    This has a direct bearing on the parents and grand parents in this church. If your preference is for your children to grow up and get nice jobs here with all the securities and comforts and wealth that go with American life, rather than to hear the call of God to missions, you will be out of step with the spirit of God, and with this pastor, and this church and with the aims of Education for Exultation.

   The aim in this new building and in all the vision and strategies that go with it will be that children are consecrated by their parents to God for his great purposes, no matter what they are, and that parents become like the adoptive parents of a child of missionary’s many years ago. When they came to a crisis of whether he was to go back to the very South Sea Islands where 17 years earlier the two missionary parents had been clubbed to death and eaten by cannibals, assurance came from his adoptive parents. They said, When you were given to [us], your father and mother had laid you upon the altar, their first-born, to be consecrated, if God saw fit, as a Missionary of the Cross; and it has been [our] constant prayer that you might be prepared, qualified, and led to this very decision; and we pray with all our heart that the Lord may accept your offering, long spare you, and give you many souls from the Heathen World for your hire. (John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, An Autobiography Edited by His Brother [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, orig. 1889, 1891] p. 57). That's the kind of parents and the kind of young people that Education for Exultation aims to produce. O that we might one day raise up a generation that will complete the Great Commission!

   Which simply leaves us one last question - the third point.

---The first point was that the personal, relational, educational inner workings of our church should take our hearts and minds to Christ and the glory of God and the global purpose of God to be glorified among the nations. Woe to us if we become so inward-focused that we lose our passion for the glory of God among the nations.

---The second point was that we should aim to produce children and parents who are ready to give their lives and their children's lives to bring about exultation in Christ among the nations.

   Now third, and in just a word, the strength to do this will come from an indomitable hope in God. Verse 13: "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."

    The way to missions may be hard. It may be strewn with sickness and persecution. But it is not a joyless road or a hopeless road. Our aim in Education for Exultation is "exultation!" Joy! Just look at verses 9-11. "Therefore I will give praise to you among the Gentiles, and I will sing to your name. Again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him."

The message of missions is "Let the Nations Be Glad!" (Psalm 67:4).

   Therefore we must be glad. You can't, hear me, please in the name of our Lord Hear Me, you can not call the nations to rejoice in a salvation and a God that does not delight and sustain your own heart…….

    So our vision is Education for Exultation - exultation for us and exultation for the nations depends on whether or not We Will follow Christ? We Will run the race,…. we will share what we believe in?

Wheather or not We Will fight the good fight,… stand on our faith,.. and wear the name of Jesus?

Will we give him all our life, no matter what the sacrifice?

May the Lord our God prosper the work of our hands to this great end!