Audio Transcript

Worldliness — a theme addressed many times here over the years. Especially worldly media. I just glanced at the APJ book here, on pages 291–307, to be reminded of how big a theme worldliness has been for us over the years, Pastor John. A permanent challenge for the church. But not one every preacher wants to address in the pulpit, it seems, according to this note of concern from an anonymous young woman, who sees worldliness creeping in around her, in the lives of the professing Christians in her life.

She wrote us this: “Pastor John, thank you for the innumerable ways in which this ministry blesses me and other Christians around the world, as well as for your and Tony’s books, which also contribute to that. I don’t want to exclude myself; I am sure I also have blind spots, but when I see the ways in which Christians today use their free time and celebrate events in their lives, my heart feels heavy and saddened because of what I perceive to be worldliness. The celebrations are just like those of unbelievers; they often go to concerts by popular artists, stay out late on Saturday nights, then skip church the next day or arrive one hour late. They’re usually absent from prayer meetings. They vacation without giving Sunday worship so much as a moment of consideration. Christ is not present in most of their conversations.

“Some of these individuals are locally seen as mature, model Christians. My own church has solid Bible- and Christ-centered preaching. Yet I don’t see the subject of worldliness mentioned often. Nor do I see it even on websites with solid theology. In APJ 603, titled “What Qualifies as Worldly Music?” you said, ‘Worldly isn’t a sound; worldly is leaving Christ out. That is why it is called worldly and not Christ-ly. And it approves of what he disapproves. It is called worldly because it treasures the world above the one who made the world.’ Could you expand on that in relation to my concerns above? What can Christians do to encourage one another in faith and treasuring Christ? I am saddened and worried about the future of the church and Christianity because of what I see being normalized in the church today.”

I share your sadness and your concern for the church. In fact, I see most of my ministry as a ministry devoted to weaning the church off of the world and its pleasures onto Christ and his pleasures. I try to speak and write in such a way as to create spiritual taste buds in people’s hearts, so that they find distasteful things that don’t honor God and find desirable the things that do.

We Long for Revival

I think what we are longing for together has historically been called “revival” — a work of God in the church first. We call it “awakening” when it touches the world, but in the church first, “revival,” a work of God that causes the hearts of God’s people to burn — like in Luke 24:32: “Did not our hearts burn within us when we walked with him?” Revival causes our hearts to burn with love for God’s word and love for God’s people, love for God’s service, all rooted in an increasingly intense love for God himself, and for communion with God in prayer and meditation, with a growing delight in holiness and a growing horror at sin (especially our own), and a growing concern for lost people.

I think one of the greatest signs of worldliness is little concern for the reality of hell and people going there because they don’t believe, and in all of that, a greater intensification of our sense of spiritual truth and spiritual realities. That’s my sense of what revival is and what the church needs today. This is a sovereign work of God. We can pray toward it and we can preach toward it, teach toward it, write toward it, embody in our individual lives as much of it as possible, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power, and I agree that we are certainly in need of it.

Why Such Worldliness?

When I was in college, a popular little book by J.B. Phillips — called Your God Is Too Small — was very effective in many of our experiences and lives. It was a provocative little book that pleaded with the church to stop treating God as though he were a side issue in life and to wake up to his massive centrality — the fact that all things are “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). It had a significant awakening effect upon me.

“We can pray toward revival, but in the end, it’s a gift God gives to his church with irresistible, sovereign power.”

About forty years ago, David Wells wrote a book called No Place for Truth, which made the case that in the American church, God rests far too lightly on the people of God. He doesn’t have weight. It was the same heart cry from Dr. Wells as from J.B. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight in our worship services and little weight in our lives. He’s taken lightly. He’s simply one among many factors rather than the all-consuming factor, and I have thought that if I were to write a book today with a similar burden, it might have this title: Your Christ Is Too Cheap, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Big.

Christ Too Cheap

When I say, “Your Christ is too cheap,” I have in mind Philippians 3:8. Do the people who flirt with the world and seem to be totally at home in secular entertainments that are void of God, Christ, Christian morality — do those people really say, with the apostle Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”?

For Paul, Christ was the supreme and all-pervasive treasure of his life, and I would ask all of us, How does our treasuring of Christ compare to our treasuring of entertainments offered us by the world? Where are our affections? Because that is the key bottom issue. Where are our affections? Not first our behaviors, but our heart.

Heaven Too Distant

When I say, “Your heaven is too distant,” I mean that the reality of the afterlife is simply not operational in the daily mindset of many believers and virtually all unbelievers. But as I read the New Testament, the call to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven and not on earth is pervasive (Matthew 6:19–21). We are called to set our minds on things that are above (Colossians 3:1–2). We are called to look to things that are eternal, not transient (2 Corinthians 4:18). We are called to bank our hope on the rewards of the resurrection, not the rewards of this life (1 Timothy 6:17–19).

Heaven is a dominant, life-shaping reality in the New Testament, but a minor reality in most people’s lives today. It is too distant and, therefore, ineffective, leaving us sitting ducks for worldliness.

Earth Too Big

When I say, “Your earth is too big,” I mean that people are simply not thinking clearly when it comes to how tiny this earth is — not only in the universe, which is not very significant, but in the scope of eternity, which is very significant. I wonder if people ever think that, in one hundred years, virtually every person alive today will be gone — eight billion people gone. There is a complete turnover of humanity on the earth every ten decades, which seems very short to me now because I’m in my eighth. The number of people who live longer than one hundred is 0.0002% of the population. It is statistically insignificant. Every one hundred years, there is a complete turnover of humanity. Virtually everybody who was 22 years old when I was born is gone, and in 22 years, everybody born before me will be gone. That turnover has been happening for thousands of years.

We tend to think of humanity in terms that don’t really fit individual experience. Humanity has been around for thousands of years on the earth, but the earth has been home to individual humans no more than one hundred years and, in most cases, way shorter than one hundred years. And after that brief eighty to one hundred years (or less), every single one of those humans enters eternity and, compared to eternity, those one hundred years on earth were nothing. The Bible calls it a vapor (James 4:14). It lasts two seconds when you breathe it out on a cold winter morning.

If people were rational, they would not be earthly minded; they would be heavenly minded. And if they were heavenly minded, they would not find their greatest pleasures in the entertainments produced by earthly minded people. So, we pray and we teach and we live with the hope that God would break in with sovereign, reviving power, and cause his word to be so loved that it will no longer be, as Jesus says, choked out “by the cares and riches and pleasures” of this world (Luke 8:14).

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. We start this new week off with a solid Bible question from a listener named Andrew. “Pastor John, hello to you! My question is about who will judge the world finally — Jesus, the Father, or the word of Christ? Of course, John 3:17 and John 12:47 tell us that Jesus did not come into the world the first time to play the role of judge. I understand that. That comes later. And as John 5:22 says it, it’s not the Father who judges in the end, but Christ. But then other passages, like 1 Peter 1:17, seem to actually say, no, the Father judges in the end. And then John 12:48–49 says final judgment comes from the word of Christ, under the authority of the Father. Can you help me understand all this? In the end, who judges the world?”

I think if you put all the pieces of the New Testament together, the answer goes something like this (it’s kind of a complicated answer, but I’ll unpack it): God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth. So that’s the sentence that answers the question as I see all the pieces going together. But before I give the building blocks and unpack those pieces, let me say why I think this is worth talking about.

“Every single human being will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe.”

I mean, I think this is really important. And the reason is because every single human being, every single individual listening to our voices, will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe for the way each of us has responded to the measure of revelation that each of us has concerning God, concerning his ways in the world, and for the way we have lived our lives — including our attitudes and our words and our actions in response to the witness of God in nature, in Scripture, in our own conscience (which is just another witness to God’s reality). “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” Paul says in Romans 14:10.

So that’s why it matters. And I think there should be a kind of trembling seriousness about it over against the superficiality of most of what happens in the world.

Judged by Father and Son

Now, here are the building blocks of that complex answer that I summed up in that sentence about who judges the world. There are biblical passages that say, plainly, that God judges the world — the Father judges the world. First Peter 1:17: “If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” So there it is, clear. The Father judges, impartially, all of us. Or Romans 3:5–6:

If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

So that’s the first building block. The Father judges the world.

Here’s the second one. You have biblical passages about Christ judging the world. So, 2 Timothy 4:1 says, “. . . Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom” — he judges the world. So, you have Christ at his second coming described as the judge of the living and the dead.

Judged Through the God-Man

And then, if you ask how these two threads of Scripture — that talk about Christ and talk about the Father judging the world — fit together, how those threads are woven together, the clearest answer is that God the Father judges through God the Son, the God-man, Christ Jesus. And the New Testament expresses that relationship between the Father and Son in different ways.

For example, Luke in the book of Acts expresses it by saying that God appointed Christ to be the judge of the world. “[Christ] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). We see the same thing in Acts 17:31: “[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” So that’s about the clearest statement you could get of God judging by a man, Christ Jesus. So God judged through Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus expresses this relationship between the Father and the Son in judgment with the same kind of emphasis, with focus on the God-man — that God intends to do his judging through a man, an incarnate Son. John 5:27: “[God] has given the Son authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.”

So, I think when Jesus says in John 5:22–23, which is just a few verses earlier, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” — I think when he says that, he doesn’t mean that the Father is not involved at all in judgment, but that he’s not involved in judgment without the Son. “The Father judges no one” means, I think, “The Father judges no one apart from the Son.”

And I say that because eight verses later, Jesus says, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). In other words, both God the Father and God the Son say, “I don’t judge anyone without perfect harmony between my will and my Father’s will,” or “my will and my Son’s will.”

Judged by Apostles and Saints

Now, besides the judgment of the world through the Father and Son, the New Testament also speaks of the involvement of the apostles and the saints in the judgment of the world. This is really amazing. For example, Jesus says to the twelve apostles in Matthew 19:28, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” And then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:2–3 to the church, the whole church,

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!

Now, if that sounds incredible, which it does, it gets even more incredible in Revelation 3:21, where Jesus says, “The one who conquers [that is, the one who triumphs over persecution and temptation by keeping the faith — the one who triumphs], I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” That’s just breathtaking.

“To be part of Christ’s body, his bride, is to be part of his rule.”

In other words, to be part of Christ’s people by faith — simple, childlike trust in the infinitely worthy Christ — to be part of his body, his bride, is to be part of his rule. That’s what he said. And part of his rule includes part of his judgment. So, if we sit with him on his throne, in some sense sharing in his rule, we then share in his judgment, just like Paul said.

Judged by Sin and Truth

Now, there are two more building blocks in that sentence that I gave. So besides God, Christ, apostles, and Christians, listen to the way Jesus describes the judgment in John 3:19: “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” In other words, it is our own sin, our own love of darkness, that will be our judge at the last day.

And then Jesus says in John 12:48, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” In other words, at the last judgment, the truth that Jesus spoke — and that we knew and did not follow — will rise up as our judge. So, the truth and our sin will also be our judges.

What Judgment Means

Now, let me draw in one last cluster of a different kind of building block to use when we’re building our biblical theology of divine judgment. There are not only six judges, so to speak: God, Christ, apostles, Christians, truth, sin. There are at least six meanings of the word judgment. And we should ask, each time we’re talking about it, Which one are we talking about?

Judgment is an expression of the highest and final authoritative decision about our destiny by God (Romans 3:6).
Judgment is an expression of the immediate execution of the act of judgment (Acts 17:31).
Judgment is an act of final and decisive separation from God for non-Christians (Matthew 25:32).
Judgment is an act of meting out various rewards to Christians (1 Corinthians 3:15).
Judgment is any effect of truth that has been believed or rejected (John 12:48).
Judgment is an effect of sin in response to truth (John 3:19).

So, we should always clarify what we’re talking about when we ask about particular texts concerning God’s judgment.

Christ Judged for Sinners

So, to give the summary answer once more: Who will judge the world? God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians, and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth.

And I think, Tony, that the note we should end on is the distinctive Christian reality. Lots of religions believe in the final judgment of God. There’s nothing distinctively Christian about final judgment.

The distinctive Christian reality is that God’s Son came into the world in order to take on himself the judgment that we deserve when he died on the cross, so that these words from Jesus in John would be gloriously true. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). That’s the distinctive Christian message.

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” 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.” (Romans 15:8–13)

When you read the letters of the apostle Paul, you discover that one of his trademarks is to build modest houses and then dig mile-deep foundations under them.

For example, marriage is a modest house, and the way a husband treats a wife is a fairly ordinary, everyday, modest act in that house. Paul builds that modest house in Ephesians 5, and then he digs a mile-deep foundation for it.

He says to husbands, “Here’s the foundation for your modest house called marriage: the Son of God — the second person of the infinite, eternal Trinity and the Creator of the universe — possessed, from before eternity, a predestined holy and blameless bride, the church. And to make her his own and cleanse her from all impurity, he came into the world as the God-man, and he was crucified in her place. And deeper than the mystery of Genesis 2:24, he became one flesh with her — one body — that they might enjoy each other forever.”

To this mile-deep foundation Paul adds, “Therefore, husbands, a modest proposal: this afternoon, be kind to your wife.” So Paul builds modest houses and digs mile-deep foundations under them.

Modest Conflict Reconciliation

Here’s another example from Romans 14. The vegans and the meat lovers in the Roman church are quarreling, so Paul builds a modest house. He says, “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Romans 14:6). So, get along without judging each other, says Paul.

Then he digs a mile-deep foundation under that house:

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Romans 14:7–9)

“One of Paul’s trademarks is to build modest houses and then dig mile-deep foundations under them.”

To which, perhaps, one of his impatient pragmatist friends would say, “Paul, we are talking about vegetables and steak! And then you bring in life and death and the crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection and his lordship over the living and the dead — good grief! Lighten up. You don’t need to get all deep and theological and heavy about everything.”

Modest Churches

Then we come to our text, Romans 15:8–15, and we notice that it begins with the word for — otherwise known as a massive drill bit for digging pilings a mile deep under modest houses.

Paul builds the modest house in Romans 15:5–7:

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

There’s the modest house: “Live in harmony. Welcome each other. Do it all to show how glorious God is.” And then he fastens the drill bit in Romans 15:8 — using the word for — and digs a mile-deep missions week text about “The Global Glorification of the Merciful God,” which is the title of this message.

This is not a message on Romans 15:5–7. It’s not an exposition of living in harmony and welcoming each other as Christ welcomed us for the glory of God. But it’s good for you to know that this mile-deep missions text about the global glorification of the merciful God was drilled to support the modest house called Bethlehem Baptist Church, who welcome one another as Christ welcomed us.

Global Missions

We often think the other way around — namely, that the church exists to support missions. There’s a sense in which that’s true, but that’s not the way Paul set it up here. Romans 15:8–13 is a mile-deep missions text about the global glorification of the merciful God, and all of this passage is dug as an unshakeable foundation under the modest house of Christian harmony called Bethlehem. God has been doing this for one hundred and fifty years — making his global mission a massive support for the church. It’s not just the other way around.

So let’s watch him drill these pilings. Romans 15:8 says this: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised.” Male circumcision was the sign of belonging to Israel. So Paul is saying that the Son of God came into the world as the Jewish Messiah. When the high priest asked Jesus in Mark 14:61, “Are you the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered, “I am.”

As the Messiah, he said in Mark 10:45, “[I] came not to be served but to serve, and to give [my] life as a ransom for many.” As the Messiah, “[he] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). As the servant-Messiah, he became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

But as a servant to the circumcised he was not coerced or forced: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). Christ served Israel freely. He gave his life freely. He took it back freely. He died. He rose. And thus he served.

Why? Why did he come to serve like this? Paul answers in the middle of Romans 15:8: “To show God’s truthfulness.” Here’s the entire verse: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness” — or we might also say, for the sake of God’s truth. Christ came into the world as the Jewish Messiah to prove to the universe that God tells the truth. He only tells the truth. He never lies. Every word of God comes true.

Two Great Purposes of God

At the end of Romans 15:8 and the beginning of Romans 15:9 Paul drills down into two purposes guaranteed by God’s truthfulness. Because God is absolutely truthful, two purposes of God will come to pass. First, God’s promises made to the patriarchs are firm — they will come to pass. Second, the Gentiles will glorify God for his mercy.

Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:8–9)

We might jump to the conclusion that these are two distinct purposes. Confirm promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — that’s one purpose. Bring about the global glorification of the merciful God — that’s the second purpose. But I doubt it, because God’s purpose to save the Gentiles was included in the promises made to the patriarchs.

Promises to the Patriarchs

Genesis 12:3 says, “I will bless those who bless you . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” When the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, came to serve Israel — when he died and rose again to confirm the promises made to Abraham — in that very act of confirming the promises to Israel, he secured the global glorification of his mercy among all the families of the earth. Because that’s what God promised to Abraham.

So God is true. He keeps his word to Israel, and that word promised that Israel would be blessed and that Gentiles would be blessed through Israel. Never think of the Great Commission as excluding Jewish people. Jesus came into the world to confirm the promises made to them. And those promises include a great salvation through faith in Messiah Jesus.

There are almost fifteen million Jewish people worldwide. Sixty-five thousand Jews live in Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities. There are twenty-four synagogues in these cities. Jesus Christ is their only hope. Every missional focus at Bethlehem includes them. God’s call is on some of you for the Jewish people. Your call is right here in this text — to join Christ in confirming the promises made to Israel.

Gentiles Will Glorify God

But let’s focus for the rest of our time on God’s second purpose — the global glorification of the merciful God.

Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, [first] in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and [second, to make explicit that it is included in the first] in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:8–9)

Let’s ask three questions: Who are the Gentiles? What is God’s mercy? And, How are Gentiles to glorify God?

1. Who are the Gentiles?

Paul quotes four different Old Testament passages to support his claim that God’s purpose is that Gentiles glorify God for his mercy.

As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” (Romans 15:9–12)

In all four quotations he mentions Gentiles. He chose these texts to show that already in God’s purposes in the Old Testament — you could say, in his promises to the patriarchs in Deuteronomy, Psalms, or Isaiah — already in God’s word to Israel, his aim was that the Gentiles would be saved. They would glorify God for his mercy.

In one of these four quotations from the Old Testament, Paul shows us what he means by “Gentiles.” It’s in Romans 15:11: “And again, ‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.’”

“God’s purpose is that he be glorified for his mercy among the peoples of the world.”

“Peoples” — with an s — parallels “Gentiles.” This means that Gentiles are not simply to be understood as individual non-Jews. It does have that meaning in many places, but Paul is striking another note here. God’s purpose is that he be glorified for his mercy among the peoples of the world. This is why there is an s at the end of the word people in our church mission statement: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.”

Therefore our calling as a church in global missions is not only to win to Christ as many individuals as we can, but also to make disciples among unreached or unengaged peoples. Or as one of our global partners emphasized yesterday, our calling is to plant biblical churches that plant biblical churches among all the peoples of the world.

2. What is God’s mercy?

In the Bible “mercy” and “grace” are overlapping realities. Where they overlap, they have the common meaning of treating someone kindly and helpfully. The difference is this: when that kindness is drawn out by a person’s misery, we tend to call it mercy, but when that kindness is drawn out in spite of the person’s guilt, we tend to call it grace.

You can show mercy to an animal because an animal can be miserable (Proverbs 12:10). But you don’t show grace to an animal because animals don’t have moral capacities that make up the basis of moral guilt.

The Bible tends to use these words interchangeably when dealing with God’s grace and mercy towards sinners because our greatest misery — namely, suffering in hell, forever cut off from the goodness of God — is inseparable from our guilt. No human being but one has ever lived whose misery was not accompanied by guilt. Therefore all of God’s mercy toward humans is gracious.

But here Paul strikes the note of mercy: “ . . . that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:9). When God came down on Mount Sinai and declared his name, he said, “I am.” He said, “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious” (Exodus 34:6). The first thing out of his mouth after his name is mercy: “My name is Yahweh! My name is Yahweh! I am merciful. I look with pity upon the miserable.”

And when Zechariah was filled with the Spirit in Luke 1:78, he exulted in why Jesus and John the Baptist had come: “Because of the bowels of the mercy of our God.” That’s a risky image. God doesn’t have intestines, but he has mercy way down in the feeling part of his being. Not just brains of mercy. Bowels of mercy. Deeply felt mercy.

When Christ became a servant to the circumcised and gave his life as a ransom for many, they sang a new song in heaven: “You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). A tsunami of mercy was unleashed for all the peoples of the world. Missions is God’s plan to make that mercy known and glorified. There is no other plan. Therefore, it will succeed. Which brings us now to our last question: How are Gentiles — the peoples — to glorify God?

3. How are the peoples to glorify God?

Be sure you see what Romans 15:9 says. It does not say, “In order that the Gentiles might receive mercy.” It does not say, “In order that the Gentiles might glorify God’s mercy.” It says, “In order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.”

“God’s mission to the world is radically God-focused, God-exalting.”

God’s mission to the world is radically God-focused, God-exalting. The end of all things is God. And he is so glorious — so great, so beautiful, so valuable — that his glorious fullness overflows with mercy. Mercy is the stream. God is the fountain. Missions lead people to the stream and then up the stream to the fountain because the goal of all missions is that all the peoples would glorify God — glorify God! — for his mercy.

So then, how are all peoples to glorify God? The answer is found in the four Old Testament quotations in Romans 15:9–12. As I read them, you tabulate the words that describe how the peoples are to glorify God for his mercy.

“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” (Romans 15:9–12)

I think “extolling” and “praising” are basically the same, so what we have is praise, sing, rejoice, and hope. Which of these is at the bottom, giving rise to the authenticity of the other three? Here’s what I suggest.

Joy is at the bottom. Romans 15:10: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” Joy is the root: joy in seeing and savoring the glory of God spilling over in mercy. Next comes hope: the hope that this joy will last forever, never giving out but only getting better and better. Next comes praise: praise may be unspoken or spoken. In my heart I can offer to God words of praise for his glory. And finally comes song: my inner joy in God’s glory, my hope that it will last forever and get better and better, and my heart-praise burst forth in song.

You do see what this means, don’t you? It means that the way the peoples glorify God for his mercy is by being happy in the glorious God of mercy — not just happy in the relief of misery, but happy in the glorious God who relieves the misery of guilty sinners, all because Christ became a servant to the circumcised. Gladness in God for his mercy glorifies God for his mercy.

Sustained for and by Missions

So here we are at the bottom of the mile-deep foundation for Romans 15:7: “Welcome one another [at Bethlehem] as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Then Paul fastens the drill bit and digs his mile-deep foundation for our welcoming one another: incarnation, the service of Christ’s sacrifice, the declaration of God’s truth, the confirmation of God’s promises, and the global glorification of the merciful God.

God has sustained our church for one hundred and fifty years. He has sustained us for the sake of world missions, but in this text it’s also the other way around. God’s mission to be glorified for his mercy among the peoples is the mile-deep foundation that supports the church. So may God raise up hundreds of you for the sake of the peoples and for the sake of our church.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;     let all the peoples praise you!Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. (Psalm 67:3–4)