All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that worshiping God is the ultimate goal of history, while missions serve as a significant means to achieve that goal.
John Piper's quote reflects the idea that throughout history, humanity's ultimate aim is the fervent worship of God and His son. Missions, which involve spreading faith and serving others, are crucial activities that facilitate this worship, making them significant but secondary in importance to the act of worship itself.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the purpose of life and service, this quote can inspire the congregation.
God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.
You donβt have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
When you read about a car crash in which two or three youngsters are killed, do you pause to dwell on the amount of love and treasure and patience parents poured into bodies no longer suitable for open caskets?
Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we're selling this deadly stuff anyway?
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.
To speak for others is to first silence those in whose name we speak
Now is the time for Afro-realism: for sound policies based on honest data, aimed at delivering results.
If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.
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