Notes on John Piper

(Originally Written March 17, 2006 in 3 Subject)

Let The Nations Be Glad
John Piper

Chapter 2: The supremacy of God in Missions through prayer

Life is war. God supplies the needs to be in the war and to win it. The supplier gets the glory.

Life is war because the devil attacks faith. Paul uses the Greek word to fight to tell the Christians how to live for God. Paul repeatedly uses warfare imagery in his writings. The folly of most Christians is that they do not have a wartime mentality. They are at ease and have let their guard down. They are susceptible to the enemy's attacks.

Until Christians adopt a wartime mentality they cannot pray effectively. Prayer is using the sword against the enemy. If we do not feel that we need a sword, then we cannot pray correctly. God answers prayer to equip His soldiers.

Prayer is ineffective because Christians have no urgency. God has sent us on a mission and promised to back us up with prayers. All we have to do is adopt a wartime mentality. The end of the war is known: God will win.

Prayer was the reason the Early Church grew so rapidly. The Early Church had a wartime mentality and a sense of urgency.

Jesus tells us to pray in His name. He has all the authority in Heaven and on Earth. God's goal will come through prayer.

Prayer is important to missions, but it is not the work of missions. The Word of God is, and the Word of God cannot fail. The work of missions is to preach the Word of God. Prayer supplies the preachers with the necessary tools to preach.

Chapter 3: The supremacy of God in missions through suffering

Since life is war, suffering is inevitable. The Bible constantly talks about how suffering brings joy. Christ suffered on the cross for us as the ultimate substitution for eternal damnation, not as a substitution for suffering in life. Christ is our pattern for existence, therefore, our suffering is normal and to be expected.

God does not simply allow suffering, He appoints it. "Why does God allow this? No, that is not quite the right question. We have to ask, why does God appoint this?" (Piper, 84). He appoints it for six reasons:
1) Suffering deepens faith and holiness
2) Suffering makes your cup increase
3) Suffering is the price of making others bold
4) Suffering fills up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions
5) Suffering enforces the missionary to go
6) The supremacy of Christ is manifest in suffering

Chapter 4: The Supremacy of Christ as the conscious focus of all saving faith

Is Jesus Christ the only hope for man? This question asks three things:
1) Will anyone experience eternal conscious torment under God's wrath?
2) Is the work of Christ necessary for eternal salvation?
3) Is it necessary for one to hear Christ's message to be saved?

Urgency is lost if any of these three questions is answered with a 'no'.

1) Hell is real. It is everlasting, unquenchable and an eternal fire. It is punitive.
2) Christ's work is universal. The resurrection is the only answer for human misery.
3) Now that Christ has been revealed, He is the only way. Those who fear God without believing in the name of Christ cannot receive forgiveness for their sins, which is crucial to being saved. People who have not audibly heard the gospel have heard it according to Psalms 19:4. "Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun".