Who Am I? Series

God places Himself before anyone else as an act of love. Let me explain. Do you ever pay attention to the airline attendants at the beginning of a flight? It’s just before the plane is to take off the runway that they explain the safety procedures set in place by the FAA. Curiously, they tell parents that in case the plane is depressurized, leaving no breathable air for the passengers, the mother and father are to reach up to the ceiling and place the oxygen mask over their faces before their children’s face. Why in such a terrible moment of tragedy would a parent do such a selfish act of placing their own safety before their child’s? Because the most selfless act the parent can do is to place their own oxygen mask on first in order to ensure they will have not blacked out. Only when the parent is fully conscious can he or she care for their child. It’s only when the parent has taken care of their own oxygen supply that they then turn to their child’s interests of safety. Since God is unique as the most glorious of all beings and totally self-sufficient, He must be for Himself if He is to be for us. If he were to abandon the goal of his own self-exaltation we would be the losers. Everyone one of those Scriptures I read to you a moment ago showed how God acted on behalf of humanity while glorifying Himself. Did you notice how in each of those previous Scriptures that you and I benefitted immensely because of God’s self-exaltation? Now, what should drive you?

I’ll read the key words in 1 Peter 2:9 and then Revelation 5:9–10. 1 Peter 2:9: “You [that is, you who trust Christ] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” Revelation 5:9–10 (a glimpse into heaven after this age and the task of missions is complete):“And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you [Jesus] 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’” (Revelation 5:9-10). You can hear the connection in the parallel words. “Nation” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “nation” in Revelation 5:9. “People” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “people” in Revelation 5:9. “Priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “priests” in Revelation 5:10. And “royal” in 1 Peter 2:9 links with “kingdom” and “reign” in Revelation 5:10. In both texts, God has made for himself a royal priesthood. It called “royal priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9. And Revelation 5:10 says, “You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and thy shall reign on the earth.”

Missions and missionaries in this age are at the heart of what God is doing — forming one new race and nation and people and priesthood from all the races and nations and peoples of the earth. God is jealous for them all. Revelation 5:9 uses the word “every.” It says, “You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Christ bought them with His own blood. He will have them. Long before the united financial crisis in New York and Tokyo and Paris made globalization more understandable, God created a globalized people. But it is far more than globalized. God’s aim is not that his redeemed people be made up of people from a mere 192 countries from the United Nations. His aim is peoples, tribes, languages, ethnic groups—all of them. All 13,000 ethnolinquistic groups in the world and 1,568 Unengaged Peoples. According to Joshua Project, there are 6,850 of these peoples with fewer than 2% evangelical Christians. And 1,568 of those are unengaged — that means there are no believers in Christ and no missionaries working among them. In other words, the task of cross-cultural, global missions is not finished. There should be no unengaged peoples. Given the global scope and education and wealth of the church, the global church of Jesus Christ should have teams of missionaries in every people group in the world.