Opposed Unto Death, but God Grants Eternal Life

The following is a lightly edited transcript provided by a transcription service. Please check the video before quoting.

David Platt at CROSSCON 2024

As you find your seats, if you have a Bible, and I hope you or somebody around you does, you can look on with it, lemme me invite you to open with me to Revelation chapter seven, the last book in the Bible, Revelation chapter seven.

I want to start this last session by setting the stage for where we’re going and then praying specifically altogether for what’s about to happen. So I want to set the stage in two ways. One, by making sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to the state of the world, and then two, by making sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to what is clear in God’s word.

So the state of the world, what’s clear in God’s word, we’ll start with the state of the world. I want to show you a map on the screen that depicts the state of the world when it comes to access to the gospel today. I hope you’re familiar with this map,

The Gospel Has Spread

Some version of it. There are three colors on it. You see green areas of this map that represent places in the world where the gospel has spread and there are many disciples and many churches who were able to spread the gospel in those places.

It does not mean that everybody in green areas is a follower of Jesus or necessarily has even heard the gospel, but they have access to the gospel in Christians and churches around them in green parts of the world.

It’s where most of us live in a green part of the world. The yellow areas on this map represent regions where there’s less access to the gospel. There are fewer Christians and fewer churches that are proclaiming the gospel. It’s usually going in one of two directions. Either the gospel used to be more prevalent there, or there used to be more Christians in churches, but access to the gospel has diminished, and has decreased.

Spreading the Gospel in Europe

You look at different parts of Europe where that’s the case or it might be going the other direction. Maybe the gospel has begun to spread in those places and there’s some access to the gospel, but still a long way to go to where people in that area have abundant access to the gospel and Christians and churches around them.

And then you have the red areas on this map that represent regions that are classified as unreached by the gospel. And what that means is these areas are read on this map. If you live in one of these areas, the likelihood is you will be born and live and die and you will never encounter a Christian or a church who can share the gospel with you.

You’ll be born to live and die and never even meet someone who can tell you the good news of God’s love for you in Jesus. And in these red areas of the world, there are approximately 3.2 billion people,

Getting on the Same Page of God’s Word

As best as we can tell, about 3 billion people live in these red zones in the world, which then leads us to what is clear in God’s word. Before Jesus left the earth, he was crystal clear in what he was calling all of his followers to do. This is the will of God for our lives.

Matthew 28:18 through 20, Jesus came and said to them, all authority and heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I’m with you always to the end of the age.

So did you hear that Jesus gave his followers not just a general command to lead other people to Jesus wherever we live Yes, but Jesus just gave a specific command to lead other people to Jesus among all of the nations, which means, so follow this because this is what I want to make sure we’re all on the same pages, same page in that is clear in God’s word.

Being a Disciple of Jesus

To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a disciple maker for all the nations. It’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It means you live to see followers of Jesus among all the nations.

That doesn’t mean you or any one person is singularly responsible for making disciples of all the nations, but it does mean that you as a follower of Jesus have a unique and significant part to play in disciples being made among all the nations that this is what you’re here in the world to do. God has not saved you to sideline you in his plan for all the nations.

God has saved you to be a disciple-maker for all the nations. This is what it means to be a Christian. This is clear in God’s word. So now to make the connection come back to this map and a world where over 3.2 billion people among the nations are still unreached by the gospel and every follower of Jesus is the disciple-maker for all the nations.

As Followers of Jesus, We Must Work Together

That means that all of us, all of us, without exception, every follower of Jesus, are all working and praying and giving and living for the spread of the gospel to all the nations. That is the same for every one of us. And the only question that’s specific to each of us is where and how God by his spirit will lead you to play your part in this mission.

So for most of the 11,000 people in this room, the answer to that question of where and how right now is a college campus or a city somewhere here in the green at this moment, God has placed you in the city you’ll travel back to after this conference and God has called you there to be a disciple maker for the nations, to make disciples of the nations right where you live around you and to seriously consider how you from the green can play a part in getting the gospel to the red through your praying, through your use of money, through maybe going for a week or two or a summer or a semester going to the red.

Staying in the Green

And for some of you, God will lead you to stay in the green even after college for the foreseeable future. And as long as he leaves you in the green, he’s calling you to be a disciple-maker for the nations.

From there praying, giving, sending, supporting, looking for opportunities to go to the red short term, always open to God at any point saying it’s time for you to take a one-way trip to the red, which then leads to others in this room whom the Holy Spirit of God is calling to move to the red and be a disciple maker for the nations there.

Acts Chapter 8

And a place where the gospel hasn’t gone much like we read about in Acts Chapter Eight, where Pastor John walked us through last night when thousands of followers of Jesus scattered to spread the gospel in Judea and Samaria in places where the gospel had not gone.

Or in Acts 13 when the Holy Spirit called Paul and Barnabas to take the gospel to new places where Jesus was not known. God today is calling multitudes. John prayed last night for a thousand from this room.

Ultimately I believe tens and hundreds of thousands of followers of Jesus to be disciple-makers of the nations in the red where the gospel hasn’t gone yet, which is why here at the start of this last session, I want to invite every follower of Jesus within the sound of my voice.

And I should add, I include myself in this for all of us right now before God to pray and ask God, are you calling me to move to the red, to be a disciple maker of the nations there and then for us to listen to God by his spirit, through his word?

God Will Not Lead You Into the Red

And then at the end of our time together, a few minutes from now, I’m going to invite people all across this room to stand. If you believe God may be leading you to move to the red, and I say you may because as we’ve discussed that is not a decision you need to make alone.

That’s a decision you need to make with your local church. So by your standing today, you would be saying, I’m going to communicate to the leaders in my local church and if I don’t have a local church, I’m going to find one and I’m going to communicate to my leaders there that I believe God may be leading me to go to the red.

I’m going to begin working with my local church to discern if the Lord is leading me in that way and if so, what that would look like where I might go.

God Speaks by His Spirit

And some of you in this room, no. Before we go any further, that God is already leading you to go and you’re ready to stand right now others of you, I believe God is going to speak by his spirit in the next few minutes, maybe in a way that you did not expect to lead you to stand and to be clear, that invitation at the end of our time will not be a moment when this room is divided into two tiers of Christians, the super Christians who are moving to the red and the sub-Christians who are staying in the green.

God calls all Christians to be disciple-makers for all the nations. The question is where and how. And that’s not a matter of spiritual maturity. That’s a matter. Spiritual obedience and some of your obedience to God’s spirit will mean sitting during that moment.

What it Means to Be Christian

For others of you, obedience to God’s spirit will mean standing. What’s important right now is for every follower of Jesus to pray and say two things to God. I’m going to put this on the screen so first to pray, God, I will go wherever you call me to go.

This is what it means to be a Christian. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have sacrificed the right to determine the direction of your life. You have died to yourself to follow Jesus wherever he leads as your Lord.

So to pray, God, I will go make disciples wherever your spirit leads me to go and make disciples of the nations green, red, wherever, and then to ask right now in this room, God, are you leading me to move to the red in the days ahead knowing there would be a process that would lead to that with your local church just to ask that question before God with an open willing heart.

So will you bow your heads with me I want to give us a moment to pray these two prayers first just between you and God. So I want to give you a moment. I’ll leave both of these on the screen if you need to see them. I want to invite every follower of Jesus within the sound of my voice, including those who are watching online to pray these two prayers to God right now.

God Sheperd’s Us

Oh God, we confess that you are our savior and our Lord and we are so glad that you are the shepherd of our lives. We trust you with our lives. So we pray together right now that in the next few minutes, you will speak clearly to us by your spirit, through your word.

We pray that you would keep the adversary from distracting us, from hearing your voice, from doubting you. When we hear your voice from deceiving us into thinking that your voice cannot be trusted, please help us to hear you clearly and help us to obey you completely no matter what that means we trust and love you.

We want to make disciples of the nations wherever and however you lead us. We want all the peoples of the world to know who you are and how much you love them and we’re asking you to set apart some many, any of us today to go to them.

We pray that unreached people might be reached in the days to come because of what is about to happen in this room today. In Jesus’ name, we pray, amen. All right, you ready?

Revelation Chapter 7

Revelation chapter seven. Over the last couple of days, we’ve walked through the Bible. We’ve seen these twin themes of suffering and salvation, suffering due to our sin, suffering due to the effects of sin in this fallen world, and God’s sovereign salvation in it all.

So it’s no surprise to turn the page into the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and to see both of those themes practically on every page throughout this book. We don’t have time today to do an exhaustive study of Revelation, but when you step back and look at it, you realize this book was written in a sense to highlight these two themes and there’s a lot of confusion about Revelation, what it says about the end times.

People have come up with all kinds of charts and graphs and interpretations and predictions of this or that and history, but I don’t believe that was the primary purpose for which revelation was written. The author of this book, John, was suffering.

He was exiled to an island to proclaim the gospel and God gave him this vision and told him to write this book, to send to churches filled with Christians who were suffering, and being persecuted as they followed Jesus. And John is not saying to them, I really want to confuse you about the end times with a bunch of symbols so you can try it and figure out what some charts are.

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

No John is saying to them, don’t give up. Don’t give in to the ways of this world. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep your eyes on where all this is going and keep reclaiming Jesus all the way to the end knowing that the end is really good news for everybody who trusts in and obeys Jesus.

So resist sin, endure suffering, live and die to spread and ultimately experience the salvation of God. That’s the whole point of the book and that point may be most clear in Revelation seven versus nine through 17. Follow along with me as I read aloud this vision from God that John writes down,

Salvation Belongs to God

He writes, after this I looked and a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice.

Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb and the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God saying, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.

Then one of the elders addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come? I said to him, sir, and he said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb, therefore they’re before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple and whoever sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.

They shall hunger no more nor thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

What God is Saying to Us: 6 Points

Oh, there’s so much here, so much God is saying to us in this room right now through this text, I want to summarize it with six points. You might write them down. I’ll give you a heads-up. The first two come straight from this text and all over God’s word for that matter.

The next two points will be observations of the world. So I mentioned that because I want you to know those are not coming directly from this text. I believe they’re true and they relate directly to what we’re seeing in this text in the last two points.

Come back to this text and really the whole book of revelation so that gives you an idea of where we’re going. Here’s the first point. Number one, the ultimate goal of God is for his grace and glory to be enjoyed and exalted among all the nations.

Bringing People Together

That’s what Revelation Seven is telling us that this is where all of history is headed and it’s headed that way because the God of history has designed it that way. The ultimate goal, that aim of God is to bring together a multitude of people that no one could count.

So don’t just think a stadium full of people gathered for a football game, 80, 90, a hundred thousand strong. No, this is a great multitude that no one could number from. Just imagine this scene from every nation and the word here for nation is ethnic.

So don’t just think of a country or geopolitical entity like we might think of 200 or so United Nations today. No. This is every ethnic group in the world that we know we live in. Most of us live in the United States. There are all kinds of different ethnic groups here. The same is true all over the world.

Across Language and Culture

And then we have this elaboration of terms just to make sure we don’t miss the point from every nation, all the tribes, all the peoples, and all the languages. Joshua Project tells us there are over 17,000 distinct ethnic groups in the world and over 7,000 distinct languages in the world. Can you imagine this scene, every one of them singing together with one voice?

What does that sound like? The Tulo of West Africa, the launch of Indonesia, the Chechens of the North Caucasus, the man of Myanmar, the Azure of Brazil, the Hutu and the Tutsis, north Koreas, and South Koreans, Russians and Ukrainians, Saudis and Somalis, the Belo of Pakistan, the P of Afghanistan all joined together with one voice.

What will be our song selection that day? Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb and blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever.

The Ultimate Goal of God

The story continues with beautiful imagery of enjoying God that will unpack more in a moment. That’s where all of history is headed. So if that is true, if the ultimate goal of God is for his grace and glory to be enjoyed and exalted among all the nations, then the second point flows from that.

If this is the ultimate goal of God, who’s the Lord overall history, the author and creator of your life, then the second point, the ultimate goal of your life is to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among all the nations.

Enjoy God in All His Grace and Glory

I assume that no one in this room wants to get to the end of your life, whether that’s today or 70 years from now and you look back and realize you missed the whole point like I missed what really mattered. I assume everyone in this room wants your life to count for what actually matters in this world.

So if Revelation Seven is where all of world history is headed and you want your life to count in this world, then this is what you live for. If you want your life to count in this world, you don’t waste your life on lesser things in this world you live in.

The aim of your life is to enjoy God in all of his grace and all of his glory, to be saved from your sin and yourself by the grace of Almighty God, and to walk with God in all of his glory on a day-by-day basis.

Your Relationship With God

You were made for a relationship with God, to walk with God, to know God, to be friends with God, and not just to enjoy him in all of his grace and all of his glory, but to exalt him and all of his grace and all of his glory among all of the nations you want, all the nations to enjoy and exalt God. So you live for this from wherever you are on that map, you live for this to the full.

You refuse to settle for a nice comfortable Christian spin on the American dream because you know we were made for so much more than that. You were made for a much greater dream. You were made to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among all of the nations.

This is the goal of your life. It’s the goal of all of our lives, which then, so now let’s pause leads to the reality in our world that we need to feel in this room in light of what we’re seeing in God’s word. So point number three, there are more people among the nations today who are unreached by the gospel than ever before in history.

Reaching the Unreached

This is a staggering reality and we need to feel it so the population of the world is increasing, including the number of unreached people in the red and the church is nowhere close to keeping up with what it takes to reach them. So it’s interesting just a bit of history.

So there was a conference that happened 50 years ago, in 1974 called the Uzon Conference on World Evangelization. So a large conference of church leaders from around the world to talk about spreading the gospel in the world and a man named Ralph Winter trumpeted the need to focus on unreached people groups who’d never heard the gospel.

And in the last 50 years, we have talked about unreached people, we’ve researched unreached people, we’ve held conferences on unreached people, we’ve turned entire mission organizations upside down to focus on unreached people, and 50 years later there are more unreached people in the world than when all of that started and I could share a variety of reasons that I believe are causing that to be true, but for now, just let it soak in.

There are more people among the nations today right now in our day who are unreached by the gospel than ever before in history. More people today are going to eternal hell without ever even hearing the good news from the God of heaven. That is happening on our watch.

We Can Reach More Nations than ever Before

Yet at the same time. Point number four, we have more opportunities to reach all the nations today with the gospel than ever before in history. Just think about this in so many different directions.

Think about travel like Paul who we’ve talked about, read letters, and words from he never could have fathomed. He’d go from one city to the next long weeks to travel by foot by ship. It didn’t always work out very well.

He could never have fathomed a machine that could pick you up in the air, transfer you anywhere in the world in about a day, and drop you down there and just like goes through the sky and lends you there. He never could have imagined that.

Think about how long it would take for him to write a letter or dictate and have it take weeks to get somewhere and for people to hear it and then respond to it. It takes weeks for them to send a reply back.

He never could have imagined the opportunity to communicate with people around the world in real-time in multiple languages from a device within our pocket just press the button and speak into it and it’ll change the language and you can communicate with people on the other side of the world in real-time. This is amazing.

Travel Technologies

It’s travel technology. Think about Pastor John, who talked about the migration of peoples in the world, and how God is bringing so many people from the red to the green.

And while we won’t dive in here deep, it’s worth mentioning, that it’s statistically true. The people in our country, the United States, who are most resistant to people coming from the red are evangelical Christians.

God is bringing the nations to us, to our front doors, people who don’t have access to the gospel bringing them to us and we are working against that migration of people’s urbanization of the world. There was a day when most people lived in rural settings like 3% of the world, urban, just a couple of centuries ago.

Now it’s well over 50% and continuing to rise God bringing the nations to cities, urbanization, and globalization of today’s marketplace. I’ll come back to that map.

Do you realize the opportunity speaking to a sea of college students, the opportunities there are for you to get a degree here in the green and go to the red with that degree? There are open doors there for engineers, teachers, nurses, doctors, and all kinds of different people.

Study the Bible

These countries where many are opposed to the gospel at the same time will pay you to come spread the gospel there. Now they don’t know that’s what they’re paying you to do and you don’t need to tell ’em on your way in, but you do it because you’re a Christian.

I think about a nursing student in the green who gets a degree in nursing and instead of looking for a job in the green, looks for a job in the red. She’s working right now in the heart of the Middle East in a significant hospital, in a significant city in the Middle East.

She has a Bible study in her office every week with Muslims. Nobody stops her. Do you know why? Because she’s really good at nursing and they’re paying her money to spread the gospel there. The opportunities are all over the place. If we will open our eyes to them, we have more opportunities than ever before in history to spread the gospel to the nations.

What a time to be alive. So make sure to just pause there. When you think about opportunities to move to the red, it doesn’t just mean leaving behind however many tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars of education you just got, leave all that behind, leave a job behind, and go to the red. No, use that education, use that job. Just look for one in the red.

There are so many opportunities to move to the red all around this room if we see it. What if God has designed the globalization of today’s marketplace for the spread of his glory among the nations?

It’s exactly what he’s done in addition to putting us in this part of the green and one of the wealthiest places to ever walk planet Earth where we have resources to spread the gospel to the red. If the Lord leaves us in the green, all that to come back to then the last two points.

So if we’re disciple-makers for the nations from the green or the red in a time where there’s a greater need and greater opportunity than ever before in history, let’s hear point number five, living to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among all the nations will be costly.

The Elders

So did you notice Revelation seven verses 13 and 14, the Bible says, then one of the elders addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come? I’ll put it up here. Who are they from? Where have they come from?

John says, I said to him, sir, you know, tell me and the writing, this vision is intentional to focus here not just on who they are, but from where they have come, what they’ve come through. He said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.

Now we could stop right here and have all kinds of discussions about what this great tribulation is referring to, but we don’t have time today to discuss what we don’t know for sure. What we do have time for is what we know for sure from the whole book of Revelation and the whole Bible.

Enjoy God

All those who live to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among all the nations will go through tribulation in this world through much tribulation. You live to enjoy and exalt the grace and the glory of God among all the nations.

It will not get easier for you in this world. It will get harder. We’ve seen that over and over again in the Bible the last few days and it’s right here in the last book of the Bible. You turn back just one chapter and go to Revelation chapter six, verse nine.

I’ll put it up here on the screen. John writes, when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and the witness they had born. Did you hear that? These are martyrs who have been slain for witnessing the word of God.

Sovereign Lord

Now listen to their prayer. In verse 10, they cried out with a loud voice. Oh, sovereign Lord. It’s interesting you look back in Acts chapter four, what we looked at where John started us last night when the church was being persecuted, they start their prayer the exact same way. Oh, sovereign Lord, that’s what we saw last night.

God, you are sovereign over it all. Even sovereign over us being slain for your word. Oh, Sovereign Lord, holy and true. How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? In other words, how long until your kingdom, until your justice finally comes, and watch this. Verse 11.

Then they were each given a white rope and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

Did we just hear that there are more servants, more brothers and sisters to be killed, to be slain like they were? In other words, the number of martyrs is incomplete. So let’s pause here, and not be ignorant or foolish. If we in this room are going to be serious about making disciples of all the nations,

We Must Love Jesus More than Our Own Lives

We need to realize any one of us may be counted among that number. None of us is called to seek martyrdom, but we are all called to love Jesus more than our own lives.

Revelation 12, 10, and 11, remember as Satan is thrown down and John writes, I heard a loud voice in heaven saying now the salvation and the power and kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accused of our brothers has been thrown down and accuses them day and night before our God and they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives, even unto death, living to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among all the nations will be costly, tribulation, trial, persecution, slander, suffering, and potentially death.

Don’t be surprised when any of those things come. That’s a clear takeaway. God has spoken over and over again in this conference, living to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among the nations will be costly. But point number six, living to enjoy and exalt the grace and glory of God among the nations will be worth it.

White Robes in the Blood of Jesus

This multitude who’s come through tribulation, what are they wearing? They’re wearing white robes, washed, made white in the blood of Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away our sins, your sins, my sins all have trusted in Jesus, all of our sins completely, totally eternally wiped away and they’re holding palm branches in their hands.

A picture of victory over sin and suffering and death. Victory over tribulation. Tribulation will be a thing of the past. Then verse 15 says, he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. That’s the resounding theme of heaven and revelation. God perfectly and fully. And finally with us, with him satisfying our desires.

No more hunger, no more thirst. He’s shepherding us to springs of living water that never run dry and wiping every tear from trial and tribulation from our eyes. Revelation 21, 3, and 4 puts it this way I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold the dwelling place of God is with man.

God Himself is Your God

He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall the every morning nor crying nor pain anymore.

For the former things have passed away. Revelation 22 verses one through five puts it this way, the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be anything cursed on the throne of God and the lamb will be in it. His servants will worship him. Verse four, they will see his face, his name will be on their foreheads. The night will be no more.

They will need no light from a lamp or sun. For the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. These have to be the five most beautiful words in all the Bible. They will see his face.

JD

So in February of 2019, my wife and I were joyfully content with the children in our home and God put it in our hearts and a date night dinner to begin another adoption process. Fast forward to January 2020, we’d been attached matched with a 3-year-old precious little boy who we were planning to name Jd Jeremiah, Daniel, and we were three days away from going to pick him up.

Our bags were packed in January 2020 when he got word that his adoption would be postponed for a couple of weeks due to a strange virus that was spreading. Little did we know that a couple of weeks turned into months and eventually years until the end of July this year we got the call.

We’d been praying every single day for three and a half years to get saying you can go and get him. And in August we went to pick him up and bring him home with our family. Here’s a couple of pictures of JD. We quadruple-checked to make sure that said welcome home JD. Before we did that sign there was JD with his mom.

There’s JD with his little 2-year-old sister who in a roundabout way that we never could have planned the Lord led us to adopt while we were waiting for JD. And there is JD and me face-to-face.

Suffering and Sin

In my home for the first time and after a week, and a few days of talking about suffering and sin and opposition in this world, I just want to encourage every follower of Jesus in this room.

There is coming a day when you’re going to be face to face with Jesus himself and the wait may be long and the days may be hard, but for all who trust in Jesus as the savior of your sin and the Lord of your life, God the father is going to bring you home one day soon we’re going to be with him, him with us, and he will shelter us once and for all from all sin and all suffering, the sun shall not strike us nor any scorching heat.

No more sickness, no more disease, no more car accidents, no more cancer diagnoses, no more anxiety, no more fear, no more disorders, no more depression, no more conflict, no more war, no more pain, no more hospitals, no more death. We’ll be face to face with God himself and he will wipe every tear from our eyes. This is how the story ends and not just for us.

Revelation 5

For a multitude that no one can count from every nation and tribe and people and language to use the illustration from waiting for my son to bring him into my family, into my home. We have family waiting to be brought in among the nations. Revelation five, Jesus has already bought them with his blood. They’re brothers and sisters.

They’re sons and daughters waiting to be brought to the father. So let’s live and die to bring them to enjoy the grace and glory of our God. This is what we’re here to do. Do not settle for casual, comfortable cultural Christianity.

This is Christianity. This is life living to enjoy the grace and exalt the glory of our God among all the nations, wherever he might lead you. In a world where 3 billion people right now still haven’t heard of his grace and glory in the face of Jesus. So now we come to this moment. How is God leading you by his spirit, not your plans for your life, his plans for your life?

And if you would say, I believe God may be leading me to move to the red and I want to communicate that to my church, this is not you making that decision for sure today. This is not you getting on a plane tomorrow. This is what you saying, I believe God may be leading me to move to the red. I want to communicate that to my church and begin that discernment process with them.

Live in the Green

If you would say that, then in just a moment I’m going to invite you to stand and we are going to praise you specifically for you. And if you sense God’s saying to you as far as you know, I am calling you, God’s saying to live in the green, to be a disciple maker for the nations.

From here praying, giving, living, working, sacrificing, going short term but not moving there, then I’m going to invite you to stay seated. Again, not a call for a two-tiered class of Christians in this room, a call for obedience to Christ in this room.

We have prayed that God would raise up laborers for the harvest field in the red during this time with this specific invitation for laborers to go to the red where people are waiting to hear the gospel.

So in this holy moment, if you believe God may be calling you to move to the red and you’re going to pursue that possibility with a local church I want to invite you to stand wherever you are in this room and I want to mention I know there are people watching online.

If God’s speaking to you on the other side of that screen, you may not have anybody else around you. The Lord sees you. So I don’t invite you to stand too. Is there anyone else in this room that just doesn’t want to move on and begin to pray over these? Don’t let fear or anxiety fix your eyes on Jesus, whatever he is calling you to do.

Okay, so now here’s what I want us to do. In just a moment, I’m going to invite everyone else to stand and gather around the people who are standing in this room. So go ahead just right now, don’t get up yet, but just kind of make sure you see, because I want to make sure we’ve got a hand on the shoulder of every single person.

Spirit Leadership

In this room who’s standing and we’re going to intercede for them and for the spirit’s leadership in their lives. So let’s do that now. Let’s get up and just gather around and I’m going to invite Pastor John to join me out here and lead us in prayer specifically for those who’ve stood.

And I tell you what, let me give you a moment just to pray as the spirit leads you out loud all at the same time for those who’ve stood. And then Pastor John will bring our voices together into one prayer for them. So go for it right now. Just a hand on their shoulder. Let’s just start praying for them right now.

God Our Father

Almighty God in Heavenly Father, my prayer, and I believe that I speak for thousands, is that you would fill with your Holy Spirit, all of those who have stood and that they would bear the fruit of love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and meekness and faithfulness and self-control.

I pray that their faith right now would be strengthened and that they would come through whatever fires of testing like gold. I pray that Satan would be frustrated in all of his designs to thwart their resolve.

The Righteousness of Christ

I pray that their love would be buttressed and shot through with knowledge and all discernment that they may prove what is excellent and be filled with all the fruits of righteousness for the day of Christ.

I pray that you would keep them free from the love of money and ease and fame and the praise of man and they lay hold on the promises of God. Fear not. I’m with you. Be not dismayed. I’m your God. I’ll help you, I’ll strengthen you. I’ll uphold you with my righteous right hand. I’ll always be with you.

Therefore, you can confidently say, I will not fear. What can man do to me? I pray that they would love the church, that they would love the lost, that they would love the glory of God, especially as it shines in the enjoyment of new converts from the red zones.

Let God Make Us Whole

Yes, God, and I pray that you would make them fruitful way beyond any dream they have of their little insignificant selves. Make them fruitful and effective. Oh, may there be millions of converts to Christ in the next 50 years?

Yes, God, yes, God, because of what you have wrought in this room right now, I commend them to your grace, which is able to keep them and establish them and give them an inheritance among all those who are being sanctified.

Amen.

Pray and Be Prayed For

Now, I want us to switch now and those of you who’ve just been prayed for, I want you to turn and pray for those who’ve been praying for you. For those who God is calling by his spirit, as best as they can tell, to be in the green, to live in the green, not to move to the red.

At this point I want us to pray that they would be disciple-makers of the nations there that they would live and work and pray and give, and God be a disciple-maker for the nations from there playing their part from there in the spread of the gospel among the nations.

So let’s do the same thing all across this room, you who’ve just been prayed for, start praying for the people around you. There might be more of them than you. Just put your hand on some of their shoulders and start praying for them out loud.

And feel free, you can all pray for each other, but pray along these lines, and then Carrie Fulmer will lead us in prayer for those who will be living among the green for the foreseeable future, go for it. Let’s start to pray right now.

Behold God’s Glory

Heavenly Father, as we close out this conference, we pray for all of the churches represented here. Lord, we pray for you to give our congregations back home a vision for the knowledge of your glory filling the earth as the waters cover the sea.

May pastors be gripped by the mission impulse that we see throughout the scriptures as the word is preached weak in and weak out. May they hold up God’s glory for us. We pray missionaries would be raised up, workers would be equipped and motivated to go to the least reached people in the world to go to these red areas, Lord.

And we pray for you to strengthen the resolve of churches to send well in a manner worthy of God. As the church at Antioch sent out Paul and Barnabas, we pray that churches would be willing to sacrifice their best for the greatest cause on earth.

We Pray All Over the World

We pray that churches would train and build up Timothy’s and Priscilla’s and Aquilas to go out and plant churches all over the world. We pray that sending churches here in America would conform to the New Testament pattern so that missionaries who go out there would have a clear vision for planting true and faithful churches in every culture and language.

We pray for missionaries to plant vibrant, sending churches all over the world that the manifold witness of God would be made known worldwide through local churches. We pray that sending churches will continue to partner with those that they send, providing counsel, encouragement, visits, and love that is steadfast and enduring.

Finally, we pray for generous financial support from sending churches as Christians here are enthralled by the glory of the risen Christ. May they be freed from the love of money, freed from the love of false security that money brings, and made more useful as they fuel mission’s work overseas.

The Treasures of Heaven

Give us a vision for your glory, Lord. And we pray that we would store up treasures in heaven and we would enjoy that treasure on the last day as we stand next to people who are the fruit of the missionaries we’ve supported and counseled and encouraged, and we proclaim together on that last day, salvation belongs to our God and to the lamb, Lord, whether goers or senders, you’ve given us a greater ambition than anything the world has to offer.

As we leave here today, give us holy confidence, not in our own strategies, not in our own virtue, but in your sovereign grace and power. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Cry Out for the Nations

Amen, amen. All right, don’t sit down yet. Don’t move yet. Want us to pray in one more dire? tion. It’s going to lead us into worship through song. I want us all to cry out for the nations. I want us all to intercede right now for unreached people in the world.

And if you know the names of people, groups to call out and intercede for them. If you don’t know the names of people groups, then call out for countries. Let’s just cry out specifically, just kind of go through the map as the spirit leads you.

Let’s intercede all across this room the way Jesus has taught us to pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name among all the nations. May your kingdom come, your will be done all over the earth as it is in heaven. So let’s pray right now, all out loud at the same time, interceding for the people specifically who don’t have access to the gospel right now, go for it.