“So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
– Ezekiel 38:23
So if you read through Ezekiel 38, you might be confused or perplexed. It’s a pretty difficult passage to understand and interpret in the whole of the book of Ezekiel. I remember the last time I was reading through this in my Bible reading, getting to the end and saying, “There’s a lot I don’t understand here.” But this conclusion, I do understand.
Ezekiel 38:23, in the end of all things, God is going to show his greatness and his holiness. He’s going to make himself known in the eyes of many nations and they will know that he is the Lord. And I know for those of you who follow along this podcast, we pray all the time for unreached people groups, for the nations, for the tribes, for the languages, the peoples who’ve yet to be reached with the gospel, who have little to know knowledge of the gospel.
They don’t know, they don’t have access to the good news of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. And there’s a reason why we do that. It’s because in the end, that is what God is all about, making his glory known among all the nations. That’s where the whole story is going to end in Revelation 7:9–10, with a multitude that no one could count from every nation and tribe and people and language gathered around his throne giving him glory. This is the end of all things.
And if that’s the end of all things, the end toward which God is moving all things, then shouldn’t we be living for that end? And one of my constant prayers is that God would wake us up as the church to see the concept of unreached people as totally intolerable to us. If there are 3 billion people among the nations right now who have little to no access to the gospel, then we should be talking about this all the time in the church, like all the time in our Christian lives and our families.
We should be praying about this all the time. This should not be just a topic that’s relegated to Sunday here or a few people in the church to really be concerned about. If we really believe there are 3 billion people in the world on a road that leads to an eternal hell and nobody’s ever even told them how they can go to heaven through Jesus, then we should be talking about this all the time and saying, how can we pull our resources together? How can we pray? How can we do whatever God is calling us to do to get the gospel to them? Because that’s the end for which God is working in the world and it’s the ultimate purpose of all of our lives. And so I hope that you see times where we pray for unreached people, not as times to think about missions, but as essential to what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
To follow Jesus is to live for his global cause, to live, to make his name known. Yes, right where we live and among all the nations of the earth. So God, we pray that you would transform our understanding of Christianity to be about the end for which you have created us and all things, the holiness, greatness of your name being made known among all the nations. God help us to live for that. God help us to pray for that. Specifically, God, we pray today for the Miranelle people of the Philippines on the island of Mindanao now where there are 1.5 million people, Muslims, who have little to no knowledge of who you are, Jesus, and what you have done for their salvation. God, we pray that you would cause Christians in the Philippines to go to mind now and to make the gospel known there.
God, we pray that you would raise up Christians from other places to go to the Miranelle people to make the gospel known among them on this island in the Philippines. And God, we pray that you would use our lives however you want as we pray like this, as we give our resources, as we dream and we think about our future and our families and our marriages and our kids and our lives as students. God, we pray that you would spend us however you want for the spread of your glory among all the nations. God, help us to live for the end that you’ve created us and everything in the world for that the nations, all of them might know that you are the Lord. Oh God, transform our understanding of Christianity and what it means to be your children around your purpose in the world.
Help us to pray and give and live accordingly. I pray for children, students who are listening to this right now, that they would have dreams of making the gospel known among people who’ve never heard it. Pray for parents who are listening right now, that they would dream about that for their own lives, for senior adults to dream about this in their retirement and for parents to dream about this, for their own lives, in their own futures and single adults, to maximize singleness for the spread of your glory among the nations.
For senior adults to dream about retirement in terms of how they can make your glory known among the nations during the last days before they see their savior’s face. God, for churches that dream about this, what can we do together to make the gospel known among those who’ve never heard it, and to plan accordingly and to live accordingly. To use all the grace you’ve given us, for the spread of your glory among the nations. God, help us to live for your purpose in the world and not for any lesser purpose. And God, please help us to refuse to settle for a cultural Christianity that turns a blind eye and deaf ear to 3 billion people who’ve never heard the gospel. God, help us to live differently, that they might be reached with the good news of your greatness, your holiness and your grace in the gospel. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
