Who Is Lottie Moon?
Charlotte Digges Moon was born on December 12, 1840 into a wealthy family who owned a tobacco plantation in Virginia. “Lottie”, as she was called, was a small girl with a big heart. She was only four feet, three inches tall, but she moved to China as a single woman in order to reach the unreached people of China with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Lottie was raised in a Christian family, but was indifferent about following Jesus until she was a teenager. But God had big plans for Lottie Moon. He used the powerful preaching of John Broadus, one of the founders of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to awaken her heart to the glories of Christ and set her on a new trajectory in life at age eighteen.
She went to college and graduate school and, after the civil war, she became a teacher. In 1872, her younger sister decided to go to China as a missionary, and since the Southern Baptist Convention had changed its policy about sending single women to the mission field, Lottie soon accepted a call to join her sister in North China. So in 1873, at the age of 33, Lottie Moon was appointed by the SBC as a missionary to China.
Lottie spent her first decade in China teaching in schools, but she discovered that her real passion was for evangelism. At that time, married men were the ones who did most of the evangelism and church planting. But Lottie’s heart burned with passion for the millions in China who’d never heard of Jesus. So she stopped teaching and moved to another area and started planting churches. Her work resulted in the development of over thirty independent Chinese churches.
During the first part of the twentieth century, all SBC missionaries had to take a pay cut because funds were scarce. Few knew it, but Lottie was giving away much of her salary and food to the starving people she worked among.
Her unselfish generosity led her to suffer from malnutrition, and when her colleagues discovered her condition, she only weighed fifty pounds. She was on her way back to the States for medical treatment when she died at the age of seventy-two from malnutrition.
Before she died, Lottie suggested that churches take up an offering around Christmas time to support missions. The SBC took her up on this and, for over one hundred years, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is collected and every penny goes directly to the International Mission Board. We give three percent of our tithes and offerings to Lottie Moon, right now on pace to give approximately $5,000 this year. 47,000 SBC churches giving toward this offering each year are able to give nearly $160 million to missions. Never underestimate what God can do with your ideas for gospel advancement!
Why Did She Sacrifice So Much?
Why did Lottie leave the comforts of a wealthy, land-owning, family? Why did she leave a stable career in teaching? Why did she put in the time to learn a new language and a new culture? Why did she endure financial loss and even starvation? Why did she spend the last forty years of her life spreading the gospel among the Chinese?
Because she was convinced that God deserved to be worshipped by all the peoples of the earth. She was convinced that all peoples needed to hear about the Most High God who’d sent his Son to die for their sins, so that some of them might be saved and give praise to God. Lottie Moon’s life and ministry was focused on helping the people of China obey Psalm 117.
This morning, and for the next couple of weeks, we’re pausing our study of Mark’s Gospel to study a few Psalms. We’re almost half way through Mark, and I thought it would be good to spend some time in another genre of Scripture and see what God has for us here.
A Short Psalm with a Wide Reach
Psalm 117 is the shortest Psalm and the shortest chapter in the Bible. But don’t think that its shortness means that it’s insignificant. This is a short Psalm with a wide reach. It’s like a little Lottie Moon, four foot three inches, with a heart strong enough and courageous enough to move to the other side of the world as a single woman – before there were phones and internet.
This Psalm has a global vision of God’s purposes. It will challenge us to leave behind our small-minded, self-centered, comfortable, casual, cultural, American Christianity, just like Lottie Moon did as an eighteen year old girl and follow Jesus to the ends of the earth.
This short Psalm can easily be divided into two parts. In verse 1, God calls all the nations to worship him. In verse 2, God gives the reason why all nations should worship him. We’ll read the text, notice these two things, and then close by considering a major implication this text has for our lives.
God Calls All the Nations to Worship Him
The first thing we see in verse 1 is that the Lord is calling all the nations to worship him. “Praise the Lord, all nations! Extol him, all peoples!” I want to ask three questions about this verse. First, who are the “nations” and “peoples”? Second, why does God want their worship? And third, what would it look like for the nations to worship God?
Who Are the “Nations”?
First, who are the “nations” and “peoples” who are commanded to praise and extol the Lord? These terms refer to everyone who isn’t part of Israel, everyone who’s not a Jew. But these terms have a much narrower meaning than just “everyone in the world who’s not a Jew.”
The nations and peoples refer to all the ethnic groups that make up the Gentile world. The word used for “peoples” is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to small tribal units of people (cf. Gen. 25:16; Num. 25:15). So the Psalmist is referring to all the ethnic groups and all the tribes of the world.
The New Testament picks up on this usage. When we see the word “nations” in the New Testament, it’s the word ethne, from which we get our word “ethnic.” An ethne is a group of people bound together by a common language and culture. There are multiple “ethnes” in every country. So for example, the country of India has 2,256 people groups. China has 550 people groups, or ethnes.
The “ethne” are not just Gentiles in general, but all the language groups in the world. This is made clear in Revelation 7:9, where John writes, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” The nations are the different “tribes, peoples, and languages.”
So when we see the word “nations” in the Bible, we don’t need to think of modern-day countries with clearly defined borders and governments. This isn’t the way the Bible defines a “nation.” This understanding of nation is extremely important for our understanding of what God is wanting to see happen in Psalm 117:1. He’s commanding all the ethnic and language groups of the world to worship him. He wants praise from all the 10,000 ethnic groups that exist in the world today.
The Need is Great
The sad reality is that thousands of people groups are not obeying this command. Out of over 10,000 identifiable people groups in the world, over 4,000 of them are unreached. A group is considered “unreached” if they are less than 2% evangelical Christian. And over 2,000 of the unreached people groups are also considered “unengaged,” meaning that there is no current church planting strategy among them.
A portion of every gift you give to the church goes directly toward funding missionaries working among the unreached and unengaged. Our international mission efforts should be focused in this area because this is where the need is the greatest. This is why we pray for and seek to partner with missionaries who’re engaging the unengaged, who’re calling the peoples of the world to obey Psalm 117:1.
Why Does God Want Their Worship?
The second question I want us to consider is, why does God want the worship of all the nations and peoples of the world? Verse 2 will give us a very specific answer to this question, but I want to mention two broader, more general, reasons why God wants the worship of the nations.
First, the Lord commands the worship of all peoples because he is the Lord over all the earth. Psalm 8:1, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The Lord is God over all the earth. He created and owns everything, and therefore deserves worship from everyone. He’s not a tribal deity bound to a certain location like the pagan gods. He’s not the God of some peoples, but all peoples. He rules over all nations and therefore deserves their worship.
Second, God wants the worship of all the peoples because his greatest passion is for his name to be glorified. Isaiah 42:8, “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other.” This means that everything God does, he does for his glory. Here are just a few examples:
God chose Israel for his glory, Isaiah 49:3, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” He rescued Israel from Egypt for his glory. Psalm 106:7-8, “Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works…but rebelled by the Sea, by the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power.” Jesus tells us to do good works so that God gets glory. Matthew 5:16, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” God forgives our sins for his glory. Isaiah 43:25, “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
God wants all the peoples of the earth to worship him because he is Lord over all the earth and because his greatest passion is for his name to be glorified. As John Piper says in his excellent book on missions, Let the Nations Be Glad!, “The most passionate heart for God in all the universe is God’s heart.” God deserves and desires to be praised by all the peoples of the world.
What Does It Look Like for the Nations to Worship God?
The third question I want us to consider about this first verse is, what would it look like for the nations to worship God? Some might think that the peoples of the world are worshipping God when they worship their various gods and live the best life they can according to the principles of their religion. But if that’s the case, why did God send Jesus?
The peoples of the world can only truly worship God through conscious faith in Jesus Christ. The New Testament makes it clear that the only way a person can know the God who made them is if they turn from their sins and place their faith in Jesus. In light of this truth, the peoples of the world won’t be able to truly worship God until they hear and receive the message about Jesus.
These “true worshippers” will worship God in a certain way, according to Jesus. John 4:19-24, “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’”
Worshipping God “in spirit” refers to worship that is carried along by the Holy Spirit, worship that is mainly an inward and spiritual event, not an outward, physical event. Worshipping God “in truth” means that we respond to, and are guided by, true views of God. True worship involves right affections in the heart towards God and right thoughts in the head about God.
True worship isn’t just lifting our hands during a song. It’s responding to who God is and what he’s done for us in Jesus. True worship is about a person, not an emotion or a place. As the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, we’re led to praise him, love him, and give our lives to him. This is what happened to Lottie Moon as a teenager. The Spirit of God gave her eyes to see Jesus for who he is and the entire course of her life was altered. She was used by God to take the message of Jesus to those who hadn’t heard of him so that they too might become “true worshippers” of God.
Why Should the Nations Praise the Lord?
In verse 1, we see God commanding the nations to worship him. We’ve considered who the nations are, why God wants their worship in general, and what it looks like for them to worship God. Let’s now turn our attention to verse two, where God gives us a specific reason why all nations should worship him.
One reason why the nations should worship God is because of his loving and faithful character. His “steadfast love” is “great” – a word meaning “to prevail,” used to describe the stronger side in a battle. His “faithfulness…endures forever.” God can be trusted. He’s true to his word. This attribute of his will never end, it’ll “endure forever.”
But does this verse say that the nations should worship the Lord simply because of his sterling character? Because of his great love and never-ending faithfulness? Well yes, in one sense. But the psalmist is making a broader point here that we might miss if we’re not careful.
This verse says that the nations should worship the Lord because of the Lord’s goodness “toward Israel.” The “us” in this verse is Israel. The peoples of the world should praise Israel’s God because of his love and faithfulness to Israel.
This begs the question: Why should the nations praise God for his goodness toward Israel? Why should they care about Israel’s God? Most of them didn’t like Israel, so why should they worship the God of a nation that they don’t like?
Blessed to Be a Blessing
The reason why the nations should praise God for his goodness toward Israel is because God promised to bless all the nations through Israel. God promised that, in Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, “all the nations would be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). God set his love on Israel in order that Israel might extend his love to all the nations. The blessing of God was meant to be extended to all the nations through Israel. They were blessed to be a blessing.
We see glimpses of this in the Old Testament, such as when Rahab the Canaanite was saved because she helped the people of Israel conquer Jericho (Joshua 2). Or when Ruth the Moabite is folded into the people of God through her kinsmen-redeemer Boaz (Ruth 1-4). Or when Naaman the Syrian is healed by the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 5). But for the most part, Israel failed to bless the nations.
In Jesus Christ, however, God has fulfilled his promise to Abraham. God sent Jesus, a Jew, a child of Abraham, in order to bring God’s blessing to all the peoples of the world. Anyone from any people group who puts their trust in Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, receives the blessing of God. Galatians 3:26, 29, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith…If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
God made promises to his people and he has kept them in Jesus. All the nations of the world are being blessed by God through the true Israel, Jesus Christ, and therefore all the nations of the world are called to obey this text and “Praise the Lord!”
A Serious Implication
God’s desire for all the nations to worship him has a serious implication for our lives and for our church. I’ll state it as a question: How can the nations worship a God they’ve never heard of? How can God bless the peoples of the world with the love of his Son if they’ve never heard his name?
The nations won’t hear the call to worship the Lord unless we go and tell them. The peoples won’t know why they should worship the Lord unless we go and tell them. The command of Psalm 117:1 obligates us to make this invitation heard among the nations.
World Christians
My aim this morning isn’t to persuade everyone to move overseas to be a missionary, though I pray some will seriously consider that possibility. My aim is much greater. My desire for you and for our church is that we always have the nations in view, that we be “world Christians.”
The way I see it, there are only three options when it comes to missions: we go, we give, or we’re disobedient. Whether you go or give is a secondary issue. The primary issue is: do you have a heart that beats for the glory of God among all the peoples and nations of the world? Do you want Psalm 117:1 to be obeyed? Do you want the unreached to be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ?
May we do what Israel failed to do. May we extend the blessing of God in Christ to the nations. We also have been blessed to be a blessing. If God’s grace to you stops with you, you haven’t understood the nature of his grace. We’re called to join with God in spreading the glory of his grace to the ends of the earth. If your heart has been awakened to the glory of the grace of Jesus, like Lottie Moon’s was, the trajectory of your life will be radically changed.
One reason many Christians don’t care about the global glory of Jesus is because they’ve never actually met him. What about you? Are you content to be a casual observer of Jesus, or are you willing to unconditionally follow him to the ends of the earth?