God receives praise through life and death of Jim Elliot

Jim Elliot said he was just a nobody trying to exalt Somebody.

Fifty-two years after his death, the well-known missionary to the Huaorani tribe of Ecuador continues to make the Lord’s name great in the Earth as his efforts and story affects people even today.

“The Lord who is great and greatly to be praised is praised more tonight because of men like Jim Elliot,” said Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Akin’s message detailing the life and ministry of Elliot was given as the second message of Southeastern’s annual “20/20 Collegiate Conference.”

The conference, which was held on February 2-3, focused on the Missio Dei, the mission of God. In keeping with the theme of the conference, Akin delivered his final message of a series on great heroes of the faith by speaking about Elliot, a man who aligned his life with God’s mission by taking the message of the Gospel to the nations.

Akin “wed” Psalm 96, which he calls a great missionary psalm with the life of Elliot. In looking at the passage, Akin said it could be broken down into four major movements, which Elliot’s life demonstrated.

“God desires that the nations praise him,” Akin said. He said this psalm instructs us to sing a new song to the Lord, proclaim his salvation and declare his glory throughout the world.

It was this desire to proclaim God’s salvation that led Elliot to the unreached people groups of Ecuador to share the Gospel with them. In reading from Elliot’s journals, Akin said, “He asked, ‘Burn, burden and break me…Send me to an unreached, stone-aged desperate people group.’”

“God, I pray thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus,” Elliot later wrote in his journal. This entry demonstrated a healthy and necessary fear of the Holy God, Akin said, as is called for in Psalm 96.

Akin also said this passage teaches the nations to worship God and acknowledge his holiness. Elliot was so aware of God’s holiness, Akin said, that he wrote, “Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know such an extraordinary God.”

“Jim Elliot understood what it meant to worship God,” Akin said. “Jim would have been embarrassed by all of this. After all in a letter to his parents dated June 23, 1947, he wrote, ‘Missionaries are very human folks, just doing what they are asked. Simply a bunch of nobodies trying to exalt Somebody.’”

On January 8, 1956, Elliot, along with four fellow missionaries, was attacked and killed by the men they were trying to reach with the Gospel. Despite having pistols in their pockets during the attack, Elliot had said, “We are ready for heaven. They are not.”

“Jim did give up that which he could not keep to gain what he could not lose,” Akin said, referencing Elliot’s most well-known journal entry quote. “My question is this: Will I? Will you?”

“The nations need to know,” Akin said during a closing prayer. “God, use us to get that message to them.”