Church On Mission: Blessing to the Nations
About this series:
The opening lines or pages of a book are often designed to set the context for all that follows. For example:
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair’ (A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens).
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’ (1984, George Orwell).
The same is true of the Bible. The opening pages set the stage for all that follows; it’s long, unfolding story can invariably be traced back to these scenes. In particular, we see God eternally existing and then choosing to create all there is out of nothing. He commissions mankind - the pinnacle of his creation, made in his image - to, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule…” (Genesis 1:28). Then sin enters the world and there follows a spiralling downward away from harmony with God and with people. And yet there is the gospel promise of Genesis 3:15.
And then, following a restating (to Noah) of the commission to, “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” and the establishing of a covenant (Genesis 9:1-11), we’re introduced to Abram (from Genesis 11:26), called by God to become the one through whom he will accomplish the mission given to mankind and through whom God’s intended blessing of mankind will come about.
This series is designed to explore a few points in the biblical journey that flows from these opening scenes in the Bible, the story of how God’s blessing will fill the earth. It’s clearly only a very few of the many stages on that journey that we could talk about, but they will serve to show how God’s people have always been on mission and how the church today is still on mission today.
Importantly, it is God’s mission. Christopher Wright has said, ‘God doesn’t have a mission for his church, he has a church for his mission.’ God’s intent has always been to fill the earth with his blessing and his people have always been his means for bringing that to pass. It’s important that we have an understanding of the biblical storyline and that we see our involvement as being in God’s mission rather than imagining that we are asking God to bless our mission.
This eight-part series will begin with three practical steps we can all engage with in order to become people on mission - Prayer, Care and Share. These three words represent vital practical elements of a missional lifestyle and they contain a logical progression too. Please keep these three words in mind as we work through the series, especially as ways to apply what’s being said - for example:
What does it look like to be sent? Prayer, care & share.
How can we still be on mission against all the odds? Prayer, care & share.
About this talk:
Abram’s father, Terah, moved his family from Ur of the Chaldeans (Babylonia) with the plan to go to Canaan. However, they settled in Haran (roughly halfway to Canaan), where they stayed until Terah died (Genesis 11:31-32). It was here that God said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (12:1). Stephen, speaking centuries later, understands that God in fact had spoken to Abram while he was still in Babylon (which perhaps explains why Terah moved his family in the first place): “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you’” (Acts 7:2-3).
God’s purpose in causing this family to move - a huge journey of approximately 2,200 miles, including the additional trip to Egypt - was for the blessing of all the nations: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (12:2-3). There is no suggestion that Abraham was anything other than a moon worshipper, along with the rest of the people in Ur - it is God alone who chooses him to be the channel of blessing and he does so for the purpose, ultimately, of fulfilling his promises of Genesis 3 & 12 and of keeping his covenants of Genesis 6, 9, 15 & 17.
This is clearly God’s way of ensuring that his commission to Adam & Eve and then to Noah - “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” - becomes a reality, despite the intervening scattering of the people across the earth (Genesis 11:8-9). God may have scattered them, but he will still bless them; and he chooses Abram (later renamed Abraham) to be the channel through whom that blessing will come. And this is the beginning of the rest of the story of the Old Testament. From Abram to Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, through Moses and Samuel, then the judges and kings, God is calling a people to live for him as his special possession, distinct from all other peoples and thus showing his greatness to those other peoples.
Sadly, of course, the story proceeds in ever-decreasing cycles of corruption and godlessness until God’s people reap what they have sown and God finally sends the Assyrians and then the Babylonians to them as his instruments of judgement. And yet God will not give up on his promise that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
The decisive change in the story comes when Jesus arrives - it is no longer the descendants of Abraham’s ethnic nation that will be the channel of blessing, but the descendants of Abraham’s faith - those who, like Araham, believe God and whose faith is credited to them as righteousness (see Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3ff; Galatians 3:6; James 2:22). So “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Abraham)” the father of faith and through your descendants of faith (Galatians 3:7,29).
This has always been, and still is, God’s mission - to bless all peoples as they are enabled to trust him and his gracious provision of a right relationship with him through faith in his Son Jesus Christ. The blessing is found in Jesus alone, but it comes through the church, the descendants of Abraham’s faith.
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