Fm - Session 5

calling

Blessed to Be a Blessing God’s Strategy to Transform the Nations

Session 5

worship and prayer

10 minutes

• Sing 2-3 Worship Songs (Project songs on PowerPoint.) • Pray out loud for the course and for God to reveal himself through it and have each student pray for his or her neighbor at the same time that God may reveal himself and his purposes in a deeper way, give vision and renewed passion for his work on earth to be done.

group activity: homework review1

xx minutes

For homework for this week I asked you to choose a personal application and share it with other members of your group; an application that helps address a relationship you’re in (with yourself, God, others, environment, systems) that doesn’t yet reflect God’s intentions for you. You were to decide how you would better that particular relationship and then do something concrete within the past week to improve that relationship. (See PowerPoint.) At this point I’d like you to go into your groups of 4-5 people and share with those in your group how you did in your personal application. If the class is small, do not divide. Ask students to summarize what they did as a personal application — two minutes each. Do not make comments until all students’ experiences have been shared. Walk around and listen to groups. Select one or two student to report to the entire class.

review of previous session Ask students to summarize the most important points of the last session. xx minutes

video clip: god’s initial rescue efforts: the great flood and the scattering of the nations xx minutes

So how does God’s Story continue? What does God do? (See PowerPoint.) How does God respond to the crisis precipitated by Adam and Eve? Abandon humanity and leave us in the mess we made? Destroy the earth and start all over again? Abrogate our freedom and force us to behave?

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As we saw at the end of our last session, God doesn’t abandon humanity, but continues to provide and protect them. How does humanity respond to these efforts by God? is is what Genesis 4-11 tells us about. In this next video clip we’ll see how the story continues… how humanity continues to abandon God’s vision of Shalom and what God does in response. Let’s see how the story goes: Show Video Clip: e Great Flood/Babel. In your homework for this week I also asked you to read the first two sections of the article “God’s Initial Rescue Efforts”. What were your reactions to this first part of the article? What did you think of the interpretations that were given regarding the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel, as God seeking to rescue humanity from its selfdestructive path, instead of God punishing humanity for its sins? (If necessary, have two students read the first two sections of the article ‘God’s initial Rescue Efforts’ aloud.) Allow participants time to respond. We don’t know how many years passed from Adam to Nimrod and his descendants – it could have been a few thousands or tens of thousands of years. But we do know that Genesis 4-11 describe a chapter in human history that did not glorify God, nor advance his vision of Shalom. Notwithstanding, though God was deeply grieved by the sins of humanity, he rescued them twice from their own self-destructive path – once by starting anew with one family, and secondly by disrupting Nimrod and his descendants efforts at empire-building, which would have brought even more oppression and exploitation on the great majority of humankind. What happened next? What will God do?  

video clip: what if you were god?

xx minutes

Try to put yourself into the shoes of God. If you were God – how would you solve the world’s problems? What would you try to do? Allow participants time to respond. Show video clip: What if you were God…? from Bruce Almighty to show how difficult a task it is to put the world to rights. Bruce Almighty’s solution, as the movie shows, didn’t really work. Answering every person’s prayer with ‘Yes’ may seem like a fantastic solution at first, but is not realistic and sustainable, since you’ll have many contradicting prayers: Osama Bin Laden praying that fire would fall on the United States, while George W. Bush praying that American interests would gain more of a foothold in the Middle East. So what will God do?

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Returning to our story, this is the scene within which, in Genesis 11:27 and onto Genesis 12, we find a great turning point in God’s Story with his World.2 If we don’t understand what happened in Genesis 12, we won’t understand the rest of God’s Story with his world.

group activity and homework review:3 have you settled?

xx minutes

In your application exercise for this week I finally asked you to do Scripture Study 1 as homework and to come prepared to share your findings with other members of this group. At this point ask students to summarize their answers and reflections to the questions of Scripture Study 1. Do not make comments until students’ have been shared. Make sure that the following points are addressed. If necessary, add the following insights after having students reported their findings, and ask a couple of follow-up questions to draw out the following answers: Terah, Abram’s father, had three children – Abram was the firstborn. Haran, one of his brothers had died. ey left the comfort of their home country and became immigrants. His family had begun a journey to Canaan from their home in “Ur of the Chaldeans” (probably the ancient center about 70 miles south of modern Baghdad) – but settled mid-way in Haran. OK – to contextualize this and better put ourselves into Abram’s shoes let’s say that this immigrant family had left Mexico City, and they were heading for El Norte – even though Terah and his family were all going to Canaan.4 No, it doesn’t look like they made it. ey settled in Haran. Now, I don’t know exactly what Haran meant for Terah. Perhaps it provided good employment opportunities. Perhaps, he had gotten emotionally and physically tired of the long journey and opted for early retirement. Or perhaps difficulties to continue the journey were stacked so high, that he simply could not conceive how to overcome them and so settled for the more or less comfortable life of Haran. Having settled before finally reaching his destination, there, Abram’s father died. So, we can say that this Mexican family only made it as far as Tijuana or Cd. Juarez and then the father dies.5 Sarah was sterile. Look at the genealogy earlier in Genesis 11. If Sarai is sterile, the genealogy would stop, since Abram – the firstborn – does not have a son

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to continue his family’s lineage into the future. e whole family is threatened here by Sarai’s sterility. is meant that the command ‘be fruitful and multiply…’ could not be realized.6 In fact, because children provided for their parents in old age thereby being the social security system of that day, because they enabled the family line to extend another generation, and because they gave proper burial to their parents and honored the names of their ancestors, Sarai’s sterility was life threatening. Probably sad, stuck in a hopeless situation…His younger brother had died at a young age. His father was gone. His wife was sterile – no children that could provide for them in their old age. ey were immigrants in a foreign land – not having made it to their destination… not knowing what would be next. Plus – he must have felt stuck, since in ancient Mesopotamia people felt obligated to stay permanently where they had buried their dead. While Terah had not done that himself with his son Haran, Abram may have felt that out of respect for his father he must not migrate and continue the journey.7 No. Abram hadn’t done anything wrong in particular – at least Genesis doesn’t mention it – yet like all of us – he suffered from the consequences of sin and death that affect all of us. He seemed like an ordinary person faced with difficult questions regarding his and his family’s future. Finally facilitate a conversation with participants around the following reflection questions: • Where did you intend to go with your life/with your church? • Have you reached it? Have you settled for less than you wanted? • Where have you settled? What have you settled for? (See PowerPoint.)

plenary study: god calls ordinary people willing to trust him

xx minutes

Let’s continue with the story of Abram. What happened next? Have participants turn to Scripture Study 2 “God Calls Ordinary People Willing to Trust Him”. Let’s first look at Genesis 12:1-3, where we’ll see that God is not interested in leaving us stranded. He desires very much to help us become unstuck, like he did with Abraham. So what happened to Abram? What happened in this story? What did God say that God would do? What were the four specific promises God gave to Abraham? Allow participants time to respond. It seems that God promised to bless Abram, giving him four specific promises:

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1. making him into a great nation, 2. making his name great, 3. blessing and protecting him, and blessing those who blessed him and cursing those who cursed him 4. and even blessing all the families of the earth through him. God spoke with him and promised to make through him a great nation that would be a blessing to all the nations. is is why we call this episode “calling”. is ordinary man, who like so many others was suffering from the consequences of sin and death, was called by God to change the course of history – to work alongside God to bring people and nations back to what God had intended them to be. is call of Abram narrows the focus of the Biblical story to one family, but through them all the families of the earth will be blessed. Indeed, the Hebrew word used for blessing includes the notion of Shalom (see Genesis 28:21). So to establish Shalom means to reverse the destructive course that sin brought on humankind. It is about re-establishing healthy, life-giving relationships. rough Abram and his descendants all nations on earth would be able to experience Shalom! e salvation of the nations was God’s ultimate motivation in making Abraham’s name great and in being the God of Abraham’s innumerable progeny. is universal purpose totally dominates the covenant.8 Insert fountain picture here. Why did God call Abram? Was he anything special? What was Abram doing when the Lord called him?9 Allow participants time to respond. Suggest that he must have been a really religious or good person that God would call on him to work alongside God in this important task – i.e. to bring people and nations back to what God had intended them to be. Probably he was praying when God called him? He must have been at least a righteous person. “My Bible in v. 2 says that Abram was in church, praying and fasting when the Lord said: Go…”10 (It’s a joke!) What were the requirements that God gave Abram before he could be called? Did God say: “Abram, I want you to stop being so angry, carrying bitterness in you, being greedy, blaming others for how bad you’re doing!? I want you to stop drinking, smoking, selling drugs, sleeping around with lots of women! I want you studying your Bible and praying every day, and going to church! I am going to go away for a few months and come back. If I find that you have done all these things, then be ready. I will call you?11 Allow participants time to respond. ere is no mention in the text of God checking out Abram’s criminal record. It tells us nothing about whether Abram even knew God or prayed to him before

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this story. God does not call Abram because he is a righteous person. In fact, God calls Abram out of his problems, right when everything was the darkest – when he and Sarai were up against a wall – facing a crisis. Abram had no special merit or qualities that prompted God’s decision. Yet, God entered into a relationship with him. e Bible here does not elevate Abram as a heroic religious figure – like the saints many have grown up revering and to whom some have lit candles or prayed. In fact, lives or situations marked by chaos, emptiness and darkness – as in Genesis 1, or by failure, exile, and sterility as in Genesis 11-12 are the kinds of places where God shows up, speaking a word that brings light and movement out of darkness and paralysis. God calls people out of places of stagnation and death, initiating movement and new life. God’s call can bring liberation and meaning, which is consistent with the work of God envisioned as therapist or empowering liberator.12 It is very important to understand how the Bible portrays God here. One thing though is important – there was one requirement…at Abram would be willing to leave behind the life he had known, the way of life of his ancestors, and follow God into new lands. at he would be willing to leave behind a life marked by curse and death and take a leap of faith to follow God into a life marked by life and blessing. Read Genesis 12:4. How did Abram respond to God’s call? Did he trust God? Allow participants time to respond. e word used in Hebrew for ‘obey’ is actually the word ‘hear’. Abram heard God’s voice, and this voice made a difference in his life.13 It seems that Abram was willing to believe that this God speaking to him was truthful and seeking his best – and so he put his trust in him – trusting that God would make a way. He was willing to give responsibility to God to direct his life. When Abram gave up his place in his father’s household, he forfeited his security. He was putting his survival, his identity, his future and his security in the hands of the Lord. For Abram this was a big step. He couldn’t consult an atlas, research the country on the internet, or discuss plans with a travel agent. He didn’t even know where he was going! God had not told him. As he traveled, he would have to trust God to lead him one day at a time. His unknown destination was Canaan, which is modern-day Israel.14 Discuss with participants the following reflection questions: • If God would show up in your life like he did with Abram and tell you that he wants to bless you to be a blessing to others, but that you would need to be willing to leave behind the way of life you knew and take a leap of faith into a new kind of life… what would you say? What would your church say? Would you be willing to leave behind

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ways of doing and being church that have left you stuck, and instead follow God’s lead into new ways of doing and being church? • Have you trusted God to lead you? Where/in what ways have you not fully trusted God? Where/in what ways has your church not fully trusted God? • What do you think of the following definition of the word ‘calling’? “Calling means God recruiting you to be part of this movement of people who want to bring God’s blessing back to the world.”15 So how does God continue going about the task to bring blessings/ Shalom to the nation and his creation?

video clip: god’s rescue continued Let’s see how the story goes: xx minutes

Have one participant first read the last section from the article “God’s initial rescue efforts” (God’s Rescue Continued: e Calling of Abraham and the Blessing of the Nations). Show the Video Clip: Abraham & Joseph So what will God do next?

reflection: hearing the groans of your people

xx minutes

As we move on with God’s Story, we now reach the dramatic archetype for God’s battle to put the world to rights: the Exodus. It is the one story that permeates the rest of God’s story with his world; the story of the liberation and formation of an oppressed people, and the challenge to the powerful to forfeit their god-complexes and reclaim their true identities. For four hundred years Abraham’s descendants had languished as an oppressed people in a life of despair. Pharaoh, who enslaved them, didn’t even remember chief-magistrate Joseph who rescued Egypt from certain starvation. “After a long time the king died and the Israelites groaned under their slavery.” Read Exodus 2:23-25 (See PowerPoint.) Now the Hebrew word used for “groaning” in these verses is the word for an inarticulate moan – a moan that comes out of one’s depths – a moan that cannot be put into words. Actually it’s the Hebrew word for describing the groans of women during childbirth. Like many oppressed people, the Israelites had lost their voice; all they were left with were inarticulate moans. And it tells us that these groans came up to God and

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the Hebrew word used for “come up” is that used for a burnt-offering – a sweet-smelling odor that is coming up to God. And then it tells us that God heard that groan and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he decided that it was now time to do something about it.16 Before we continue with the Story, let’s take some time to reflect on this… for this passage offers a crucial insight into a very important principle of integral mission. When we look at the communities in which God has called us to work in… Where do we begin? I guess we begin like God in the Exodus, hearing and listening to the pain of the people. Giving them opportunity to express their pain. e pain of people when it is articulated in community leads to empowerment and transformation. Pain, which is kept to ourselves and is never shared with anyone else, leads to despair. Have participants turn to: “Responding to Our People’s Groans” and give students 5-10 minutes time to reflect on the questions. Once they’re done, have students share their thoughts and reflections.

lecture: the liberation, formation, and calling of the people of israel So coming back to our Story, what did God do? How did he react to their groans? Did he remain silent? Did he become angry? Did he respond? e very next words are: “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law.” Holy history & liberation history is now about to happen because a people groaned in their pain. Notice – they didn’t groan to God in this passage. ey didn’t even refer to God – they just groaned. And because God was in a relationship with them through their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he remembered his covenant with them and decided to do something about it. He decided to do something for this insignificant people; this oppressed people; this people who had no prestige within the most powerful and dominant empire of its day; who spoke a different language and was segregated into its own ghetto quarters; who had no voice – so that all that was left were groans! God, once again looked for someone to represent him and carry out his purposes on earth. He didn’t just come down himself to confront the Pharaoh person to person. He chose a person willing and available to serve him. is person was Moses! Isn’t it interesting that he was willing to choose an ex-murderer and failed revolutionary for this task?! God truly gives second chances! Show Video Clip: e Exodus.

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God’s Preferential Option for the Poor As you watched this video clip…. How does God reveal himself? What does this tell us about God and his actions on earth? Allow participants time to respond. Make sure the following points are covered: It is by this liberating deed that Yahweh reveals himself as the One who takes up the cause of the afflicted and the oppressed, a revelation that was to have a major influence on the way the newly forming people of Israel thought about God. It significantly shaped their worldview and selfunderstanding. Some theologians call this “God’s preferential Option for the Poor”. If God had been revealed as the One who was primarily concerned for “law and order” in Egypt and would have backed the Egyptian slave masters, it is quite apparent that a “different kind of God would have been revealed.” Standing in shock and joy on the opposite shore, after the Egyptian army had been drowned by the waters, the Hebrews proclaim, “e Lord is a warrior!” (Exodus 15:3). God is a warrior. He has come to rescue us. God’s Concern for the Rich Is God only concerned for the poor, however? What about the Egyptians, the oppressors? Project the following list of verses onto PowerPoint, and have different students read each verse out loud: Read Exodus 7:5; 7:17; 8:10; 9:14; 9:16; 10:2; 12:12; 14:4; 14:18. What does this tell us about God? Allow participants time to respond. Make sure the following points are covered: God is not a God of the Status Quo. While he begins the work of liberating a people whose identities have been marred by those who have played god in their lives, he is equally intent on liberating those whose god-complexes are not only oppressing the poor, but also marring their own identities. When the non-poor play god in the lives of other people, using their economic, military and political powers to subdue others, they have stopped being who they truly are and are assuming the role of God. God was not capricious in hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh believed that he was God and thus fully justified in playing god in the lives of “his” people. Repeatedly God, speaking through Moses, explains God’s intention: that Pharaoh and the Egyptians and the surrounding nations “will know that I am the Lord.” e poor and non-poor, oppressed and

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oppressors need God’s redemptive help to recover their true identity as children of God made in God’s image, called to live in relationships characterized by Shalom. Both need God’s redemptive help to recover their true vocation as productive stewards, given gifts by God to contribute to the well-being of all. Unfortunately, as in the case of the Egyptians, they didn’t accept God’s invitation to change! Following Yahweh’s victory over the Egyptians, then, Moses led the Israelites to Horeb, the “mountain of God”, also called Sinai. At Sinai God told them what he had in store for them.

scripture study 3: the purpose of israel

xx minutes

Divide students into the same groups of four to six. If the class is small, do not divide. Project onto PowerPoint “Group Study: e Purpose of Israel” and have students study the following Scripture verses and discuss the questions as a group: Read Exodus 19:4-6; Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Isaiah 42:6-8; Isaiah 49:6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8. • Why did God rescue this oppressed people? What was his purpose for this new nation? What did he have in store for them? • What do these passages tell us about God? What does his choosing Israel as an oppressed people, liberating them and calling them to become a blessing to other nations, tell us about God? Did they do anything special to merit God’s attention? • How does God plan to save the nations according to these passages? • Do you believe that God still works in this way in our world today? Walk around and listen to groups. Have each group write their answers onto poster board and then have one student from each group report their findings to the entire class. Make sure that the following points are addressed. If necessary, add the following insights after having students report their findings, and ask a couple of follow-up questions to draw out the following answers (using PowerPoint): A Kingdom of Priests • At Sinai God began transforming Israel from a group of slaves from a multitude of nations into one people. A people that would develop into a faith community and be constituted into one nation under God. What priests were for a people, Israel as a kingdom of priests was to be for the nations! e entire nation of people, both male and female – children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and the elderly – were all to

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be priests.17 is was hard work! It took a day to get Israel out of Egypt and forty years in the wilderness to get Egypt out of Israel. Rescuing the human heart is the hardest mission in the world. A Light to the Nations • God liberated this people so that they might voluntarily choose to be a worshiping community in the midst of the nations. A nation that would obey God and keep his covenant and thus, would become a blessing to all the nations. A nation that would bring light to the nations, open blind eyes, bring prisoners from the prison, and bring salvation to the nations – to the ends of the earth. A nation in whose midst Shalom would prevail and thus establish Shalom in other nations. • No, they didn’t do anything special. In fact, they were the smallest, most insignificant of all people groups. Yet, God is interested in the weakest, most vulnerable people. He cannot abandon them but chooses to liberate them. God’s Strategy to Bring Shalom to the Nations: Choosing a People to Live Shalom • God hears the cry of his people and comes to deliver them – not all at once and not by a single flash of lightning, not by a supernatural power; not the angels; not a very powerful leader; but in what by now is emerging as a characteristic pattern: through the call of an individual, and a people – through a community. Calling them forth to become a blessing to others, tells us that God cares about the whole world and seeks to bring Shalom to all nations – not just one. He still looks for available and willing people today to bring Shalom to their communities and nations. God’s plan thus hasn’t changed. It remains the same, namely that humans be his representatives on earth. e first humans were created as priests – to serve as God’s intermediary for the earth. All of Adam’s descendants were meant to be priests. God wanted Adam and his descendants to spread his will and his nature throughout the earth, to administrate his kingdom by filling the whole world with a single ‘nation’ of Spirit-led people.18 Adam and his descendants failed, and the earth became populated with many nations who did not know God and thus acted in many inhumane ways. God, then, chose one of those nations – Israel – out of all the nations to serve as priest before the other nations, so that ultimately, all nations would return to him.19 • Do you believe that God still works in this way in our world today? • Share story of how churches in Uganda helped reduce the AIDS prevalence rate, contributing to the so-called “Ugandan Miracle”.

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lecture: what a truncated vision does to the church and the nations

xx minutes

e Old Testament, through its stories of liberation, teaches us that liberation requires more than our belief that God can overthrow the empire that rules our lives. It requires more than our acting on that belief. It even requires more than celebrating God’s victory in us. Our liberation – whether or ourselves, our family, our church, our business, our city, our nation, or the world – must include the difficult, painstaking task of building, under God, a new way of life for those liberated. We need to build a way of life that encourages us to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.20 A way of life that advances God’s reign on earth! ough the Old Testament does not contain the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’, the kingship of God is one of its central themes.21 In the next session we will look more concretely how God wants our family, community, nation and world to look like and what has gone wrong and keeps going wrong. One of the amazing things is that Scripture lays out very clearly the world as it should be and a profound description of the world as it is. Unfortunately, many Christians have difficulties articulating a vision for the kind of society God intends for us to live in. We often talk about faith in individualistic terms and apply biblical principles only to our private lives. So a great majority of us don’t know what we ought to be about; what ours and our churches’ purpose is; what we’re called to do. Because the Christianity we’re taught doesn’t challenge us to envision and work towards the kind of society God intends for us to live in, we take the way of least resistance and accommodate ourselves to “Sunday Christianity”. As a result we substitute God’s bigger vision for a much lesser vision. We become diverted from our main calling and sell for a much lesser calling. I would like to suggest that we can’t really make a lasting difference in our church, in our ministry, in our business, in our family or in any human relationship, unless we are able to get two things clear: 1. a clearly articulated vision of what human society was meant by God to be and… 2. a realistic appraisal of what human society actually is. We’ve got to understand the “world as it should be”; what God’s intentions for it are. Fuzzy ideas such as “God wants all people to give him glory” are not bad, yet won’t do. We need to have a clearer idea about the values and structures that would need to be in place to enable a society to get there. It is not enough to understand the “world as it should be”

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though. We also have to understand the “world as it is”. Dwight L. Moody, the famous urban preacher and evangelist of the 19th century, once was asked by the Chicago Tribune what his definition of a great preacher is. His answer: “e pastor who climbs to the pulpit every Sunday with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other!” He was saying that a part of the Gospel is the Bible, since the Bible gives us our conceptual framework of what it is that we believe – “the world as it should be”. But it is not enough to have the Bible and hold a conceptual framework. Besides the conceptual framework, we also need a contextual framework – we need the newspaper. We need good news but also daily news. Real ministry doesn’t happen in a vacuum. ough we are not of this world, we are still in this world. So real ministry only occurs when Bible and newspaper are brought together, when Gospel truth, “the world as it should be”, and the “world as it really is” are brought together! One of the amazing things is that the Scriptures describe very clearly “the world as it should be”, as God intended it to be, while at the same time giving a profound description of “the world as it actually is”. But this is material for the next session.

homework assignment and application

xx minutes

I’d like you to read the article “Understanding Society’s Systems - e “World as it Should Be” versus the “World as it Is”” and do the exercise at the end of the article “Analyzing your Church”. Come prepared to share your findings with the rest of the group.

closing prayer Ask a participant to close in prayer. 5 minutes

total time: xx minutes

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personal notes

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endnotes 1

Adapted from e Harvest Foundation, Leadership Development Training Program, Level I, 19 2 N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, 73 3 Adapted from e Harvest Foundation, Leadership Development Training Program, Level I, 19 4 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 63 If this Evangelistic Bible Study series is used in Africa talk about how immigrants are trying to head to Spain or other European countries, but only make it as far as a city like Algiers or in Northern Africa. If you’re in Eastern Asia, use Australia as the so-called Promised Land, where immigrants seek to head to. 5 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 61 6 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 63 7 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 63 8 Arthur F. Glasser, Announcing the Kingdom, 59 9 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 64 10 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 65 11 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 65 12 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 67-68 13 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 67 14 John R. Cross, e Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, 101 15 Brian McLaren, e Story We Find Ourselves In, 73 16 Based on class notes from course taught by Robert Linthicum, Building a People of Power 17 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 71 18 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 72 19 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 72 20 Robert Linthicum, City of God City of Satan, 85-86 21 Based in part on Dewi Hughes, God of the Poor, 27

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