A Blessing To The World - Sermon from Jan 11, 2009

Christopher Wright in an article in Christianity Today entitled, "An Upside-Down World," writes, "The map of global Christianity that our grandparents knew has been turned upside down. At the start of the 20th century, only ten percent of the world's Christians lived in continents of the south and east. Ninety percent lived in North America and Europe, along with Australia and New Zealand. But at the start of the 21st century, at least 70 percent of the world's Christians live in the non-Western world - more appropriately called the majority world. More Christians worship in Anglican churches in Nigeria each week than in all the Episcopal and Anglican churches of Britain, Europe, and North America combined. There are more Baptists in Congo then in Britain. More people in church every Sunday in Communist China than in all of Western Europe. Ten times more Assemblies of God members in Latin-America than in the U.S." And I would add that there are many more Lutherans in Africa then there are in the United States now, also Latin America. The promise given to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and 22 has been fulfilled in ways that no one could have expected. Who would have ever thought that the center of Lutheranism would end up being Africa instead of Germany or Scandinavia or America? But that is what has happened. Who would have thought that there would end up being more Chinese Christians than European ones? But that is what has happened. Who would have thought that Africa would start sending Christian missionaries to America to bring the gospel to people who at one time were the dominate force in Christianity? But that is what is happening. Abraham would have bowed down in worship if he had seen this for himself. God has been true to his Word.

Abraham, a blessing to the world is today's theme. You could almost say that this is a sermon about the history of missions in the church. In Genesis 12:3 we hear God say to Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse: and all people's on earth will be blessed through you." God here is singling out Abraham to start a line of people that will be his people, his nation. These would end up being the Israelites or as a smaller group of them would later be called, the Jews. But here he points out that, that is just an intermediate step that in the end all peoples on the face of the planet will be blessed through him. Later in Genesis 22 God reissues this promise. The plan was that the Nation of Israel would draw other people around them to God. When people saw how the Israelites were blessed they would desire to have what they had. We see this start to happen in the book of Exodus. We see that some of the people listen to Moses' warnings about the plagues and take actions to protect themselves. In Exodus 12 we see that when the Israelites finally do leave Egypt that a number of the Egyptians go with them. They had come to the realization that this God was the one true God, they had become believers.

We see this promise continue to be talked about throughout the Old Testament. We also see many Gentiles brought into the Israelite nation. Gentiles like Rahab the Canaanite prostitute in Jericho and Ruth the Moabitess. We see God continues to send out his Word promising salvation for the Gentiles. In Isaiah 49 he says, "I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth." In Isaiah 52 we see that the Messiah suffers for all men's sins. It reads, "So will he sprinkle many nations." This is alluding to the high priest sprinkling the blood on the mercy seat in Leviticus 16:14. The servant doing the sprinkling of his own blood is of course Jesus Christ. The sprinkling brings forgiveness of sins and redemption. And it is for all people, for all nations.

Unfortunately God's people are not so generous at times. Sometimes we tend to want to limit God's promises to people like us. For instance in the book of Jonah, Jonah is ordered to go and witness to the gentiles in Nineveh, but he does everything he can to avoid it. Eventually he ends up going and is very angry when they do repent and God forgives them. He does not think they deserve to be forgiven. But that is what God does because he desires that all men be saved.

This line of promises about the gentiles continues throughout the Old Testament. The prophets Jeremiah, Zechariah and Malachi also look forward to the time when all the gentiles surround the throne and worship hm as Lord and king. The most remarkable thing we see about this is that God always seems to use humans to do his work in this area. He usually doesn't just bring people to faith he generally works through other people to do this. We really see this in the New Testament. In Matthew and Luke all Christians are given the directive to out and baptize and teach all nations about Jesus Christ. And we see this happen for instance in Acts 8 where the Ethiopian eunuch is brought to faith through Philip explaining Isaiah to him. In Acts 10 we see Cornelius, a gentile and centurion in the Roman Army brought to faith through the ministry of Peter. All of this by the way resulted in much consternation in the church at first. They did not like the idea of the gentiles coming into the church. They were unclean and didn't follow the traditional customs. But in Acts 12 we see Paul saying that he and Barnabus will bring the message of salvation to the gentiles. In Galatians 3 Scripture talks about the gentiles being justified by faith in Christ alone. In Ephesians it talks about how the gentiles and the Jews are united in one church. Finally in the book of Revelation we see the multitude praising the Lamb and counting him worthy to open the book. This multitude is from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.

The book of Revelation is book that looks into the future which means we are also part of the process of getting this blessing out to others. You could say that this is a promise that is not completely fulfilled yet and that we have a part in filling it. We are included in that directive of Matthew 28 to go out into all the world and baptize and teach about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The history of missions is impressive to say the least. Through the past two thousand years Christians have risked life and limb and even died doing missionary work in the hardest of circumstances. Yet there is much work yet to do.

At the same time we have many Jonah moments when it comes to missions. Most of those Jonah moments have to do with local missions in our own backyard. There are certain people that some do not want in their churches. In one of my previous ministries I was at a function where an elder in another Lutheran church, which was in the inner city, told me that some people in his church wanted to call an African American pastor because most of the community was African American, but he said he was against that, after all the good African Americans went to the Baptist church and we didn't want the other kind. When I started doing developmentally disabled ministry I found that 80 percent of that population had no church, not because they didn't want to go but churches didn't want them because they made too much noise and sometimes messed up the carpets. So much like Jonah we don't care if someone burns in hell as long as we have good people like us in the church and our carpets are clean. When God told Abraham that through him all peoples would be blessed he meant just exactly that, all peoples, even Ninevehites.

The fulfillment of this promise though has been nothing short of amazing to watch, whether it has been following it through the Old Testament and into the New or whether it has been looking at the history of missions in the couple of thousand years that have followed it. God has succeeded in keeping his promise and he did it through us, humans. Whether it was the Israelites witnessing and demonstrating their faith, or the Apostles spreading the Word or modern missionaries covering the planet. God has kept his promise. Through the Seed of Abraham we have the Messiah dying on the cross for us and rising from the dead, paying for our sins and redeeming us and also through the blessing given to Abraham we have the message shared with everyone, no matter their tribe or language. We as Gentiles have been the recipients of that blessing. The early church did not want our kind in their church with our non-Jewish ways and unclean habits, but God through his Word brought us in any way. And thank God for that. Thank God that the Lamb of God sprinkled his blood on the altar for the healing of all nations, because that means we are the forgiven and saved people of God. And it also means that now we have the joy of sharing that with all the others that Christ died for as well. Amen.