Sermon 5/29/05 – The Mission –
Genesis 12:1-2
The Mission
“Now
the Lord had said to Abram, ‘Get out of your
country, from your kindred, and from your father’s
house, to a land that I will show you. I will make
you a great nation; I will bless you and make your
name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will
bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who
curses you; and in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed’” (Genesis 12:1-2)
“And
he believed in the
Lord, and He
accounted it to him for righteousness”
(Genesis 15:6)
Dennis Prager wrote a column
dated May 12, 2005, entitled “The
Jews’ Mission.” Mr. Prager is a columnist,
and also an author, speaker, filmmaker, radio talk
show host, a teacher of college-level classes that
have included Russian and Jewish history, and in his
spare time he conducts orchestras – an interesting
and talented person. We have permission to quote
him and his website address is
www.dennisprager.com.
In the article he asks this
question of believing Christians – What is your
mission? and then answers the question: “To bring people to Christ” or “spread
the Gospel.” As a physical descendent of
Abraham, he has the right to assume our answer. God
decided before this world existed that Y’shua
HaMashiach, Jesus the Christ, would be born a Jewish
boy in the tiny community of Bethlehem – “You,
Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth
to Me the One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting”
(Micah 5:2, written at or before 700 BC).
Christianity is rooted in Israel, and our Messiah
was a very Jewish man.
Mr. Prager asks the Jews a
similar question: “What
is the JEWISH mission?” and he answers that
one as well, saying that most will likely respond:
‘What do you mean?’” He states that Jews
“are preoccupied with
SURVIVAL… of the
Jewish religion (observance of religious laws) and
of the Jewish people.” Mr. Prager observed
that the only large group of Jews with a mission are
those who are LEAST interested in the Jewish
religion. They tend to be involved, he said, with
ideologies of the political “Left,”
like “Marxism, socialism,
feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, and animal
rights.” Among the reasons cited for Jewish
secularism include the terrible experiences they
endured under Christianity and under Islam. It was
safe to be secular, dangerous to be religious. Only
the U. S. has truly accepted Jewish participation,
and the typical Jew, he said, is drawn to humanistic
issues.
He went on, “it
is tragic for humanity because the people who
brought the Bible and its Ten Commandments TO the
world are often the most active in seeking its
removal FROM the world.” He points out that
the Jewish people DO have a mission – “to
bring the world to ethical monotheism,”
defined as the truth that “there
is one God and therefore one moral standard”
for us all. He compares the Jews to Jonah in the
Bible, who was told by God to carry a message to
Nineveh. He didn’t want to go and ran away on a
ship, which was then in a storm that he understood
was caused by his running away. Mr. Prager
concluded, “Most Jews are
still running away from their divine mission and
causing storms in many places as a result. Only by
bringing the ethical monotheist message to mankind,
and working with like-minded Christians to do so,
will the world’s seas ever calm down.”
Actually, I disagree with Mr.
Prager in minor areas. First, if you ask the
typical “believing Christian” in the Western World,
“What is your mission?” and then could somehow get
an HONEST response out of them, it would be
something like, “I hope
there’s a sale this weekend!” or “What’s
on TV tonight?” or “Who
won the game?” The other disagreement, which
is also minor, relates to the secularism of the
Jewish people. When we were in Israel, some years
ago, there was a PRESENCE of the Lord in that land
which was very profound, and as I concluded at the
time: we can be far from the Lord, but the Lord is
not far from His people. “Our” mission is more
about the Lord Himself, than it is about us. It can
be argued that ALL have failed God, but He will
never fail us in return.
Our mission, here at Friday
Study Ministries, the First Church On The Net, is
indeed to “reach the world for Jesus Christ,” and
yet it isn’t that we have some great faith to make
it happen, but it is the Lord who has the drive, the
resources and the love; and I often feel like the
passenger in an airplane, rather than its pilot.
There was a great woman of God named Corrie Ten
Boom, of a generation ago. Her family in Holland
was instrumental in the saving of many Jewish lives
during the Holocaust then upon Europe. A movie was
made about her life, entitled “The
Hiding Place,” and at the Holocaust Museum in
Jerusalem, a tree is planted in her honor. In her
book, “Each New Day,”
here’s what she said: “Some
people think that I have great faith, but that is
not true. I do not have great faith – I have faith
in a great God!’
In our Scriptures for today, we
see Abraham (Abram), a man listed among the “heroes
of the faith” in the Book of Hebrews, Chapter
11. The assumption is that he personally had
tremendous faith, and he is indeed described as the
“father of all who believe”
(Romans 4:11) - he is a model for us all. To be
right with God is to have a faith like his.
But the miracle isn’t only that
any of us have faith, it’s that GOD ACCEPTS the
faith we have. He communicated to the man to “Get
out of your country,” to leave family behind,
and GO! And the difference about Abraham was that
he WENT! In all of the situations that Abraham
endured, through the mistakes he made and the
successes that indeed were his, he continued to
BELIEVE that God would see him through.
And here is what Scripture says
about this interesting man who was willing to follow
God, even though he actually acquired, in his
lifetime, very few of the remarkable promises that
were offered to him: “he
(Abraham) believed in the
Lord, and He (God)
accounted it to him for righteousness”
(Genesis 15:6). “Righteousness”
consists of BELIEVING in the Lord!
Mr. Prager is right – we have a
mission. God chose a people through Abraham, and
through him God’s Promise came to this world. Our
mission is to trust, to have faith in the One who is
our Promise. When He says, “Go,” we are to go, and
when He says love God and love one another (Matthew
22:37-40), we are to love. Let’s pray:
Lord, I give myself to You.
Please forgive my unbelief and let me have FAITH in
You. You ARE my mission. When You say, “Go,” I
will go. When You say, “love,” I will love, because
I trust in You. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus Name.
Amen.
