Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome back. Thank you for joining us for episode 227 of Missions on Point. This is the third episode in this series on preaching about missions. The first two episodes kind of talked about the why and the how to. Why would we think of preaching about missions in every sermon, and how can we do that? Basically, the answers to those questions are that missions is in the whole Bible, and we get to missions through doing biblical theology.  When we touch on the message of the entire Bible, we will inescapably touch on the work of the church in doing global missions.  For our next several podcast episodes, I would like to slow down and look at individual books and genres of scripture to show you a little more firsthand what this can look like. Rather than simply mention topics that you might address in a sermon, like I did last week, now you might find yourself preaching through a book of the Bible. And, the question is simply: how in that particular book of the Bible could you expect to rightly apply the sermon to your church audience, directing them toward global missions?

For today, we ask that question about the book of Genesis. And for the next several weeks we will be talking about the Old Testament. And the first thing to say is that the work of global missions is not explicitly found in the Old Testament. That is a task uniquely given to the church in the New Testament. And you might say that this fact disproves my point about somehow preaching about missions in every sermon. And to that I say that if you are preaching from the Old Testament and you only interpret it the way an Old Testament saint would understand it, then you are wrong. The revelation of Jesus Christ – born in the flesh, died, and risen from the grave – gives to us the right understanding of the Old Testament. Without the New Testament revelation of Jesus, a veil remains over those who read the Old Testament. So, the Old Testament gives us a problem of which the New Testament gives us the answer. Our worship of God has been transformed. The new temple is the body of Jesus Christ, the church. And the entire Old Testament points to the need for local churches taking up the charge to go into all the world and preach the gospel. We’ll try to see that more in the coming episodes. Today though, let’s focus on the book of Genesis.

From chapter 1, the account of creation, God’s glory is displayed through his word bringing order out of chaos, form to what was unformed, filling that which was unfilled, light into the darkness. Humanity is the pinnacle of creation, designed to rule as God’s representative, and to fill the earth with the glory of God’s image. And it all culminated in a seventh day of worshipful rest. From the very beginning of time, God signals his ultimate intentions with all of creation, that a man in his image would be king of the universe. Global missions calls all mankind into the purposes of God that exist from the beginning of time.

The beauty of marriage in chapter 2 does the same thing. There is not a marriage or society on this earth that doesn’t need to be called back to this beautiful ideal for human flourishing.

The fall of mankind in chapter 3 reminds us of every human being’s lost condition by birth. It explains the enmity all over the world. When preaching from a framework of global missions, don’t just reference the sins of your immediate society, mention the lostness of every human born everywhere.

The genealogies beginning in chapter 4 and 5 point to the singular hope of one man born of a woman who would crush the head of the serpent and defeat sin and death. All of mankind’s hope rests in the promise given to the woman.

Noah and the flood from chapters 6-9 signal to us the need for God’s complete and total judgment of creation due to sin. And while Noah does not bring about the new creation that we need, it still remains true that all people everywhere are called to repent unless they face the coming wrath of God’s final judgment on sin.

The Table of Nations and the Tower of Babel represent the lowest point of rebellion against God without hope. It’s the problem of the divisions of mankind into languages and people groups, cursed, separated from one another, and at enmity with each other. It’s the climax of the problem that we still find ourselves facing today in global missions. The hope of an answer only begins to come with the promise to Abraham that a blessing for every nation would come through his line.

In fact, this is one of the main governing ideas of the Bible. We rush through the narrative up until this point and then drastically slow down. Sin is bad, and the situation rapidly declined after Cain and Abel, and the lowest point is the Tower of Babel, a situation whose solution is inaugurated at the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. The gospel comes to all nations, and the curse is reversed as those who were hostile, separated by language and culture, are now united in Jesus together.

But Abraham, the man of faith, who sojourned in a land that was not his own, anticipated the promised offspring who would bring a blessing to all nations. Abraham struggled to accept that the blessing would come through the promise rather than the natural-born son, as he longed for his son of the flesh, Ishmael. Abraham’s nephew Lot was counted righteous because his uncle was a righteous mediator of blessing, interceding for him, so that he would be rescued from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The nation of Israel would be reminded of the origin story of the nations of Amon and Moab, as all people everywhere are called to bless Abraham and his descendants and not curse them. And yet, Abraham and his son Isaac fail to bless the nations as they both deceive and bring a curse to the kings of the earth, like Pharoah and Abimelech.

Isaac is the picture of God’s promised fulfillment, and Abraham’s only son of promise foreshadows the only son of God who must be sacrificed for our salvation. Faith in a substitute sacrifice is the only way anyone anywhere will have hope beyond death. Yet, we are reminded through Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah that the son of the promise will come through Abraham’s line.

Again, it is the second born, Jacob, not the firstborn son, Esau, who received God’s blessing, but this of course is despite his own character. God graciously pursues Jacob, using the circumstances of facing Esau, and Laban, and even his own vindictive sons, and ultimately he came face to face with God who humbled him and removed his self-sufficiency. God’s mediator of blessing to the world must be perfectly righteous to bring about God’s blessing to all.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were eminently flawed characters, yet they walked by faith and not by works of the law. They are saved by God’s gracious choosing of them, that through their lineage would come the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. They themselves did not bless the world, but one of their offspring would.

And so, the story of Joseph is the climax of the book of Genesis. He’s not counted as one of the three patriarchs, and he is clearly portrayed differently than those that came before him. He is born as one of 12 brothers, after many who come before him, yet he is destined to rule over his brothers and bring salvation to the whole world. He is the favored son, for whom the blessing and presence of God are evident, despite his brother’s hatred of him. The question of Joseph is how could the hated brother bring a blessing to his brothers and the whole world? How could the rejected brother bring peace to all? And it’s not just that God would divinely orchestrate his story so that he would become the ruler of the known world. Somehow his brother’s hearts would have to change. The problem from the beginning is that we have had brothers who have hated and murdered each other, from Cain and Abel, to Ishmael and Isaac, to Esau and Jacob, and now, once again, the firstborn son Rueben proved to be a disappointing ruler of his family. And this is why the story of Judah is highlighted in the middle of Joseph’s story. For his children fit the pattern. The younger son overcomes the firstborn. And the promise is given to him in Genesis 49 that the scepter would not depart from his line. It’s not the firstborn who would rule, but a second generation would come. Just like with Adam, the first man would not be king over creation, but a second Adam would be the perfect image of God. And like Joseph, though he is rejected by his brothers, it is through his rejection that he brings salvation to the whole world.

All of mankind has consumed the forbidden fruit and we are starving from the spiritual famine of our sin. And this is the hope of all the world, that somehow one of the offspring of Abraham would be born who had a different heart, who would, like Judah, be the one who would lay down his own life to honor his father and be a ransom for his lost brothers.

The great mystery of the mess of sinful history is the same quandary that Joseph’s brothers find themselves in in the last chapter of Genesis. They wonder whether their brother who rules over them would be merciful to them. And their answer and ours is the reassurance of God’s sovereignty, that what man intended for evil, God intended for good. The sin that was introduced in the garden was not a mistake on God’s part. God always had something better in mind than the rule of the first Adam. God’s perfect son would be born of a woman, through Abraham’s line to bring salvation for all nations to the ends of the earth. Though sinful man would build a city in opposition to God, God’s chosen son would walk in the wilderness by faith, rejected by mankind, to save mankind, to righteously rule over them, not to abuse them, but to feed them with the bread of life.

As you preach from the book of Genesis, this is the call that goes out to every nation. Will you bless the son of Abraham and be blessed by him, or will you continue in opposition to him and be cursed? Every story in Genesis is connected to this grand story. The message of the book as a whole must be preached when we preach the individual passage. All people everywhere are born into this world, a precious creation of God the Father, yet, they are born into sin, in need of the savior that comes from Abraham’s line. Our hearts are as deceptive and combative as Jacob’s, in need of radical divine transformation. We live in a world doomed to destruction, like Noah’s world and Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, God will faithfully rescue his righteous ones who live by faith. It matters not that you are born of the flesh, but that you are a child of the promise. 

I pray that as you preach through Genesis that you will somehow touch on these global purposes of God. And I pray that a missions-minded framework of biblical interpretation will lead you to rightly exposit God’s word and apply it to God’s people who are now called to go into all the world to carry this message with them.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.