Sermon Tone Analysis

Who are we and what were we made for?

We were made to be Kings and Servants We were blessed by God.

What is blessing?

Genesis 2:1

Blessing is to be in a peaceful present relationship with God and his creation, such that you are at productive and fruitful in the earth.

What Happened to Us?

Genesis 3:13

WE physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually are dead and are alienated from the life of God and are under the curse that is in reverse of the blessing.

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God’s mission is the final destruction of all that is evil from his whole creation.

Our mission therefore has to be as comprehensive in scope as the gospel the whole Bible gives us.

— Christopher Wright

What is God’s Mission in the World?

God’s mission to deal with the problem of sin through his people - the people of Abraham.

Abraham’s people were blessed to be a blessing, so is the church of Jesus Christ — the completion of Abraham’s people.

According to Christopher Wright, God connects Election, Ethics, and Mission together and they can not be untangled.

Election = the promise that God selected Abraham and he selected the believer.

Ethics = doing righteousness and justice (social justice) as God in Christ did for you for EACH OTHER.

Mission = that the Lord may bring about his blessing to his people AND his creation who also experience the blessing of God.

Exodus 19:4-7

God’s people were formed through their redemption from Egypt and were now ready to do the same for the people around them by obeying their redeemer.

God called these people Israel.

Jesus is the New Israel who is the blessed covenant-keeping son of Abraham who brings the blessing into the world through the cross to all who would place their trust in him and these people go and do likewise with the service of their lips and style of their life.

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Jesus is the New Israel who is the blessed covenant-keeping son of Abraham who brings the blessing into the world through the cross to all who would place their trust in him and these people go and do likewise with the service of their lips and style of their life.

1.

What does the word “blessing” usually bring to mind for you?

In what ways has your concept changed in the light of this chapter?

2. “Being a blessing” might not seem an adequate description of “the mission of God’s people” (and indeed, by itself it isn’t!), but what aspects of our mission would be challenged or improved by thinking in such Abrahamic terms?

3. Abraham was called to “leave and go”.

Whether or not you are called to physically leave your country and go overseas as a missionary, what elements of your present cultural and social context do you need to “leave” if you are to follow Abraham in “faith-obedience”?

4. Does the notion of the demand of obedience to the mission of the church sound like legalism to you?

How might this unbiblical notion be biblically rebutted?