God's Promise of Blessing

SERIES INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to take a break from our series through the Psalms so that we could have a special six-part series in September. I also told you that the series would be structured around answering the question that you see on the screen, “What Kind of Church Are We to Be?”

There are clearly a lot of ways in which we could answer that question. Answers could focus on programs or worship styles or even translation versions. An answer could be designed around the doctrinal specifics of church structures that have differentiated churches for centuries. For some of you, it is possible that the question caused some consternation because you suspect that I might be introducing a significant change in one of these areas. You like things as they are and are unhappy that 2020 has forced so many changes on you already; you certainly don’t want major changes in your church.

Well, I am going to challenge us over the course of this series that we need to make some changes as a church. Frankly, though, I hope that I do that in every sermon that I preach from this pulpit; change is the natural condition for a Christian as we are continually changed by the Spirit of God, conforming us to the image of our Savior. We need change. We need it in our own lives, and we need it in our church. In fact, I will go so far as to say that we really need to embrace the constant change of the biblical kind if we are going to fulfill our purpose as a church.

So, what area of change are we going to focus on in this series? I’m sure that is the question that you are asking yourself by now. As I indicated at the outset of the service this morning, my goal is to focus upon the power of the gospel this month. We began the year with Rom 1:16–17 as our theme verses. COVID has distracted us as we have had to change many plans, but as the fall sets in, I want to reset our focus on the gospel. The expanded form of the question that I will be addressing in this service is “What kind of a church are we to be so that we will be most effective in our gospel efforts in Sterling Heights and our surrounding cities?”

Now, I fully recognize that God is the One who makes our gospel efforts effective. The gospel is, as Rom 1:16 says on the banner behind me, “the power of God.” We cannot generate gospel success with a program. We cannot produce it through our efforts alone no matter how much we may want to do so. At the same time, the Bible is absolutely clear that God has chosen to use us as the messengers of His gospel and that He works through our efforts to bring people to Christ and to add them to Christ’s church. For that reason, this is a valid question for us to ask, “What kind of a church are we to be so that we will be most effective in our gospel efforts in Sterling Heights and our surrounding cities?”

This is a question that I have spent the past year thinking about as I have been working on my final project for my doctoral program and the conclusion that I have come to is that we need to be “An Ethnically-Integrated Church.” What I mean by this is that our church should be a church in which people from multiple ethnicities worship and serve Christ together. We live in a divided world. Ethnicity is one of the most significant dividing lines in our world. Yet when those lines are crossed because our union in Christ is elevated as more precious and significant than our ethnic differences, the gospel power is on brilliant display before a watching world.

Illustration

Think about it; right now, our country is being torn apart by racial as well as all kinds of other divisions. The concept of intersectionality is breaking our society down into every smaller segment as everyone seems intent on finding a group with which they can identify while claiming oppression from the majority that is not part of that group. The theory is that the more oppressed groups you can identify with, the more voice you are to have in the cry for social justice. For example, there is a cry for social justice that is based entirely upon looking at issues from a racial perspective. Race, as it is generally thought of, is a significant component of ethnic identity, but it has now become a component that is causing cities to burn and lives to be lost. We need to recognize that many of the issues at the center of the protests are real; there is real injustice in our world and all too often that injustice does line up with racial divides because that is an easy way to divide humanity. As Christians, though, we know that all of the injustice is evidence that our world is broken by sin, sin that impacts people differently. Our concern for social justice must be a concern that people come to know the God of justice, not simply have a better experience in an unjust world.

It is exactly in our kind of a broken world that the power of an ethnically-integrated church shines brilliantly when men and women set their differences aside and jointly magnify Jesus Christ.

Now, I do not believe that every church must be an ethnically-integrated church. Growing up where I did in rural North Dakota, I was 17 or 18 years old before a met an African American in person. My home church at that time was not going to have too much ethnic integration unless you consider the interaction of German descent and Polish descent ethnic integration. Such is not the case where we live, though. We live in an ethnically diverse city, and the trends suggest that our diversity will continue to increase rapidly.

Consider the city of Sterling Heights, that is where this building is located. According to available census numbers and world population estimates, in 2018 Sterling Heights was 83.45% White, 7:53% Asian, 5:87 Black, 2.13 % mixed. This was a shift from 2010 when the city was 85.1% White, 6.7% Asian, 5.2% Black, 2.2% mixed. Sterling Heights is clearly increasing in diversity and based on our population of nearly 133,000, these percentage changes represent a lot of people. The other cities around us all show similar trends, as frankly do cities throughout the country.

This is not the entire story, though. As we all know, we live in a city with many immigrants; Sterling Heights has the second-largest immigrant population in MI with over 36,000. Yet, by-and-large that immigration is hidden inside these numbers. For example, there is no way to see in these percentages the estimated 50,000 Chaldeans living in Macomb County as they are included in the 83.45% White. Likewise, both Filipino and Vietnamese immigrants are included in the Asian numbers. The numbers show us that the white populous, which was nearly 100% of Sterling Heights when it was incorporated as a city 52 years ago is decreasing, but they do not give the full story. We live in an ethnically diverse community, not that I need to tell you that since we all experience it every day as we live our lives in this community.

This is why I believe that to reach this community for Christ, we need to become an increasingly ethnically-integrated church. Over the remainder of the month, I want to share this goal more fully with you. I am not proposing that we change our church so that our numbers increase. Nor am I proposing that we change our church because we are struggling financially. I am not concerned with such tangential matters. The reason that I am putting this before us is because I am becoming increasingly concerned that we are not serving God as fully as we ought as a church. I am concerned that we are not casting as brilliant of a light for the gospel as we ought. I am concerned that we are not demonstrating the power of God to our community even though we have these words hanging on our wall. I am concerned that we are not the kind of church that we should be.

As I said, I have been considering this question deeply for the past year. Over the rest of the month, I will share various things that I have discovered from that study as well as several detailed conversations that I have had with some of the ethnic minorities who are part of our church already. By God’s grace, we have a fairly good degree of ethnic integration already, but we are nonetheless far from the level of integration represented in our community. If we reach our community for Christ, we should expect our church to increasingly reflect its level of integration.

Of course, anything that we do or any changes that we make must be driven by God’s revelation. For that reason, I have planned six sermons to dig into what God has revealed in terms of His plan and His design for His church. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, if you miss some of these sermons because you fail to come back for the evening service, you will have an incomplete picture. I urge you to schedule your life around these services so that you can be part of all of them.

Transition to the sermon:

To start our series off…yes, that was all introduction for the series so far, now its time for the sermon. This morning, I want us to start our series with a quick overview of God’s eternal program. I am calling the sermon, “God’s Promise of Blessing.”

SERMON INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

I am a real fan of the mapping programs that we have on our phones. I love the way that my phone integrates with my car so that I have step by step directions displayed on the screen in my car and called out over the car’s audio. I especially like it when I get real-time updates on road conditions so that I can avoid accident delays or stumbling into construction zones. This feature saved us about 20 minutes last weekend routing me and Grace around an accident on I-75 when we were heading north for the Family Retreat.

One of the things that I don’t like about the programs, though, is that I don’t see the big picture on the screen. I see the direction I am to be going, but I don’t see where I am in the larger context in the way that I used to with the old fold-out maps that took up half the front seat.

Of course, I’m sure that the younger people here are thinking, “Why do you need that information? It doesn’t help you get where you are going.” And they’re right, but I still feel more confident when I know how my current location fits into the big picture.

Involvement:

I want us to get similar confidence this morning that an ethnically integrated church fits into the big picture of God’s promises.

Preview:

To do that, we are going to take a quick tour of the entire Bible. Specifically, we are going to consider who God has specifically promised to bless, what that blessing is, and how it is to come about. What we will see is that God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities. God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities.

Transition from introduction to body:

We will begin our tour of God’s blessing with…

BODY:

I. The Initiation of God’s Blessing

We find the initiation of God’s blessing on the very first page of Scripture, or at least in the first chapter of Scripture if you are using an electronic version without pages this morning.

In Gen 1:26 and 27, on the seventh day of creation, we find,

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

And immediately following God’s pinnacle act of creation we have in verse 28 the initiation of God’s blessing for mankind,

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The details of God’s blessing are not spelled out here as God first initiates it, but it is clearly connected to fruitfulness resulting in an increase in numbers for mankind. Humans are to produce life as part of being image-bearers. Even though the blessing was given when only two humans existed in creation, the implication is that all who would descend from them were included in its scope. Furthermore, the next chapter of Genesis reveals that God would dwell with mankind in His creation. From the beginning, God’s blessing included a personal relationship for mankind with the Creator. God blessed mankind with a relationship with Himself.

Transition:

Because of the connection to fruitfulness—the multiplying of mankind—there is reason to believe that from the very beginning, God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities. Of course, we do not get very far into the pages of Scriptures before we encounter the…

II. The Delay of God’s Blessing

The Fall of Adam and Eve into sin in Gen 3 shatters the expectation of God dwelling directly and openly with mankind. Still, God’s promise of blessing does not disappear. After the Fall, God’s promise of blessing flows through the “seed of the woman” in Gen 3:15, being passed through the line of Seth in Gen 5 and then from Seth to Shem and from Shem to Abram/Abraham. In the middle of tracing the line of God’s promise of blessing, we also have the rise of ethnicities in the early chapters of Genesis. If you were with here on Sunday nights over the past year when we studied the first 11 chapters of Genesis, you may recall that the table of nations in Gen 10 shows mankind dividing into ethnicities. God’s judgment on the rebellion of mankind in Gen 11 at the Tower of Babel where the people attempted to centralize rather than disperse led directly to the development of ethnic diversity as God forced people to scatter over the earth. Still, we observed that there were indications of ethnic diversity along family lines earlier in Gen 5 as families were known for things like cities, music, and agricultural characteristics. The biblical account indicates that ethnic diversity is integral to mankind’s story.

Of course, the rebellion at the Tower of Babel is indicative of the rebellion that has been common to mankind since the Fall. God had promised to bless mankind by providing what is “good,” as only God can define “good.” Rather than trusting God, though, man attempted to grasp the “good” on his own. Yet God doesn’t abandon mankind; instead, He selects one man through whom He promises to bless all nations—Abraham. In the final line of Gen 12:3 God promises Abraham, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” The means by which God will fulfill His blessing promise is narrowed to an ethnic people descended from Abraham, but the beneficiaries of the promise are explicitly “all the families on the earth.”

The OT records how God forms the nation of Israel from the descendants of Abraham. The nation had a unique covenant relationship with God as well as a place—the tabernacle and then the temple—where God symbolized His presence and rule over the nation. The nation was to attract individuals from the nations and invite them to live in a covenant relationship with God. Israel, of course, fails to live up to that ideal, but the ideal is never lost. The psalter ends in Psalm 150:6 with the call, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!” Similarly, the prophet Habakkuk recognizes that God’s plan is “for the earth to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD. Because of Israel’s failure, though, the OT ends with God’s promises delayed, waiting for One who could bring them to fruition—God’s promise of blessing awaited the coming Messiah.

Transition:

Still, at the midpoint of biblical revelation, we see clearly that God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities. When we move into the Gospels, we encounter…

III. The Procurement of God’s Blessing

I love how Michael Vlach, a professor at The Master’s Seminary in California puts it, “In the opening scenes of Matthew and Luke anticipation is electric concerning a coming Savior and King. Something big is about to happen and it does. The Messiah is about to burst on the scene.” As Jesus, the Messiah, arrives and carries out His redemptive mission, He makes minimal references to the shape that God’s program will take following the cross. For good reason, His focus is on procuring the means for God’s blessing through his substitutionary atonement; His mission is the mission of the cross.

Sin had to be dealt with before God could bring His promise of blessing to fulfillment. That blessing, as we saw at the outset and as the OT expanded includes God dwelling with mankind. A holy God cannot dwell with sinful men and women. In fact, a holy God must judge sinful men and women. We know that, right? We know that we were separated from God because of our sins, condemned and facing an eternity of His righteous wrath in hell. That is where we stood before God when Jesus took that wrath upon Himself by going to the cross. He procured the means by which we could receive God’s blessing by dying in our place. Now, through faith, our sins’ debt is placed on His account and His righteousness is credited to us. This is salvation. This is why we magnify Jesus, our Savior. If you do not know what I am talking about or you have never trusted in Jesus as your own personal Savior, then I urge you to talk to me today or send me an email. I would love to share with you more fully what Jesus Christ has done.

While the cross is the focus of Jesus’ mission, there are a few places in the Gospel accounts in which Jesus clearly indicates the continuing international scope of God’s promised blessing. We are going to look at three of those texts this evening in a sermon I’ve entitled, “Christ’s Multiethnic Vision.” The means of God’s promise of blessing narrowed down to one person—the Messiah—during this procurement phase, but the scope of His promise remained inclusive across all humanity.

Transition:

The procurement of God’s blessing required the cross, yet at the cross, the same overall principle was still in play: God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities. I am going to skip over most of the NT now and jump to the end. In the coming weeks, we will examine passages in the NT more closely, but for now, I want to turn to the final section of this great story and consider…

IV. The Culmination of God’s Blessing

We see the culmination of God’s blessing most clearly in John’s Revelation. Through John’s visions, we obtain glimpses of God’s people assembled before His throne. Now, we know that God’s people will have OT saints, church-age saints, tribulation saints, and ultimately, even millennial saints. What I want us to quickly notice, though, is that within the glimpses we receive, the multiethnic nature of God’s people is readily displayed.

Take, for example, Revelation 5:9–10. These are verses that I frequently read while we are celebrating the Lord’s Supper together as we will this evening. John sees before the throne of God four living creatures and 24 elders singing a new song,

“Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”

Of those redeemed through the work of Jesus Christ, appropriated by faith, of course, John observes people from every conceivable ethnic group. We tend to divide mankind up in many different ways; John’s point is that it doesn’t matter what division you may choose to define different ethnicities, they will all be represented among those whom Christ purchased with His blood. In fact, even in chapters 21 and 22 when John gives us a brief glimpse of the eternal state, there are references to “nations.” Much of what drives ethnic distinctions today are the nations from which a person is descendent, which have traditionally formed around ethnicities—extended family groups of tribes and clans. Apparently, even in eternity, ethnicities remain meaningful. God’s promise of blessing clearly extends to all ethnicities.

Transition from body to conclusion:

God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities.

CONCLUSION

God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities. That is what I have attempted to show you with this brief tour through Scripture. From start to finish, God has been concerned for all people groups, all ethnicities.

Application

The question that I want us to leave asking ourselves this morning is whether we truly share God’s concerns. Do we care that God’s promise extends to all ethnicities? Do we want to see all the ethnicities in our community share in God’s promise of blessing with us? If we claim that we want that, then what are we doing to make it happen through our church? What might we need to change so that our church can be more effectively used by God to share the means of His blessing—Jesus Christ as the One who saves from sin—to share that means of salvation with those who need to know Him? What do we need to do so that we can all join together in worship now in preparation for that day when we will assemble together before the throne of God?

God’s promise of blessing extends to all ethnicities