A Different Kind of People

The Expansive Mission of God’s Kingdom and His Royal Nation

Intro: Wilt Chamberlain vs Bill Russel

two best centers of all time

Wilt could score 60 pts in a game

Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships in his 13 year career

The ultimate team player vs the ultimate individual player

in 1961-62 year Wilt averaged 50 points per game

and Bill Russell won the league MVP

Wilt won 2 titles in his career. The best player to ever play the game at that point. Averaging 30+ pts and 20+ rebounds per game

Individual vs team.

Players don’t win. teams win. Players can contribute but they can’t win on their own. Even in a sport with just 5 people on the court.

Wilt forgot why he had his other-worldly gifts. The guy was an alien. But he thought it was for himself. Money, stats, girls, fame.....and those things Wilt won in....except the stuff that matters.

And man this is the metaphor our world needs now.

Mutually assured destruction. Immigration, food, markets, global interconnected spaces. Russia invades Ukraine and we all feel it. Some guy in a chinese wet market just has to have some bat and here we are with millions dead.

Our politics around personal autonomy, radical individualism....its just as toxic as a people as it is for our individual souls

And God knew that. So he built into His people a relief valve to save them from their nationalism, to save them from thinking that it was about them. He gave them a mission and a raison d’etre :

New Living Translation Chapter 12

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

When people here the words: “The chosen one” it probably evokes 1 of 2 responses:

The Chosen one is given special privilege and that makes them exceptional and to be envied (Lebron James), Wilt Chamberlain

The Chosen one is this relief of a gift....they have come to save us,, to bless us with the special gift that they have stewarded for those in need. (Bill Russell)

Abraham was chosen not because of His righteousness but because God needed to make a people to be His people.....not because they were special or righteous, but because God wanted to pour out his blessing on the world through them.

Stewards not owners.

God called israel his people so they would be His representatives to the world:

And he called Levites as priests, not because they were righteous but because God needed a people who would represent His people in God’s presence.

New Living Translation Chapter 3

5 Then the LORD said to Moses, 6 “Call forward the tribe of Levi, and present them to Aaron the priest to serve as his assistants. 7 They will serve Aaron and the whole community, performing their sacred duties in and around the Tabernacle. 8 They will also maintain all the furnishings of the sacred tent, serving in the Tabernacle on behalf of all the Israelites. 9 Assign the Levites to Aaron and his sons. They have been given from among all the people of Israel to serve as their assistants. 10 Appoint Aaron and his sons to carry out the duties of the priesthood. But any unauthorized person who goes too near the sanctuary must be put to death.”

Priest has a special call to serve God and serve people. An embodiment of the Greatest Commandment and SHma

Aarons family were servants and had access to Moses, Aaron and Miriam

Set aside: not a privilege but rather a sacrifice (no land to call their own)

Different kind of inheritance.

It was about God’s people and pleasing Him, not making themselves great.

Of course that was corrupted.---just like us

And all of this is really about us and our calling as God’s people.

-radical individualism

-Spiritual abuse

-America as the chosen people

-competition among Churches

-battles over who is right in interpreting scripture

-parties

-Nationalism

-supremacy (race, religion, sex, gender, ethnicity, national origin)

Recap:

-royal Priesthood

-holy nation

-Roles of Priests

-consecrated places, consecrated people

-butchers to lambs

-Kingdom authority through service and connection with God

-Different kind of prayer: interceding with authority

today’s passage:

New Living Translation Chapter 3

5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.

6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.

8 What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.

What do I want to do:

Connect the holy nation/royal priesthood with God’s mission in the world

-We are a royal nation and holy priesthood as a gift to the world

-Just like levites we have no land to call our own.

-politics of our moment

-America is not our home

-The kingdom is an empire working like Yeast

Identity as missionaries: what are missionaries: people who live understanding their purpose and calling. We are a royal priesthood of an underground empire (not just kingdom)

All Part time people: all are called, no special class of ministers

-the roles of staff in our organization are to serve the mission, not about some special class of people.

-we are priests,, we are missionaries

-Missionary Pathway Training

-The Syndicate:

Priests had a particular calling: Kingdom people, kingdom bearers, consecrated for holy work, creating holy spaces.

We have this same calling: Be people who belong in God’s presence (By His Grace)

Be people who bring the blessing and calling fo the kingdom to the world (By His Grace)

Set Apart for a particular purpose (Holy calling, particular calling)

Consecrating spaces with our intentional lifestyle: Holy, peculiar, passionate,

Inspire with stories of Transformed lives and people living in their calling

-Holy: Make decisions based On God’s purposes rather than our own. Mat and Ketti moving to Boise to partner with our church plant

-Peculiar: Sabbath, Service, Village—The Pavlishes

-Passionate: essential to our identity— Amy Hyatt

Transition: We have a collective calling but unique contributions.

Particular calling:

Gifting: Eph 4: God Gave some, (gifts to the church) APEST

1 Cor 12:4-11

New Living Translation Chapter 12

4 There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. 5 There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. 6 God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.

7 A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. 8 To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. 9 The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. 10 He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. 11 It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.

Passion: For Place, People, Need

Story of The Boston Project

The Boston Project Ministries (TBPM) began as a vision by a group of Gordon College students in 1995 to mobilize teenage volunteers in Christian service throughout Boston. In late 1996, two of the founders, Paul and Glenna Malkemes, decided to relocate by moving to what is now the center of The Boston Project service area: the Talbot-Norfolk Triangle (TNT) neighborhood of Dorchester. Their apartment became the TBPM headquarters, and the move signaled a shift in the approach TBPM took toward serving the community.

Tampa Underground

Story: Your story might give you a particular calling

Recovery

addiction

Survivor

Industry

Place

God has been preparing you

Season:

Teens-leaders-communities-city

Lifetime:

Service, hospitality, story-bearing

Calling happens when we listen to the father and see what he is doing and our particular place in it.

GPS: redemptionboise.org/gps

Conclusion:

the church has been like Wilt and we need to be like Russell

-as individuals, we set aside our ambition and ask how our gifts were meant to serve.

let pray:

Repentance for individualism

repentance for particularity

Repentance for selfish ambition

Asking God to show us our calling as a different kind of people

Committing to service of others for the blessing of the world.