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Living as God’s Missional
People Text: Isaiah 61 Review… ►We, as Christians, will always be defined by how well we manage/navigate through the ‘in-between’; how well we hold to a future hope without losing sight of how that hope comes to bear on our present reality. So, our present situation? feeling caught in-between, frustrated, fatigued, unsure as to how to pray; In a word, we’re “heartsick”. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”. ● Although the final Kingdom will always remain a massive and fresh act of grace, it does not provide us an excuse for passivity or permission to disengage from the world and concede to the dysfunction and disorder brought on by evil. Instead, we are like architects and builders who have undertaken the task although they may not live to see it to completion. We may not now see the end result, but we see how setting this stone on top of that one, or laying this piece of tile next to that one contributes to the beauty and the completion of the project. Restoration always involves our posture toward God in worship, our movement toward others in service and our commitment to loving creation-care in stewardship. ►Eschatology seems far more concerned with impacting the present than with explaining the future. ● Isaiah 61 [the scripture that Jesus read and declared that all that was promised was coming true in him: Luke 4] ● I realized, not all that long ago, that my eschatology was being shaped by such prophets as Isaiah and Jeremiah. These writers seemed painfully honest about a couple of things: First, that things aren’t the way they are supposed to be [i.e. our world experiences wars, amber alerts, poverty, hunger, divorce, etc.] Second, that the world’s not right because we’re not right. The world is filled with impoverished, broken, enslaved individuals like me who are daily confronting our own dysfunctionality. ● The prophets portrayed an image of God who was determined to transform people for the sake of bringing transformation to the world; which doesn’t seem like such a good idea to us! Our hope is in the fact that God is doing something about all that’s wrong with the world; all that’s wrong with us. The story suggests that this Spirit (essence) of the sovereign God will be ‘deposited’ in us- meeting us at our own place of impoverishment, brokenness, bondage and grief, enabling us to know live with a renewed sense of ‘vision for our lives’… a renewed sense of ‘mission’ toward the world. All of this, it appears, “for his own glory” (61:3). ● As you take in the story, you will find (2) particular aspects of God’s nature and character which are consistently being celebrated or highlighted; (2) words which I hope to recapture and allow to become part of our story: ‘glory’ and ‘righteousness’. “glory”- (Hebrew ‘kabod’, pronounced ‘kaw-vode’) means ‘weight, substance, honor, significance, splendor, reputation, recognition, reverence, richness’. In the word, you get the sense that glory has a lasting quality to it; a sense of consistency and durability. ● You get the impression that “glory” seems to somehow be associated with God’s ‘otherness’ and, at the same time, his active presence within his creation. Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! Amen.” ● It was to be this glory of God that was to give our lives meaning; weight; significance. He was to be what ‘mattered’; he was to ‘interpret life’ for us [as authors have stated: We were made for God, so nothing else will satisfy us]. You also discover in the story that ‘we’ have glory; glory as ‘image-bearers’, ‘reflecting God’s glory’. Psalm 8:3-8 “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers- the moon and the stars you set in place- what are people that you should think about them, mere mortals that you should care for them? You made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge over everything you made, putting all things under their authority- the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents. O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!” ►Glory is “God on display”. But, often not so much in the extraordinary, as the common-place and seemingly ‘mundane’ (i.e. lilies, birds, children, poor, thirsty, etc.) It’s a glory that has been ‘tarnished’; that lacks its original ‘luster’. ►Worship seemed to always be the anticipated and appropriate response to any discussion about God’s glory. All worship has, at its center, a sense of ‘wonder’. Worship is, essentially, stopping long enough to become aware of what’s been going on around you all along; to notice, to hear. It’s our way of saying to God, “We get it! ►Interestingly, glory is described as something recognizable, but easily dismissed or ignored (Romans 1). It’s described throughout the story as being ‘encompassing’ and ‘pervasive’, but easily missed. Psalm 19 “The heavens declare the glory of God…” The heavens are saying something to us, and if they are not silent, why are we not hearing? Maybe it means we’re not listening? Not paying attention?! The reason we typically miss it is that we stop at the created and fail to see the Creator to which it is pointing us! ►Glory always: ~ Lends perspective. ‘Glory’ is the feeling of being in the presence of something bigger than yourself and the vertigo that accompanies it. It makes us feel ‘unsteady’; ‘unstable’, but unable to take our eyes off of it. In those instances, you are being reminded of how ‘small’ you are and how ‘big’ the world is. ~ Gets our attention. Glory is what ‘re-orients’ us; keeps us from being distracted by everything else and losing the centrality of God. ~ Calls us to something ‘bigger’. We were created for glory; for transcendence; for ‘the other’. God has deposited something of himself (his glory) in us as his image-bearing creatures. ● But, our entire world’s system is built upon offering ‘illusions of glory’; replacing the reality with a less costly alternative which never lasts and always keeps the fulfillment we seek at arms length. ● So, we will either live our lives for the ‘glory of God’, or pursue meaning and fulfillment in that which will always lack substance and significance… “meringue”. Jeremiah 2:11 “Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!” ● In the NT, the word used for ‘glory’ refers to “assessment” or “estimation”. We do this every day with people, with appointments, with projects, with activities, with positions, etc. It’s ultimately about how we assess or estimate all of life, even God; it’s about the value we assign/attach. ● In most instances, it’s not that we don’t know any better, it’s just that we are so easily deceived; we fail to see things the way they ‘really are’ (glory: the way God assesses things). ►Futility is what we experience when we attach the wrong “price tag” to life. It’s the frustration experienced as you invest yourself and expend yourself in that which is ultimately worthless. When we put the wrong price tag on something, it cannot provide the value assign it; it’s not really worth it. ►Those things determined to carry ‘weight’ or ‘significance’ (be glorious) will always get the best of us! We use the phrase, “They were in the height of their glory!” to describe someone as we witness them act with heart (pathos- passion) and the almost endless energy it supplies (“I never get tired of…”) Or, we say, “It’s almost as if that’s what they were created for!?” ►Unfortunately, we often don’t find out what matters until we have expended ourselves on what doesn’t! ● We experience “glory” as we find ourselves assessing life the way God does; valuing the things he values… sharing his passions (heart).
►We are in the ‘height of
our glory’ as we find ourselves reflecting his! |
