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Living as God’s Missional
People Text: Isaiah 61 ● The image Isaiah offers is compelling because it pictures God at work in the events of history as a means of accomplishing his good purposes for his creation. The idea is clear: the mission of a hurting, broken and rescued people was that they would, in turn, become agents of restoration. Review: ► Isaiah seems painfully honest about a couple of things: First, things aren’t the way they are supposed to be. Second, the world’s not right because we’re not right. The world is filled with impoverished, broken, deceived, enslaved individuals like me who are daily confronting our own dysfunctionality. ● 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: ‘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. ► Worship seemed to always be the anticipated and appropriate response to any discussion about God’s glory. 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!” ►Glory always: ~ Lends perspective: ‘Glory’ is the feeling of being in the presence of something bigger than yourself and the vertigo that accompanies it. ~ Gets our attention: It keeps us from being distracted by everything else and losing the centrality of God. ~ Calls us to something ‘bigger’: You were made for so much more! We were created for glory; for transcendence; for ‘the other’. ►We live such frustrated and unfulfilled lives because we’re forever attaching the wrong “price tag” to life. When we put the wrong price tag on something, it cannot provide the value assign it; it’s not really worth it. ►Unfortunately, we don’t find out what matters until we have expended ourselves on what doesn’t! ● Righteousness of God’ is a predominant theme in the writings of the prophet Isaiah. ‘righteous’- word has a variety of meanings, given the context. It can mean ‘innocent’, ‘right in a cause’, ‘ethical in character’, ‘just/justice’. ► God’s righteousness was usually invoked when things were going ‘sideways’ in creation. The Jews kept coming back to ‘creation and covenant’ (Psalm 19): since God is the good Creator, he takes delight in all he has made (jealous for it); and, once things went bad, he made a covenant with Abe to turn things around to demonstrate how eager he is for restoration. ● But, the human dilemma was always raising certain questions about God’s righteousness: “As Creator, how would God remain passionately and patiently committed to setting things right?” and, “How would he remain faithful to his covenant promises in the context of our unfaithfulness?” The answer: ‘righteousness’. “righteousness”… was a way of understanding God’s posture toward his creation. His ability to deal with the evil/corruption in the world without appearing indifferent toward it and his faithfulness to the covenant promises - in the midst of human rebellion, without the fear that he might withhold grace. ► Righteousness has been too often identified by what we “don’t do”. Defining life by the things you ‘don’t do’ is not a very compelling way to live. Or, we equate righteous with certain things we ‘do’, such as bible study, prayer, church attendance, giving, etc. “But you can… forgive without limits, serve without need of compensation, give without fear of lack, enjoy life without being enslaved by it. ► The world lacks righteousness because it glories in the wrong things. There seems to be a direct link between what we glory in and the rightly-ordered life. ● So, we have a glory problem… we fail to notice the way life really is, which causes us to attach the wrong price tag.. And, we have a righteousness problem… our lives aren’t right because we’ve ordered them around things which lack substance/significance. ● What I think our world desires is ‘glory’ is ‘righteousness’ (although they wouldn’t say it that way): transcendence (to connect with the other) and justice (to see things set right). What we have been waiting for is a faith that’s bigger than our daily devotions; bigger than all the guarantees of success and prosperity; bigger than the ‘charmed life’ we’ve been promised if we follow Jesus; big enough to even allow me to confront the really ugly and painful realities of life. ► The answer is a ‘pure’ religion- not ‘no religion at all’ (the option being chosen by many). What we are hungry for is a transformation of our own heart and person which results in the transformation of our social systems (ways of being together). James 1:27 “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (glory & righteousness). ► Without a commitment to justice (righteousness), our pursuit of glory becomes more about personal piety and self-improvement. The shelves are crammed with books which cater to our pursuit of personal fulfillment (prosperity, health, self-esteem); but, few, if any of them seem to make the connection between our ‘glory’ and its inclusion of (or effect on) others. (2) things happen: 1) our faith gets ‘compartmentalized’; it becomes easy to interpret faith as something you ‘believe’ (you know, deep down in your heart), but has no recognizable impact on the way you actually live your life, and 2) it breeds self-righteousness. ► Without a commitment to glory, our demands for justice prove to be little more than a ‘cause’ which makes us angry and looks more like ‘retaliation’ than ‘restoration’. Some of the most angry, least compassionate people I have known have been people with a ‘cause’. With a cause, you can easily disassociate yourself from ‘those people’ who are responsible. We quickly discover that ‘anger’ is not the same as ‘passion’ and that the mission of the church cannot be sustained without an experience of Jesus which is transforming the individual. ● For reasons of misuse or misappropriation, the church has feared any discussion about concrete measures we might take to actually help build toward the kingdom- to help our present reality look a little bit more like God’s new world. ● You’ll find some Christians who are hesitant about any mention of the ‘social gospel’. There’s certainly a danger in reducing the message to simply humane acts of kindness toward one another without any suggestion of transformation. We’ve made improvements, but the issues have not been fully addressed. That’s not a complete gospel because it ignores the evil which is responsible for the corruption in the first place! But, neither is a message which becomes simply about one’s personal spiritual experiences and has nothing at all to say about the renewal of the world in which we live. The gospel says, “It’s not either-or… it’s both!” ► God is saying, “I’m going to fix this; wanna help?” Where does that leave us? In terms of our relationship to ‘righteousness’…“no one is righteous, not one…” Romans 3:10 [that’s a relief: I thought it was just me!] “A righteousness from God…” (Romans 3:10) The status that we are given when we place our confidence in Jesus as God’s means of setting the world right. ● God will bring about his glory and his righteousness through: ‘transformation’- “oaks of righteousness that the Lord has planted for his own glory”… a symbol of strength, stability, and permanence (deeply rooted). In a semi-desert climate, large trees were rare. ► Hope always demands more of us, not less! The values of God’s future are believable only to the extent that those priorities are being incarnated in his people. The key to righteousness is ‘glory’- recognizing, embracing, and experiencing the self-giving love of the Creator God.
And, the result of glory is
‘righteousness’- the re-ordered life which makes God’s self-giving love both
identifiable and available to the world! |
