Video Transcript: Ray Vander Laan of That The World May Know - Israel's Mission

Welcome to the latest study of the Bible in context from that the world may  know. I think sometimes people think of this book as a collection of short stories. Got some amazing inspired stories in it. But if you think about it, each of those  stories is part of a much greater story, one story of a God who created the  universe then entrusted it to his human partners to care for it. They were  unfaithful, and it began its descent back into chaos and sin. But God didn't give  up on his creation. He decided to redeem it, this great plan of his using human  partners in that redemption. Oh, to be sure, he will empower them with his spirit  and direct them with his book and support them in a community of faithful  people, but God chose human partners, people who would be a light to the  nations, people who would make his name known, people who would make  disciples of all the nations, Bible characters who who explained why they were  acting faithfully because they wanted The world to know that there is a God.  We'll start this study in the desert. As God did he found Israel in the desert. He  said characters like Abraham and Sarah, who were desert nomads. As God  gave Israel that mission to make Him known. Then we'll join Jesus in his world.  See how he became the foundation stone, the Capstone, the central focus of  that plan of redemption that God had. We'll even go to Rome and hear how that  good news of Jesus, that Jesus is Savior and Lord, confronts the gospel of  Imperial Rome. Then we'll join Paul in cities like Thessaloniki and Philippi,  Athens and Corinth and discover the implications of God's plan of redemption  for a very pagan world. Let's go first to the desert of the Negev with Abraham  and Sarah and discover the kind of partners God is looking for In this plan of  redemption Come let's go see. It's an amazing story. When the time came for  God to begin working out his plan to redeem a broken world, he started in the  desert. I found my people in a in a desert land a vast and terrible wasteland, he  will say. And he chose two people, Abraham and Sarah, wealthy people by the  standards of their culture, but by our standards, he started pretty simply, and yet  he found two people who had a passion for him and a desire to be his partner, to become a blessing to all the nations of the world. They're also an invitation to us to join that plan, to become God's partners today, and in a sense, to join a 4000  year old journey, the journey of God's story. We just walked through a 5000 year old city gate. We're in the desert of the Negev, the flat area in the southern part  of Israel, the desert where the patriarchs lived. There's a flat plateau here. On  this end stands this city, sort of as a century, and the city of Beersheba. On the  other end, this city is called Arad, A, R, A, D, and we're in what's called the Early Bronze think 3500 to 2500 BC. This part of the city does actually have a bit of  biblical history. When the Israelites came out of Egypt and were wandering in  the desert to the south this city, the king of this city and his army attacked the  Israelites, and they were defeated in the South. Our interest, though, is here,  because this city was here when Abraham lived not too far from here. And I think this city has a place that can teach us what God was already training his people 

through His servant, Abraham. So come, let's go see you. We walked on the  ancient Street. Felt kind of fascinating to be back that far in history, and we  came to what's known as the Canaanite house. Now, if you look carefully, you  can kind of make out what was here. 3500 BC. There's a outer wall which  enclosed this family's living space. The main structure is this single room house.  You can see it had, it's modern, but it had a roof, but for shade more than for  rain, it doesn't rain a whole lot here, and a bench around the outside where  people could sit. They probably slept in there, ate in there, had their craft,  whatever it was on a hot, sunny day in there. It's kind of the main living space  out here, several smaller spaces raised platforms, probably had a canopy roof  where people would sit and spin a rug or cloth, or where people would make  pottery, if that was their industry. An extended family lived here. Oh, sometimes  even 20, 30, or even 40 people lived in this particular space. So that's where we  are. Now, what's our lesson that we want to draw out of the Bible from this  space? God called the Hebrew people to Mount Sinai to give them a mission.  The mission was to be a kingdom of priests, a group of people who would  extend the reign of God by submitting to their king who had saved them by  grace, would put him on display, demonstrate him to the nations, so that others  would be drawn to God. That's their mission. Now, when they got there and  heard that mission from Moses and got the book which that mission was  inscribed in, the Torah. They discovered, if they didn't remember it from the  ancient stories, they had an ancestor. Ancestors actually Abraham and Sarah,  who had lived hundreds of years before them, and God had already been using  him to carry out the mission. Though it isn't spelled out until we get to the time of the Hebrew people who left Egypt So Abram lived in this general vicinity, and  God was using Abram, Abraham later, already hundreds of years earlier. Now  let's talk about the context. Abraham lived in a tent. Abraham and Sarah did.  They were still nomadic. You can almost see the imprint of a tent here, as if,  maybe before this, people lived this way. And here was the main tent and a  small tent and a small tent and a small tent. And then later they begin to do it in  stone as they settle down more permanently. So Abraham is living in a tent. But  the lifestyle Abraham lived is very much like these people did. They were what  we call a patriarchal society. Now a central idea in patriarchal society is the idea  of redeem. Redeem. Say, Go'el. Go'el means to redeem. Now, what does  redeem mean? Well, obviously, it's a Bible word. In Exodus, God says, I will  redeem you with a mighty arm. Or in Isaiah, it says, Say to Israel, do not fear, I  have redeemed you. Or to John the Baptist's, father Zechariah, Praise to the  Lord the God of Israel, for he has come and redeemed his people. Now notice  all three of those before Jesus is born. So what is this redeem business that  God is doing well, believe it or not, in spite of the fact that it has religious content in the Bible, redeem is not a religious idea at its origin. Redeem is a patriarchal  idea, an idea in patriarchal society. Let me show you how it works. Let's imagine

we're a family living in this house. I'll be the patriarch, for the sake of our story.  Several of you my sons, wives, have married in and joined us. Others of you are children. My younger brothers live with us, an extended family, and I'm the  patriarch. Now my responsibility is to take care of all your needs. Whatever  resources we have, they all come to me every dime. My job is to make sure your needs are met, that you're fed, clothed, housed, that the family is comfortable as best I can provide. That's my job. Now if one of you gets marginalized, let's  imagine one of you is captured by an enemy, or one of you somehow, because  of an injury, is out there somewhere in need. My job is to bring you back into the  patriarchal household. The patriarchal household is called the father's house.  Say, Beth Ab the father's house, the house of the father. My job as patriarch is to find the marginalized person and bring you back in so that your needs continue  to be met. Whatever it takes. I'm going to do that even for example, let's imagine that one of you loses a piece of family property because of an economic  setback. My job is to take my resources to go out and find who's got the  property, buy the property and restore it back to the family household. My job is  to keep the household intact now that restoring to the household is what the  word redeem means. To redeem is to take someone who's for whatever reason  gone outside the household and do whatever it takes to bring you back in. That's the concept of redeem So if God is thinking along those terms, when he says, I  am Israel's Redeemer, he's thinking, you guys are alienated from the father's  house, from my family. I'm going to head out there and do whatever it takes to  restore you to my Beth Ab. I will redeem you. He can redeem you from your  enemies, that's in the Psalms. He can redeem your life from the pit that's in the  Psalms. He can redeem you from trouble that's in the Psalms. God rescues lost  children and restores them to the Father's house. That's the idea of redeem.  Now, when the patriarch dies, guess what the oldest son gets most of the  resources. Try that next Christmas with your kids. Give the oldest a whole bunch of stuff and give everybody else a little bag of candy and see how that swings. In Western society, it doesn't cut it. But in their society, if the eldest got all the  resources, everybody danced. Yeah. Yes, my oldest brother got it all now he has to take care of us. He's got to make sure I'm fed. He's got to make sure I'm  clothed. He's got to make sure I'm covered, whatever it takes if I get  marginalized and pushed out, he has to bring me back in. Yes, I'm taken care of  now, biblically, God is the Father. The Father's house is his family, his  community. He gave all his resources, or a double portion of his resources, if  you want to use the biblical term to his oldest firstborn. Now, do you remember  who God's first firstborn was? People want to say Jesus, no, in Exodus, God's  firstborn is Israel. Hey, Israel, I'm going to give you way more resources than  any of the other nations in the world. You know why? Because I want you to  bring my lost children back into my pod, into the father's house. So Israel got all  these blessings, not because God liked them more than somebody else, or God 

played favorites and he picked them instead of the Dutch God picked Israel to  say, You're the oldest son. Take care of everybody else, bring them back in.  That's redeem so as God redeemed them, they were to become his partners, in  a sense, in redeeming others. Now, sometimes Israel did a great job.  Sometimes they kept a lot of the resources for themselves and did everything  they could to keep those lost children out. So eventually God came and said, I'm going to have a second first born, my only begotten firstborn, and Jesus came  with all the resources of his heavenly Father, as the very Son of God for what to  bring all his lost children back into the father's House. He lived, he died to pay  off enormous debt, our sin. And then he said, I'm gonna go prepare a place in  my father's house. Beth Ab, I'll entrust you with the resources. Your job, go  looking for my lost family members, redeem them in the blood of my son. Now  notice, redeem doesn't simply mean save them so they go to heaven someday.  Oh, that's a big debt that has to be paid without that you can't get back into the  father's house, but redeem means bring them back into the family. Now, let's  think of a couple Bible examples, and our time is so short. Think Abraham and  Lot. Why is Abraham responsible for this nephew of his that's a big pain? Well,  because it's a family member. So Lot gets kidnapped. Abraham raises an army  and goes after him. Why? Because he loves Lot. Maybe he does some way he  goes. He goes after Lot because he's responsible to bring that lost person back  in. So he rescues him from great danger. How about Ruth and Naomi. You  remember the story Israelite husband and wife, two sons famine, head off to  Moab. While they're there, the husband dies, and the two sons die after  marrying Moabite girls, Ruth and Orpah. But do you understand the tragedy in a  patriarchal society, your connection to the family is the patriarch. Naomi's got no  connection. Naomi's marginalized. She's the widow, she's the orphan, she's the  unborn, she's the elderly, she's the alien, she's the person who's outside the  family of God, and she's got no way back in. She heads back to Bethlehem. I  always thought she went home to sit on the family property. That property is  gone. She can't get it back. She's got nothing. There's a redeemer. His name is  Boaz, and God raises him up. And you know what he does? He goes out first,  and he buys the property back. It may have cost him a fortune, and guess what? He gives the property to Naomi and to the child he and Ruth produce. Now that  property belongs to the child. That's not Boaz's property. He just gave it away,  but he's willing to expend huge resources to get Naomi and Ruth back into beth  Ab. Or think about the prophet Hosea. Here's the holy man in a town of 250,  people, I'm guessing, and God comes to him one day and says, go down to the  house of prostitution, pick out one and marry her. Now there's a woman who's  marginalized in that culture, and he comes home with Gomer, someone his  neighbors all knew way too well. And she's got family. She bears them, three  children. She's in the community. She's restored. She's redeemed, but we  discover she likes the old way better, and she goes back to the street. And now 

God shows up again to the holy man, and God says she's up for sale. She's hit  the bottom of the barrel. Go pay the debt and buy her back. My wife, yeah, and  there he stands in front of his neighbors bidding on Gomer, why to pay her debt  and bring her back and restore her to beth ab, and that's what God is up to, that  

lost world out there. We can think of them as pagans and sinners and non  believers and apathetic. God thinks of among his children who are in trouble and in debt, and his son was willing to die, be shamed in front of a whole community, get them back. And he turns to his family and says, Will you help me? Will you  help me? Will you bring back my lost children please. Redeem. That's what  God's up to. Does it mean be saved? Yes, that's the debt that has to be paid first of all. But it's bigger than that. There's a second lesson, because Abraham is the classic example of a godly patriarch, the way he treats Lot. But notice it goes  much deeper than that. It's one thing to care about your family, even if it's the  black sheep you don't care much for what about when it's total stranger?  Remember the story Abraham's sitting in the tent the hottest part of the day, and he sees three strangers coming across the field in the distance. Strangers. Now  you're given an insight in the text, who are those three, two angels and God?  Does Abraham know this? No, there are three people he's never seen and will  never see again. What does he do? This old man, gets up, are you ready? And  he runs. I've been in this culture a lot. I've talked to a lot of people who live in  this culture. I've never met anybody who's ever seen an old man in a robe run.  That is shameful. Old Men don't run. It's undignified and dishonorable. There are three old men who run in the Bible. One is Abraham, one is Esau, to meet Jacob and the other, the father of the prodigal. Abraham will shame himself to bring in  three strangers. And then it says he bowed down and called them Lord. My.  Lord, let me wash your feet. Boy, I know somebody else is gonna go there. And  then he got up and said, Please, let me prepare something to eat. Begins to  prepare, actually, it says he ran to the flock. You know, there's an aside here.  Does anyone remember what's in the chapter before? In the chapter before? I  don't know how to say this, Abraham's been circumcised. Now. I know why he's  sitting in the tent. I'm not sure exactly how he ran. He's willing to run shamefully  and in pain for three total strangers fall down in front of them, wash their feet  and then invite them for dinner. He turns to Sarah and says, are you ready?  Prepare? Three. Seahs. Three seahs of flour, of the finest flour. Now, finest flour  means wheat flour. That's the expensive stuff. It's the really good steak you keep in the back of the fridge for your anniversary coming up. And when I show up to  dinner, I don't think you serve me that one. That's the special one. Sarah, get  them the best we got. Make bread for them. Now, Has anyone taken the time to  look up what a seahs is? We say three measures in English. You know what  three measures is? Somewhere between 50 and 75 pounds. How many of you  guys have baked bread from scratch? How many of you have seen it baked  from scratch? How long would it take you to make 75 pounds of flour into 

bread? He has her bake enough bread for those three guys to last for three  months. 75 pounds for three strangers he'll never see again. Why? Because he  cares about people who were outside of beth ab. How do you respond to the  stranger? How do you respond to the marginalized? How do you respond to the  alien, the widow, the orphan, the child of a single parent, the imprisoned  person? How do you respond? Do you run even if it shames you? It's called  redeem because maybe in the process, they would come to know the God of  Abraham. Now, to a Jew, that's what it means to be a kingdom of priests. That's  what it looks like when God is in charge. People give every ounce they've got to  bring in three outsiders. You ready for this? Then Jesus told them another  parable, you say it, then Jesus told them another parable. The kingdom of  heaven is like a woman who took yeast and mixed it with 75 pounds of flour. He  uses the same number. And every Jew in that Biblically literate audience knew  at that moment that Jesus was saying, The kingdom of heaven, which I came to  bring, is just like Abraham and Sarah. There's the mission. How much flour will  you prepare for the next homeless person you drive past, the next nursing home you go by, the unborn, the alien. This is what you are to say to Israel, do not  fear. I have redeemed you. Praise be to the LORD the God of Israel, for he has  come and redeemed his people. Your mission, Israel and by the grace of God,  followers of Jesus, go show them. God has paid their debts. Maybe by you as  his instrument, he will rescue them from their trouble and restore them to the  Father's house.