Article 2015-02 - God’s Plan Is: Saving People And ...

Chapter 5: God’s Plan Is: Saving People And Sending Them

Introduction

In this lesson we must understand God the Sender before we can understand the motivation for and nature of His mission. Next, we need some understanding about who man is, how and why he was created, and how he was saved after his fall into sin. The great miracle is how God uses saved people to help Him save others. An important part of how God executes His mission is to send His people as His ambassadors. Even from the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we see how people that were once sent on a mission by God, begin to send other people on mission! Through running ahead of our story a little bit, we see examples of how people in the Bible, once sent by God, became senders themselves. We now look at the third theme. God’s mission is: saving sinners and sending them.

The story: Who is God?

We will not understand much about the need for world missions when we do not have a basic understanding of Who God is. In other words, what His attributes are, what His character is and what His plans and claims are with regard to humanity. How do we know? By reading the Bible and accept it as the infallible Word of God. Through it He, the Infinite, reveals Himself to finite man in language, pictures and illustrations that match our limited understanding.

In the first three verses of Genesis we see God appear in His Trinitarian existence. First we read about God, then the Spirit of God is mentioned and finally the light appears. According to John, there is a direct connection between Jesus Christ, God’s Son (also called the Word of God) Who equals life and light. It is remarkable how explicitly the Son of God is mentioned as participator in the creation process.

God speaks about ‘us’ and ‘our’, thus indicating more than one Person (three in fact), Who all share the same Godly essence of Being. By this Trinitarian existence we see that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are relational in character. It is important to see that this is the first thing God reveals in His Word about Himself. It is significant that God reveals Himself as a relational God before He starts to create mankind, also made as relational beings.

Scripture reference

• In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth … and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light (Gen. 1:1-3)
• In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … In him was life and that life was the light of men (John 1:1,3)
• For by him all things were created … all things were created by him and for him (Col. 1:16)

The story: who is man?

Man reflects the Trinity in that he was created with a body, a soul and a spirit – all in essence human, and all united in one life. All three components are necessary and complement each other; none of the three functions independently of the others. The Godhead is similar: revealed in three Persons, yet one in Being. This three-in-one characteristic is one of the likenesses between God and man.

Man has been created to live in two worlds. He, the Adam, was created from the dust of the ground (‘adamah’ in Hebrew) – the realm of the world – and God breathed into his nostrils the breath (‘ruah’ in Hebrew, literally ‘spirit’) of life – the heavenly realm. It means that man is meant to live relationally on earth as well as in heaven. He is equally equipped to have spiritual communion and fellowship with God and with his fellow-man.

Human life is not complete as long as it is lived on the natural, earthly level only. Man has been created for intimate contact with God and he can and is supposed to know God. When that level of spiritual life lacks, man, although physically alive, is in fact spiritually dead. Being separated from God, whether in his earthly existence or in the hereafter, is death in ultimate form. It is a condition of being lost (through sin) of which God seeks to redeem mankind.

This is the Bible story in a nutshell: God created man to have fellowship with Himself. Man sinned and lost it. God provided a way of salvation so that fellowship could be restored. Proclamation of this way of salvation is what world missions is about. It is the Mission of God, to save a lost human race. Everyone who has been saved is called to participate in and cooperate with God in His Mission, to proclaim the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. So from the Mission of God come the Missions of the Church.

Scripture reference

• … God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life … (Gen. 2:7)
• When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God (Gen. 5:1)
• Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one (Deut. 6:4)

People, Sent by God

We see in the Bible that God sends some people to perform a certain task. In turn, we see people, once sent, at a later stage in their lives become senders themselves – senders within God’s purposes.

The first people sent were Adam and Eve. It is the sad story, after the Fall, that they are sent out of Paradise with the commission to care for a world that had come under the curse. God’s beautiful creation had been brought into jeopardy because of people’s sins and they were to bear the consequences of their actions. From then until the end of time every mission would have to deal with sin and offer God’s salvation.

The second person sent was Noah, although he was not told to go somewhere. He received the command to pronounce judgment over his wicked generation. He built the Ark (the only possibility of salvation) over a period that may have been as long as one hundred years, in full view of his people. No one except his family believed him (not one outsider asked to join him) and all except Noah and his family perished.

The third person was indeed told to go: Abram was to leave his country, his people and his father’s household, to go to the country God would show him. He went with an all-the-world-encompassing four-fold promise. His personal blessing was threefold. God said: ‘I will make you into a great nation’; ‘I will bless you’ and ‘I will make your name great’. This threefold blessing had a greater purpose, lasting until the end of time: ‘You will be a blessing and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’

He had to make a sacrifice to obtain that promise: he was to leave all that was familiar to him and embark on an adventure that he could not grasp. With Abram leaving his country the Mission of God had become visible in one man. He became God’s first person to be redeemed, who would eventually grow into a first redeemed nation.

The last person in Genesis that is explicitly sent by God is Joseph, although at first it looked as if he was only sent on an errand by his father, Jacob. This is a story in which a father sends his son and it points forward to God the Father, sending His Son.

Sent Ones Become Senders

The first sent person who became a sender later in his life, is Abraham. He sent his servant Eliezer to look for a bride (Rebecca) for his son Isaac.
Later we read how Isaac, the next sender, sent his son Jacob to find a wife.

The third sender is Jacob, who sent his beloved son Joseph to find his other sons with whom he lost touch when they herded their flocks in the dangerous area of Shechem. Later we consider what this story tells us about missions, and what its value is for our course.

The fourth and last sender is Joseph. After he met his ten brothers in Egypt again, he sent them back to fetch this younger brother with the words: ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again’. This statement is of great importance for world missions, as we will later see.

Many important missionary themes in Genesis converge in its last fourteen chapters. The story of Jacob and Joseph contains many missionary elements. It shows God’s sovereign rule in history, placing strategic people along the time-line to execute His salvation plans. Its New Testament counterpart we see in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Discussion & dialogue

Mention characters from other Bible books that were sent by God on a certain mission and discuss what that mission was.

Links to related content

• Powerpoint to use for this study
• Biblical Mission Stories - Teacher’s Guide
• Biblical Mission Stories - Table of Contents