The Living God Is a Missionary God (1976)

Part one in a four-part series of talks from Urbana 76
by John Stott

"Who then are the true descendants of Abraham, the true beneficiaries of God's promises to him? Paul does not leave us in any doubt. They are Christian believers of whatever race."

Millions of people in today's world are extremely hostile to the Christian missionary enterprise. They regard it as politically disruptive (because it loosens the cement which binds the national culture) and religiously narrow-minded (because it makes exclusive claims for Jesus), while those who are involved in it are thought to suffer from a kind of arrogant imperialism. And the attempt to convert people to Christ is rejected as an unpardonable interference in their private lives. "My religion is my own affair," they say. "Mind your own business, and leave me alone to mind mine."

It is essential, therefore, for Christians to understand the grounds on which the Christian mission rests. Only then shall we be able to persevere in the missionary task, with courage and humility, in spite of the world's misunderstanding and opposition. More precisely, biblical Christians need biblical incentives. For we believe the Bible to be the revelation of God and of his will. So we ask: Has he revealed in Scripture that "mission" is his will for his people? Only then shall we be satisfied. For then it becomes a matter of obeying God, whatever man may think or say.

So the overall title of this series of four expositions is The Biblical Basis of Missions. Their purpose is to convince us that world mission (the endeavor under God to bring the whole world to the feet of Jesus) is neither an unwarranted intrusion into other people's privacy, nor a regrettable Christian deviation, nor the hobby of a few eccentric enthusiasts, but a central feature of the historical purpose of God according to Scripture and, moreover, a responsibility which he lays (in some measure at least) upon all his people. It is no exaggeration to say that the Bible is a missionary book, because the God of the Bible is a missionary God.

What we are going to do is look at the four major sections into which the Bible is divided (the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Acts and the Letters) and see that in each section the unfolding purpose of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) for his church is a missionary purpose. Thus, according to the Old Testament, the living God is a missionary God; according to the Gospels the Lord Christ is a missionary Christ; according to the Acts the Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit; and according to the Letters the Christian church is a missionary church. We cannot escape this. The evidence is overwhelming. If we listen and submit to God's word it will change our perspective and is likely to change our lives as well.

The Call of Abraham

Our story begins about 4,000 years ago with a man called Abraham, or more accurately, Abram as he was called at that time. Here is the account of God's call to Abraham.

Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land f Canaan; but when they came to Horan, they settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran. Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. (Gen. 11:31-12:4, RSV).

God made a promise (a composite promise, as we shall see) to Abraham. And an understanding of that promise is indispensable to an understanding of the Bible and of the Christian mission. These are perhaps the most unifying verses in the Bible; the whole of God's purpose is encapsulated here.

By way of introduction we shall need to consider the setting of God's promise, the context in which it came to be given. Then we shall divide the rest of our study into two. First, the promise (exactly What it was that God said he would do) and second-at greater length its fulfillment (how God has kept and will keep his promise). We start, however, with the setting.

Genesis 12 begins: "And now the Lord said to Abram." It sounds an abrupt opening of a new chapter. We are prompted to ask: "Who is this 'Lord' who spoke to Abraham?" and "who is this 'Abraham' to whom he spoke?" They are not introduced into the text out of the blue. A great deal lies behind these words.

This illustrates, by the way, the great danger of the "microscopic" study of Scripture. Mind you, it is important that we get out our microscopes, as it were, and examine small passages in minute detail. At the same time, we must be careful not to make the all-too-common mistake of isolating the text from its context, both its immediate context and its wider context in the Bible as a whole. To do so is sure to lead to misunderstanding. Instead, there is a sense in which every part of the Bible, however short, should be seen as a microcosm of the whole. We must understand each in the light of all, and not in ignorance of it, still less in defiance of it. Since we believe the whole Bible to be the word of God, we also believe in its unity (though of course a unity which contains a rich variety) and our expositions must demonstrate this unity and not violate it. This principle is never more true than of the first three verses of Genesis 12. They are a key which opens up the whole of Scripture. The previous eleven chapters lead up to them; the rest of the Bible follows and fulfills them.

What, then, is the background to this text? It is this: "The Lord" who chose and called Abraham is the same Lord who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, and who climaxed his creative work by making man a unique creature in his own likeness. In other words, we should never allow ourselves to forget that the Bible begins with the universe, not with the planet earth; then with the earth, not with Palestine; then with Adam the father of the human race, not with Abraham the father of the chosen race. Since, then, God is the Creator of the universe, the earth and of all mankind we must never demote him to the status of a tribal deity or petty godling like Chemosh the god of the Moabites, or Milcom (or Molech) the god of the Ammonites, or Baal the male deity, or Ashtoreth the female deity, of the Canaanites. Nor must we suppose that God chose Abraham and his descendants because he had lost interest in other peoples or given them up. Election is not a synonym for elitism. On the contrary, as we shall soon see, God chose one man and his family in order through them to bless all the families of the earth. Nor (if we remember the context) should this surprise us, for the God of Abraham is the God of creation, "the God ... of all the kingdoms of the earth," "the God of the spirits of all flesh" (2 Kings 19:15; cf. Gen. 18:25; Num. 16:22).

We are bound, therefore, to be deeply offended when Christianity is relegated to one chapter in a book on the world's religions as if it were one option among many, or when people speak of "the Christian God" as if there were others! No, there is only one living and true God, who has revealed himself fully and finally in his only Son Jesus Christ. Monotheism lies at the basis of mission. As Paul wrote to Timothy, "There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).

The Genesis record moves on from the creation of all things by the one God and of man in his likeness, to man's rebellion against his own creator - and to God's judgment upon his rebel creature - a judgment which is relieved, however, by his first gospel promise that one day the woman's seed would "bruise," indeed "crush," the serpent's head (3:15).

The following eight chapters (Genesis 4-11) describe the devastating results of the Fall in terms of man's progressive alienation from God and from his brother man. First, Adam and Eve are driven from the garden and so denied access to the tree of life. Next, Cain murders his brother Abel. Later God saw that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (6:5), and God destroyed those wicked sinners by the flood. Only Noah and his family were spared. Afterward God established his covenant both with human beings and with the subhuman creation, promising never again to judge the world with a comparable deluge, but to preserve the regularity of day and night, summer and winter. Nevertheless, the sin and degradation of man remained. Righteous Noah fell victim to drunkenness and one of his sons to immorality. And though the nations grew and "spread abroad" under the blessing of God's providence (10:32), they were later "scattered abroad" under his judgment after the proud rebellion of the Tower of Babel (11:9).

This was the setting in which God's call and promise came to Abraham. All around was moral deterioration, darkness and dispersal. Society was steadily disintegrating. Yet God the Creator did not abandon the human beings he had made in his own likeness (Gen. 9:6). Out of the prevailing godlessness he called one man and his family, and promised to bless not only them but through them the whole world. The scattering would not proceed unchecked; a grand process of ingathering would now begin.

The Promise

What then was the promise which God made to Abraham? It was a composite promise consisting of several parts.

First, it was the promise of a posterity. He was to go from his kindred and his father's house, and in exchange for the loss of his family God would make of him "a great nation." Later in order to indicate this God changed his name from "Abram" ("exalted father") to "Abraham" ("father of a multitude") because, he said to him, "I have made you the father of a multitude of nations" (17:5).

Second, it was the promise of a land. God's call seems to have come to him in two stages, first in Ur of the Chaldees while his father was still alive (11:31; 15:7) and then in Haran after his father had died (11:32; 12:1). At all events he was to leave his own land, and in return God would show him another country.

Third, it was the promise of a blessing. Five times the words bless and blessing occur: "I will bless you ... so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you ... and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves (or be blessed)." Thus the blessing God promised Abraham would spill over upon all mankind.

A posterity, a land and a blessing. Each of these promises is elaborated in the chapters that follow Abraham's call.

First, the land. After Abraham had generously allowed his nephew Lot to choose where he wanted to settle (he selected the fertile Jordan valley), God said to Abraham: "Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever" (13:14-15).

Second, the posterity. A bit later God gave Abraham another visual aid, telling him to look now not to the earth but to the sky. On a clear, dark night he took him outside his tent and said to him, "Look toward heaven and number the stars." What a ludicrous command! Perhaps Abraham started, "1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, 30 ... " but he must soon have given up. It was an impossible task. Then God said to him: "So shall your descendants be."

Previously God had promised that his descendants would be as countless as the dust of the earth (13:16); now he said they would be as countless as the stars of the sky (15:5). Later still he combined the similes and confirmed his promise with an oath: "By myself I have sworn ... I will indeed bless you, and will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore" (22:16-17). Indeed, it is remarkable that the famous astronomer Sir James Jeans conjectured in his book The Mysterious Universe that the two are approximately equivalent, that there are probably as many stars in space as grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. That was to be the size of Abraham's posterity! And we read: "He believed the Lord." Although he was probably by now in his eighties, and although he and Sarah were still childless, he yet believed God's promise and God "reckoned it to him as righteousness." That is, because he trusted God, God accepted him as righteous in his sight.

Third, the blessing. "I will bless you." Already God has accepted Abraham as righteous or (to borrow the New Testament expression) has "justified him by faith," No greater blessing is conceivable than this acceptance with God which the Bible calls "justification." It is the foundation blessing of the covenant of grace, which a few years later God went on to elaborate to Abraham: "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you ... for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you ... and I will be their God" (17:7-8). And he gave them circumcision as the outward and visible sign of his gracious covenant or pledge to be their God. It is the first time in Scripture that we hear the covenant formula which is repeated many times later: "I will be their God and they shall be my people."

A land, a posterity, a blessing. "But what has all that to do with mission?" you may be asking with impatience. My answer is "Everything! Be patient a little longer and you will see." Let us turn now from the promise to the fulfillment.

The Fulfillment

The whole question of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy is a difficult one in which there is often misunderstanding and not a little disagreement. Of particular importance is the principle, with which I think all of us will agree, that the New Testament writers themselves understood Old Testament prophecy to have not a single but usually a triple fulfillment - past, present and future.

The first belongs to the past. It was an immediate or historical fulfillment in the life of the nation of Israel.

The second belongs to the present. It is an intermediate or gospel fulfillment in Christ and his church.

The third belongs to the future. It will be an ultimate or eschatological fulfillment in the new heaven and the new earth. A good example is the repeated prophecy that the Temple, after its destruction by Babylonian soldiers in 586 B.C., would be rebuilt. First, it was rebuilt at the end of the same century when God's people were restored to the land. Second, God's temple is Christ and his church, for today God dwells in Christ among his people, as Jesus and his apostles repeatedly affirm (for example, Jn. 2:19; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; Eph. 2:21, 22). Third, the regenerated universe will be God's temple, for his presence will fill it, and the saying will then have come true that "the dwelling of God is with men" (Rev. 21:3, cf. v. 22).

God's promise to Abraham received an immediate, historical fulfillment in his physical descendants, the people of Israel. God's promise to Abraham of a numerous, indeed of an innumerable, posterity was confirmed to his son Isaac (26:4, "as the stars of heaven") and his grandson Jacob (32:12, "as the sand of the sea"). Gradually the promise began to come literally true. As the writer to the Hebrews put it centuries later: "Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore" (11:12). Perhaps we could pick out some of the stages in this development.

The first concerns their years of slavery in Egypt, of which it is written, "the descendants of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the land was filled with them" (Ex. 1:7; cf. Acts 7:17). Or as Moses was to put it later, "Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as the stars of heaven for multitude" (Dent. 10:22; cf. 1:10; 26:5; 28:62; Neh. 9:23).

The next stage I will mention came several hundred years later when King Solomon called Israel "a great people that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude" (1 Kings 3:8), "as many as the dust of the earth" (2 Chron. 1:9) and "as many as the stars of the heaven" (1 Chron. 27:23).

A third stage was some 350 years after Solomon; Jeremiah warned Israel of impending judgement and captivity, and then added this divine promise of restoration: "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant" (33:22).

So much for Abraham's posterity; what about the land? Again we note with worship and gratitude God's faithfulness to his promise. For it was in remembrance of his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he first rescued his people from their Egyptian slavery and gave them the territory which came on that account to be called "the promised land" (Ex. 2:24; 3:6; 32:13), and then restored them to it some 700 years later after their captivity in Babylon. Nevertheless, neither Abraham nor his physical descendants fully,inherited the land. As Hebrews 11 puts it, they "died in faith, not having received what was promised." Instead, as "strangers and exiles on the earth" they "looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (see Heb. 11:8-16 and 39-40).

God kept his promises about the posterity and the land, at least in part. Now what about the blessing? Well, at Sinai God confirmed and clarified his covenant with Abraham, and pledged himself to be Israel's God (for example, Ex. 19:3-6). When Balaam was hired by Balak King of Moab to curse Israel, he not only remarked that "the dust of Jacob" was countless but added, "How can I curse whom God has not cursed? ... Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it" (Num. 23:8-10, 20). And throughout the rest of the Old Testament God went on blessing the obedient, while the disobedient fell. under his judgement.

Perhaps the most dramatic example comes at the beginning of Hosea's prophecy, in which Hosea is told to give his three children names which describe God's awful and progressive judgement on Israel. His firstborn (a boy) he called "Jezreel," meaning "God will scatter." Next came a daughter "Lo-ruhamah," meaning "not pitied," for God said he would no longer pity or forgive his people. Lastly he had another son "Lo-ammi," meaning "not my people," for God said they were not now his people: What terrible names for the chosen people of God! They sound like a devastating contradiction of God's eternal promise to Abraham.

But God does not stop there. For beyond the coming judgement there would be a restoration, which is described in words which once more echo the promise to Abraham: "Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered" (Hos. 1:10). And then the judgements implicit in the names of Hosea's children would be reversed. There would be a gathering instead of a scattering ("Jezreel" is ambiguous and can imply either), "not pitied" would be pitied, and "not my people" would become "sons of the living God" (1:10-2:1).

The wonderful thing is that the apostles Paul and Peter both quote these verses from Hosea. They see their fulfillment not just in a further multiplication of Israel but in the inclusion of the Gentiles in the community of Jesus: "Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy" (1 Pet. 2:9-10; cf. Rom. 9:25-26).

This New Testament perspective is essential as we read the Old Testament prophecies. For what we miss in the Old Testament is any clear explanation of just how God's promised blessing would overflow from Abraham and his descendants to "all families of the earth." Of course the nations are quite prominent in the Old Testament record. Sometimes they are used as instruments of God's judgement on Israel, and sometimes they are themselves judged because of their hostility to Israel. They are also depicted as watching God's dealings with his people, and coming in some sense to know that he is the Lord as they see him both judging and redeeming them. Yet, although Israel is described as "a light to lighten the nations," and has a mission to "bring forth justice to the nations" (Is. 42:1-4, 6; 49:6), we do not actually see this happening. It is only in the Lord Jesus himself that these prophecies are fulfilled, for only in his day are the nations actually included in the redeemed community. To this we now turn.

God's promise toAbraham receives an intermediate or gospel fulfillment in Christ and his church.

It's surely significant that almost the first word of the whole New Testament is the word Abraham. For Matthew's Gospel begins: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac ..." So it is right back to Abraham that Matthew traces the beginning not just of the genealogy but of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He knows that what he is recording is the fulfillment of God's ancient promises to Abraham some 2,000 years previously. (See also Lk. 1:45-55, 67-75.)

Yet from the start Matthew recognizes that it isn't just physical descent from Abraham which qualifies people to inherit the promises, but a kind of spiritual descent, namely repentance and faith in the coming Messiah. This was John the Baptist's message to crowds who flocked to hear him: "Do not presume to say to yourselves 'We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham" (Mt. 3:9; Lk. 3:8; cf. Jn. 8:33-40). The implications of his words will have shocked his hearers, since "it was the current belief that no descendant of Abraham could be lost" (J. Jeremias, Jesus' Promise to the Nations, SCM Press, 1958, p. 48).

And God has raised up children to Abraham, if not from stones, then from an equally unlikely source, namely the Gentiles! So Matthew, although the most Jewish of all four gospel writers, later records Jesus as having said, "I tell you, many will come from the east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness" (8:11-12; cf. Lk. 13:28-29).

It is hard for us to grasp how shocking, how completely topsy-turvy, these words will have sounded to the Jewish hearers of John the Baptist and Jesus. They were the descendants of Abraham; so they had a title to the promises which God made to Abraham. Who then were these outsiders who were to share in the promises, even apparently usurp them, while they themselves would be disqualified? They were indignant. They had quite forgotten that part of God's covenant with Abraham prom ised an overspill of blessing to all the nations of the earth. Now the Jews had to learn that it was in relation to Jesus the Messiah, who was himself seed of Abraham, that all the nations would be blessed.

The apostle Peter seems at least to have begun to grasp this in his second sermon, just after Pentecost. In it he addressed a Jewish crowd with the words: "You are the sons ... of the covenant which God gave to your fathers, saying to Abraham, 'And in your posterity shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' God, having raised up his servant [Jesus], sent him to you first to bless you in turning every one of you from your wickedness" (Acts 3:25-26). It is a very notable statement both because he interprets the blessing in the moral terms of repentance and righteousness and because, if Jesus was sent "first" to the Jews he was presumably sent next to the Gentiles, whose "families of the earth" had been "far off" (cf. Acts 2:39) but were now to share in the blessing.

It was given to the apostle Paul, however, to bring this wonderful theme to its full development. For he was called and appointed to be the apostle of the Gentiles, and to him was revealed God's eternal but hitherto secret purpose to make Jews and the Gentiles "fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Eph. 3:6).

Negatively, Paul declares with great boldness, "Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants" (Rom. 9:6-7).

Who then are the true descendants of Abraham, the true beneficiaries of God's promises to him? Paul does not leave us in any doubt. They are Christian believers of whatever race: In Romans 4 he points out that Abraham not only received justification by faith but also received this blessing before he had been circumcised. Therefore Abraham is the father of all those who, whether circumcised or uncircumcised (that is, Jews or Gentiles), "follow the example of [his] faith" (Rom. 4:9-12). If we "share the faith of Abraham," then "he is the father of us all, as it is written, 'I have made you the father of many nations' " (vv. 16-17). Thus neither physical descent from Abraham, nor physical circumcision as a Jew, makes a person a true child of Abraham, but rather faith. Abraham's real descendants are believers in Jesus Christ, whether racially they happen to be Jews or Gentiles.

What then is the "land" which Abraham's descendants inherit? The Letter to the Hebrews refers to a "rest" which God's people enter now by faith (Heb. 3-4). And in a most remarkable expression Paul refers to "the promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world" (Rom. 4:13). One can only assume he means the same thing as when to the Corinthians he writes that in Christ "all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours" (1 Cor. 3:21-23). Christians by God's wonderful grace are joint heirs with Christ of the universe.

Somewhat similar teaching, both about the nature of the promised blessing and about its beneficiaries, is given by Paul in Galatians 3. He first repeats how Abraham was justified by faith, and then continues: "So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham" and who therefore "are blessed with Abraham who had faith" (vv. 6-9). What then is the blessing with which all the nations were to be blessed (v. 8)? In a word, it is the blessing of salvation. We were under the curse of the law, but Christ has redeemed us from it by becoming a curse in our place, in order "that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (vv. 10-14). Christ bore our curse that we might inherit Abraham's blessing, the blessing of justification (v. 8) and of the indwelling Holy Spirit (v.14). Paul sums it up in the last verse of the chapter (v. 29): "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." The way to become a child of Abraham and qualify for the promise is to belong to Christ by faith, for he is the seed of Abraham (v. 16), and then we become "heirs" (notice the language of inheritance as in verse 18) according to his promise of the fullness of his salvation both here and hereafter.

Thus the apostle Paul on his great missionary journeys, as he shared with the Gentiles the good news of salvation in Christ, was convinced that he was preaching the very same gospel as had been preached 2000 years previously to Abraham in the words "in you shall all the nations be blessed" (Gal. 3:8). For "the nations" were the Gentiles, the "blessing" was justification and the gift of the Spirit, and "in you" or "your offspring" referred in the end to Christ (v. 16).

Not, of course, that God has ever repudiated his ancient people. On the contrary, the same Paul, the special apostle to the Gentiles, looks forward to the time when (in his vivid imagery) the broken-off branches of God's olive tree will be grafted in again and there will be a widespread turning of Jewish people to the Lord (Rom. 11:11-36).

But we have not quite finished yet. There is a third stage of fulfillment still to come.

God's promise to Abraham will receive an ultimate or eschatological fulfillment in the final destiny of all the redeemed.

In the Book of Revelation there is one more reference to God's promise to Abraham (7:9 ff). John sees in a vision "a great multitude which no man could number." It is an international throng, drawn "from every nation, from all tribes and people and tongues." And they are "standing before the throne," the symbol of God's kingly reign. That is, his Kingdom has finally come, and they are enjoying all the blessings of his gracious rule. He shelters them with his presence. Their wilderness days of hunger, thirst and scorching heat are over. They have entered the promised land at last, described now not as "a land flowing with milk and honey" but as a land irrigated from "springs of living water" which never dry up. But how did they come to inherit these blessings? Partly because they have "come out of the great tribulation" (evidently a reference to the Christian life with all its trials and sufferings), but mostly because "they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," that is, they have been cleansed from sin and clothed with righteousness through the merits of the death of Jesus Christ alone. "Therefore are they before the throne of God."

Speaking personally, I find it extremely moving to glimpse this final fulfillment in a future eternity of that ancient promise of God to Abraham. All the essential elements of the promise may be detected. For here are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, a "great multitude which no man could number," as countless as the sand on the seashore and as the stars in the night sky. Here too are "all the families of the earth" being blessed, for the numberless multitude is composed of people from every nation. Here also is the promised land, namely all the rich blessings which flow from God's gracious rule. And here above all is Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham, who shed his blood for our redemption and who bestows his blessings on all those who call on him to be saved.

Conclusion

Let me try to summarize what we learn about God from his promise to Abraham and its fulfillment.

First, he is the God of history. History is not a random flow of events. For God is working out in time a plan which he conceived in a past eternity and will consummate in a future eternity. In this historical process Jesus Christ as the seed of Abraham is the key figure. Let's rejoice that if we are Christ's disciples we are Abraham's descendants. We belong to his spiritual lineage. If we have received the blessings of justification by faith, acceptance with God, and of the indwelling Spirit, then we are beneficiaries today of a promise made to Abraham 4000 years ago.

Second, he is the God of the covenant. That is, God is gracious enough to make promises, and he always keeps the promises he makes. He is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. Mind you, he does not always fulfill his promises immediately. Abraham and Sarah "died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar" (Heb. 11:13). That is, although Isaac was born to them in fulfillment of the promise, their seed was not yet numerous, nor was the land given to them, nor were the nations blessed. All God's promises come true, but they are inherited "through faith and patience" (Heb. 6:12). We have to be content to wait for God's time.

Third, he is the God of blessing. "I will bless you," he said to Abraham (Gen. 12:2). "God ... sent him [Jesus) to you first, to bless you," echoed Peter (Acts 3:26). God's attitude to his people is positive, constructive, enriching. Judgement is his "strange work" (Is. 28:21). His principal and characteristic work is to bless people with salvation.

Fourth, he is the God of mercy. I have always derived much comfort from the statement of Rev. 7:9 that the company of the redeemed in heaven will be "a great multitude which no man could number." I do not profess to know how this can be, since Christians have always seemed to be a rather small minority. But Scripture states it for our comfort. Although no biblical Christian can be a universalist (believing that all mankind will ultimately be saved), since Scripture teaches the awful reality and eternity of hell, yet a biblical Christian can - even must - assert that the redeemed will somehow be an international throng so immense as to be countless. For God's promise is going to be fulfilled, and Abraham's seed is going to be as innumerable as the dust of the earth, the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore.

Fifth, he is the God of mission. The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless "all the families of the earth," he has promised to do so "through Abraham's seed" (Gen. 12:3; 22:18). Now we are Abraham's seed by faith, and the earth's families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God's plain purpose.

I pray that these words, "all the families of the earth," may be written on our hearts. It is this expression more than any other which reveals the living God of the Bible to be a missionary God. It is this expression too which condemns all our petty parochialism and narrow nationalism, our racial pride (whether white or black), our condescending paternalism and arrogant imperialism. How dare we adopt a hostile or scornful or even indifferent attitude to any person of another color or culture if our God is the God of "all the families of the earth"? We need to become global Christians with a global vision, for we have a global God.
So may God help us never to forget his 4000-year-old promise to Abraham: "By you and your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed."

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