World Mission of the Church - Lesson 1

Dr. Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
wm601-01
Course Introduction
Lesson Transcript

I hope that everyone has a Bible with them. It may not be automatic that you bring it, but certainly in the first part of this course, the next several days, it will be very helpful to bring your Bibles because we will spend a good bit of time looking at various key text and executing certain passages and therefore be helpful to have your scriptures with you in order to really get started in this theme before we actually begin to look at the biblical theological base. I think it's important that at the start to actually make a theological point just to make sure that we're on the same wavelength when we use the term missions because we distinguish very carefully and mission studies between the word mission and the word missions, plural. And because it's so often not clearly brought out in the kind of normal discourse about missions and, you know, hallway talk discourse, it's important in a class to be very clear and precise and what we mean by this. So when we talk about Mission Singular, this is really the larger picture, which, as you see on the overhead here, is related to what we call the mission day, the mission of God, which can be defined very simply as the reconciling work of God in the world. That would be a kind of simple, straightforward definition of the mission of God. It's very important to distinguish in mission and missions plural, because missions must follow from God's mission. Be very surprised to know that the word missions, the way it's used today in my SS IO and S missions is not something that has been used throughout the church's history to describe what we talk about today as missions.

[00:02:17] It's actually a rather late term that does not appear until the 16th century from these remarkable Jesuit Catholic missionaries of the 16th century, which we will not have time to look at in this course. But the Jesuits are the ones that first coined the term missions. So that has become part of the vocabulary of modern church discourse to discuss missions in the church or the church's mission. And so what happens is the word mission and missions have been confused because in the older discourse, if you were to go back to the Reformation, for example, and before and before the church fathers, and you would look at do which you can now, by the way, do very easily through these nice word searches. If you go into I have like the all the church fathers on a CD, you can actually run through word searches and look at every time they use the word mission and they never use it the way we use it today. The way the word mission is used is normally in a Trinitarian context to describe the father sending the son into the world. It's used in that kind of context, not the church going out, doing whatever. So it's important theologically to understand that mission represents a divine initiative of God to reconcile his creation according to his elective purposes, that he is sovereignly chosen. Now, in order to do that, a part of God's mission includes the Church's role, the church's action in the world, preaching, witnessing, bearing witness to the gospel, planting churches, whatever. And that's what we call missions. And so we distinguish between kind of the general broad mission and missions, plural, which I define here as the obedient spirit led strategy and implementation of plans to fulfill God's mission in the world.

[00:04:19] So mission is the theological anchor of missions. If you reduce missions as an island of its own, apart from linking it to God's initiative in God's sovereign plan, then you end up missions become reduced to various tasks, which the church does. You know, we have a car wash next week and we have a mission trip the following week, and we have this. We have that. You know, we all have things that we're doing, but it is not biblical because missions is meant to be an expression of the missionary heart of God. Mission is to anchor of missions, plural. The church does missions. God has a mission in the world that he's unfolding according his own purposes, not all of which are made perfectly clear to us what he's doing or how he's doing it. I often I take my lead by. By the way, from the marvelous African theologian me very ad co who has made the helpful observation that the mission de or the mission of God can be generally divided into three parts. The reason I like this kind of tripartite view of mission is because it helps us to see what our role is and also the larger view of what is beyond our activities or our efforts that we engage in the world. So let me just mention the three part from this day, and this, I think, help clarify why we cannot reduce missions. It turns the church's activity as the whole discourse about mission, because the first part we would call the Divine initiative in preparation prior to someone receiving the gospel. In other words, what activity is God involved in in preparing someone? Before you preach the gospel, share the gospel, plant churches, do the Jesus sermon, whatever you may want to be doing to promote the gospel in a people group or a person.

[00:06:30] What kinds of divine initiatives precede your presence there? That to me, is a very important theological point. The older language, the term it's used in the from the church fathers onward actually is a term appropriate to evangelical. The preparation of the good news to use the language just in martyr. In what ways has the what he called the low gospel. Of course, the seed of the word been spread and prepared people to receive the preaching of the word made flesh. Those are very important theological considerations. We don't always understand in what way God has prepared people. But we do know that God prepares the soil. As Betty Adecco, the African theologian, said so well, he said the missionaries didn't bring God to Africa. God brought the missionaries to Africa. I think that is the perspective that we need to have. On one hand, we are the bearers of the good news. We have a normative, unique message to bring to the world, but we certainly should have the humility, recognize that we're not the ones brain that there we're being brought there and heralded there by the call of God. And I think it's important, by the way, to maybe this is a little premature to mention this in the class, but to to at least stoke the fire a little bit of saying I at least have not lost my basic conviction of the importance of God's call in one's life. And I think it's important to recognize that we don't talk as much about that as we used to, and people often don't ask about it. But I think it's worth asking yourself, what is God calling me to? How is God speaking to me? How is God leading me? Because that, again, also acknowledges God's sovereignty.

[00:08:20] He has the right to call us forth and send us wherever he wants to send you. And it's a dangerous thing to pray. Lord, I'm willing to go wherever you want me to go. I'm willing to do whatever you want to do. That's a dangerous place to pray. But can we pray? Can we pray? That's. I pray that prayer. And this was a disaster. I've been thrown to and fro ever since I was in this big dilemma when I was in seminary. Actually, I was how came here to Gordon Conwell. And it was like 1981. And I was really, really torn about was God calling me to be a pastor, to be a teacher or a missionary. I couldn't decide. And finally one night the Lord laughed and said to me, You can do all three. So I've been busy doing all three ever since. But God may have a particular calling for you that is unique and specific to a particular thing, and you need to be open to that. So there's a divine initiative in preparation appropriate to have Angelica. Then there is the historical transmission, and that's the stuff we normally talk about. Our church has adopted a people group and we're going to plant a church in this location and we're going to do that. We're going to go and show the Jesus film. There are we have a short term mission trip to this location, some kind of historical act where we engage in some way with particular people group and some activity to promote the gospel. That's that is really the missions kind of side of this whole thing, what we call missions where God calls to do something in the historical process. But we have to see it in the context that God has already been there prior to our arrival, preparing the way, shaping hearts to receive their message or whatever.

[00:10:12] And I know in my work in India, I. Still teach in India, and I've spent a lot of time there. And in India we have now planted over 400 churches in north India. The minister I'm involved in, and I've been a part of many, many church plants in North India. And one of the amazing things is watching what happens when the gospels preached in a village. I have seen this so many times. You can preach the gospel in a village A and you can have incredible hostility. People shout at you, throw things at you, tell your Bible and just shreds people being beaten up, you know, all kinds of hostility. And go five kilometers down the road and be received with joy. It's really amazing to see God's work preparing people to receive the gospel. You can't even make general sense. All of North India is completely hardened to the gospel. It's not true. You know, maybe by comparison, North End is a very difficult field, but we found certain villages that just seem to be completely open to the gospel. And the minute you preach the gospel, they're right there to receive it. It's amazing. So I have to believe that God is preparing people, certain people, to see the gospel. We don't always know who or where, but it's certainly you can observe that as we do the historic transmission. And finally, God's still at work after you're gone. And this is the really exciting part of it. And that's what I call the indigenous assimilation, that after the message is preached, the people themselves have to assimilate that gospel and make it their own and own it. That process is itself a very transforming process, and that's the spirit which does that in our lives.

[00:12:09] Sometimes we don't trust the spirit for that process, and we don't believe that it can actually happen. But in fact, it happens all the time. The Apostle Paul went from city to city preaching the gospel, planting churches, and the Holy Spirit helped those church to assimilate it and to own it for themselves. And take, for example, the marvelous work of the Ephesians believers and colossi. You can see how they're multiplying the faith on their own without Paul's assistance. So this kind of thing is happening from the very beginning and is part of God's work. God helps churches as individuals to assimilate the gospel and to apply it to their own lives. And the African scholar London Sunday, another African scholar, made a marvelous observation in many of his books. He's a professor of world Christian at Yale University, and he's a Gambian. So here he is from The Gambia. He received all of the input of the Western missionaries, and he said, Isn't it amazing how so? Oftentimes in the 19th century, especially, a white Western missionary came in to Africa where they unknowingly promoted a gospel, which is very much steeped in a lot of cultural stuff and very ethnocentric and blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. A lot of things which today would not be mistakes that we would make but were made. But the amazing thing is how the Africans heard it, received it, and assimilated it as their own, and they were able to sift out all that much of that. That in itself is a great testimony to God's work, and we don't have to be perfect in the transmitting of the gospel. And some people are afraid to share the gospel to anybody because they haven't quite completed Robert Coleman's course of discipleship.

[00:14:03] But, you know, even if you haven't had his course on evangelism, discipleship doesn't mean you can't witness or evangelize or disciple. Now, granted, that course will help you be more effective. But let's also look at the larger picture of the great work of God to work even with our forwardness, our mistakes, to see the church established again in India. I've seen, you know, so many studies we've done, frankly, in the early years, just stupid. We just made stupid mistakes. We did the wrong thing. We we approach things wrong. We don't know what we're doing. And yet some of those early churches are our most dynamic churches today, and many of them are themselves planning churches. And it's just great to see that marvelous way of that. God has helped people to assimilate the gospel message. So this helps to put things in perspective keeping the mission of God as the great theme and the missions of the church. As part of that great theme, it reminds us that missions flows from the character and nature of God. This is not a task which the church has decided. The way the Kiwanis Club or the Lions Club decides to increase their membership. This is something that God is doing. It also encourages us that God will equip for the task. God equips us for the task at hand. It's a great reminder of God's sovereignty in the whole missionary enterprise. And one of the problems that William Kerry faces we'll see later was a kind of a hyper Calvinism, which is not true to Calvinism, not true to reformed theology. That would say because God is sovereign, we don't have to do anything. We can just sit back and wait for God to gather the elect.

[00:15:58] This is not good reform theology, and it's certainly not been the practice of the larger church. There are two expressions of the church's life. So we have to recognize God's sovereignty is there and God calls us to obey him in fulfilling the things he calls us to do. It also gives us a great certainty of the outcome. If this was merely a church, the church's endeavor, the church dreamed up the idea of Let's expand and see if we can get people and Lesotho or in Uzbekistan to become Christians, then it can hold. It could fail. But because we have this great promise in Revelation, where John sees as psychologically men and women from every tribe, language, tongue and people works for the lamb, we have Jesus own promise. Matthew 2414. The Gospel in preached in all nations, every ethnic group. Then it's a great encouragement because we know this is part of God's sovereign determination that the Gospel will be preached in all nations. And he has purchased men and women from with his blood, from every tribe and language of the world. And thankfully, it will keep missions from being anthropocentric, being man centered or human centered, and will help us to be more focused on God's activity and are not missing out on what God is doing in the world today. So that's, I guess, more of a definition background so that we will have all that we will study in its proper place. So what we'll do now is we'll begin to go back to the scriptures and we're going to look at some key passages in the in the Scriptures regarding the missionary heart of God, because we want to show that missions, the missions of the church is not rooted in certainly any kind of post informational modern plan to spread the gospel that we have all kinds of plans and strategies, but it's rooted not even in the New Testament, but rooted in the Old Testament and the very heart of God.

[00:18:16] And when Jesus comes along later and gives the Great Commission text, which was for a good amount of time on it, is all done clearly as a fulfillment of an extension of promises made in the Old Testament. So we want to clearly demonstrate the deep biblical roots of the global Plan of God to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth. So we'll try to demonstrate that by looking at a few key text. Let's turn then to Genesis chapter 12. I'm going to call this the exegetical section number one, which means this passage will be fair game for the midterm exam. So when you take time to look at really, I actually think the best way to look at this is not so much the Abrahamic covenant, maybe in that precise terms. I'm using that term and a little broader to refer to the whole patriarchal covenant. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which we kind of collectively refer to as the Abrahamic Covenant because the Abraham becomes renewed to all the patriarchs. So we actually should kind of look at the whole sweep of it. And what I want to do is to look in the text and see if we can identify three aspects to the covenant. It begins Genesis 12. It's actually made clearer and clearer as you go through this text. And this will be at least a part of demonstrating that the missionary theme and God's commitment to bring the gospel to all peoples is rooted in all three major strands of the old covenant. So what we're going to do is look at this kind of section of law. We'll look at some of them, the prophets and the writings, just to show you. I mean, again, we're just kind of going through the House, pointing out a few things, and all of this could go through a lot more in-depth exploration.

[00:20:23] But I want to begin with Genesis 12, which is God's call to Abraham. And in that passage, and for the sake of the taping, I'm going to go ahead and read versus two and three of Genesis 12. If you have your Bible, please turn with me to Genesis 12 two and three. This will be a text that you're well familiar with. And by the way, one of the passages you can memorize for the midterm, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Obviously, this is the foundational covenant of your highway to Abraham, which becomes the covenant which brings forth the entire particular covenant with the Jewish people. But it's important to recognize that when God chooses Abraham, and as that develops ultimately in the choosing of Jacob and the 12 tribes in the nation of Israel, this is never, ever intended for the very beginning to be an exclusive choosing that is chosen in order to exclude peoples. It's actually meant to be a bridge through over which and through which that God will reach the world. He says very plainly in verse three All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. And what we'll see is the covenant is reaffirmed and restated as particularly after the offering of Isaac, is that the covenant contains three distinct aspects to it. The first is what I call a numerical blessing or a personal blessing to Abraham and Abraham, where he particularly promises the Abraham that he will be given many descendants. Now, you know, of course we'll recount it, but the whole context.

[00:22:30] Abraham and Sarah, where Sarah is unable to have children, she's in advanced age. All kinds of impossibilities are present. And yet God comes and says, Covenantal, this doesn't matter because I have made a commitment that you will have many descendants. And then several metaphors in the Old Testament are invoked to reinforce the numerical image. What are the main metaphors to give a little picture of the sheer number of his descendants? Someone tell me. Yeah. Saying on the seashore, I didn't hear yours. You know, I write the stars in the sky. In other words, the dust of the earth. So there are a number of fairly dramatic metaphors that are invoked to say, we're not talking about something minor here, but, you know, can you count the stars? So we are descendants. Be look at the, you know, the sand on the seashore. This is the kind of imagery it's invoke. So Abraham Abraham being one is going to be made many. He multiplied in, as you know, from Hebrew as the whole loins of Israel is present in Abraham and God's calling it forth. Even though his wife, Sarah, is barren. And then, as we'll see, there is it's not limited to Abraham and his own descendants, but also to Israel. There'll be a national blessing to Israel. I will bless you as a people. You're going to have descendants who will take possession of the gate to their enemies. He will really reaffirm the importance of the nation of Israel. There's not just a lot of the sense that they actually multiply in slavery, but that wasn't fulfilling the covenant. The covenant was not just that they become, you know, numerous as the stars in the sky, yet be slaves in Egypt, but that they actually are formed into a nation that will be a light to the Gentiles.

[00:24:33] And so that national promise, you know, he actually uses all kind of geographic words, you know, go to the north, south, east and west. This land will belong to you and your descendants. There's a geographic clearly a geographic promise. And of course, the whole expression, the Promised land is obviously a reference to the land promised to Abraham. So this becomes a very clearly tied in to these covenant. And finally, as we saw here in the text, that this is a not only a numerical bus and Abraham, a National Geographic blessing to Israel, but a spiritual blessing to all nations. So let's look and see how this kind of plays out in the renewal of the covenants. First, if you look in Genesis 17, this is the covenant circumcision will kind of walk through these texts quickly here, but this is where his name is changed from Abraham to Abraham. And of course, as you know, the word Abraham exalted father. Some people say pride for. I don't think that's necessary necessarily, but certainly it doesn't emphasize the multiplicity of it. Abraham, father of many, because I made your father. Many nations and nations will come from you. Kings will come from you. He starts emphasizing the dramatic nature of this covenant is not just going to be blessing him. So the three parts of the covenant really begin to spell themselves out, beginning after the sacrifice of Isaac, which of course is the Lord provides the realm. And you have this text, Genesis 22, and this is one you should definitely highlight where the Lord swears to Abraham and listen for the three parts of covenant verse 17 and 18, I will surely bless you. He's speaking to Abraham and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

[00:26:41] That is clearly a numerical, personal blessing. Abraham, you are an old man. You have no, I have a descendants. You've tried it through your own methodology, but I'm telling you, I want to make your descendants many your descendants. Secondly, will take possession of the cities of their enemies. Okay, so he is envisioning here, they're not just going to multiply and be scattered all over, but they're actually going to be a force. They're going to be a nation. They'll take possession of the gate to their enemies. And finally, verse 18, And through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed because you obeyed me. He introduces in both of these cases in the Genesis 12 text, he uses the word for families and Genesis 22. The word here is peoples, peoples of the Earth. We blessed through you. This is not geographic political units, people groups. We blessed to you. So he's saying all peoples on earth, we blessed because you've obeyed me. There are the three kind of in the probably the most clearest form in Genesis 22, the three aspects of the covenant to Abraham. And later on this is renewed with each of the patriarchs. And let's just briefly look at that and we'll stop in. Company. QUESTION Maybe there in Genesis 26, look at verses 3 to 5. You have the same three points made in the renewal to Isaac with the covenant there. Stay in this land for a while and I will be with you. Will bless you for to you and your descendants, I will give all these lands. This is the second part of the covenant that you're going to be the this will be blessed and we'll have this geographic blessing that I swore to Abraham.

[00:28:40] This is this the Promised land? Verse four I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. That's the first part of the covenant, the numerical blessing. And through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed. And the Septuagint, Pontotoc, nay, all nations. The exact language that's used by Jesus in the New Testament to describe the church going to all nations. So this is very powerful language. We'll see later. This is the very text that's quoted by the Apostles to describe the theological justification for the gospel breaching Jewish walls, because this is the big theological problem of the first century. They didn't know how this thing was going to be going to all nations. And they they don't say, Oh, Jesus told us to go to all nations. They say, No, this is what was promised. They're beginning they go back to Abraham through your offspring. All nations on earth will be blessed. So it's repeated to Isaac and then the covenant repeated to Jacob and Genesis 28. If you look at versus 13 and 14, the same thing happens. I am the Lord, the God of your Father, Abraham, the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. This information about the national blessing your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you'll spread out to the west and to the east. To the north, To the south. Again, powerful numerical blessing, their many descendants. And then finally, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. So the three parts of the covenant are repeated to all of the patriarchs. And clearly you make it known that the blessing which God has given to Abraham is not meant to isolate the Jewish people in some way, that they can put God in their pocket and say, okay, we have a covenant with us and that excludes us, the world.

[00:30:49] But God chose the Jewish people in order to bring his blessing to all nations. They are the bridge through which he is going to redeem the world and through which his glory. You may know, nations will come interesting to the light of your rising. Israel is going to be a light to the nations. That's the title, by the way, of that marvelous book by Walter Kaiser, our President, which explores this whole theme as an autism scholar. He has an entire book on just the theme of missions in the Old Testament. Israel as a light to the nations be well-worth picking up our books and are you'd find it very, very helpful. Biblical study. And he touches on a number of these text and by the way, he makes a strong case grammatically in Genesis 12 that it's clearly through them that the world is being blessed. It is not that they are simply blessed themselves, but it is through them that the world is blessed. And you can follow that argument carefully through his book. There are some people who argue grammatically various things, but clearly the covenant is intended that God is boss in Abraham, so that he will be a blessing and they will be a blessing to the world. Okay. Any questions, comments about the kind of the basic structure of this covenant and the implications, especially for the third part of the covenant, that from the very beginning we have language in the covenant which points to nations being blessed, not just to Abraham or a particular nation being blessed. Comments or thoughts. You go with the peoples of the nations distinction. Yes, actually, you have in the Old Testament several different words, people words. And then later on, that gets translated into the Septuagint, the Greek version, into several different Greek words.

[00:32:54] We'll actually look at this more extensively in the New Testament. The main point to recognize is that in the two main words that are used in the Old Testament, they're both people words, not geographic words. So if you use a word like kingdom, if he said all kingdoms of the world be blessed, that generally refers to a political unit. We like saying Iraq or we blessed or Germany we blessed. But actually the word that's used is a more particular word, the Genesis 12 as the specific word which can be translated. Families of the Earth, all families be blessed and the larger word. All ethnic groups or people grew to be blessed. So it's a people language rather than geographic language. We'll actually explore. We won't do this in the Hebrew, but in the Greek we'll explore probably ten or 15 different Greek words that are used or could have been used. And that'll help us to see the nature of what words are actually chosen in the New Testament. When we get to the great commissions, but at the same basic distinctions there. So when you get to the Greek translation of the Old Testament, they do use the word ethnic, which is the word word ethnic from as opposed to word like vessel or kingdom or some kind of political kind of word. Okay. Let's see if we can chart, at least in broad form, how Israel did on these three parts of the covenant and how in what way were they fulfilled. If you turn over to Exodus chapter one, you begin to meet up with for the first time some fairly dramatic multiplication, a numerical vocabulary that we have not yet met with. Because when we get to the Book of Genesis, the end of Genesis, and they make the sojourn down to Egypt, the number is quite small.

[00:34:51] There's some variations about how many, but we're talking about less than 100 people are brought down. So when you have in fact in excess one verse five, it says This is a Jacob numbered 70 in all. Then there's some macerated text, Dead Sea Scrolls, which says 75. You have the quotation Act 714 which gives us a relatively small number. You have the course. Those that are already down there, Joseph and his children, Manasa, Ephraim and so forth. So you put it together. It's a fairly, you know, very countable group. And then I don't I think we have like we only have like 75 in this room. I mean this is it you're at and it's a very countable number. Can you think about that? This is the descendants of Israel. Here you are. So when you get down into Egypt, that completely changes and that begins to be given to us in the text game verse six and seven, says Joseph, That generation died. That says the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous. So the land is filled with them. From this point on, there's no more counting going on until we get to the the of course, the very important text of David, who counts all the fighting men, which has all kinds of issues theologically with why he did that and why he shouldn't have done that. But one of the issue, one of the points is that they were uncountable, which was a testament to God's sovereignty, because God said, you're a nobody your bearer, and you can't have any by any of that and now make you so many, you can never count them. So here they are. You have this kind of multiplication language that's used here.

[00:36:37] And finally, I know we're zipping through a ton of material, but this is just to kind of give us the broad outline of these three parts of the covenant. When you get to Deuteronomy after the wilderness wanderings and they're about to take possession of the land. This is where Moses actually quotes the language of the covenant to describe what's happened in due only chapter one. This is one of the Moses sermons on the plains of Moab as they're about to enter into the Promised Land. So here you have the this is the recounting of the whole thing. Deuteronomy, the second law. So in that process, Moses looks out over the people. He talks about how the Lord is too heavy a burden for Him to carry because it's not just managing a small group. The Lord, your God has increased your number so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky. Now, this is the first time, though, we have a few places where multiplication language is used. This is the first time that the actual language of the covenant is invoked. So, Abraham, they made a covenant which promised you will be as many as the stars in the sky is now explicitly pointed out by Moses that it has happened. So if you look at the fulfillment of the covenant into the three parts of it, there is no issue that this first part is fulfilled. It's interesting that today if you go to the here it is this just came out, the international missionaries or let's just see how many people confess Judaism. It's probably around 18 million or something. Let me just give you the always good to get exact statistics in terms of how this has changed over the years in 2004.

[00:38:39] Okay. He's saying that right now it's just under 15 million are moving up to 17 million in 2025. So this is a numerical kind of, you know, assessment that's being made even today. And you have Moses making an empirical statement about the sheer size of Israel. This first, by the come is simply empirical, then not attached to it is just saying you are none. You're going to be so many that it can't be counted. That's it. It's what happened. It's argument fulfilled. Now the second part of the covenant becomes more difficult. Each of these becomes more difficult to measure or talk about easily. The second part, of course, deals with the whole national inheritance. Before we get to that, let me just mention, at least in passing, that in Deuteronomy, Moses never forgets that the covenant includes all three In one hand. You could say, Well, there's no question that Moses understands one and two. Moses says, okay, you're you're now as many as the stars in the sky dead on fulfillment. The actual language is invoked. Part one of the Covenant. The whole point of this, the context of Moses sermons, is they're about to take the conquest of the promised land. They're about to enter the land. They're no longer slaves. They're the people of God they've met. They're in covenant with God. So number two is on the verge of being fulfilled, especially under the Ministry of Joshua. But he doesn't forget the larger context. In fact, he says, the Lord will establish you as doing 28, verse nine The Lord will establish you as His holy people, as He promised you on oath. So He is again invoking the covenant. You will not just be numerically great, but you're going to be a great nation.

[00:40:36] All right. But then it literally says if you keep the commands, the Lord your God, this is the contingency side of the whole thing with the exile. Verse ten Then all the peoples on earth will see that you're called by the name of the Lord and they will fear you. So Moses recognizes the global importance of this, that this is going to you going to be awe inspiring to the nation. They're going to see God's work in your midst and they're going to be drawn to Yahweh and, of course, all kinds of provisions in the law about receiving the foreigner and how to incorporate the foreigner into the people of God. All of this there not to be a separate people in this mission sense. They are to be separate in the sense of holiness and their righteousness before God, but it's only so that they could be a bridge of blessing to the nations. The first and second part of the covenant are fulfilled. The second part under Joshua, you know, it's a difficult call. You can make it as well as I can. You go through Joshua, when you ask the question, at what point do the Israelites take the land? At what point do they successfully receive the inheritance that they were promised under the Abraham Covenant? And it's a bit nebulous because there are still little pockets that they have difficulty resolving. They never quite deal with all the nations completely, but substantially it's achieved. And the scripture says they were at peace. And, you know, from Denver, Sheba, there is a substantial fulfillment of it. Some people argue there is a complete fulfillment of it. It's a matter of, I think, an open debate that I haven't fully resolved my own mind.

[00:42:21] But the main point is that it is at least substantially, if not completely fulfilled in the Ministry of Joshua. The problem is, well, does it matter how much you debate how much they took of the land, the highlighted amount, 95% or 100%. The real point seems to me is that the. They lost it. They weren't able to hold on to what they had because disobedience. So much of the Old Testament is the struggle about the fact that they weren't even able to enjoy the inheritance they were promised, and they eventually were kicked out to the Babylonian and the Sunni Babylonian exiles. So by the time you get to 722 in 586 B.C., everything has changed anyway. So it's hard to begin to talk about the third part of the covenant when part two is in massive jeopardy. And so it's almost a theoretical point about how much they took earlier. When that time we're talking about, we're now on a point of crisis about it. So with the exile, it becomes more difficult for the Israelites to capture a global vision, which is why Isaiah's prophecy is so important. As we'll look at later on, we'll touch base on a few text Isaiah to show how he clearly has the whole picture in mind. Isaiah undoubtedly sees the whole thing. Even in exile, he sees where God is calling the witness to go and the implications of the covenant. But I just want to establish this point deep in the law and how the covenants confirmed that the basis of the Torah is not untethered from a global heart of God for the nations of the world. So from the very beginning of the covenant of Abraham, we have God revealing his desire to bless all nations, all peoples, all families of the earth.

[00:44:25] Now, how that happens and the role that Christ plays, of course, at that point we have to wait a lot. There's a lot of riches and gems in this that are hidden, but we cannot say and we'll see this. We get the New Testament later that the New Testament initiate something new. The whole point is that this is an expansion of and a fulfillment of the promises originally made to Abraham, which are find in fulfillment through the witness of the church. Oh, there's so much more we could look at, but we want to at least establish this foundational point in the law. Comments, Questions about the three parts of the covenant. The basic observations. Yes. Was your point for Deuteronomy 28, nine and ten that was supporting the third promise that this was a reference to these? The overall text reinforces both, but certainly verse ten does point to the third, not in the sense of them necessarily. The language of blessing is not invoked here. It doesn't say that all peoples on the earth will be blessed, but it does say that they will see that you're calling them the Lord and they will fear you. So you have the fact that they are not living out their life for God in isolation from the world. That's really the only thing I would say from this text isn't saying more than that, but it does at least remind them. And we'll say that this is a big theme in David's writings in the Psalms, that then the world will see this. The language of blessing is invoked and the Old Testament we'll see later. But they are not being chosen in isolation from the world. That's the point. And then the application for us is that you were not saved by God in isolation from a lost world.

[00:46:22] And if you have a theology that creates kind of this community of salvation, apart from our responsibility and mandate the blessing of the world, and your theology is weak. So you have to understand that even Israel, in their particularity of their calling in covenant in the law, the prophets and all of that is still mean made in the context that they are a light, a witness nations, and that includes blessing and judgment. And this text may be as much about judgment as blessing. It will be a blessing to the nations, and ultimately it'll be a judgment to the nations because the accountability is there, but it will bring us to other other places.