The People of God

Made For : an audio journey

The writers of books of the Bible come from an age where they were really masters of imagery and storytelling. Throughout the New Testament followers of Christ, like you and me, were described in many ways. So, what do these descriptions mean for each of us?

Full Transcript below, or at missiongap.org/podcasts

'Made for' CONTRIBUTORS:

• Andrew Scott – From Ireland, living in the USA. Serves as President of OM in the US, and author of “Scatter: Go Therefore and Take Your Job With You”
• Belén Peters – From Chile, living in the USA. Serves as Career Advisor with Elevalto, career advisors for Jesus followers looking to take their life and skills to another part of the world.
• Decio De Carvalho – From Brazil, living in Puerto Rico. Serves as Executive Director of COMIBAM, an alliance of national mission groups across twenty-five Ibero-American countries.
• Ewout van Oosten – From the Netherlands, living in the Netherlands. Serves as Global Director of TeenStreet, a youth discipleship movement in over 50 countries.
• Glenn Packiam – From Malaysia, living in the USA. Serves as Associate Senior Pastor of New Live Church, and author of “Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus”
• Jessica Shumba – From Zimbabwe, living in Zimbabwe. Serves as National Director of OM in Zimbabwe, mobilising Zimbabwean Jesus followers to share Gods love.
• Katherine Lee – From the USA, living in the USA. Serves as Content and Creative Director for the Fuller Leadership Platform at Fuller Theological Seminary.
• Lawrence Tong – From Singapore, living in Singapore. Serves as International Director of OM, a global community of Jesus followers, united to share God’s love with those who don’t know it.
• Vaibhav – From India, living in India. Serves among people unreached with the love of Christ, focusing on the Tribals, the rag pickers, farmers and migrant workers. (Last name omitted for security)

Bible readings: Mason Peters, Mariela Morbelli, Carla Moran, Matt Tooker, Anthea Godsmark, Philip Godsmark

Hosted by: Geoff Peters - Geoff is a huge fan of coffee and market research, but what really gets his heart pounding is inspiring people to share God’s love with the world. He is a deep thinker driven to understand the fears, concerns, beliefs and motivations of Christians better. Through the Mission Gap Project, Geoff hopes to encourage believers to step beyond the safety of their comfort zones and love others for Christ.

Transcript: Series one, episode two: The People of God.

Geoff:

The writers of books of the Bible come from an age where they were really masters of imagery and storytelling. Throughout the New Testament followers of Christ, like you and me, were described in many ways.

Reader 2:

1 Peter 2:9. You are chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.

Reader 3:

Romans 9:25-26. Those who are not my people I will call my people. They shall be called children of the living God.

Katherine:

John 1:12-13. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Geoff:

Here's Glenn. I asked him to explain this connectedness that Peter and Paul talk about, this new way of defining a people group, the people of the Messiah.

Glenn:

People define or form bonds of solidarity based on all kinds of things. So early on, ostensibly, solidarities formed around kinship lines or family lines and you know the family of so-and-so and then the family of so-and-so. And then you see this New Testament, tribes. But even so, the people of God in the Old Testament was one large family of Abraham, the family of the 12 sons and all of that, the 12 tribes. But there was always this hope, there was always this promise actually in Genesis 12 and 15 that God was going to use that one family to bless all the families of the earth. And so God's dream was to have for himself one people comprised of all the families of the earth. That's always been God's dream. That's been the mission of God from the beginning.

Glenn:

And there are moments in Israel's history where they forgot that, just like there's moments in our history when we forget that. And we think, no, God is an American or God votes this way, or God is ... We shape an image of the mission of God around our own national or ethnic loyalties or identities. And it's not that those things get erased. I want to be clear about this. It's not that the family of God erases those things and we all become a generic people. Again, the vision in the book of Revelation is of every tribe and every tongue. So the tribes don't go away. The families don't go away. The ethnos, the ethnic distinctions don't go away. Distinctions don't go away, but divisions do.

Glenn:

And that was what was so radical about the church in the first century is Rome, the world, up to that point had never known a way of defining yourself as a social identity, as a social group that didn't follow racial lines or ethnic lines or national lines. They understood citizenship, and they understood ethnicity and they understood language and culture. But to say no, there's a new way to define people and that is the people of the Messiah, the people of Jesus, the people who belong to him. And it was so radical that Paul had to continually write to Jews and Gentiles in his congregations and to say, this is how y'all need to figure out how to eat together and how to worship together and how to be patient with one another because it's radical.

Geoff:

Decio grew up in Brazil, alongside families from all over the world. He describes the privilege and beauty of engaging in different cultures, and what a picture that presented to him of the people of God.

Decio:

Yes. I went to school with Japanese, Chinese, Armenian people, German background, people from many parts of the world. And then of course met later on with Koreans and others who migrated to Brazil. So this is all just in Brazil. I wasn't aware of how beautiful that was, that we were friends. We went to school together. We would go to each other's homes to do homework or projects. And I would see or hear the family speaking in Japanese or Chinese. And then they would serve me some snack or even a meal. And I had the opportunity to see this happen, even though I wasn't aware of how beautiful that was, just being able to be part of God's beautiful creation, his vast and varied creation of different ethnic groups.

Decio:

And of course, then later, as I participated in God's mission in various parts of the world, having the privilege of meeting and getting to know people from other cultures, learning a language and just seeing also all of the reflections of God's nature and God's creation around the world through people of different color, different tastes, different sounds and so forth. So God has given us a privilege of seeing his beauty through the variety of people that live on his planet, his world.

Geoff:

This is Andrew. He was born and raised in Ireland, but now lives in the US.

Andrew:

We have to go back to the beginning, and I think we can go to Genesis 1 and see that. We can go to Ephesians 1 and see it, where we clearly see that God had a desire in a sense to make his dwelling ... He wanted a people for himself. Of course, God is existing in eternity as the Godhead, son, father, son and spirit. And in this community, they decide that they wanted to create other people who would get to enjoy this community, which is a mind blowing idea that God made us for himself to be part of his family, which is just mind blowing.

Katherine:

You know, I think you become the people of God by doing what the way is, like by enacting what Jesus called us to.

Geoff:

That's Katherine again. We were talking about how this people of God went beyond geographical boundaries, how it was around faith lines, not blood lines. Here she is again.

Katherine:

I mean, you look back at all the patriarchs, they weren't qualified by anything other than God's calling. They had to live into becoming the people of God, and it was a risky thing because they had no real proof this is actually going to work out. I mean, you think of Abraham, he's just a wanderer and God says you're going to become a great nation. But he had to step out and risk in faith. And I think we're doing that now. So I think the people of God are in transition. We're always becoming. We haven't arrived. And I think that should give us a sense of humility about ourselves and about others and about what God is doing.

Katherine:

And so that sense of "I think I'm in and you're out" that goes along with political clashes, that has no place in the people of God. Like the people of God is we're people on the way and we are defined by a reign, not a territory. It's God's reign. It's not a territory. It's not a geophysical location. So any attempt to locate the church and the people of God within geography is just missing the point. And it's hard and there's a sense of displacement. There's a sense that we are always a journeying people, like we're not at home. We're exiles and we're being formed and we're on the way.

Geoff:

Katherine and I went on to talk about the challenge we feel as believers in the way we view those who believe differently to us. How do we come alongside and love people who oftentimes don't look like me, believe like me and love them as fellow people of God called just as we are?

Katherine:

If we are supposed to be the image of that, then we mirror his purposes for creation, which includes others who are different than us. And that purpose is love and reconciliation. And I don't mean that in a pie in the sky, you do you, and I'll accept that, and I'll do me and we'll all just sing a nice song. I think love is concrete and it's painful. I mean, certainly the cross says that, to love looks like this. It's sacrificial. It's self-giving. And it is rooted in the truth and it calls out what is false.

Geoff:

You've been listening to the Made For podcast series, part of the Mission Gap project from Operation Mobilization with me, Geoff. To find out more, go to missiongap.org. And if you would, please rate this podcast in your app store and leave a comment so others can more easily find the series. In the next episode.