Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do We Still Need the Church? | Torah | Genesis 49:28-50:14

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Churches are consistently in the news for scandals, drama and celebrity pastors. Is God still using the church for his plan? Should we still trust the church as an institution? In today's episode, Patrick shares what we can learn about the church from Genesis 49:28-50:14. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 49:28-50:14 Resources: Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power by Andy Crouch Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. I recently finished the Discovery Channel's three-part documentary about Hillside Church and the scandal around it with its celebrity pastor, Carl Lenz. Now, it's a story you've heard. I've heard way, way too many times.

A young guy moves to the big city. He launches a church that grows exponentially. He becomes a celebrity pastor. And he ends up rolling up to his church like a celebrity in a limo with an entourage wearing his designer clothes. And then he becomes a pastor to celebrities going on trips with Justin Bieber hanging out with Jay-Z. And then the scandal breaks. He'd been cheating on his wife for months before the scandal opened up. And then the scandal worsened because it turns out that this kind of behavior has been a part of his life well before he even planted the church in New York.

And it's pretty clear that Hillson covered it up to protect the brand. And then the show comes out. out as it always comes out and people love it they watch it it's a vicious cycle isn't it we love celebrities so we want church celebrities we also love celebrity drama and we absolutely love a celebrity falling from grace and so of course christian media gives us more of what we want those christian celebrities falling from grace the casualties in these stories aren't just the people who are hurt by these celebrity pastors it's the reputation of jesus it's not just that the other casualty is our own trust in his plan to use the church for God's ends. The other casualty is our own relationship

with our own church. As these shows, they often make us more suspicious, more cynical of the church leaders in the church that we attend, or the church people were around what's really happening behind the scenes. Is that you? Maybe watching these stories unfold, maybe seeing hard things in your church, but guess what? No church is perfect, and you've probably seen some tough things. Have you found yourself deconstructing or wondering if maybe we really even need a church? Or maybe you're just perplexed. I mean, why in the world did Jesus and the apostles launch a church? Why not just send the Holy Spirit into tons of individuals? Why this whole thing, this whole apparatus around it? I want you to know you're not alone. I mean, I watch these shows. I listen to them. I feel the

exact same way. And I've thought all these questions to myself. In fact, from time to time, I've tried to make it be true, but I'm always reminded that the further I get away from the church, the further I get away from Jesus. The further I get away from the body, the more useless I become. I'm like a hand chopped off from its arm. And so isn't this a paradox? Isn't this frustrating? That on the one hand, the church and institutions like it can do so much bad, so much evil, so much wrong. And yet, on the other hand, God seems totally bends on using them, using the church, for his purposes. We can't grow in our faith without it. Isn't it a paradox? Isn't that frustrating? Don't you wonder why? To understand why we need to understand institutions. In his book,

playing God, Andy Crouch, he talks a lot about institutions. Now, I get it. The idea of institutions doesn't sound very exciting to anyone. That term sounds kind of stuffy and boring. And yet, when we have these conversations about the church, that's exactly what we're talking about. Institutions are the places where humans come together to reflect God's image and to exercise tremendous collective power for good or for evil, for justice, or for injustice. Institutions are the place where most of our life excitement happens. It happens in the institution of family or in the institution of your workplace or the institution of your church or your school or your favorite NFL team. Much of what we love about life, much of what makes life

interesting and exciting is actually at its root institutional. If we want to understand institutions, then we need to understand what comprises them. How are they built? And all institutions have at least four things. They have artifacts, arenas, rules, and rules. Now, again, I realize this can sound stuffy and boring, but go along with me on this because I think it's really interesting. Football is actually a great place to start because each of these four things is so clear. The artifacts of football are the uprights, the uniforms, the clothes that the fans wear, the football itself. These are the things that are used in the game, but they also can all represent the game on their own. The arena is, well, the arena, you know, the stadium.

Or maybe it's the basement man cave where the game is watched surrounded by team paraphernalia. The roles are also pretty clear. There's players, there's coaches, there's refs, fans. And of course, there's the opposing team with all its fans. And everybody has a different role to play in the game. And of course, there's rules. Some of those rules are the ones that are written down, the ones that are in forced by the referees. But there's other rules. There's rules for fans. Being a good sport,

treating the other team well, or maybe shouting at the top of your lungs when the other team is on third down. You can take out any of those four parts, an artifact, the arena, the rules, the rules, and you can still kind of play a football game. For example, you could have a bunch of pros pulling off their choreographed plays without refs or with the opposing team. I mean, it still works. But you have to have everything to have the full-blown institutional effect. You have to have everything for it to be fun, for it to be meaningful, for it to be a real game, you know? And this is exactly why they had to add fans and fan sounds into games during COVID, because without the fans, something was just missing.

Institutions have an incredible power to do things that individuals can't do. It's not just how football works, it's how medicine works. The artifacts of medicine are doctors' tools and machines. The arena is the hospital or the doctor's office. The roles are the nurses or the doctors, the patients. The rules can be found on those little prescription bottles or in the careful way that someone is prepped for surgery. And I'm using this medical example just to point out that institutions aren't imaginary. The rules and roles aren't aren't artifacts associated with them aren't just make-believe.

They aren't just games. They're complex, connected systems that accomplish much more than any individual could do on their own. But that takes us to the dark side of institutions. Think about the Jim Crow South and the institution of segregation. The artifacts are the separate drinking fountains, the separate buses, and the lynching trees. The arenas were the public spaces that were shared by black and white people. The roles were all racialized. What did it mean to be a white man, a white woman, a black man, a black woman?

And the rules of racial hierarchy and violence were enforced both by the law and by vigilantes. You see, institutions might sound stuffy, but when you think about that example, you begin to realize that they have a tremendous power. And for that reason, the Bible is incredibly sober about institutions. As we come to the end of the book of Genesis, we've watched as God as actually developing a small institution, the family of Abraham. And there's great good that's done by this family. I mean, this is the family that saves the Near East in Egypt from a seven-year-long famine. people would have starved without this institution. And yet, of course, it also does great evil. There's violence. There's deception. There's selfishness. Like all institutions, it transcends one lifetime.

It actually takes three generations to establish the institution of Israel, which is true of most of our institutions today as well. But here's what I want you to see. God's answer to the evil that has done in the institution of Israel isn't to dissolve the institution. He doesn't get rid of it. His answer is to confront it and to push that family, that institution, to push them forward to to strive towards the ideal. And so as we come to the end of Jacob's life in Genesis 49, it seems like the author wants us to see all of this. He wants us to see the glory of institutions and he wants us to see the ruin of institutions. In this story, we witnessed the death of Jacob.

And as we die, again, we see the glory and the ruin. We see the ruin in his death. And yet we see the glory in the fact that he's surrounded by a family that could not exist without the institution of Israel existing. We see the glory in the sense that he's surrounded by these Egyptians and ancient near Eastern people who would have starved during the famine without the institution of Israel. Let's just look at this in Genesis 49, verse 29. This is what Jacob says to Joseph. bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite and the cave that is in the field at Machpala to the east of Mamma. to the east of Mamry and the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite

to possess as a burying place. They buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There's your first generation. They buried Isaac and Rebecca and his wife. There's your second generation. And there, I buried Leah. There's your third generation. The field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites. When Jacob finished commanding his sons, there's your fourth generation. He drew up his feet into bed. and breathed his last and was gathered to his people. Notice, Jacob names all of the generations that built the institution called Israel, all the generations that God worked through

for the purpose of blessing the nation around him. And the authors want you to see this. They want you to see the ideal, what Israel was supposed to be, which was the nation that blessed all the nation. They want you to see this. And the way that they do that is by showing the way that the Egyptians respond to Jacob's death.

50, verse 2. So the physicians embalmed Israel. That was Jacob's other name, Israel. 40 days were required for it. That's how many days were required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him for 70 days. Just stop and think about that. When's the last time you remember a people group weeping for one person for 70 days?

70 days of mourning. That's how much Israel and his family blessed the ancient Near East in Egypt. Israel kept them alive through his seven-year-long famine. and now they weep for 70 days. The author goes on to say that so many Egyptian officials travel with Joseph to bury Jacob in the promised land that the Canaanite inhabitants say in verse 11, this is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians. Jacob wasn't even Egyptian, but these Canaanites are seeing all these Egyptians mourning

him and what he meant to them, and they just assume he must be an Egyptian, but that proves the point. If Israel's doing its job as an institution, it will be blessing the nation so much so that they might even be mistaken for a member of those nations. Let's go back to our original question in this podcast because I realize we've gone around in a long circle. What do we do with the institution of the church? An institution that can do great good and do great evil. Well, I believe the answer is remarkably straightforward. We can't give in to cynicism. We can't deconstruct it. Because if that's what you do, all you will do is leave behind you rubble and ruin. That's not the option that God gives

his family. We don't get to become cynical. We don't get to deconstruct it. Instead, like Joseph, we have to become builders. We have to become builders who point and push this God-made institution towards what God wanted it to always be. To do that, we have to repent. We have to say all the things that we've gotten wrong in the past. And we have to forgive. We have to forgive the institution for the ways that it's failed us. But then we take the third step of becoming stewards, the people who are stewarding and guiding this institution towards the end that God made it for, that we would be the people who bless the nations, that we would be the place where Jesus' name is proclaimed, that we would be the institution where God's healing power is experienced in a tangible way. You see, God knows the power

of institutions. We won't get it perfect, but if we are willing to repent, if we are willing to forgive, and if we are willing to become stewards, we can pass off the church better than we found it. we can become the medium through which God is bringing his kingdom to earth. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.