Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Does Jesus Heal Human Society? | Who Is Jesus? | Jeremiah 29.7

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're asking, who is Jesus? Jesus didn't come to take us to heaven. Let that sink in for a moment. Go through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and look at all the purpose statements Jesus gave of why he came. And you'll never find one that says what most of us believe.

Starting point is 00:00:32 that is that Jesus came to take us out of this world and get us off into heaven. He never said that. He had a much bigger plan than that. Jesus came to heal our world. Now, many Christians today don't have a category for that. Jesus wants to heal our world? See, most of us probably think that Jesus is going to return someday, take everybody off to heaven, destroy this world, and maybe start over.

Starting point is 00:01:01 but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. And Jesus was clear that it was through him that God's kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus's plan was to heal the world. Now Patrick and I are doing some stuff over on YouTube. We're teaching a class called Who is Jesus. And we have a whole session on that we don't believe in Take Me to Heaven, Jesus. If you're interested in that, go over to the show notes and click on the link there. YouTube provides us an opportunity to spend a little bit of a little bit.

Starting point is 00:01:31 more time to show some pictures and images, Bible verses. I think you might like it. So again, the link is in the show notes if you want it. One of the reasons that Christians have come to the wrong conclusion about Jesus' mission is because we have this tendency to skip over the first half of the story and start in the middle. War of the Worlds was a radio drama in the late 1930s. And the story of the War of the World was that aliens had invaded our country and we're taking it over. Well, it's a fictional story, obviously, right? But a lot of people didn't tune into the beginning

Starting point is 00:02:09 where it was introduced as a fictional story. And the way the War of the Worlds was written, it sounded like breaking news. And so the people who tuned in late really thought that there were aliens invading, and they freaked out and did a lot of crazy stuff because they thought our world was being taken over. Well, it wasn't.

Starting point is 00:02:31 It was a radio drama, but because they missed the beginning, they didn't know how to interpret the story that they heard. Kind of the same thing. If we miss out on the first half of the story, what you might think of as the Old Testament, but what the early church called their scriptures, if you miss out on that story, you'll never understand what Jesus was really about. We've got to understand the context that Jesus came in to understand what his mission was. So let's start at the beginning and hit some highlight so that we can understand Jesus' mission better.

Starting point is 00:03:08 When God created, he partnered with human beings made in his image and that God was going to rule the world through his image bearers. But then sin enters the world when Adam and Eve rebel against God and usurp his authority. So God's response to a sinful broken world is not to take the Christians out up to heaven. heaven. Instead, God reboots his plan. He reboots his kingdom by calling Abraham and making a promise to Abraham that through his descendants, all the peoples on earth will be blessed. I think it's really clear in Genesis 1819. Listen to what God says. For I have chosen him, now he's talking about Abraham. for I have chosen Abraham so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. So let's make some sense out of this.

Starting point is 00:04:14 God chooses Abraham and tells him to direct his children, his descendants. And by the way, all Christians are descendants of Abraham by faith in Christ. He says, I choose you. Now you teach your descendants to follow me. And through your descendants, through your descendants following me, I am going to bring about the blessing that I promised you. Let's just read it again just to make sure that's right. For I have chosen him, Abraham, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord. So he's chosen him so that he will teach all of his descendants to follow God's ways, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. The way God is going to bring about the promise to bless all the peoples of the earth through Abraham is through Abraham teaching his descendants what is right and just, teaching them kingdom ethics, God's ethics. Now, this promise to bless all the peoples of the world through Abraham and his descendants

Starting point is 00:05:23 was repeated to Abraham's son Isaac and to Isaac's son Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons that made up the 12 tribes in Israel. Israel eventually rebels against God and is sent into exile in Babylon. Listen to the instructions God gives them while they're in Babylon. He says, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you will profit. prosper. That's found in Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 7. In other words, when they find themselves in exile, God doesn't say, I'm going to come and take you out of it. Instead, his first instruction is to say, to pray and seek the welfare of the city. God has a heart for the world. God doesn't abandon the world. He doesn't give up on the world, but he calls his people to seek the prosperity and the welfare of the world.

Starting point is 00:06:23 Now we've got to fast forward a little bit. This is 10-minute Bible talk, not two-hour Bible talks, right? And so we fast forward all the way to the coming of Jesus. And when Jesus comes, he announces the kingdom of God and he chooses 12 disciples. Now, that's not a coincidence. When he chooses those 12 disciples, what he's doing is he's saying, I'm reconstituting the people of God. Just like Jacob have 12 sons of Israel. So I call 12 disciples.

Starting point is 00:06:53 because I am bringing the people of God back together. And then Jesus calls his people to live by kingdom ethics. He calls them to pray that his kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. So that should sound very familiar because remember back in Genesis 18, God chose Abraham to teach his descendants God's ethics so that the world will be blessed through them. Now here comes Jesus, reconstituting the people of God, calling them to live by kingdom ethics, telling them to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Jesus is about healing the world through his church, through his people. But it's not as if the world just gets progressively better over time. No, Jesus says that he must return. And when he returns, he will bring judgment against those who oppose him and he will finally set up his kingdom. Jesus does not come to take us to heaven, but instead to bring heaven to earth, that what we've been praying, that God's will be done on earth as in heaven, is now actualized at the end of the Bible. What we find in Revelation 21 is that the new heaven and new earth comes down out of heaven and resides here. That God's dwelling place is now here on this world, a redeemed world, a transformed world, a renewed world, a renewed world. world, but it is here on this world that he dwells with his people. It is here on this world, a transformed world, that he wipes every tear from every eye. And then in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, what we see is imagery that reminds us of the Garden of Eden. And here's the payoff line. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be

Starting point is 00:08:52 any curse. God doesn't give up on this world. God doesn't abandon his creation. Instead, in Jesus, he's redeeming it. One day, there will no longer be any curse here, that all the nations will be healed by God, that he will keep his promise that he made to Abraham, that through his descendants, God would heal the world. So what's this mean for us? Gosh, it totally changes the way we live. In our own personal lives, it means that God isn't just cared about the spiritual areas of our life, but he's concerned with every area, that every area is a spiritual area. And then in our world, it means that Christians are called to be actively a part of what God is doing to heal the nations. Is there injustice or inequality or racism or oppression or war?

Starting point is 00:09:48 Well, God calls his people to speak into those things. God calls his people to live in such a way as to show that one day Jesus is going to return and judge those who oppose them and set up his kingdom here. He's going to undo the curse that has led to so much sin, that has led to so much pain, that one day God will come and renew his creation. So sometimes I think that because Christians are hoping, to be taken out of this world and taking to heaven, that we give up on this world, that we say that what happens doesn't really matter, that somehow this is like polishing the

Starting point is 00:10:29 brass on the Titanic. Why worry about this world when it's sinking? But the truth is that when sin entered the world all the way back in Genesis 3, that this world already sunk, that we are already at the bottom of the sea. And then what Jesus is doing is coming back. to restore us, to salvage the Titanic, to bring it up out of the depths of the sea, to renew it. Sometimes I think Christians don't participate in the big conversations that our world is having about the crucial issues of our day because we think that it doesn't really matter that we're going to escape out of here and go to heaven someday. But if you see that God is going to heal the nations and keep the promise he made to Abraham back in Genesis 12,

Starting point is 00:11:17 then Christians should be actively concerned about all the things that God is concerned about, that we should work for the healing of the nations now, that we need to heed the instructions that Jeremiah gave the people in Babylon back in Jeremiah 29-7. Seek the welfare of the city. Seek the welfare of the world because God is concerned about every square inch of his creation. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Does Jesus Heal Human Society? | Who Is Jesus? | Jeremiah 29.7

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