Abraham and Pentecost (Gen 11 - 12; Gal 3)

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, how are you doing today? I hope you are well. And uh Tim uh Tim here, and we are diving deep into our Living Scent series. This is the last week on Living Sent. Um so a couple episodes, and then we'll start our next teaching series on 10 words of life. So um reflecting on this Pentecost, you know, on Sunday I taught on Pentecost, um, that moment uh recorded in Acts chapter 2, uh, 50 days after Passover, um, when Jesus uh had been crucified, and uh this outpouring of the Spirit on the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. And I just wanted to connect it into some of the trajectories from the Hebrew scriptures. Uh Pentecost, this moment of God's Spirit Um being poured out, and all those different um people from different nations, people who spoke different languages, and people even with different ethnic backgrounds. I mentioned on Sunday um this was a Jewish pilgrimage festival, so these were all worshipers of Yahweh God, um, but a number of them were converts to Judaism, and so still had a different ethnic uh background by birth. And so, you know, this real kind of um, you know, multi-ethnic representation, multilingual representation of the the Mediterranean world at the time. And uh, you know, one of the things we didn't have a lot of time, we didn't have time to go into on Sunday is how much this is a fulfillment of trajectories uh from the very beginning of scripture. And I just wanted to touch on a couple of these uh with you. Um, how uh God was healing things that He's wanted to heal from the very beginning. Uh Genesis, of course, starts off Genesis 1 and 2. Uh the world is created in all its goodness. Uh we see this picture of Shalom, people in right relationship. And then, of course, Genesis 3 is the story of the fall. Um the man and woman, they uh they disobey God, eat from the tree, introduce sin and death into the human experience. And then through Genesis uh 3 through 11, you see the continued outworkings of sin and violence. Um to the point where the world gets uncreated, decreated in the story of Noah and the flood. Um, the world again becomes formless and void in a sense. Uh, and then at the end of Genesis uh 3 through 11, kind of all the different ways that um the effects of sin are being explored, at uh at Genesis 11, it ends with the story of the Tower of Babel. And um, the Tower of Babel, in some ways, is like in the same way that humans felt individually, in Genesis 3, we see kind of this a whole society kind of committed to arrogant building up itself in the story of the Tower of Babel. Of course, you know, they're building this tower, trying to reach up to heaven, and God comes down and then introduces this confusion of languages, um, and so they're not able to complete the tower of this arrogant tower of Babel project. Um, and so um this all these languages are introduced to the people of Babel. Uh, you know, it says uh Genesis um 11 um verse 7 come let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand one another. So the Lord scattered them from there, they're all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. Um that is why it is called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of the whole world. And so it's this, you know, this kind of fracturing of humanity at this point. And um, people, you know, the people that can no longer communicate in the same way. Right on the heels of that, you have this introduction. So Genesis, so Babel, this introduction of all these different nations, all these different languages, right on the heels of that, we get the story of um the call of Abram. And the call of Abram in Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is God's his kind of initial launching of his rescue in response to all this sin and brokenness from Genesis 3 through 11. And so um, in response to all this sin and brokenness, God we're told that the Lord said to Abram, Go from the this is Genesis 12, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, 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. And that last sentence, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you is key for us. And so when you put um the you know, uh Genesis 11 and 12 back to back you, the the the story of Babel and the call of Abram, we see these two these two realities. Sin is resulting in this fracturing, this disunity among um among human beings, but God is not leaving it at that. God is launching this this rescue mission through Abram, through his descendants, that somehow God's blessing will again be poured out on all humanity uh through Abram and through his descendants to all peoples on earth. And um, and there's a lot of different ways this, you know, this continues through the story of Israel, but then um in a Israel itself needs rescuing. And so uh ultimately this mission of Abram descends upon um the one true Israelite, Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one who bears the sin of the world and brings new resurrection life to the world. But the but um it it's it's through Jesus' people, his kingdom community, you know, or as the new test as the New Testament says, his body, the church, that the blessing um to all the world then begins flowing out to the world. And so this is what Pentecost is. Pentecost, the spirit being given to Jesus' uh followers, that so that all peoples could know the good news of Jesus, could know forgiveness of sins, could know God the Father as their father, could have God's presence in their hearts by the Spirit, is the fulfilling of the promises made to Abraham and the reversing, the healing of the fracturing that took place at Babel. Right? Because it was at Babel that the disunity of languages introduced. Acts chapter 2. We now, all those different um languages are now hearing the good news in a way that they can understand. The Spirit is bringing them back together. Um, and this is the blessing that was uh that was promised to come through Abram. Uh Paul actually makes reference to this. Where is it? In Galatians chapter thirty Yeah uh Galatians three um Yeah, it talks about Galatians three, seven. Understand then that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Um scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham. Abraham, all nations will be blessed through you, which is what we read in Genesis 12, 3. Um, so that those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Um and then verse 14, he redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that is all the non-Jews, through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. And so um it uh yeah, this and what Paul's getting at here is simply the idea that I was touching on, that um God made these promises to Abraham about blessing to all people, um, and that promise blessing God always planned on fulfilling that, and it now has come through Jesus the Messiah, as we trust in Jesus, and part of that blessing is actually the reception of the Holy Spirit, um the the very presence of God in our hearts, and and and part of what the reason God is wanting to do that is because this is healing the very uh the very thing that has gone wrong all the way back in Babylon. So uh I don't know if that's all feels if that feels complicated, nebulous, I I apologize. Uh but what I guess the main thing I wanted wanted to point out today is this this what we heard about on Sunday, this moment in Acts chapter 2. This is not just some random one-off, like God's like, I got an idea. This is the fulfillment of a trajectory that is kid that has been there from the very beginning of the biblical story. God wanting to bring uh the despair element, the different ethnicities and languages, tongues and tribes together, not by erasing their differences, but uniting them uh in faith in Jesus and by the gift of the Spirit. God saying, I promise to do this through Abram and his descendants, that promise coming through Jesus and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And we see the beginning of that in Acts chapter 2, and we today, as part of the global church, um continue to be part of that movement. There is no movement in all human history that as that is multinational, multilingual, multi-ethnic as the global church is today. Nothing like it has existed in all human history. This does not mean we, as far as Jesus has have arrived, but we do get to see how God is fulfilling his promises in and through the living church today. So be encouraged, grace and peace.