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Galatians 5 offers us three different, but interrelated ways to think about how to live the Christian life.
These three exist in unity, they never exist alone.
This is the Christian life:
This is your calling; this is your privilege; this is your joy!
Summary - The Gospel in Genesis 1-50 and in the City
Genesis has introduced us to the Creator-Redeemer God who graciously gives mankind a garden-temple in which to serve God and from which to extend the worship of God throughout the earth.
In Adam all mankind rebels against God and is banished from the temple-garden. Prior to banishment from the temple-garden, a promise is given of a second Adam, who would not succumb to Satan’s temptation and would finally defeat Satan.
After the progression of sin and rebellion, mankind and the earth are eventually judged by God in a worldwide flood. Consequently, after the flood Noah and his descendants are given the renewed kingdom responsibility in a new world, but they also fail to extend the worship of God, choosing instead to congregate at Babel. Again, the world is judged; this time through dispersion.
God then chooses Abraham and his descendants to be the family through which the worship of God will be extended throughout the world and through which the nations of the world will be reunited in worshipping God.
The story line of Abraham’s family keeps the reader wondering whether they will be the people who will extend the worship of God throughout the earth and unify the nations in the worship of God. The story unfolds with moments of success in their being the people who carry out God’s purposes but also includes too many moments of forgetfulness, neglect, and outright rebellion against God’s purposes.
As we read Genesis through eyes and hearts illumined by New Testament revelation, we understand that the successes and failures of the descendants of Abraham provoke us to anticipate the One whom God promised would ultimately defeat Satan and not only succeed where Adam had failed but would triumph more gloriously over sin and death. Through this One the worship of God would be extended through the earth and the nations of the world would be unified in their worship of God.
Today, because of the triumph of Jesus Christ over sin and death, through His body, the church, His kingdom is quietly being extended through the earth and people of all nations are joining together in worship of the Triune God. This kingdom will be consummated in the New Heaven and Earth.
Cities are not the only places where there is evidence of that happening, but in a unique way, city churches can become a microcosm of the multi-national, multi-ethnic, world-wide worship that God desires.
Cities churches offer a greater possibility for tasting the cosmopolitan worship of the New Creation, where people from every tongue and nation will join together in the worship of the living God.
Cities offer opportunity to those who are now the seed of Abraham in Christ to be His people in extending the worship of God among the nations of the earth and seeing the diversity of the world brought together in unity in Christ.
Cities are the crucibles which test the power of the gospel to create new communities that are unified in their love of Christ and in their commitment to do justice and love mercy in the midst of depravity and diversity.
Reunion and restoration to Canaan (47:28-50:26)
As the story of Genesis winds down, we are wondering about the outcome of the Abrahamic promise that God’s people would bring blessing to the nations. Ironically, the people of God are in exile from their promised land; yet while living as strangers in the midst of a powerful nation, they have opportunity to be the bearers of blessing.
Not only do they have opportunity while in exile to bless the nations, but here they receive the blessing of their father, who speaks to each of his sons a blessing that is suitable to them. Through the blessing of Jacob upon his sons, they are assured of the continuity of the Abrahamic promise and their ultimate return to the land of promise.
The Abrahamic promise has passed from Abraham to Isaac and then to Jacob. Jacob has seen his descendants multiply and in some slight measure, through Joseph, he has seen blessing come to the nation of Egypt. Jacob had only sojourned in the Promised Land and wants to be buried there permanently with Abraham and Isaac.
Now that the patriarchs are off the scene, we wait to see how the seed of Abraham will live out their responsibility to be faithful to God and to be a blessing to the nations.
The final chapter concludes with a promise of redemption, i.e. that the Lord will visit his people and deliver them from Egypt and bring them to ‘rest’ in the Promised Land. The ‘rest’ of the land anticipates the ‘rest’ that the Messiah would bring. Jesus inaugurates this rest in his first coming and consummates it in his second coming. We now enjoy rest to our souls but long for rest for our entire being.
The gospel assures us that the ultimate rest will come in God’s time. Meanwhile though believers live in exile from their heavenly home, they do so with a spirit of hope and expectation. They serve a God who is capable of preserving them in exile, blessing them in exile, and using them to bless others while in exile.
While serving God in the city we live with assurance that we are strategically located in His story of the progress of redemption. We are here to participate in the advancement of God’s purposes of ‘calling out of the nations a people for His name.”
In some sense, any place in this world is like “Egypt’ because all believers live as strangers and foreigners and do not enjoy the consummate rest. If we are here, we are not home. Perhaps even more so, urban centers with their density, diversity, and heightened depravity create a deeper awareness of exile and a longing for ‘home.’ However, like Jacob’s family, we accept that God in His sovereign wisdom leaves his people in Egypt, delays the consummate enjoyment of rest, and employs His people to carry out His purposes. Meanwhile, we pray, “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.”
Jacob’s family in Egypt (46:1-47:27)
As Jacob and his family go to Egypt during the time of famine, he is assured by the Lord that the Abrahamic promise of numerous descendants will be fulfilled in Egypt and that the covenant family will eventually return to the land of promise.
While in an alien land, God continues to bless Joseph with wisdom and influence so that he becomes a blessing to the Egyptians. God prospers His people as they settle in the alien land.
” 27 Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.”
This sojourn in Egypt is temporary in the plan and purposes of God. Eventually God intends to bring them out. What remains to be seen is whether the people of God will settle down in Egypt, be content with the prosperity they enjoy, and eventually lose sight of the land of promise.
Ultimately their sojourn in Egypt anticipates the greater son of Jacob, Jesus, whom God will call out of Egypt (Matt 2:15) to deliver those who are held captive either by the prosperity or the oppression of Egypt.
People in urban centers are often held captive by either the prosperity or the oppression of the city. Many come to the city and stay because cities offer a promise of economic opportunity. Others remain in the city held captive by their oppressive circumstances and are not able to find a way out. The city becomes like an Egypt that first offers prosperity but often leads to oppression. Yet, whether in prosperity or oppression, there is a restlessness of the soul.
In the midst of this restlessness, the human heart retains a feint recollection of a better promise – a place where the soul can rest. The quintessential son of Jacob, Jesus, who himself was called out of Egypt, is the one who delivers us from the Egypt of our restless of souls. Whether our souls are restless in prosperity or in oppression, they are restless and cry out for that promised place of rest. The call of Jesus needs to be heard everywhere but especially in the city: 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Mat 11:28-30 ESV)
The Refining of the covenant family (42:1-45:28)
The covenant family has suffered brokenness due to their own sinful choices born out of jealousy, rivalry, and succumbing to pagan morality. If dependent alone on Jacob and his eleven sons, the covenant promise of blessing to the nations through the seed of Abraham would fail. Nevertheless, though in exile, Joseph fulfills the responsibility of Abraham’s descendants as he brings blessing to Egypt.
Reconciliation and restoration come to this broken family from an unlikely person. The one who has been betrayed and most deeply offended and hurt is the one whom the Lord uses to bring about restoration to a broken family. Joseph models the grace of one who submits to God’s sovereignty and who experiences God’s grace in the midst of his hardship.
Joseph as a model of grace in the midst of betrayal anticipates Jesus whose experience of betrayal would lead to His death on the cross and who through His suffering brings about the reconciliation and restoration of those who have rejected Him and betrayed Him.
Here in the City of Philadelphia, we are asking God to use the unlikely to bring about His purposes of reconciliation and restoration in this city. In some sense, my brother Steve and I are a lot like both Joseph and his brothers. In being like his brothers, we know what it is to betray our upbringing, to reject the grace offered to us, and to cause brokenness in the lives of others. Yet, like Joseph, we know what grace is all about. We’ve experienced God’s sovereign and gracious hand in preserving us through our arrogant rebellion and forming us by the gospel through the challenges of a life-time of ministry with all of its joys and its sorrows.
We want, like Joseph, to live out the grace of the gospel which enables us to be a part of God’s plan of reconciling and restoring the brokenness of the nations of the world.
Joseph in Egypt (39:1-41:57)
These chapters highlight the presence of God and His providence in the life of Joseph. Despite the injustice and betrayal of his brothers, Joseph experiences fresh grace which takes him through the trials of captivity and brings blessing to him and others in the midst of his troubles.
The Lord gives grace to Joseph to flee the seductions of Potiphar’s wife; the Lord protects him while unjustly imprisoned, and eventually exalts him to the second highest position in Egypt.
While the covenant family remains in the land of promise, they suffer internal atrocities as with Onan, Tamar, and Judah. On the other hand, Joseph, though in exile from the land, brings blessing to the nations. The Lord uses him to preserve Egypt from the devastation of famine and ultimately to preserve God’s people from the devastation of famine.
The name of the LORD is advanced and honored among the nations, as Joseph experiences the presence of the Lord in his hardship and remains faithful to his God.
What Joseph experienced in his hardship through the presence of the Lord, anticipated the future gift of the Spirit through whom the promise of Jesus to His disciples is fulfilled, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Unlike Joseph, who was banished to Egypt against His will, many believers choose to live in the urban centers of the world, believing that the Lord who preserved, protected, and prospered Joseph in Egypt will do the same for them. As Egypt was an unlikely place to play a significant role in the history of redemption, so urban centers may also appear to be unlikely places for the advance of the gospel.
Yet, God’s grace defies human expectations. Suburban church planting often depends upon the availability of open space, plentiful resources, economic stability, homogeneous populations, etc to insure successful church plants. The demographics of urban church planting present a scenario, much like Joseph’s experience in Egypt, which calls for an amazing display of God’s grace which alone overturns all human expectation.
Family disunion in Canaan (37:2-38:30)
These chapters demonstrate the far reach of sin even among those chosen to bring blessing to the nations. The family disharmony that temporarily interrupts the advance of God’s purposes is eventually reversed by the gracious work of God.
Joseph is the son favored by his father yet envied by his brothers. In their jealousy, they revert to a vicious act of casting their brother into a pit, selling him into slavery, then telling their father that he was killed by an animal.
As we read this story, we wonder how those who have been graciously chosen of God to bring blessing to the nations can at the same time be so ungracious within their own family. We read these chapters with sadness, yet with faith in the covenant God who remains faithful. Our hearts ache in seeing the brokenness of the covenant family, yet we wait in faith knowing that the Lord is working even through the tragedies and the sin of His people.
The absence of grace in the brothers of Joseph reminds us that apart from grace there would be no chosen people to fulfill God’s purposes of bringing the blessing of Abraham to the nations.
The betrayal, rejection, and discarding of Joseph anticipate the suffering of Jesus who in His rejection offers deliverance to all of those who will believe in Him.
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, (Joh 1:11-12 ESV)
Unfortunately, the church in cities has often reflected a disharmony similar to the family of Jacob. Often divided along racial and economic lines, the urban church fails to reach the nations around it because it is captured by its own jealousies and, consequently, is unattractive to those who look in from the outside. When the covenant family fails to display the grace which it has received in the gospel it loses its power to be a blessing to the nations.
Cities need churches that reflect the grace of the gospel, which displays for us and in us the most passionate love, the deepest mercy, the most magnificent grace, the most underserving forgiveness. These are the churches that will bring the blessing of Abraham, i.e. the gospel, to the nations whom God is bringing to the urban centers of the world.
Genesis 36:1-37:1 record the descendants of the rejected line of Esau. The prosperity of both Jacob and Esau makes it difficult for them to share the land of Canaan so Esau chooses the higher elevation of what is later called Edom. Esau takes multiple wives one of whom is a descendant of Ishmael, perhaps an attempt to bring some unity to the two lines that were not heirs of the Abrahamic promise. The Edomites create their own alien kingdom to the kingdom of God in establishing themselves in a fortress like land and having a monarchy long before Israel would. 37:1 sets Jacob in contrast to the Edomites, for he dwells in the land of his father, Isaac’s sojourning, i.e. the land of promise.
Our immediate text only implies that there is a rivalry between the two kingdoms. The future history of Israel would reveal the innate resentment in the Edomites toward Israel. This came to its culmination at the fall of Jerusalem in 586BC when the Edomites sacked the First Temple. Later under John Hyrcanus the Edomites were forcibly converted and largely subsumed into Israel. One of the most notable Edomites was King Herod who enlarged and embellished the Second Temple.
In the gracious providence of God, there were some from Edom (Idumea) who followed Jesus during his earthly ministry (Mk 3:7-8). An irony of redemptive history is that many of the chosen line rejected Jesus while many of the rejected line followed Jesus. The election of Israel and the rejection of Edom served God’s purposes in redemptive history in giving Israel the privilege and opportunity to bring the blessing of Abraham to the nations, even to Edom. While Israel failed in that responsibility, Israelites, Edomites, and other Gentiles are being recreated as a new unified humanity in Jesus Christ.
While ministering among diverse people groups in the city it is natural to view some groups as more privileged and others as disadvantaged. There exists a great disparity of wealth and education and opportunity. Often this divide is along racial lines, yet prosperity and poverty are at times oblivious to race. In cities we have the ‘Israels’ and ‘Edoms’ which on the surface may appear to be favored or disfavored by God. Yet, we are often surprised by the indiscriminate work of the Spirit who convicts both the favored and disfavored of sin and righteousness and judgment.
Another disadvantage exists in economically and educationally depressed neighborhoods, i.e. the semblance of Christianity that remains, though often sincere, most often has a low view of Scripture, a false gospel of health wealth and prosperity, and a dependence on political and social action rather than the preaching of the gospel.
Every city neighborhood needs a church that has a high view of Scriptural authority and a clear understanding of the gospel (see 9marks.org).
In chapter 35, the Lord instructs Jacob to return to the place where Abraham had built and altar and where he had made a vow to the Lord after he had been assured by the Lord that the promise to Abraham belonged to him and his descendants. Jacob returns with a serious commitment to shun idolatry and to worship the Lord. He is keeping the vow he made at Bethel that if the Lord brought him back in peace, then the Lord would be his God and he would honor Him as Lord by giving one tenth of all he possesses.
Once again, the Lord reaffirms the Abrahamic covenant with Jacob, blesses him, and changes his name to Israel – the prince of God. Jacob consecrates a memorial at Bethel to mark this occasion.
He moves on as the bearer of the covenant promise. Yet he does so in the midst of the vicissitudes of life. One of Rachel’s nurses dies. His beloved wife also Rachel dies while giving birth to Benjamin. He experiences the joy of being reunited with his father and brother, but soon experiences sorrow in the death of his father, Isaac.
God is faithful to his promise to Abraham that He would bless his offspring and bring them to the land of promises. Yet, the story reminds us that every bearer of the promise eventually dies. We are left looking for One who will bear the promise and never die. Surprising when he finally comes, he does die, but in a grand reversal, He rises from the dead so that the promise to Abraham will live on forever.
New communities of covenant believers in urban centers often become Bethel-like experiences to many who have been running from God, chasing the wind, seeking to satisfy the idols of their hearts. Here you find many young people from Christian backgrounds who, like Jacob, seek to make their own way in life with only a marginal recognition of God. They come to cities lured by the hope that the emptiness of their souls can be filled by the many promises of urban life.
Often there is an initial encounter with the call of Christ, interrupted by the difficult challenges of life, and then followed by a renewed call to return to a place of renewed allegiance, forsaking idolatry and worshipping Christ alone.
For many who have struggled on their spiritual journey through broken relationships, disappointments, and betrayals, these gospel-centered city churches become their ‘Bethel,’ the place where they grasp the gospel, meet the Lord, and choose to worship and serve Him. Though they continue to struggle through the vicissitudes of life, they do so as those who now are recipients of God’s gracious promise in Christ.
Genesis 34 is one of those sad chapters in the history of redemption. Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, is raped, humiliated, and then treated like a commodity to be traded for mutual benefits. Jacob appears ready to make the exchange of his daughter for the benefit of prospering in the land – the land already promised to him by the Lord.
When Dinah’s brothers hear of the atrocity they first object because the Hivite’s do not bear the covenant sign of circumcision. It appears already that the covenant itself has become less significant than the sign of the covenant. For them pride of identity supersedes the blessing of covenant relationship with the Lord.
The brothers create a ruse in which the Hivite men agree to circumcision and, while recovering from the surgery, they are slaughtered by Jacob’s sons. The brothers then plunder the city and take captive the women and children.
Jacob fears both disgrace and potential revenge from the other inhabitants of the land. Rightfully so, because they have failed to be the covenant family that reflects the grace of God.
Though Jacob and his family are recipients of the covenant promise and though the sons bear the covenant sign of circumcision, it appears that cutting away flesh does not cut away the evil of their hearts. Jacob sons are worse than the pagans whom they destroy. They deceive; they take revenge; they murder; they steal; they are justified in their own eyes. Instead of blessing the nations as the offspring of Abraham, they are morally bankrupt, destroying rather than delivering the nations of the world.
We leave this chapter longing for that offspring of Abraham who truly will bless the nations and create a new community of covenant believers that will include the nations of the world
Tragically, this story reflects the history of Christianity in the city. Christians who wear the new covenant sign of baptism often do so without having experienced the power of the gospel that transforms a sinner’s heart. They are religious, upholding the signs of Christianity, but bankrupt morally. They often are angry, bitter, unkind, and unmerciful.
The city of Philadelphia is peppered with religious edifices that stand as a sign of Christianity’s once magnificent presence in the city. However, the signs and symbols eventually became the substance, replacing the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ with formalism. The signs and symbols lacked the power to overcome racism, injustice, and disregard for the poor and disenfranchised. The signs and symbols had no power to restore broken relationships or to deliver from life consuming sins. Without the gospel, these religious edifices soon succumbed to 12-step programs, conscience-soothing acts of mercy, and self-help seminars.
The city needs a resurgence of new communities of covenant believers who not only uphold the signs and symbols of Christianity, but who bear evidence of a life being transformed by the gospel of God’s grace – a life of indiscriminate forgiveness, mercy, generosity, and bountiful love.
