discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 25
it is seen as a reiteration of the human responsibilities of the Abrahamic
covenant. Don Richardson, the author of Peace Child and Eternity in Their
Hearts, has put the Abrahamic covenant in accounting terms: The top line of divine
blessings means that the recipients have a bottom line of responsibilities. 4
Changing Abram’s name to Abraham in Genesis 17 further emphasized
that the blessings promised in Genesis 12 would reach out to future generations
in ever-widening circles. When God told Abraham that he would have a
new name, “father of many nations” (17:4, 5), God also told him that he was
being offered “an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants”
(v. 7). The Genesis narrative keeps emphasizing that the promised blessing
of all peoples was not limited to Abraham’s time. To Abraham’s son Isaac
God proclaimed: “Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed”
(26:4). When God renewed the Abrahamic covenant with Isaac’s son, Jacob,
He added the phrase about “offspring” that He had earlier said to Isaac: “All
peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (28:14).
Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, spiritual as well as biological, were
thus blessed in order to be a blessing.
The Sinai Vision of Mission
The Heart of God 25
Following their escape from Egypt, Abraham’s descendants encountered
Yahweh at Sinai. In that desert setting, God renewed His call to Israel for a
covenant relationship: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then
out of all nations you will be my treasured possession” (Exodus 19:5ab). The
phrase “treasured possession” has caused some to conclude that Yahweh wanted
to relate to Israel in ways that excluded other peoples. Such people fail to see
that “treasured possession” was not all that God said about Israel in the Sinai
covenant. After saying “treasured possession,” God went on to say, “Although
the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”
(vv. 5c-6).
Centuries later, as Peter wrote to Christian believers, he quoted Exodus 19
and then explained to his readers that the reason God chose a people was so
“that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into
his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). Thus, for Israel to be asked at Sinai to serve
as a kingdom of priests (or “priestly kingdom” [Exodus 19:6] as the New Revised
Standard Version puts it) meant that God wanted this people to be an active
bearer of His grace to the world.
Just before the people of Israel arrived at Sinai, they camped at Elim, an oasis
with “twelve springs” of water “and seventy palm trees” (Exodus 15:27). Jew-