Transcript
Paul, in Romans 8, when he has talked about the spirit groaning within us about our own struggles, can immediately go on to say we know that all things work together for good to them who love God, because it is the one God who is, so to say, in control of fortune and in control of virtue. So that both of these dichotomies are destroyed. The whole myth of the ancient world is destroyed, and in its place there
is a new picture of reality which is expressed in the form of this model, father, son, spirit, one God. So that the original phrase in the name of Jesus becomes expanded into the phrase in the name of father, son, and spirit. And it was only in this way that the meaning of the cross of the risen Jesus, the meaning of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, could be explained. In other words, to put it in a
different way, God is not what the ancient world had always believed and what most of the modern world believes, including most of the Christian world believes. Not what it says it believes but what it does believe. God is not a monad beyond time, beyond change, beyond suffering. God is both beyond history and in history because Jesus is both truly God and truly man. Because Jesus is both the real presence of God, and he is the Lord.
And remember that when the first Christians, St. Paul among them, use the word kurios, Lord, for Jesus, they are using the word which is used for Yahweh, for God, in the Old Testament. And using this word kurios for Jesus in the context of the Greek-speaking Jewish world of his time, Paul was identifying this man Jesus with God, with the one whom the Jews knew as Yahweh. And at the same time, truly man, truly sharing in
the agony, the God-forsakenness of history. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? In other words, to put it in another way, the cross is an event in the life of God, of the triune God. And the purpose of it is that men, in the midst of their history, in the midst of all the agony and change and apparent meaninglessness of history, should be part of the life of God. As Jesus prays in the
great high priestly prayer that they may be one in us, thou in me and I in them, that they may be one in us. And therefore there is given through the dying and rising of Jesus, the Spirit who is the Spirit of God, who is the foretaste of the kingdom of God, and yet at the same time, the one who is the creator of the world. Now this is the model of reality which the church held
up to the world, not as something which could be demonstrated. You cannot demonstrate Einsteinian physics from a basis in Newtonian physics. You cannot demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity from a basis in any other philosophy. It is offered as a model, a paradigm through which it is possible to begin to make sense of reality, through which it is possible to begin to see both nature and history as reasonable. And when this great struggle had completed, had
reached its terminus in the formulations of the fourth and fifth centuries, Nicaea and Chalcedon, then the way is opened for the work of Augustine, where on the basis of this faith you begin to get the development of a whole new understanding of human history, of human science, of psychology on the basis of this model. Now obviously we're going to discuss this after coffee, but let me just go back now and suggest to you the ways in
which this model came to be formed. Look at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. We shall be coming back and back to this because this is the beginning of the mission that we're talking about. Let me just ask you to look at three very familiar sentences which are the record according to the synoptic gospels of the beginnings of the mission. Take first Mark 1:14 and following. Mark 1:14 and following. After John was arrested, Jesus came
into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God, the reign of God, the rule of God, the sovereignty of God, kingship of God is at hand, is on the doorstep, has arrived, is upon you. Repent, do a U-turn, turn around, face the opposite way, and believe in this good news which I'm talking about. The gospel is that the reign of God is at hand. Turn around, believe it.
We'll come back to that sentence, just leave it for a moment. Matthew 4:12. When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee and leaving Nazareth, he went and dwelt in Capernaum, etc. Then verse 17, from that time he began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Finally, Luke 4:14 and following. Jesus went to the synagogue at Nazareth where he had been brought up. This is Luke 4:16.
There was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it is written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. He closed the book,
gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now just take those three very well known texts to begin with. What do they say? This is the beginning of the gospel, the beginning of mission according to all our records. It is first of all an announcement. The reign of God has arrived, has begun, has come upon you. The reign of God
is a familiar theme in the prophets, in the Psalms. That God reigns, that he is the Lord in spite of all appearances to the contrary, that Yahweh is indeed the Lord of all creation and of all nations in spite of the apparent contradictions of this, in spite of the fact that the world does not seem to recognize his lordship. Now what is being said here is that this reign of God, this fact, which is not a
new fact, Israel knows that the Lord is King. It's not that he was not the King and has now become the King, no. Israel knows that Yahweh is King, that he is Lord, that he is the sovereign Lord. But somehow he has withheld his hand, he has allowed his enemies to triumph. But now Jesus comes to announce that this reign is an imminent reality, that it is upon you. So Jesus is coming as a herald, as
an announcer. Jesus is not the initiator of the reign of God. The reign of God is a reality already. The initiator is God. So Jesus constantly, according to the fourth gospel, uses the phrase, he who sent me. Jesus is one who is sent by another. And you have the same thing in, for example, the parable of the wicked husbandman where Jesus interprets his own ministry as being the climax of the prophets who were sent one after
another to claim what God can rightly expect from his people and who were rejected. And now he is sent as the beloved son to bring the final and decisive claim on God's people. So Jesus is not the originator of this. He is sent. And he is sent by God, the one who is already known as Lord of all the nations. The one who was celebrated in the Psalms of Israel. Look, for example, at Psalm 96, one
of the best known of the Psalms. Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns. The world is established. It shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad. Let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all that fills it. The Lord, Yahweh, he comes. He will judge the earth He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples, the nations, the goyim, the heathen with his truth. So what is being
said here is that this is now about to happen. God, Yahweh, the Lord, who is the King, is about to manifest his reign. Secondly, although the reference is to Yahweh, the Lord, who is known in Israel, yet the reference is to all the nations. I read a bit of the 96th Psalm, but as you know, in many of the Psalms and in the Prophets, it is affirmed that Yahweh, who is known as the God of Israel,
will nevertheless be the ruler of all the nations, that all the nations, taetne, the peoples, will become his peoples. And then thirdly, Jesus says in the sermon in Nazareth, Luke chapter 4, that it is by the spirit of Yahweh that he has been anointed to make this proclamation, anointed, of course, gives us the Hebrew word messiah, the Greek word Christos. He is Christed. He is messiahed. He is anointed. He is the anointed one, the messiah, and
the anointing is by the spirit, the spirit of Yahweh, the ruach Yahweh, the breath of the Lord, which is the power of the Lord, the breath of Yahweh, the mighty, powerful life of God himself. It is that which has anointed Jesus, made him the anointed one, the messiah, the Christ, to announce this reign, this sovereignty of God. So now we have already three names. We have the name of Jesus, we have the name of God as
the one whose reign he announces, and we have the name of the spirit, the ruach Yahweh, as the power of God by which he is anointed. And then, fourthly, we remember that this anointing took place according to all our records at his baptism. All the strands of the New Testament agree that the beginning of the gospel is the baptism of John. John's preaching of the reign of God is, in the first place, a preaching of coming
judgment. Look, if you will, again back at the beginning of Matthew, where you have the account of John's preaching. John, Matthew 3, verse 1. John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and then a description of John's ministry, and then 11 and following. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy
to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Here is a threat of judgment. John's, John is interpreting his own baptism. The question is raised, why do you baptize if you are not the Messiah? The answer is that John's baptism is a prophetic sign,
similar to the signs of the Old Testament prophets. You remember how when Jeremiah prophesies the destruction of the temple, that he takes an earthenware pot in his hand and a hammer in the other hand, and he stands in the midst of the people and he breaks the pot and says, there goes the temple, just says the Lord. It's an acted sign, and there are many other illustrations from the Old Testament prophets. Now what we have here
is essentially the same thing. John is giving a prophetic sign, and this sign is that the people of Israel have got to go back again to the starting point. They began by crossing the Jordan under Joshua in order to enter into the promised land, and they have got again to go down into the Jordan. They have got to accept their utter sinfulness and, so to say, start again from the beginning, and John is warning them that
what he is doing is only a sign, it's only a bare sign, I baptize you with water, but the real thing is coming, and that won't be water, that'll be fire, that'll be destruction, that'll be the burning up of everything that's unfit for God's reign. It's a message of threat, of warning, and the water baptism is simply a sign to make vivid what he is actually saying. And according to all our records, the ministry of Jesus
begins at the point where he accepts this call of John, accepts the call to repentance. Jesus first appears in public as an anonymous member of a crowd of men and women burdened with a sense of their sin, accepting a call to humiliation, to repentance, and going down with them into the water of Jordan. As Paul says, he who knew no sin became sin for us. This is, according to all our records, the beginning of the Gospel.
Jesus accepts totally for himself the position of sinful, sin-burdened, guilty men and women, and in that action he receives the anointing of the Ruach Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord, and the assurance of his sonship. This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased. The words of the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 42, this is, behold, my servant, my son, my child, whom I have anointed. He will bring forth justice to the nations, so
that right there at the very beginning you have, again, you have these three names, so to say. You have God, Jesus, the Spirit, and they come together at this point where Jesus accepts totally for himself the call to repentance, to humiliation, to identification with men and women in their sin, and in that identification Jesus is anointed, empowered by the Ruach Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord, to be the, as Isaiah 42 had said, to proclaim the
kingdom, to bring forth justice to the nations. Now, that baptism in the Jordan is simply the beginning of his ministry. It is not the end of his ministry. Like all baptism, it is a beginning, not an end. Jesus has to fill this baptism out in his ministry, bearing in his own life the sin and sorrow of the world, and he has to complete it on calvary, which he refers to as my baptism. I have a baptism
to be accomplished, in which this identification of his men, of himself, with sinful men and women is completed, consummated. And it is when that baptism is complete on calvary that the disciples can then share in it. You notice that all through the ministry there is practically speaking no reference to the Spirit. Jesus sends out the disciples to preach and to cast out devils, but he never, there is no word to suggest that they are empowered by
the Spirit to do this. There is a kind of silence about the Spirit, right through the actual earthly ministry of Jesus. But then, when that baptism is complete on calvary, then it is possible for them to be taken up into that baptism, which is a baptism of water and the Spirit. It is the anointing of the whole community to continue that which Jesus has come to do. And therefore, in that great passage in John 20, Jesus,
when he says, as the Father sent me, so send I you, he breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit. They are to share in his baptism, which is a baptism in water and the Spirit. It is the baptism of total identification with men and women in their sin, in their need, and in their repentance. And so, the disciples are sent out in the power of that baptism, and others are incorporated into the baptism of
Jesus when they accept the message of the cross. So that on the day of Pentecost, you have the sermon of Peter, which culminates in the message of the cross, this Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised up and set at his right hand. And then, when the Jews ask, what shall we do? He says, repent and be baptized, and you shall receive the gift of the Spirit. That baptism in the first instance is given simply in
the name of Jesus, but very early. It is filled out in the formula in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, because that does express the reality of what happened in the baptism of Jesus. It is the action of the Son in identifying himself totally with sinful men and women in response to the call of repentance, the action of the Father in accepting him as the Son, the action of the Spirit. So, here in this formula,
Father, Son, and Spirit, you have the model which the Church offered to the Greek world to be accepted in faith as the starting point for a new understanding of the whole of human existence. And what I hope to do in these lectures is to show that this model does enable us to understand the mission of the Church, and I think enables us to overcome some of the dichotomies that afflict our own practice of mission today. The
dichotomy between the call to personal conversion and the call to social justice, for example, the dichotomy between mission as the doing of God's will in the world and mission as the calling of individuals to conversion. I hope to show as we go along that this model helps us to overcome these dichotomies. But I come back to one point that I think probably you will want to discuss when we come to the period after coffee. I think
I'm right in saying, am I not, that the doctrine of the Trinity really does not play any essential part in the thinking of most Christians in our society. And when you say the word God in the ears of any ordinary, let alone, I don't mean any person outside the church, but any ordinary church member, when you say the word God, I don't think anybody immediately thinks of the Trinity. And I think that it is worth reflecting
upon this. I suppose that if you go back to St. Augustine and look at this immense intellectual effort of Augustine's to begin the creation of a whole new philosophy, a whole new philosophy of history and of the world on the basis of this faith, an effort which was to shape the thought of Western Europe for seven or eight hundred years, you see how it is the Trinitarian model which provides the basis for it all. What I'm
going to say now, maybe I may be wrong about this because I'm not a historian, but I suspect that it was a very, very decisive moment for Western Europe when in the 13th century the translation of the Arabic, the translation of the Greek classics out of Arabic began. And when the thought of the Muslim theologians who had integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic theology and created these immensely powerful intellectual systems with which Thomas Aquinas and Albert the
Great and so forth had to wrestle, it seems to me that this injected back into European thought a purely Unitarian conception of God, the conception of God in Islam, which has dominated European thought ever since. And I may be being stupid here, but it seems to me that while Orthodox Christian churches in the West still pay lip service to the doctrine of the Trinity and we all use the formula of the Trinity and so forth, that
in fact it is not an operative part of ordinary Christian thinking. This Trinitarian model was offered to the classical world as a something to be believed as a starting point for understanding. The great phrase that Augustine was constantly quoting from the Book of Isaiah, believe in order that you may understand. Believe in order that you may understand. In modern thinking, belief and knowledge are regarded as two different things. Knowledge is regarded as something which is certain,
belief is regarded as something which is uncertain. This is the exact opposite of the way that Augustine understands it and I think we are coming to position where we need a new Augustinian beginning. The idea of a kind of knowledge which is free from all doubt, so-called objective knowledge, the idea that there can be a sort of knowledge which does not involve any personal risk for me, where I can be delivered from personal responsibility for
my opinions and where I can simply accept what are so-called facts on the authority of a science which is indisputable. I think this is breaking down in our period and that we are coming to a time when we are going to have to recognise that in fact, that belief is not an alternative to knowledge, belief is the foundation of knowledge. You only begin to know anything by starting from an act of faith. As I see
it, I come back now to the beginning of my lecture when I spoke about this name, this phrase, in the name of Jesus. As I see it, at least if I speak of my own experience, I find myself driven back to ask the question, where is my ultimate authority? Where is the place where I ultimately stand in the light of which I then try to understand all the rest of my experience? And I have to say
that I find that place in the total fact of Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified, risen, that this provides the absolute in relation to which everything else is relative. Now, this is, of course, an act of faith. It's an act for which I have to take responsibility. I cannot put the responsibility onto anybody else. And when I say that I fall back upon this fact, I don't mean that I simply then foreclose all questions. On the contrary, it's
from that fact that I go out to begin to ask questions, to begin to ask how I understand the world that I live in, how I understand history, how I understand politics, how I understand the problem of science and technology in our modern world. And as I try to understand these things, then I come back again to my affirmation of faith and re-examine that affirmation in order to see whether I have to see it in
a new way. But the beginning point is that affirmation of faith, so that faith is not an alternative to knowledge. It is the starting point of knowledge from which one begins to go out and to explore the objective world. And I believe that mission is really the acting out of that faith vis-à-vis all the realities of our human situation, not just vis-à-vis the so-called un-evangelised areas of the world, the way
in which mission was seen typically in the 19th century, but today vis-à-vis all the sectors of human experience, all the sectors of contemporary history. Mission is to be understood as the acting out of that faith in relation to the different areas of human experience. My friends, I hope that was not too confused. Maybe in the period after coffee you can press me a bit with questions so that we can get it clearer. It will
help me and it may help you. But as I go on, as I have indicated in the outline here, I want to take this threefold division as a basis for developing a theology of mission. Mission as proclaiming the kingdom of the Father, which is where it begins. Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the kingdom of God. Mission as proclaiming the reign, the rule of the Father. But then, secondly, the kingdom is not only proclaimed by Jesus, the
kingdom is present in Jesus, and mission is the sharing in the presence of the kingdom. Mission is not just proclaiming the kingdom, it is also participating in the kingdom. It is sharing in the life of the Father. The church does not just proclaim the kingdom of God, the church in a very real sense shares in the kingdom of God. But then, thirdly, the kingdom of God is not domesticated within the church. The kingdom of God is
sovereign over the church. The kingdom of God goes before the church in the power of the spirit, and the work of the church is to follow. So taking these three themes, which I intend to be the themes of the next three lectures, I want to lay down the kind of groundwork of a theology of mission as I see it. And then we'll go on to come back over that ground and look at it in more detail.
Under the first heading, proclaiming the kingdom of the Father, we've got to look into the whole question of missions and social justice, liberation, theology, mission as revolution, and so forth. The whole question of the doing of God's justice in the world. Under the second heading, sharing the life of the Son, we've got to look at the whole business of worship at the heart of the church's mission, and we must look at the questions of gospel, church,
and culture, the role of differences of culture within the common life of the church. And then under the third section, we've got to look at the work of the spirit in mission, with all the implications of that for missionary methods, for church growth, and for the development of ministries and structures within the church. Okay, with profound apologies for what I think is probably rather a confused lecture, let us go and get some coffee to recover from
it. Am I right? It is after the time, isn't it? Well, dear friends, you're all very patient and long-suffering, but we now come to the point where I try to, having given this justification, so to speak, or I hope a justification, for taking a Trinitarian model for the exposition of a theology of mission, I now, as it were, try to test this out by, in fact, doing it that way. And so for these three coming
talks, as I indicate on the programme, I'm speaking of mission in terms of proclaiming God's kingdom, proclaiming the kingdom of the Father, sharing the life of the Son, bearing the witness of the Spirit. And the theme then today is mission as proclaiming the kingdom of the Father. We can take off from the point that we were looking at yesterday, where we saw the opening words of the mission of Jesus. The reign of God is at hand.
In a sense, this is the opening announcement, the theme of the whole mission. The reign of God, the sovereignty of God, the rule of God, the fact that God is King. No more a remote or theoretical or distant future, but a present reality which has now drawn near in Jesus Christ. That is, if you like, the very core of the gospel, which is the beginning of the mission. Now, I want to make just two or three
very simple points. The first is the simple point that this means we are talking about universal cosmic history. We are talking about not one particular aspect of human affairs. If I may quote the illustration of yesterday, we are not talking about a small section of Time magazine, which is fitted in after athletics and before ballet. We're talking about that which concerns the whole of reality. One cannot too often draw attention to the fact that this book
is quite different from any of the other sacred books of the world, in the sense that in its form, it is a cosmic history. Of course, it has in it devotional poetry. It has in it theological teaching. It has in it proverbs, parables, legislation, ethical teaching. It has all these things, but if you ask what is it, it is or it claims to be essentially cosmic history. It begins with the story of the consummation of all
things, and it tells a story which is understood to be, claimed to be, interpreted to be the clue to the whole story. This is unique. I think one can say that with absolute certainty. There is no other one of the sacred books, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Vedas, the grant of the Sikhs, the Buddhist canon. None of these things have any of that character. This is unique in that respect. We are talking about
cosmic history. It seems to me very interesting. I was talking yesterday about the question, how do you answer the question, who is Jesus? The question that you have to answer when you begin to talk about Jesus. If we look at the four gospels, it is interesting to see the progression of answers. Mark, the earliest gospel, begins with the appearing of John the Baptist. The opening words of Mark's gospel, if you omit the bracketed quotation from Isaiah,
what he says is, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ was John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness. There is where it begins. Matthew takes it a stage farther back and begins, Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob and so forth. He begins with the calling of Abraham. Luke takes it a stage farther back and goes right back to Adam, the first man. John takes it one stage farther back and
says, in the beginning was the word. The story of Jesus begins before the of the world. You cannot ultimately stop at any point short of that. We are talking about cosmic history. We are talking about the whole completion of God's purpose for mankind and for creation. This is the first point, but then the second point, which immediately has to be made in following that, is that it is a universal story told on the principle of election.
The first is let's call it universal cosmic history, but the second thing that has to be said is that it is universal history told in terms of election, of the narrowing down of the story. Let me illustrate what I mean, but just to get the structure of this thought clear, let me put this on the board. What I mean is this, that the the story concerns universal history, but the moment the story begins you have a
process of election. You have the strange, inexplicable, apparently almost immoral story of how of the first two sons of Adam, the first two human beings born into the world, Cain and Abel, God chooses one as against the other. Why? Don't ask the question why, but notice that what happens is that the one who is chosen has to suffer and the one who is not chosen is protected, is given the mark of God's protection. A little pointer
to the way the whole story is going to run. Then you have the second beginning of the story, the family of Noah chosen out of all mankind to be the bearer of God's purpose, but then in Noah's family among his descendants it is not Ham or Japheth but Shem, and among the descendants of Shem it is not any of the other 70 nations but Eber, and among the descendants of Eber it is Abraham, and among the
sons of Abraham it is not Ishmael but Isaac, and among the sons of Isaac it is not Esau but Jacob, and among the sons of Jacob eventually after a very long and complex story it is Judah, and within the family of Judah there is a still further tearing away so to speak, there is the remnant which is finally left and finally within that remnant there is the one man Jesus Christ who becomes the bearer of the
whole story, and then it opens out again, you have the calling of the 12 and then the 12 go out and begin to call the nations all the others who were not the sons of Judah or the sons of of Eber or the sons of Shem but all the nations, so that the story has the the picture of an egg so to speak, it begins with everything and it narrows and narrows and narrows and narrows and
narrows to the to the point where the whole story is concentrated in the life and death and rising again of one man and then it opens out again and it finally gives you the perspective of all the and indeed of the whole cosmos renewed but the clue is at that central point. Now this process of election is something which if you look at it from one point of view appears to monstrously unjust. Why Abel and not
Cain? Why Jacob and not Esau? Why Judah and not the other tribes? It would be monstrously unjust if the meaning of the story was that the elect is chosen in order to be saved and the rest are rejected in order to be damned. But as I hope that I've made clear the the story is not that way. It is that the elect is chosen for the sake of the rest right from the very beginning. It is
for the sake of the rest and the context of the story is always the whole of mankind even though the focus of the story is always on that narrow line of election. Now I want you to be patient with me because later on I want to go much more deeply into this question of the the rationale of this biblical understanding of election but just let's look at it as it is for the moment. Go back again
to the beginning of the story. I think that we often don't pay enough attention to the first 11 chapters of the Bible. There is a tendency to begin the story with Abraham but the first 11 chapters are vital for our understanding of the and of God's gracious action in saving a remnant, the one family of Noah and then we have the wonderful story in Genesis 9 of God calling Noah out of the ark and blessing Noah
and his sons, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and promising Noah that the earth itself will never be destroyed again and giving this sign of the rainbow as a kind of sacrament of this first covenant. Come in. Here is the first of the many covenants in the Bible, the covenant with Noah. God made a covenant with Noah and you notice that it is a unilateral covenant. There are no conditions attached to it at all.
It is not said if you do so and so I will bless you. It is an unconditional unilateral covenant of blessing and so Noah and his descendants are sent out under the promise of God's blessing, under the sign of the rainbow as the sort of visible sacrament of this universal covenant and the only command is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, of which one can say that it is the only one of God's commandments
that we have fulfilled to the letter. Well in chapter 10 you have the fulfilment of the blessing. Chapter 10 represents the fulfilment of the promise given in chapter 9. Chapter 10 is the list of the 70 nations which according to the understanding of the Hebrew people were the inhabitants of the world, the 70 nations, the goyim in Hebrew, the taethne, the heathen as we translate them in the old versions and these nations are the product of
God's blessing of Noah and they fill the earth. And then you have the story in chapter 11 of mankind's own attempt to create his own unity, the project of the tower that shall reach to heaven and we have this first picture of man's attempt to construct his own city, Babel, Babylon, which will reappear again in the story over and over again, Nineveh, Rome, the great harlot sitting on the seven hills at the end of the Bible,
the dark caricature of God's purpose for man, man's own project for his unity, which inevitably issues in confusion and alienation because as I said yesterday the precise point about every human project of unity is that it is divisive. Your project for unity is what I see as imperialism. My well-intentioned project for human unity is what you see as imperialism. Imperialism is the name that each of us gives to other people's projects for human unity. And
Babel is the first, so to say, example of that. And then God patiently begins once again. God picks, so to say, one of the 70 nations and if you look at the list in chapter 10 you will find in verse 24 the appearance of Eber. No position of prominence. He is not the first in the list or the last in the list. He comes in the middle of the list. He has no special prominence. There is
nothing special about Eber, but God chooses Eber to be the one through whom he will begin again his patient program for blessing of the human race. And so the descendants of Eber are traced down to the coming of Abraham and we have the story of God calling Abraham out of his comfortable pagan existence in the city of Ur, one of the great centres of civilisation in the Mesopotamian plains, and calling him out into an existence by
faith, an existence which depends simply on the promise of God. And Abraham is promised not only that he will be blessed, but that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. The blessing promised to Noah and his descendants is renewed for Abraham, but Abraham is to be the bearer of that blessing, not to be the exclusive beneficiary of that blessing, but the bearer of that blessing for all mankind. And then you have the
story of Abraham's descendants living by faith in a land which they do not own, but which they have been promised. You have the trial in Egypt, the affliction of the children of Israel. You have the marvellous redeeming action of God by which they are delivered from overwhelming power and brought to the mountain where God meets with and renews his covenant, promising that they will be a royal priesthood and a holy nation. They are to be the
priesthood for all mankind. Again, it is the same principle. It is a people chosen for the sake of all mankind. A priest does not exist for himself. A priest exists for the people. The priestly nation is to be the bearer of God's blessing and of God's revelation for all mankind. And as the story goes on, we see over and over again the promise renewed, the great section in the Psalms from Psalm 95 to 100 where the
coming reign of God over all the nations is celebrated over and over again. God will come in judgment and blessing for all the nations. And we have it, of course, also in the prophets. But we have also at the same time the constant, repeated, continuous conversion of that promise into a private privilege for the bearer of the temptation of Israel to believe that because God has called them, therefore, they are in a privileged position as compared with the other nations.