Impact

Called to be Missional (part 2)

The Church was birthed for God’s mission; mission was not birthed for the Church. What is God’s mission? God’s mission is to restore shalom to His creation. Shalom means peace, but not the kind of peace of the 60’s and 70’s, shalom is deeper than that, it is a peace that is holistic. Shalom is the type of peace that brings completeness by way of intimacy with God.

The Church was birthed for God’s mission; mission was not birthed for the Church. What is God’s mission? God’s mission is to restore shalom to His creation. Shalom means peace, but not the kind of peace of the 60’s and 70’s, shalom is deeper than that, it is a peace that is holistic. Shalom is the type of peace that brings completeness by way of intimacy with God. As The New International Dictionary of the Bible put it, “Peace is the presence of God, not the absence of conflict.” One author offered what I think is the best definition of shalom that I have see: “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophet’s call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creature in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be” (Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, p. 10).

Sin vandalizes shalom, but God’s mission is to redeem His creation for the purpose of restoring shalom; this mission is what God calls His people too. God never intended His people to keep God’s shalom to themselves. Anytime God’s people become comfortable, it is not long before they become complacent. When this happens, God’s people become self-indulgent by keeping God’s shalom all to themselves until God rocks them out of their complacency.

Shalom as God’s Mission
We see this through a simple reading of the Bible. Israel frequently got into trouble when She lost sight of her calling to bless the nations around Her by mediating Yahweh to them which often led to idolatry. Because of Her idolatry, God disciplined His people by sending Babylon into Jerusalem as judgment. Many of the Jews were taken captive and deported into Babylon which was an entirely different culture than the one they had called home.

For those who were exiled into Babylon, everything changed. Their food was different, their worship would never be the same, the language was different, the music was different, the clothing was different; everything was so very different. When the prophet Jeremiah wrote his letter to the exiles (Jer. 29), he wrote from Jerusalem to encourage his fellow Jews by reminding them of their God ordained mission. Now their instincts would have led them to fight against living in their new home, but in Jeremiah 29:4-7 we discover the essence of how God’s people are to live wherever they find themselves: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Those who were taken into exile were commanded by Yahweh through His prophet to do three things in the land: (1) build houses, (2) plant gardens, and (3) get married. The temptation would have been to revolt and bring violence to the city, but God commanded his exiled people to settle down and make Babylon their home. In essence what God commanded his people to do is what He commanded Adam and Eve to do: be fruitful and multiply; to settle in the Babylonian culture and fill it with good things.

The fourth thing that the exiled Jews were commanded to do in Babylon was to seek the shalom of the city (shalom is the word the ESV translates “welfare”). God’s people were told that instead of standing against Babylon, they were to promote God’s shalom in three ways: (1) seek the shalom of the city, (2) pray for the shalom of the city, and (3) find your shalom in the city’s shalom. The only way the exiled Jews would be able to do this was by integrating and involving themselves in the life of the city as their new home. The only way this could be done is for His exiled people to bring Yahweh into Babylon as His chosen ambassadors.