Embracing Exile – “More than Survivors” - Isaiah 49:5-9a
People in exile still have an important mission from God.
“It is not enough,” God says, to simply protect you; I want to “appoint you as light to the nations” (Isa. 49:6, CEB).
Four images may help us reimagine what it might look like
to be a missional people in exile:
• Ezekiel 3:1: “Eat this scroll” (CEB)—embodies the word.
God’s great evangelistic strategy, maybe especially in exile,
is for people to look at us and say, “Whatever that is, that’s what I want.”
2. An Open Table
• God wants everyone to be saved; prevenient grace makes it possible for us to respond.
• The broken body and shed blood is for people from different generations, ethnicities, cultures, tastes, political perspectives, and social standings.
There is always more space at the Table,
so people are constantly being invited into the body of Christ.
3. Clean Hearts
• Holiness people believe God wants to cleanse us and make us the people he wants us to be, not just tolerate us until we get to heaven.
Ezekiel 36:22: Sanctify my people, not for their sake, “but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations” (NIV).
The church needs to be separated and filled
to be a blessing to the world.
4. Dirty Hands
• It is not enough to worship; we need to participate in the transformation of creation.
• New people are not just walking into our doors, so how do we reimagine what it means to be church?
This is not a new church growth strategy; we do it because it is who God has formed us to be - we love because we have been loved.
People in exile still have an important mission from God.
“It is not enough,” God says, to simply protect you; I want to “appoint you as light to the nations” (Isa. 49:6, CEB).
Four images may help us reimagine what it might look like
to be a missional people in exile:
- The Embodied Word
• Ezekiel 3:1: “Eat this scroll” (CEB)—embodies the word.
God’s great evangelistic strategy, maybe especially in exile,
is for people to look at us and say, “Whatever that is, that’s what I want.”
2. An Open Table
• God wants everyone to be saved; prevenient grace makes it possible for us to respond.
• The broken body and shed blood is for people from different generations, ethnicities, cultures, tastes, political perspectives, and social standings.
There is always more space at the Table,
so people are constantly being invited into the body of Christ.
3. Clean Hearts
• Holiness people believe God wants to cleanse us and make us the people he wants us to be, not just tolerate us until we get to heaven.
Ezekiel 36:22: Sanctify my people, not for their sake, “but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations” (NIV).
The church needs to be separated and filled
to be a blessing to the world.
4. Dirty Hands
• It is not enough to worship; we need to participate in the transformation of creation.
• New people are not just walking into our doors, so how do we reimagine what it means to be church?
This is not a new church growth strategy; we do it because it is who God has formed us to be - we love because we have been loved.
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