St. Stephens Blog

We continue to explore the basis of John’s understanding of God. The conclusion of John’s first epistle, what follows in his epistle, is basically a sermon by John.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7; NRSV)

One commentator put it, “here is concentrated the theology John”, God is love. How do you preach a sermon on a sermon? You let it stand in its integrity and identify the points it is highlighting.

In this day and age we could be mistaken of thinking that love is God and, where love is being practiced, there God must be. We might wonder, however, about the nature of the definition of love, particularly where the act of sexual intercourse is so commonly described as “making love”. Love does not equal God, but love, according to John, is the very nature and action of the Godhead. As someone once put it, God did not have to create everything there is, especially humans, but did so because it is in the nature of the Godhead to want to love outside of itself. God created us, because it is in God’s nature to love, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8; NRSV)

The greatest evidence of God’s love towards us is declared in the work of Jesus on the cross.
God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9; NRSV)

The telling aspect of God’s love for us is not just in the work of the cross, not even our broken relationship that needed to be restore, reconciled. The power of God’s love is that despite the brokenness, God desires and works to fix it.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10; NRSV)

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and it was for this reason he sent his Son into the world. You can almost hear the words of Paul to the Romans, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

I can’t help wondering whether the greatest problem we have in our evangelism, our work of helping others to have a relationship with God, is because we are continually inviting them to be a part of church, being involved in the things which are concerned with our work of reaching out to God. On the contrary, our greatest task is to help people become aware of the love of God for them.
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (1 John 4:11-16; NRSV)

We often speak about God as a God of love, it just rolls off our tongues, but I can’t help wondering whether the problem we have in helping others to know that God is love is because we have not yet grasped this reality deeply for ourselves. Consequently, we are not very good at witnessing that love, putting that love into practice with those around us, because we do not know it for ourselves.
One of the problems, I suspect that we have, is that we have a misplaced understanding of what love means. We can get so caught up in the idea of love that is about being nice. Such kind of love does not expect another to take responsibility for their life, their own choices and their own mistakes.

The word for love here is ????? (agape), the love that a father has for his children. It is the work of a father to enable his children to grow up into adults, not by age, but to be able to take responsibility for their own life: choices and mistakes, and in turn be able to raise their children to do the same. A father does not keep his children as children.

I don’t see anything in the love of God, described by John, that pretends there is not a problem, after all, that is why he sends his Son (v 10), he acts to fix the problem. This does not mean that the cause of the problem is overlooked for we will still need to give an account “on the day of judgement” (v 17), but because of the action of God in Jesus, we can have boldness in the face God’s judgement. We can stand assured that we are right with God.

I know I have said it to you before, that every relationship begins in fear. What I mean by that is, when we first meet someone, we are guarded in what we say and do, because we are afraid that, if we reveal certain aspects of ourselves, this new person will not like us, will reject us.

In God, however, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (v 18) So often, it seems, that Christians are in a constant fear of God. They will speak of God’s love, but the legalism of the religious life, the purely literal, or fundamental, reading and interpretation of the Bible, the condemnation of others for approaching things differently, all speak of a fear of getting it wrong. They are not in the love of God, they are in a perceived fear of being punished by God.

This must have been stirring in the camp of Christians to whom John was writing. The false teachers expressing the importance of having right knowledge, the fear of those Christians that they would miss out on the promises of eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, because they did not have the secret knowledge.

So John condemns such misguided understanding of a love that has no action and of a fear of God.
We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:19-21; NRSV)

“Hate” is a very powerful word here and it is a word that receives bad press. We know that God himself hates so does Jesus. Hate comes out of passion. But I am sure that, while God hates our sin and Jesus hates the practices of the Nicolaitans, (Revelations 2:6) he does not hate a person. If “God sent his Son to be our atoning sacrifice”, even though he hates our sin, he does not reject us. Those false prophets who would condemn those who disagree with them, do not know God’s love and are, therefore, liars if they do. Their actions are a contradiction to what is revealed about God’s love in Jesus Christ death on the cross.

So the love of God that John is presenting to us here is an act of the will, a choice, to enable another, or ourself, to grow physically (body), psychologically (mind) and spiritually. It is an act of the will because we are inspired, compelled, to love when we realise the full extent to which we are loved by God.

So here is the basis of our faith, “We love because he first loved us.” (V 19) Love is the essential nature of God, according to John, and if we do not know that we are deeply loved by God, we will not be able to love God in return, as he deserves, and we will not be able to love those around us because we do not love ourselves.

We have been exploring the Epistles of John.
Jesus was a real fleshed human being
The first thing that we have noted is that John is responding to the presence of false teachers who are proclaiming that Jesus was not truly human, but retained his “heavenly” spiritual nature and only appeared human. Our knowledge of God determines our behaviour
The second thing that we explored is that we are not saved by simply having knowledge of God nor are we made right with God by our good works. John is making it clear that good works are determined by how we understand the identity and nature of God and it is our knowledge of God, having an intimate relationship with God that determines the righteousness of our behaviour and actions.
There is right and wrong knowledge of God and, therefore, right and wrong behaviour

As a counter argument to the false teachers, John is affirming that the human person is essentially good and is not evil. Having said this, he is arguing that we cannot be ruled and controlled by the desires of the flesh.
“Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” (1 John 3:7-8a; NRSV)

The freedom we have in Christ Jesus does not mean anything goes! The question is how we understand righteous and unrighteous behaviour, or right and wrong action, and how to work out the difference.

I have to confess being a little puzzled as to how to reconcile,
“Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God.” (1 John 3:9; NRSV)

The reality is the human condition is corrupted by the sinful nature, and we do go on sinning. I would like to suggest that, in the same way that I can’t imagine life without Sandy, my wife, friends, people in this church and from previous churches, and communities in which I have lived, who have had an influence over my becoming who I am, I can’t imagine life without God in it. Those who have truly entered into a relationship with God cannot later say that God does not exist, cannot afterwards choose not to have a relationship with God. So, perhaps John is speaking about sin as the particular, and only unforgivable, sin of not having a relationship with God and his Son, Jesus Christ. Those who have been born of God cannot commit the sin of denying him.

So, the determining factor of righteousness, according to John, is our knowledge of God, “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8b; NRSV) If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus, he is God in the flesh, and knowing Jesus is knowing God, and knowing God is what enables us to discern what is right behaviour and this destroys the works of the Devil, our bad behaviour.

There is no lack of responsibility here. “The Devil made me do it,” does not stand up in the court of heaven. However, remember John’s black and white language, we can know God and choose to act according to that relationship, but to not know God is to choose to know the Devil and we are, then, choosing to act according to that relationship.

There are only two options, according to John, those who know God and those who do not, and this equates to knowing the Devil. “The children of God and the children of the Devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” (1 John 3:10; NRSV)

There are different pictures, or roles, given of the Devil through the bible. Job sees him as a kind of legal prosecutor. I think it is clear that John understands the Devil to be one who is working in opposition to God, “sinning from the beginning.” (v According to biblical legend, the Devil was one of the first creative acts of God. His role was like that of heavenly Prime Minister. What led to his being cast to earth was his desire to be God. He wanted to be the one with who people had their most important relationship. In the story of the Garden of Eden, we read of how the Devil continued that desire. Even though Adam and Eve had a relationship with God, who walked with them in the Garden, the Devil invited them to listen to him rather than God. They chose to take more notice of the Devil than God. He had won their relationship and Adam’s hiding from God revealed how his relationship with God had become broken.

Sin, for John, seems to be those things, in thought, word and, particularly, action, which express our lack of relationship with God, our lack of righteousness. He goes on, then, to express the fruit of that lack of relationship with God in the brothers Cain and Abel. What is interesting is that, even though John recognises murderers “do not have eternal life abiding in them” (v 15), it is not the murder that he wants to identify as the evil and unacceptable behaviour. Cain murdered his brother Abel, “Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” (v 12) There was something in him before the murder that was considered his base sin.

We could be mistaken in thinking that it was very unfair of God to accept Abel’s offering of lamb and not Cain’s offering of grain. But there is more to it than this.
For Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen 4:5-7; NRSV, italics are mine)

Remember that John seems to understand sin as being those things which express a broken relationship with God. What makes Cain’s offering unacceptable, is not that it was a grain offering, but that he made an offering when “sin’s desire was for him”, when he was predisposed to not accept relationship with God. God cannot accept an offertory from Cain because Cain has no relationship with him. It is God who ought to be angry, not Cain. It is God’s countenance that ought to have fallen, not Cain’s. It is because Cain did not know God that his action was unacceptable and led him in misplaced anger to take his brother out and murder him.

Not all behaviour is acceptable to God. Things which may be in themselves good, such as coming to worship or financial contribution to the life of the church, are not acceptable to God, even if they are done in God’s name, if they are done without a relationship with God. Although we are not inherently evil, we mortals do not have the power or freedom to determine what is and is not acceptable to God.

Growing in our knowledge and love of God, our relationship with God, is a process and a journey to which we must commit ourselves, as Jesus committed himself to us.
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. (1 John 3:16; NRSV)

It is a journey that needs to be undertaken with others for their, and our, mutual benefit and growth.

He goes on to say,
And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God. (1 John 3:19-21; NRSV)

If we are created in the image and likeness of God, there should be, within us, this working out of a relationship with God is not a religious one, separate from our human one, but a normal and part of who we are. It is truly human to desire and have a sense of peace with God and be able to stand before God in boldness.

Even though Jesus is no longer present on earth, seated at the right hand of the Father, “by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us,” (1 John 3:24b; NRSV) we are given the Holy Spirit to continue that work of revealing God to us and by the Holy Spirit “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,” (1 John 4:2; NRSV) helps us to have security in the knowledge of God in which we are growing.

Finally, and what sounds like it carries a tinge of arrogance, John says,
Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:6; NRSV)

I find it curious that, once upon a time, if I heard or saw a Christian programme on the radio or television, I would turn off or onto another channel. Today, I am inclined to listen. I may not agree, but those who know God will be willing to discuss and work it out together.

For those who truly know God, they understand that, although everything is permissible because we have freedom in Christ, not everything is beneficial, it is not anything goes. What is righteous, and is right behaviour, is that which is consistent with the nature of God. And God has not left us alone to work this out, he has given us his Holy Spirit to help us grow in our knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord and express that knowledge in action.

The epistles of John are probably not written by the same person who wrote the gospel according to John. It was probably written just a little later than the gospel. There is, however, one characteristics that is present in both, and that is the strong dualistic language. What I mean by that is that it is black and white, it is either one thing or the other, there is no grey area: above and below, dark and light, good and evil, spirit and flesh, for example. There is a substantial shift from the gospel, the focus is not about the opponents to Jesus and the gospel who are outside the life of the believers, “the world”, “the Jews”, but the false teachers that are amongst the community of believers and what they are teaching.

I had a member of one of the congregations in my previous parish who believed that John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” was an error. How could God love the world, which was so sinful that he had to send his Son to die in order to save it and, I guess, how could he love a world that would do what it did to his Son.

These false teachers, about which John is writing to the church, are those Christians who have taken this kind dualism to the heart of their understanding of God. These false teachers believe that the world and the flesh were essentially evil, therefore, God could not have taken on human flesh in the incarnation as Jesus. Consequently, Jesus maintained his true spiritual nature and only appeared to be in the flesh. This is the basis of the heresy “docetism”, from the Greek meaning “I seem”; Jesus only seemed to be human.

So it is that we heard in the reading from the epistle, last week,
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 Jn 1:1-3; NRSV)

In other words, we heard, we saw, we touched with our hands, Jesus was not simply a spirit presence, he was a fully fleshed human being.

It would seem that the false teachers, if they were arguing that Jesus was not in the flesh, then the purpose of being a Christian was to free oneself from the world, to seek to become a truly spiritual person. This is a theology that we see present in the Eastern World Religions such as Buddhism, the desire to achieve Nirvana, other worldliness, what our young people have described as being so super-spiritual they are of no earthly good.

The epistle of John, however, calls his readers, and us, to an understanding of what it means to be a person of God, a person in Christ, based on the reality, the truth, the light, that Jesus was God in human flesh present in the world. John’s epistle it is defining what Christianity actually is and describing the life of a Christian, that is, how we understand God to be is the determining factor of how we behave, and we will be able to determine someone’s knowledge of God by their behaviour. In other words, how do I understand the nature and person of God, made known to us in the historical person of Jesus, what response does that invite me to enter into and what behaviour does that create in me?

This is nothing new, John goes on to say, but the essence of the old, as we hear it, uniquely, in the Gospel of John,
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35; NRSV)

This is the “word that [they] have heard.” What John is going to add, as new, is a sermon on the last part of Jesus’ words in John’s Gospel. It is new “because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” When Jesus first gave his eleventh commandment, he was looking to the future, now it is the present, and because Jesus is no longer physical present but with them by his Spirit, the disciples are to live out the commandment.

So John makes a contrast to the false teachers who would be encouraging those who listen to them not to worry about those things that are going on around them, not to be concerned about the needs of the people who around them, because their only task was to have knowledge of God. You cannot, according to John, be a person who really knows Jesus and not respond in love toward the world and those around you. If you say you know Jesus and you do not respond to the needs of those around you, you are lying about knowing Jesus.

John warms his readers that there is a fine line here. We are not to despise our human flesh, for if it is good enough for God in Jesus, it is good enough for us. Because God took on the material in the incarnation of Jesus, Christianity is the most material of all the world religions. There is, however, a difference between having love toward the world and loving the world. Sex is a wonderful thing, but it if we are controlled by our lust it is of the world. I have always wanted to have a flash sports car, but to envious of those who have one is of the world. It is OK to have a nice house to live in, but to set your status in the community by the size of your house is of the world. Without thinking of the material world is purely evil, we are not made right by these things.

John is writing to the infants in the faith, “your sins are forgiven”, “because you know the Father”. He is writing to the elders in faith, marked as elders because they “know him who is from the beginning”. He is writing to the young ones, “you have conquered the evil one”, “because you are strong and the word of God abides in you.” There is nothing else but having a relationship with God, as he is revealed in Jesus, that can mark us as belonging to God and this is what determines our behaviour.

Those who argue anything else, according to John, are the antichrist. The antichrists are those who deny the Father and Jesus as his anointed Son. The antichrists are not those who have thorns in their head and forks in their hands, they are simply those who consider themselves believers, but, by their actions, reveal that their belief is based on something other than a real knowledge of God. They are those who might argue that Christianity is concerned with teaching morality and citizenship, where a church youth group leader will gather the youth group in the church hall while worship is taking place in the church building, sending subliminal messages to others that God is not important.

Finally, for this portion of John’s first epistle, today, he gets to the base essence of how he understands the nature of God to be, as one commentator put it, “[The epistle’s] greatness consists in the penetration with which it expounds a single thought, that God is love,” John writes, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” (1 Jn 3:1; NRSV)

The essence of Christian faith is this, having just celebrated the death and resurrection of Easter, we are affirmed that by that death and resurrection we have a relationship with God are God’s children now and those who do not yet have that relationship with God, can be one of God’s children. The reason for Easter, the making of us his children, is because God is love, because God has immense love for us, so much so, that he was willing to die in order to make that happen.

If we understand the immensity of this love, if we know that God loves us, then we know God and this will effect our behaviour. A study some time ago revealed that we are more inclined to be attracted to people because we knew they were attracted to us, that physical attractiveness as secondary. The first behaviour that the knowledge of God’s love for us brings about is a desire to respond to that love. A desire to accept God’s invitation to become one of his children, to make a commitment to God through Jesus Christ. This commitment continues in our desire to get to know God as he is revealed is the Bible, in the prayer of conversation with God and as he is revealed in action and word by our fellow believers.

We are confronted by John’s final words in our portion of Scripture today, “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” (1 Jn 3:6; NRSV) If we are honest we know we are still sinful, we are still inclined to damage our relationship with God and others. This does not mean that we do not know God. It does mean that we do not know God completely yet, nor will we know God completely in this life, “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is”. (1 Jn 3:2; NRSV) Even having given ourselves into the love of God, committed ourselves to him, our acts of sin, by what we do and do not do, reveal those things we do not yet know about God. For when we do know God completely, as he is, we will be like him.

There are some who say that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead proves that Jesus was the Son of God. I don’t know whether it proves anything about the identity of Jesus. But it does prove something about the nature of Jesus. He was, as we Australians unfashionably say, fair dinkum. He was willing to go all the way for what he believed to be his purpose in the world. And, as God, it proves something about God. God’s love is fair dinkum. There can be no doubt, as a result of the resurrection of Jesus, that God so loved his creation, so loves humanity, so loves you and me.

I listened to a woman ring up a talk-back show during this week. She had been ‘studying’ her Bible to find out why Easter did not fall on the same date each year. She had found a connection between the Sabbath and the resurrection, which is next to meaningless except explaining why it was Sunday that the women found the empty tomb. What was interesting was that she rang the radio station to find out the reason, not the representatives in a Christian church.

Conversations on radio and television have indicated two realities. That we are losing more and more the reason for Easter, becoming more and more a celebration of chocolate, and even if we do know the facts concerned with the death and resurrection of Jesus, we seem to be more and more not recognising the significance of the event. Despite 27% of the residents of Greater Geelong describing themselves as Anglican, only 2% of those residents of Belmont are participating in the life of the church. The significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not affecting the choices we make for our life.

The result of this ignorance or insignificant response to the death and resurrection has led to those distinctions which appear within our language from time to time. Phrases from within the church like, ‘committed’ Christian as a opposed to being just Christian, sorting out the fair dinkum Christians from the Christians by name only. And from outside the active life of the church comes the description of someone as ‘a religious person’, or a ‘bible basher’, or a ‘holy roller’. It is often from those Christians who are not actively involved in the life of the church that the fear of Islam comes. Not because faithful Islam is anything to be feared, but, I suspect, simply because there is a lack of understanding of what it means to be fair dinkum about faith in a God who is fair dinkum with us.

A remarkable aspect about the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary is that Jesus tells them to gather with the other disciples to tell them about what they had seen and discovered. The resurrection appearance was not for them, as individuals. It was for other to share. It was to be spoken about with others and it became the reason for them being. Their identity as a group was based on the knowledge and experience of the resurrection of Jesus.

Ultimately this means that to be a Christian is not an invitation to be a person, it is an invitation to be a people. It is true that in living out Christian faith we will grow into full maturity and potential as an individual, but such growth is dependent upon the relationships we have with others including a relationship with the living, resurrected Christ. Jesus did not die on the cross and was not raised from the dead to call us to be a person; he calls us to be God’s people.

As a people whose identity is based on the death of Jesus that led to his resurrection; we are called to be people of the resurrection. We are not just individuals who are saved from their sin, restored to relationship with God, we are participants with God in bringing about resurrection in this world. The kingdom of God which Jesus came to bring, is a kingdom which new and different from the usual way our world and society works. It is concerned with bringing about something new – in our own life as the church, and as church in our community. This is why, often, the church enters into the domain of politics challenging what it sees as unfairness that we describe as a failure to be fair dinkum to all.

Admittedly, the church is not perfect. It fails and it sometimes fails appallingly. It has failed appallingly in its past dealings with clergy protection of children and trust relationships. It has failed in its care of its members and its welcome of those searching for God. It has even failed because it has been working so strongly within the political and welfare sphere that it has forgotten to proclaim the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But this is recognising that in order to be a people of the resurrection, we need to put to death some things in order that we can be raised again, by God.

It is true that going to church does not make any person a Christian, in the same way that going to the garage does not make you a car. But this does not equal that you do not have to go to church to be a Christian. If God is fair dinkum in his love for us through the resurrection, then Jesus Christ deserves to be declared Lord of our lives. And if the Lord of life calls us to be a people and we choose to remain on our own, then we are denying that Jesus Christ is Lord of our life.

The very fact that our society has lost touched with what Easter means and why things are the way they are, that there are parts of the church that make us all uncomfortable with the message they proclaim, that individuals claim their personal revelation is the only truth, all indicates the need we have to be within a people to discern the nature and being of God and the behaviour and choices we make toward one another.

My personal experience and relationship with the risen Christ, tested within the life of God’s people, is proof of the existence of God. Although the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ does not by itself prove the existence of God, it does prove the extent to which Jesus Christ, now risen, is willing to go in order to enable people to have relationship with the heavenly Father. Jesus put his money where his mouth was, he was fair dinkum about his belief in God. The death and resurrection of Jesus demands that we are fair dinkum about our response, too.

One of the readings in our list for today is Genesis 21:1-34.  The story is about the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah and the sending away of Hagar and Ishmael.  The back ground to this story is the promise that God will bring about, through Abrham a great nation, but Sarah has been, until this time, unable to have children.  In the end, she tries to make God’s promise happen by giving her handmaid, Hagar, to her husband to sleep with and have a child through her.  The story continues, in the reading today, and reveals how Sarah’s attempt to make God’s promise a reality comes back to bite her.  Ishmael goes on to become a great nation in his own right simply because he was also Abraham’s son, but even so, that nation was to be problematic to the developing nation through Isaac.

This story led me to ask questions about our work as church.  If we affirm our understanding that it is God’s church and God promises to grow the church.  Like Sarah, most of us have the tendency to try and make God’s promise become a reality – we invest our energy in trying to grow the church.  That will come back to bite us.  What then is our task?  I am sure that, even though we speak of the nee to ‘be’ chruch, this does not mean that we sit back and wait for God to do his stuff.  The evidence is that this has already come back to bite us.  What then are we supposed to do?

The story is interesting.  While all this working out how and through whom God is going to grow his nation, Abraham is making a covenant with Abimelech and the commander of his armies, Phicol.  Abrham is not concerned with how and through whom God is going to do his growing, he is simply establishing relationships.

Our task, then, is not so much about growing the Church – tha’s God’s business.  Our task is to be building connections with others so there are a network of relationships through which we can help others connect with God.