Every Nation, Tribe, People, and Language
Every Nation, Tribe,
People, and Language (All Saints Sunday)
Week of November 5,
2017
Revelation 7:9-17
Hang Out and Catch Up
(10-20 min)
As your group gathers, invite them to share stories of
saints in their own lives.
Prayer and
Accountability (20-30 min)
It is great to hear about how your groups are connecting to
God and one another during this time. I
encourage you to ask follow-up questions to see how situations are going in
members’ lives, and help them connect the dots to see God at work in their
lives.
Passion: Where did
I see God today?
Accepting: How am
I building diverse relationships?
Invitational: Who
am I connecting with God’s family?
Trusting: Where
does God rank?
Active: How am I
engaged with God’s work?
Bible Study and
Discussion (20-30 min)
Read Revelation 7:9-17 together.
When you hear this passage, what do you see? What do you sense?
What sticks out to you?
Check out Time
Magazine’s interview with N.T. Wright, probably the greatest New Testament
scholar in the world. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html
-In his book Surprised
by Hope, NT Wright challenges our traditional understandings of “dying and
going to Heaven.” Specifically in this article,
the following interchange between the interviewer and NT Wright really gets at
the heart of the issue:
“Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or
Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven.
They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we
have a job to do.
TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.
Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around
listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that
God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea
of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are
supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you
transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at
the end of Revelation.
TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this
all having a moral dimension.
Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily
resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to
Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very
much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our
world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of
"traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these
rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them
you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is
God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation,
and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the
plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.”
Is it possible to be so heavenly minded that we are of no
earthly good?
*How should
a vision of heaven like the one in Revelation 7 encourage us to live on
earth?
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