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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