The Worship Artist

Nelson Jennings makes a great point to remind us that God is dealing with all peoples and we can avoid our arrogance to think God only dealt with the Israelites, and he now only deals with American Christians.

The Bible gives specific examples of God’s various dealings with peoples whom we might study in school but not consider in connection with God is Jesus Christ. In Genesis 15, God covenants with Abram to multiply his descendants and to give them the land of Canaan. He adds, however, that they will spend several generations in Egypt before returning to Canaan to occupy it. God’s stated reason for this delay is that the current occupants’ sin “is not yet complete” (15:16). Their judgment will have to wait 400 years more until the Israelites come and conquer them under Joshua’s leadership.

This implies that God’s dealing with the people of Canaan did not take place only insofar as he related to Israel. Rather, God, to whom all peoples throughout world history have been responsible as their Covenant-Creator-Master, was offended by the Canaanites’ sin and rebellion against him–irrespective of his special dealings with Israel. Ultimately he would provide for the Canaanites’ and all other nationalities’ salvation in Israel’s Messiah, the world’s Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. That special work of God was interlaced with his ongoing dealings with all the peoples of his rebellious world.

-J. Nelson Jennings – God the Real Superpower: Rethinking Our Role in Missions

In today’s age in Christianity we know a lot about other religions and how to “deal” with them. We know how to logically disprove Islam or virtually any other religion. We also know how to scientifically “prove” the historical facts of the Scripture to the Atheist. But lets remember that we’re dealing with an actual person, not a mere belief system.

Preaching must thus be an encounter, an encounter not with a part of a person, not only with his reason, or with his poetic feeling, but an encounter with the entire person, with the whole man, as he exists in this world, as he is in flight from God, as he plays a role in that tremendous drama that is enacted between God and the rebellious human heart.
J.H. Bavink, An Introduction to the Science of Missions