Our Commitment To The "Foreigner” Series

Our Commitment to the “Foreigner”

Series: Cracks – Navigating Our Divided Times?

Brad Bailey – March 13, 2022

NOTE: The following notes were used as a reference and were more extensive than time would allow to be fully give, The fourth and final point was made but was not expanded upon with all that is in the notes. One will also find “further resources” with links and extensive footnotes that I hope can serve them.

Intro

Today we’re continuing in our series focused on navigating through our divided times.

Our goal is to identify some of the issues which have brought division within our culture at large...but also within the general Christian culture...to allow God to speak to us through the Scriptures. Our goal is not to settle every difference of perspective and policy... but to establish our common ground in the mind and heart of God.

Today...we are engaging our relationship to the “foreigner” ... more specifically to the immigrants... and refugees of our current world.

This has become a growing source of contention within our culture... with increasingly polarized political postures regarding immigration and refugees. On one side are positions which seem so open in terms of our borders and policy...that seems to bear chaos. On the other side are position that seek to close us off .... seeing the very nature of foreigners as dangerous... and forget our history as immigrants.

The politics of immigration and refugee policy are valuable and valid. The Scriptures refer to the validity of borders and boundaries that define nations... and they affirm that God deems human governance to manage those boundaries. That is a challenging responsibility...and worthy of debate about policies. But as this wages through our news outlets... what is lost in the hostility are the actual lives created in God’s image.

And how timely it is...that we had planned to let God speak to us about our commitment to foreigners...as we watch images of lives fleeing Ukraine... many with just a child in one arm...and a small bag in the other.

As of this weekend...over 2.5 million lives have left everything... and face the reality of a future in which they will be foreigners in a new land. And that could reach 4 or 5 million or more in the coming months.

This is the biggest single refugee crisis Europe has faced since World War Two.

Many of us have been looking... and wondering... what happens to such lives.

Those who have given their lives to working with refugees… are glad that we are looking and wondering.

They know that the tragedy we see in Ukraine represents the latest in what has become the most immediate humanitarian crisis.

They know that the numbers of people being displaced by large scale violence... by drought and hunger and economic collapse... have been growing dramatically.

The mass of lives that are fleeing Ukraine is coming amidst...the greatest increase in refugees in modern history. [1]

In the past decade, the global refugee population has more than doubled.

“The world is facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with nearly 60 million individuals globally forcibly displaced from their homes because of persecution and violence.

Over half of refugees are children. [2]

They know that the massive human tragedy in really human...that every life has a name and a soul.

every individual life faced profound challenges. … and hope we will look more deeply.

So I want to invite us to hear God’s heart.

PRAY

Overwhelmed... seek your call... not to alleviate all suffering...but to become aligned with you.

Not to solve ...but to share your heart.

Not the political pundits... not the fear that can only think of our protection and prosperity.

Join your heart.

There is an underlying message that God has for those he created… and it is this:

This is no longer our ultimate home. We are all foreigners.

In the Genesis narrative, God makes a covenant with a pagan named Abraham (Gen 12, 15), promising him land, offspring, and blessing. With these promises...He sets Abraham and his descendants... on a migration to the promised land.

Along the way, his descendants become slaves in Egypt for over 400 (Exod 1-14). To put it lightly, they were poorly treated immigrants.

And God had foretold that his would be a part of the future... a part of their identity... they would be immigrants... refugees...who had come in need of food... and then oppressed. (Gen 15:13).

After being delivered from Egypt, the Israelites resume their migration. As they are sojourning, God gives his people the law (Exod 20), within which God displays his love and concern for the immigrant. As such, the Israelites were required to treat foreigners with love and kindness, contrary to the way they were treated in Egypt (Exod 22:21; Deut 23:7). [3]