"Called - Sent;" to do God's Will! Three men! We are called also, but only Some are sent to preach good news

“Called - Sent;” to do God’s Will!  Three men!

We are called also, but only Some are sent.

In time, as we see it, God called Abram saying, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  With all the evil that was appearing on the land God gave to his people it was time to bring forgiveness to these sinners and to redeem them as he desired when he created them.  There were no maps of guides that led Abram away except the assurance that God gave to him that he would show him the way.  He had no idea of what he was to accomplish except for the words from the Lord; “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.  All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.  (Gn 12: 1 - 3).  

Of all the intricate events that Abram found himself in, the one that disturbed him was when God became upset with the trials of Sodom and Gomorrah.  The Lord and two angels who looked down the road toward Sodom; Abraham was walking with them, to see them on their way.  The Lord reflected: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, now that he is to become a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him?  Then the Lord said: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.  I mean to find out.”  While the two men walked on farther toward Sodom, the Lord remained standing before Abraham.  Then Abraham drew nearer to him and said:  “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?”  Suppose there were 50 innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it?”  The Lord replied, “If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”  Abraham continued this scenario  down to ten innocent people in Sodom.  “For the sake of those ten,”  he replied, “I will not destroy it.”  (Gn 18: 16 - 18, 20 - 21, 24, 26, 32).  Abraham, a prophet sent to save his people, even those who were sinners.  His actions here are exactly what the Son of God would do on Calvary. Called and sent to do God’s Will.

A second prophet, unknown to himself, was Moses.  One day as he was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  There an angel  of the Lord appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush.  As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.  When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”  He answered , “Here I am.”  God said, “Come no nearer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”  Here again, God is calling the second person whom he will send to rescue his people and bring them to the land he has promised and from which his Son would grow up and become the Messiah to save his people.   (Ex 3: 1 - 3, 4 - 6). 

In a similar manner as with Abraham, and the people that Moses rescued from Egypt would turn away from God, the very Lord that brought them through the desert to safety.  While Moses was on the mountain with God receiving the tablets containing the Ten Commandments written on stone by the finger of God, the people grew tired of Moses taking so long with the Lord, God, on the mountain.  They made a golden calf to worship and sang songs and danced around this molten idol image.  At the end of the forty days and forty nights,  when the Lord had given me the stone tablets of the covenant, he said to me,”Go down from here, quickly, for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt have become depraved; they have already turned aside from the way I pointed out to them and have made for themselves a molten idol.  I have seen how stiff-necked these people are,”the Lord said to me.  “Let me be, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens.  I will then make of you a nation mightier than they.  (Dt 9: 7 - 14).

Moses said to his people;  “These forty days, then, and forty nights, I lay prostrate before the Lord , because he had threatened to destroy you.  This was my prayer to him:  O Lord God, destroy not your people, the heritage which your majesty has ransomed and brought out of Egypt with your strong hand.  Remember your servants, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.  Look  not upon the stubbornness of this people nor upon their wickedness and sin, lest the people from whose land you have brought us say, “The Lord was not able to bring them into the land he promised them,” or Out of hatred for them he brought them out to slay them in the desert,”  They are, after all, your people and your heritage, whom you have brought out by you great power and your outstretched arm.  (Dt 9: 25 - 29).  Unlike Abraham seeking mercy for the ten of Sodom who were not there, Moses also sought God’s mercy and became just like Christ who sacrificed himself for the sinners of the world.  Called and Sent to do God’s Will.

The third man who was called and sent to do God’s Will was God himself.  He called upon the very holy and righteous person, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity.  Here, just like with the people Abraham was sent to become the father of untold human beings, and Moses sent to save God’s people from captivity, Jesus volunteered to do the same; however it wasn’t one faction of God’s people, it became the entire populous of planet earth, from the beginning to the end of the ages.

God the Father called his Son and sent him, through the Incarnation, to seek and find those who had wandered away from the generosity and life he had given to all mankind and present them with the probability to return to the promise of God to share everlasting life with him.

As with Abraham and Moses Jesus found a people who still wanted to fill their own desires without God’s interference.  Look at the incidents that Jesus encountered with the Scribes and Pharisees who were the experts in Sacred Scripture and understood completely what God had inspired the prophets with knowledge of his eternal Word.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” (Lk 4: 18 - 19). 

Again, this third prophet was called and sent to bring good news to the poor.  If the only persons listening and not adhering to his news were the general residents then we could surmise they didn’t understand the message in the scriptures.  But the scribes and Pharisees were in attendance and knew completely what Jesus was talking about as he read from Isaiah the prophet.  They knew, but would not allow their knowledge of scripture to interfere with their pride and obvious self-indulgence of being correct even with their hypocrisy.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings.  You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.  (Mt 23: 13).

Throughout this article we have noticed those who were called and sent to do God’s will did not find complete acceptance by their audience.  However, God knew this from the beginning there would be doubts from those who were to receive his forgiveness.  The emphasis of his calling and sending to some is what many of us have also been selected to accomplish.  

Listen and hear the call that the Lord is reaching those of us to do the same.  Reach out with our sending gifts and bring the helpless in spirit back to Christ and extend his passion to them.

“When evil seems to triumph, Lord, and our hope begins to fail, give us courage and perseverance in doing your will.”  (Psalm-prayer (119) from daytime prayer for Saturday Daytime Prayer Week Two).  

Ralph B. Hathaway