A good return?

Major Stuart Barker identifies the vital goal of Back To Church Sunday

STUDY PASSAGE: DEUTERONOMY 30:1–10

TO come back is to return. An obvious statement, but it points to a key word to consider on Back To Church Sunday tomorrow (25 September).

God’s call to the people of Israel to return to him and his enabling of their return to the Promised Land are recurring features in the Old Testament. In encouraging people to come back to church – to God’s ‘new Israel’ – we can benefit from reflecting on this ancient concept of returning to God.

God’s word, spoken to his people through Moses, made it clear that he always knew his people would, at various times, wander from their allegiance to him – the one true God. But it also revealed that many would return from these wanderings and that God had already planned their way back.

‘When you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul… then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul… Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands… The Lord will again delight in you’ (Deuteronomy 30:2–9 all quotations from New International Version unless stated otherwise).

It is abundantly clear from these verses that it is God’s deepest desire for his wandering, errant people to return to the place where they belong.

To ‘the land that belonged to your ancestors’ (v5), where he wants to bless them with his love and mercy.

To ‘have compassion on you’ and make up for the lost time of wandering; to ‘restore your fortunes’ (v3).

To grow them as a people numerically, to ‘make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors’ (v5).

To grow them spiritually in a way they had previously not experienced: ‘The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul’ (v6 New Living Translation).

To make them a fruitful and productive people: ‘Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands’ (v9).

It is also clear from this passage that we must be careful not to limit the possibility of who may return, for God promised to bring back exiles from even ‘the most distant land under the heavens’ (v4).

The truths gleaned from these verses also remind us that, when we invite and encourage people to come ‘back to church’, it is not simply an exercise to complete or a box to tick.

It is an ongoing mission, in which we are God’s agents through whom he graciously reaches out to those who have drifted from his planned place for them: ‘The Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land’ (vv4 and 5).

‘The Lord will again delight in you’ (v9) carries overtones of the celebration party planned by the father when the lost son returned from his wanderings in the parable told by Jesus. It brings great delight and celebration in Heaven when those who have drifted away from their rightful place in the family return.

Though we must be cautious about assuming that all whom we want to come back to church have drifted away entirely from their relationship with God, it is clear from the Old Testament teaching on ‘return’ that the vital goal is the return of God’s people to their relationship with him.

A return into their rightful place or community is something that should naturally accompany that restored relationship.

• Major Barker is corps officer at Hull Citadel