Blessed Earth: Hope for Humanity — Matthew Sleeth

In Blessed Earth Series Part 2—Hope for Human­ity, Dr. Mat­thew Sleeth exam­ines how God’s ori­ginal com­mand to “tend and pro­tect the planet” extends into the actions and activ­it­ies of our every­day lives. In these final six ses­sions, Dr. Sleeth advoc­ates a spir­itu­ally and envir­on­ment­ally sus­tain­able life­style, focus­ing on six key actions — Rest, Work, Give, Share, Teach, and Hope. As mem­bers of the body of Christ, we serve as the hands and feet of God on the earth.

Ses­sions:

• Ses­sion 7: Rest
  On the sev­enth day God cre­ated rest and called it holy. Rest is a gift of God. The fourth com­mand­ment tells us to rest, to stop everything. Sounds nice, but how do we find rest in a 24/7 world? Sab­bath is about restraint, about inten­tion­ally not doing everything all the time just because we can. The Sab­bath is about let­ting go of the con­trols one day a week and let­ting God be God.
• Ses­sion 8: Work
  A major­ity of our life is spent at work. Work itself is a good thing; God cre­ated us to work and called us to be garden­ers. But what does it mean to be stew­ards of the earth at the office? God is call­ing all of us to take bet­ter care of the planet. We must exam­ine our work in light of the gifts we’ve been given and the bib­lical call to care for the earth.
• Ses­sion 9: Give
  When God gave His only son to die for us, He gave extra­vag­antly. When we work hard for what we earn, we’re faced with a choice: store up treas­ure for ourselves here on earth…or give it away. From the first stor­ies of the Bible, it is clear God is not sat­is­fied with mere leftovers. He wants our eager and gen­er­ous hearts — it’s good for us, for our neigh­bors, and for God’s green earth.
• Ses­sion 10: Share
  In the early church, believ­ers were meet­ing together for meals, shar­ing, wor­ship­ping, and provid­ing for one another gen­er­ously. And each day new mem­bers were added to their gath­er­ings. It’s quite a pic­ture — people who see church not as a build­ing but as a way of life. As a soci­ety we long for com­munity, so how did we get from that early church to today’s status quo?
• Ses­sion 11: Teach
  Teach­ing what the Bible says about caring for the earth and all liv­ing things is both a respons­ib­il­ity and a priv­ilege, but how do we do it? Jesus taught primar­ily by his example, even to the point of death on a cross for our sins. In doing so, he taught us some­thing pro­found about time: what we do now — even the sac­ri­fices we make — mat­ter for gen­er­a­tions to come.
• Ses­sion 12: Hope
  When Chris­ti­ans talk about “going green,” they bring some­thing unique to the dis­cus­sion: hope. Not just hope for a bet­ter future in heaven, but hope for today through the power of God’s Holy Spirit at work in His Church. As believ­ers in Christ, we are in the life busi­ness — life today, life tomor­row, and life the next day. Com­bine faith, hope, and love, and things get done. Change happens.

(inform­a­tion taken from blessedearthfilms.org)

• Author: Dr Matthew Sleeth
• Title: Blessed Earth: Hope for Humanity
• Availablity: Available Now
• Duration: 6 videos (approx 15min each)
• Format:
  • DVD
  • Guidebook
  • Online resources (blessedearthfilms.org)

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