The Start of Something New

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Don Filcek, Beginning with God: A Walk Through the Book of Genesis; Genesis 12:1-9 The Start of Something New

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.
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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. To worship our great
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God here on a Sunday morning. Be sure to take advantage of the worship folder that you received when you walked in.
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There's different announcements and activities and things that are spelled out in there. You also received a connection card when you walked in.
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If it's your first time with us and you fill out one of these connection cards and turn it in in the black box back there, then we just ask that you please also take a free coffee mug, just our way of saying thanks for joining us.
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But remember, those of you that have been here for a while, there's a place to put prayer requests and different information and suggestions and things like that on the back of that card, too.
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We greatly appreciate when we get an opportunity to pray for you in a knowing way throughout the week. And then also, you received an offering envelope when you came in.
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Remember that those offering envelopes go in the black box back there as well, if you choose to give this morning. We don't pass an offering plate here, so anything given in there.
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A reminder that anything given in there that mentions the expansion fund on it, whether that's on the envelope or on the check itself, will go towards our hopes towards building a building here in Matawan.
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We currently have property and we just opened up a building fund. We're not doing a capital campaign or anything slick like that, but just anything that's marked, we've got that fund open and available for you there, if you would take advantage of that.
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I recognize that there's all kinds of reasons that people come to church on a Sunday morning, all different kinds of reasons that you might be hearing now.
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Your mind probably wanders to that and thinking like, what am I doing here? Some of you were raised to attend church and it's kind of like baseball, apple pie,
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Chevrolet, go to church on Sunday. It's like the American thing to do, right? I mean, have any of you kind of, you were raised going to church and that kind of seems like it's a pretty logical thing for us to do here in America.
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Others of you maybe have been dragged here by somebody. Maybe your spouse dragged you here, or maybe your parents dragged you here, or maybe your kids dragged you here.
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I don't know, but there's that possibility there as well. And still others of you have maybe come because you desire to grow in faith.
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And you would have stated that when you woke up this morning, I'm going to church this morning because I want to grow in my faith and my relationship with God and grow in community and those kinds of things.
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But my hope and prayer for all of us this morning, and even as Kyle and I get here early on Sunday mornings to pray, one of the things that we pray about is that God would work in our hearts to grow us in faith, regardless of what it is that's brought you through the doors.
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And that's what I think is awesome, is that God has that power by His Holy Spirit to convict us, to encourage us, to draw us out based on His Word.
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And so that's one of the main reasons why we take a chunk of God's Word Scripture and we break it down every week and we talk about that.
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Because it's our conviction that the truth is found in here of who God is. And that as we come in contact with this, our hearts and lives can be changed and our behavior changes as our heart changes.
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And so it's a matter of taking this on and knowing God as He is. And that's where our core values come from.
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Reproducing community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. Recognize that as the acronym for RECAST.
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The T in RECAST stands for truth. And that is because we want everything that we do to be guided and directed by the
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Word of God and to consistently come back here. And we're convinced that we can be challenged to grow in our faith by coming in contact with God's Word.
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And so as we carry on in Genesis, we're going to turn a corner here from what the first 11 chapters that we've been through so far have been kind of broken down by scholars into the section called ancient history.
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And now we're going to enter into an age of the patriarchs where we're going to be talking about Abram and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and those guys.
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And that's kind of the remainder of the book of Genesis is kind of walking us through the lives of these guys who are selected out by God and the line from him and it's a pretty big deal what is going to happen here.
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In our text, there's nothing less than one of the most pivotal points in the entirety of human history. So far, we've seen
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God create a good creation in the book of Genesis. We've seen humanity break that creation through rebellion.
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We watched the spiral down into deep depravity until God's assessment of humanity was that every thought and intention of our hearts was only ever evil continually.
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Like pretty dramatic statement, but I think if you know your own heart, then you probably recognize some echoes of the reality of that, that your intentions and your thoughts are evil.
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It's not just your behavior. Sometimes we like to think we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and we kind of go, it's just my behavior.
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I'm just not acting the way that I am inside. But in all honesty, if we're honest with ourselves, we would recognize that there's actually evil in our intentions as well.
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Sometimes we hurt people and we meant to, right? And so there's a problem. Fundamentally, God says the problem with humanity is in their heart.
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It's not just their behavior. And so then we waded through the flood. Do you guys see what
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I did there? Waded through the flood. Yeah, and then we waded through the genealogies too.
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Maybe that's funny too. We waded through some of those genealogies with all those names and all those people.
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But if you remember several weeks back, now it's been a few weeks since we covered the genealogies, but at the very end of the genealogies in chapter 11, we encountered a name that I said was going to be pretty significant moving forward.
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The name Abram, which we know is going to eventually be changed to Abraham. His name is Abram, great father.
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God is going to eventually in a couple chapters change his name to Abraham, which means father of many. And it doesn't seem like a significant change, but God loves to change people's names when he encounters them and changes them from the inside out.
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So he is, this guy named Abram is going to be significant moving forward.
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And I'll probably get his, I'll probably call him Abraham a few times just because that's how, you know, that's what is most common.
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But his name at the point where we're talking about him in Genesis chapter 12 is Abram at this point. His name hasn't been changed yet.
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But what we're going to see is God do something brand new in the text. We're going to see God enter into a unique and significant relationship with a individual human being.
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With the intention of blessing the entire world through this one dude. So that's, that's pretty significant.
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And at face value, our text in these nine verses doesn't look much different than God walking with Enoch. We saw him do that earlier.
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We saw God talk to Noah and give him instructions to build an ark. So like you could be like, what's the big deal about Abram because he's met with Noah before, he's met with Enoch before, he's met with other people before.
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So what's significant about Abraham? Well, we know, what we know now looking back is people in the
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New Covenant and being able to read the New Testament and the remainder of the Old Testament, we see just how crazy significant this situation is going to be where God selects
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Abraham. And how that's going to be what gets the whole ball rolling for the salvation plan that God had all the way back to Adam and Eve.
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God has proven that he's a God who keeps promises. And to Abram, he is going to make some very significant promises that have an impact even down to where you and I live in 2013 here in Matawan.
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So I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12. We're going to read the first nine verses. Page eight in the
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Bible in the seat back in front of you. So if you take that Bible out, turn to page eight, you can find it there. And if you don't own a
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Bible, we want everybody to have a copy of God's word. So please take that one with you. But follow along as I read
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Genesis chapter 12 and the first nine verses. The words of God to us this morning.
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Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you
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I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the
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Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.
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And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
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When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem to the oak of Morah. At that time the
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Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said to your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the
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Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.
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And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord and Abram journeyed on still going toward the
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Negev. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father I thank you for the the model that we have in Abram a man of faith and even declared in the book of Galatians by Paul to be the father of those who approach you by faith that he was the the first in that in that sense to to recognize your promises and to bank on those promises.
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Father I pray that you would open our eyes to what faith truly is to the the active component of it to the the part where we actually respond to the promises that you've given to us.
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Father that you would move in our midst to by your spirit to convict us to draw us out to show us the direction that you desire for us to go.
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Father that you would be honored by our praises and our offerings to you in regard to to worship at this time father as we as a band comes to lead us that our hearts would be moved that we would worship you in spirit and in truth that our minds would be engaged but also our emotions and our enthusiasm for you.
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Father even as we talked last week about the potential for unbridled rejoicing because of the resurrection and because of the cross and the sacrifice that's been made for us.
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I ask that you move in our hearts move in our midst to rejoice in you and your son and I ask this in Jesus name.
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A big thanks to the band for leading us in worship. Hopefully you were able to worship God in spirit and in truth there and now we continue on in worship through hearing from his word and responding by faith.
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Make sure that you keep your bibles open in front of you. I think that'd be valuable for you to have that bible turned up into page eight or to genesis chapter 12.
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So we're going to walk through this text together that you might see that i'm not making this stuff up that it's actually in there.
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So I think that's valuable and then also remember I know we just took a break but there's more juice and coffee and donuts and you can feel free to get up at any time during the message.
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You're probably not going to probably not going to distract me. And then there's also ladies restroom here and the men's is back there.
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And if you need to get up and stretch out or anything to just kind of keep your focus on God's word as we walk through this that would be awesome.
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I think it'd be valuable for us to start a few verses back just because where we're at in the book of Genesis, it's been a couple weeks.
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We took some time off for a good Friday and Easter to talk about death and resurrection. And so it's been a few weeks since we talked about these genealogies back in Genesis chapter 11.
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And if you look at primarily verses 27 through 32 identify this guy named Terah, Abram's dad.
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And so we we met him back there several weeks ago. We recognized that Abram's dad picked up his family and it says in the text headed off to Canaan.
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So they started to move to Canaan. Terah, Abram's dad moved his family that way.
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But then they got as far as a place called Haran which is in kind of near the border of Turkey and Iraq.
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And they got to that area and then they settled there. And we really don't know why or any of the ins and outs of that.
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And I just want to point out that sometimes it can be dangerous drawing conclusions from scripture. I mean sometimes it's nice to have a holy imagination and kind of imagine how things went and stuff like that.
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But I've heard teaching on Terah, the father of Abram who only carried through halfway or something to that effect.
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And I just don't see that application from the text because we don't ever have any indication that God approached Terah, Abram's dad and told him to do anything.
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So he was just, we don't know why. We don't know what the purpose was for him to pick up his family and start off towards Canaan.
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We know he's leaving from an area of Babylon. Ur of the Chaldees, as the text is going to tell us here in just a moment.
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So Ur of the Chaldees, that is a very well -known archaeological place where we saw the
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Tower of Babel happen a couple weeks ago, right? How many of you were here when I talked about the Tower of Babel and when all that happened? That was in Babylon.
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That is that Abram grew up in the shadow of the unfinished tower. The tower that represented human rebellion against God, humans trying to make a name for themselves, human trying to protect themselves where God told them to scatter across the face of the earth.
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They gathered, they in direct rebellion against him. And so that's the area that our dude in the text is from.
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He's from Babylon, if you will. And so we know that that's going on in the text.
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But we're not told why Terah moved his family out of that area to Haran, but that's where they are.
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But there's also, what we do know at this point, if we were to read again, 27 through 32, which we haven't read this morning, but if you were to read those, there's something that stands out when you read that that would stand out to them that doesn't stand out to us.
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Because how many of you here in the room primarily think of yourself in terms of air? Like your primary thought in life is like, what am
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I going to get when my parents kick the bucket? Okay, we don't think in those kinds of terms, right?
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Or we don't think in terms of who is going to be my heir, who's going to inherit my estate, who's going to get all my stuff, right?
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Is that a primary thought that you think about that every week, right? Who's going to inherit my stuff when I die?
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Well, how many of you know that down through the centuries, we live in a very different age? But that was a significant question in people's mind ongoing.
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Who's going to get the stuff? Who's going to carry on my family line? Who's going to keep the name running for my family?
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Now, my main job up here isn't to endorse TV shows.
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Last week, it was kind of Duck Dynasty, and we talked about that a little bit. You know me, I don't try to do that.
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But then now I got another TV show I'm going to mention to you. Are any of you familiar with the TV show Downton Abbey? Have any of you seen that or familiar with it?
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Okay, a handful of you. Bring that up. Watch with caution. I mean, even if I'm mentioning it from up front, watch anything that you watch on TV with caution.
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Keep your thinking caps on when you're watching, right? And then also keep your moral filter there kind of going.
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Is this good? Do I need to be watching this or not? But the reason I bring up Downton Abbey is that it's a show that's set in Victorian England in an estate.
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And there's a lord of the estate and he has no heir. And so the tension in the show is who's going to be the heir.
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Those of you watching it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But there's this tension that is, you know, he's got three daughters.
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None of them have the right according to English law to inherit. And so he's got this distant cousin who has a son that is, you know, very far removed from the daily events of the estate.
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But now he's going to be the logical heir and all the help are frustrated. Who's this guy? And so I bring all that in not because I want you to learn a lot about Downton Abbey.
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I bring all that in to say that the concept of heir is going to be significant in moving forward in the book of Genesis.
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How many of you know that what God's going to promise here in the book of Genesis is that Abraham's going to have an heir? And we're going to see several chapters of drama surrounding who's going to be the heir and how is that going to all flesh out.
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But what's interesting is that in the last, at the very end of chapter 11, they would have listened to the end of what's said there and they would have been able to pinpoint who the logical heir is.
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And I bet nobody in the room knows who the logical heir of Terah is. But you could read it and you'd go, I don't know what you're talking about.
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Lot is the logical heir of Terah. Okay, there's, you know, this guy named
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Lot who just kind of to us, when we read, how many of you would say Lot is a significant figure in the scope of scripture?
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Probably not, really. I mean, you're kind of like, I know him and I've heard of him, but he's not got a huge role to play in the whole picture of things.
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But Lot, the grandson of Terah, the nephew of Abram, is the hope for an heir for Terah as we enter our text this morning.
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We've been told that Abram's wife is barren. She's not going to have a male offspring. At least according to the text that we understand now.
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Terah is going, this isn't going to happen. Nahor, for some reason, has refused to go with his father on into Haran, moving towards Canaan, and he's out of the picture.
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Nahor has stepped off the face of the planet. You're not going to see him again. And then already we know that Haran, the son of Terah, has already died back in Ur.
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So from this introduction, the concept, the tension of who's going to be the heir is already there. Now you're thinking it's going to be
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Lot, but now you've got, you know, a son who's not able to have children and on and on. And so there's this drama that's going to unfold.
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But what we encounter in our text then, in that context, in that setting of who's going to be the heir, what's going to happen, they're moving, they settled down in Haran, God speaks to Abram, the son of Terah.
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And he says this, look at verse 12. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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Now I often wonder what these speeches look like. Have any of you ever wondered, what's a speech like that? And you encounter it in scripture and it's like, takes for granted, okay,
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God spoke to Abram. How many of you would like to sign up for one of those speeches? Like God just sent,
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God, could you call me next week? Could you text me? Could you send me an email? Could you let me know exactly what you want me to do?
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Have you wanted one of those? How many, how many, honestly, raise your hand if you've wanted one of those. I've wanted one of those.
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I confess, I would love to have God just like, wake me up in the morning and say, here's what I want you to do today and you know, go do it.
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But I want to point out that God has given us something that's awesome. And as much as I say, I would love to have
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God tell me what the specifics he wants of my life, we have a treasure here.
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This is the word of God. This is his in writing demonstration of who he is. Him, God, revealing himself to us in love and care and compassion for his creation.
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This is a significant book. This is amazing what we have here. And as much as we might long for a voice from God on the building project that we're doing as a church or you name it, what's going on in your workplace or should
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I leave this job for another or should I do this or that or whatever? As much as we would like that,
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God has shown us himself. He has revealed who he is in his character that we might know him and then apply those things to our lives.
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This is valuable. And I would love to have some kind of an audible voice from time to time.
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That would be kind of cool. But I don't want to downplay what God has given to us. He has revealed himself to us through the pages of scripture.
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I don't know what this looked like though for Abram. I don't know if it was a dream. If he heard an audible voice shouting at him from heaven or it was a still small voice in his head as he was sitting there tending sheep or whatever he did.
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But I do believe this. I believe that God is able to reveal that it is indeed his voice speaking if he desires.
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So think about it this way. How many of you would question like you kind of have any of you have a running dialogue going on in your mind all the time like you're talking to anybody talk to yourself in your brain?
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You have this running conversation. If it's dead in there, then that's a concern. Usually something's going on in there.
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But you have this dialogue. So is that God's voice? Is it not? And how many of you think that God is able to speak to you?
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He is able to speak to you. Is he powerful enough? Let me rephrase that. Is he powerful enough to speak to you? Yes, I think we all in the room would agree on that on that notion.
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God is able to speak to you. Now, here's a here's a further question. Is God able to let you know it's him speaking?
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He is. I think Abram had reasonable conviction that this was
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God talking to him and God was able to impress that on him. But I want to point this out and I want to be careful because I am gun shy about the whole concept of God told me to do
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X or God told me to do Y or worse yet. God told me that you're supposed to do
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X or Y. How many of you know what I'm saying? Because have there been abuses of the phrase
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God told me to put it out there? How many of you know often God told me to do
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X and Y is something that that God doesn't tell people to do? Do you know what
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I'm saying? It's like this. This is like sin. Have any of you ever heard some had somebody come to you and say, you know,
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God, Oh, God's just telling me that the best thing for me to do is this and I just and you're like, nah. I've read it.
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I know that he's not telling you to do that because this says that he doesn't delight in that. He doesn't want that for you in here.
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So then how do we make sense of this? Um There's a there's a difference in our lives, I guess, you know in essence between faith and presumption and and recognizing whether it's the voice of God or not, but here's the here's the crux.
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I think if you are trying to convince someone else that you have heard the word of God then you are trying to justify your own behavior.
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That's the bottom line. If I have to stand up here and say God told me that I am supposed to do blank and now you can't argue with me because God told me but there's a difference between that and being convinced in myself that God has communicated that and going out and doing that.
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Does that make sense? So is there a difference there between trying to justify myself to others or even worse yet telling them what they're supposed to be doing?
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I think you get the point. The first thing that God says to Abram, he's convinced that this is God speaking to him and Abram tells him to go.
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Um exclamation point, go. And the way that God spells this out is interesting. You know, there's a way that you could tell your kid to do something those of you have children or whatever or you know you can put it in any context you want, but I could tell my kid, you know, you need to go to soccer practice get on your bike and go ride to soccer practice.
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And I could just tell them that and that would be a command a statement or whatever that you need to go do this. But there's another way that I could say that that kind of is a little bit more what
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God is doing here. I could say now I want you to go get on your bike and I want you to go to soccer practice. And by the way, while you're gone, we're going to watch movies and play video games and have ice cream and it's going to be a party back here, but we want you to go to soccer practice.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? I don't even know you can say go and um, but not mention that you're missing out on a bunch of stuff back here, but that's not what
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God does. God literally says I want you to go and then he highlights the things that he's asking
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Abram to leave. See, I want you to leave your family. I want you to leave your kindred. I want you to leave the place that you've come to love and come to know and I want you to uproot and go.
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And by the way, I'm not going to tell you where you're going. I'm not going to tell you where you're going.
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I want you, I want you to leave everything and I want you to trust me. Is that a pretty significant call on Abram's life?
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Is this, is this crazy? How many of you are signing up for that deal right away? God's like just go and I'll tell you when you get there.
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And by the way, I want to highlight and I want to remind you of everything you're going to leave behind. Your job, your, your, your livelihood, all the things that you know and you love and I want you to just give that up for me.
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God calls Abram to leave country, his kindred, his father's house. I don't think we can overstate the level of what is being asked of Abram here by faith.
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Now how many of you are here and you like adventure? Anybody kind of a little bit more adventurous and you're kind of like I like to travel, you know, this would be kind of cool.
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Like Abram's going on an adventure, but not everything's an adventure, right? In faith, like it's kind of like, well, I think
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I would like that kind of adventure until you ask me to leave, you know, everything that I love. And all of a sudden it's not as much of an adventure anymore.
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how many of you have ever traveled? Like you've traveled around different parts of the United States or you've traveled around different places in the country and you've wondered in your mind like, what would it be like to live there?
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Have you, have you, have you wondered that before? What would it be like to live in this place or whatever? Well, I can, I can testify as somebody who actually has picked up my family and moved overseas.
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We went over, my oldest son was eight months old when we moved to England. We lived there for a couple of years.
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We thought we were going for the rest of our lives. We actually filled a container box with our stuff and took it over there and thought we were going to be missionaries for forever and ever.
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And so here we are. We had that tearful departure at the airport with our family and all of that stuff and hugs and all of that and God's brought us right back.
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But the thing that's interesting is when we had visited, we'd visited England a couple times before we went there permanently, which seems like a wise thing to do.
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But while we were there just for the short couple of weeks and the, you know, the scouting trips and all that stuff and meeting with the ministry partners, we were joining in, you know, all that stuff.
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The things that we enjoyed, the things that we, that were kind of unique and stood out to us and were kind of exciting and adventurous and stuff, you know, driving on the other side of the road and, you know, all those kinds of things and their kind of funny use of different words and I don't even know that by the end of a couple years, the very things that we thought were attractive began to grate on us.
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Yeah, can you relate to what I mean? You know what I'm saying? So you go to a different culture and you're like, oh, that is so cool how they do that. That's so neat. And you just live there a couple of years and you're going to go, why don't they do it our way?
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Right? It changes pretty, pretty, pretty quick. And so Abram is being asked to uproot and go to a different culture in a very different way, a very different lifestyle than the way that he has lived.
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But notice the end of verse one, Abram isn't even told anything about the land he is to settle in. It's not like he's offered, you know, a link to Google Maps.
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Here's the location or, you know, God gives him a you know, the full set of Rosetta Stones so he can learn the language a little bit ahead of time, get a little bit of a primer on the language or something.
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This is a huge step of faith. He doesn't even know where he's going. Try that with the kids sometime.
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Are we there yet? Don't know, because I don't know where we're going, right? Don't know. Nobody knows.
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I mean, God will tell us when we get there. That could be a pretty rough trip, I think. Of course,
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Abram and Sarai didn't have kids so they didn't have that to worry about. But I'm just pointing out just what an immense step of faith is being asked of a real guy, a real guy in history.
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And on this I want to point out that faith hasn't changed much over the years. The call of God on individuals lives has not changed that much.
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The call on the life of Abram is one of loss. Let that sink in.
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He's being called to lose something and that's all he knows at this point. He does not know yet what he is going to gain, but he is called to lose something in the opening comments of God.
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I'm calling you to go and lose your kindred, your family, your father's house.
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He is called to surrender something he can see for something he has not yet seen.
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Does that sound like a familiar calling? Is that starting to snap into focus to those who in this room have recognized a calling to a higher kingdom, towards a kingdom that is eternal, that is lasting, to store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves do not break and steal, break in and steal, versus the things that we can tangibly hold in our hands.
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Where do we set up our kingdom? What do we hold on to? To surrender those things that give us comfort and pleasure now for a further kingdom sounds an awful lot like this call to Abram, doesn't it?
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That's not an easy calling. If we're honest, we have spent a significant amount of time setting up our own comfort, our own security, our own way of life.
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And yet something fundamental in this call to Abram, call of faith to Abram, points to risk.
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That sound like risk? He's called to risk. The opposite of safety, the opposite of fortification and building a kingdom for myself, the opposite of a visibly sure thing.
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The visibly sure thing for Abram was his life in Haran. That's what he was growing to know and that's what he was,
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I mean, how many of you know, he probably did the things that he did every day because he liked doing those things that he did every day in Haran, right?
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I mean for the most part, he's living his life, he's doing his thing. By the way, we're going to find out here in just a moment that he was a very wealthy individual.
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We don't, probably a lot of people don't realize that about Abram, but he was a wealthy individual before God ever called him. And so he's surrendering things for the cause, ultimately family and country and those kinds of things.
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The call of faith in God is one of risk, but I want to point this out and I want us to be careful because to risk is not equal to faith.
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How many of you know that there are risks that we take that have nothing to do with faith? Like jumping out of an airplane or running on a trail, like, right?
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I mean you turn your ankle and there you go, right? There are things that we do that are risky, but to do something risky does not mean that you're exercising faith.
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A lot of times there's presumption involved in it and there can be a subtle fine line between presumption and here's the fine line between presuming upon God's deliverance.
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I'm going to climb a mountain without a harness because God will save me. Does that sound like faith or does it sound like presumption and lunacy?
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Okay. And what's the fine line? The promises of God. The experience and knowledge of God, the knowing him as he has revealed himself and the things that he has declared true of himself and then we go from there.
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And so this is not merely risk on Abram's part. Why? Because God told him to.
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God called him to this and so we know that. Verses two through three are pivotal though because it's not just a calling but God has issued some promises to him as well that he can hold fast to if he trusts the character of God.
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We find in verses two through three what's been called the Abrahamic covenant and again a pivotal point where God is going to make some promises to him.
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God makes an agreement with a man, God agreeing with him.
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And Abram's part was to follow God in faith and God says if you follow me by faith, I will offer you four things in return.
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Some people break down the Abrahamic covenant into three things. Some people see as many as seven. I see four in here.
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Take it or leave it in my breakdown if you like it or not. Number one, he will make Abram, remember whose wife cannot bear children stated in the text, into a great nation.
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There's the tension. There's the tension that's going to be set up over the next several chapters of the book of Genesis. God says
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I'm going to make you into a great nation. Abraham says I believe you but I don't see how. I don't know how that's going to happen, but I'm going to trust you with it.
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There's going to be some laughter and some funny things moving forward kind of going. I just don't even think this is possible.
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Ironically, God says in the process of making Abram into a great nation, he says I'm going to give you a great name.
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I think that's a subset of making him into a great nation. But remember, what was it that the people, a couple weeks ago when we talked about the
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Tower of Babel, what were they trying to build the tower for, the city for? To make a name for themselves.
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How often is our life devoted to trying to get the things that we think we need when
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God possesses them and says if you just trust me, my faith, they're yours. Here it is. And it's his to give.
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A great name is God's to give, not yours to attain. You hearing what I'm saying? And so how often do we go out and try to pursue strongly the things that he's got there for us?
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So he makes a promise to Abram to make him into a great nation. The second thing, he offers divine protection, saying those who bless
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Abram will be blessed by God and the one who dishonors Abram will be cursed. It's interesting, the first one is plural and the second one is singular, showing that the ones who bless
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Abram will be more in number than the ones who dishonor him. And it's interesting to note just in the way that things filter down even to where we live today, the majority of people on this planet revere
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Abram to some degree. You have the Muslims, the Jews, and the Christians, and you put those three groups together and you have the largest block in the world.
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And they all hearken back to Abram and hold him in high esteem. Which is interesting that in one sense
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God has continued that, but he says I will, you know, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.
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God also promises that all the families, this is the third one, God promises all the families of the tribes of the earth will be blessed in Abram.
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And that's the one that I think carries on the longest into the New Testament. This is the promise and we ultimately know, you and I know the name of the one who is the descendant of Abraham through whom all the nations have been blessed.
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Who is that one? Jesus Christ. Yeah. And then the fourth promise doesn't come until down in verse 7 when he actually arrives at the land.
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Now how he was led, I really don't know. God tells him to go and he goes.
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And I don't know, you know, if I just told you to go, pick up your family and go, you're gonna like,
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I guess I'll just get on 94 now. Um, okay. I'm supposed to leave
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Madawan. All right. Does that, can I just go to Pawpaw? Can I, you know, I don't,
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I don't know how does, how does God guide and direct in that, in that kind of thing? You know, like I, it doesn't say, it's not explicit, but Abram arrives in the area of Canaan.
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Maybe he picked that because his dad was originally going there. Have you ever thought about that? I mean, what, what motivated, what moved
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Abram on from one place to another? I, I really don't know how that, how that journey looked.
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But ultimately he ends there and in verse 7, we find that the promise of God is to give the land of Canaan to him.
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God actually appears to him in that context and says, um, all the land that's surrounding you, I give to you.
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That's the last part of the Abrahamic covenant. But there's two primary observations about these promises before we move on in the text that I want to highlight.
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First, I want you to notice that the blessings offered in this text are not to end in Abram himself.
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They are not supposed to be just for him. But he is in turn supposed to bless others.
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Somebody told me this illustration once and it's, it's kind of interesting because it's in the holy lands, but there are, there are really three bodies of water that are in Israel.
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There's the, the Sea of Galilee, there's the Jordan River, and then there's the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the
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Dead Sea primarily because it has an inlet without an outlet.
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So it festers and it's a festering stagnant body of water that has tons of salt flats on it and it's, it's a, it's a stinky mess of a, of a body of water.
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And you have the Jordan River that flows fairly clean and people can, people can drink out of that and it flows down through the
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Rift Valley there and then you have the Sea of Galilee that's constantly putting out water. But the point that I want to point out in using that as an illustration is that we are called to be a conduit.
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We are not called to be a Dead Sea that takes in and takes in and takes in the blessings of God and they end with us.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? And how often is our lives, how often do our lives look like that? Gimme, gimme, gimme.
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We are conduits for the blessing of God and that's what Abram is being called to be, a, a passageway.
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I'm blessing you Abram so that you in turn can be a blessing to others. That's fundamental to our call as followers of Jesus Christ.
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That the blessing doesn't, we're not satisfied with the blessing ending here but we, we're only satisfied when we're being used as a conduit for God to bless others because of the rich blessings.
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It's the same. Jesus talks about it in multiple contexts about forgiving others because you've been forgiven so much, loving others because you've been loved so much and on and on.
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Look at the end of verse two to validate that. So, end of verse two, so that you will be a blessing to Abrams, spoken to Abrams, so that you will be a blessing.
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And also in the end of verse three, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Again, a conduit.
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And if I can speak directly, which I think I can because I'm up here, so I'm going to speak directly for just a second,
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I think the church, I think the church in general and I think our church itself could become a stench to our culture and it will when we act as though the blessings are totally for us alone.
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I think that's a point where a church turns a corner and begins to die. When we think that the blessings are only for us and we hoard them to ourselves and we think of this as like an ivory tower, we retreat into it and we have no more interaction with the world out there because they're scary.
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That mindset starts to set in. You need to be very cautious about that.
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You see the world out there has falsely assumed that the Christian faith is self -righteous and arrogant because they have often met
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Christians who are self -righteous and arrogant.
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And so can you blame them? Could you blame a world who thinks that Christians are self -righteous and pompous?
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When they've met Christians that are self -righteous and pompous and arrogant, how could we blame them for assuming that that's what the
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Christian faith is all about? They think it's all about you. It's all about your righteousness. It's all about yourself. It's all about your way of talking or it's all about you being blessed and that's all they hear from us.
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We need to be so careful as God's people to keep bridges open between us and the world around us
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Sure, it can be dangerous for Christians to become worldly, right? Isn't there a danger that if we keep the bridges open we might get contaminated?
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Is that a legitimate fear? It is. There's a legitimate fear there.
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But how do you balance that fear with the fear of becoming useless to God in this community?
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I mean, we're going to keep that in tension. Keep those bridges open with the people around you. Keep talking with them.
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Keep interacting with them. Keep showing love. Keep being a conduit of blessing to people in your neighborhood and in the community around you and in your workplace.
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Do you bless others? You're a conduit for the blessings of God. He's given you so much.
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Are you willing to in turn pass that along to others? Certainly the gospel being a part of that, right?
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I'm not talking about just doing good things for people but certainly that's a great place to start. Like maybe be kind first before you speak the gospel.
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Right? Are you guys tracking with that? Abram was called to be a conduit of blessing.
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And then second thing from these promises that God makes, I want to point out that since the end game of these blessings is ultimately the blessing of all nations, and from our vantage point we know that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that promise that all nations were blessed through Abram, we must see
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Christ in this passage. Just like Peter did. Peter referenced this passage in a sermon in Acts chapter 3.
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We talked about that months ago when I went through the book of Acts, but Acts chapter 3 verse 25. He actually refers to this promise that God made that all the nations would be blessed through Abram.
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He says Jesus Christ fulfilled that. Peter got that. And Jesus is ultimately the culmination, the fulfillment of the
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Old Testament. He's the one who brings the promise of salvation to anyone who would come by faith to him and do what he has asked by faith, and that is to bow their knee before him and accept him as Lord and Savior.
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Abram is a great model of this in that in verse 4 he stepped away from those things that made him most comfortable.
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Look at verse 4. So Abram, God told him in verse 1, Go from your country and your kindred, verse 4, so Abram went as the
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Lord had told him. The things most comfortable to him, home, family, culture, city.
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And he went by faith as the Lord had told him. Not really knowing where he's going. If you can put that verse up there,
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Brian, so we can kind of all look at it. Hebrews 11, 8 through 10 serves as basically a commentary on the first couple of phrases in chapter 12 verse 4.
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So Abram went as the Lord had told him. And now we get a New Testament perspective on what was going on when
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Abram left. It says this, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going.
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By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
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For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is
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God. Abram understood something more than just what God had for him here in this life alone.
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Here we find definitively that Abram acted by faith. Acted on faith and his faith was one that trusted
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God would keep his promises. He was a God who keeps his promises and ultimately that his own comfort in this world was not the end game.
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And that's a big challenge for us as Americans. That's a huge challenge for us as Americans. That our pleasure, our joy, our entertainment is not the end game of the plan of God for us.
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How many of us are caught up in the worship and idolatry of entertainment? Ultimately, I would dare say that one of the biggest problems in America is that we've got one primary idol that many, we've got like a pantheon of gods, if you will, pantheon of idols, and there's one primary one in America and that's self.
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Everybody worships themselves and then there's a multitude of lesser gods that serve the self like entertainment and lust and money and commercialism and materialism and all of those types of things.
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But all those swirl around this one big god of worshiping ourselves and then we we have all of these other lesser ones that we give ourselves over to from time to time.
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The dangerous thing. We are not the end game of the plan of God.
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We are a conduit through which he desires for his blessings to pass and flow. Certainly, we benefit from that as well.
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The rest of the text is primarily the details of Abram's obedience. He left at age 75, not to a summer home in Florida, and Lot and his wife
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Sarai went with him. I wonder if there wasn't some notion of saying, well,
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I've got the heir here with me in case this doesn't work out. I really don't know where Abram was in this, but we're going to see that Abram, there's indication that Abram gets to know
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God during this time. He's coming to know him and meet him and actually growing in his trust of this
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God. They gathered up all their possessions and servants. A side note that I might think that I think may help in our general understanding
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I mentioned earlier and it might surprise some of you, but Abram is indicated in the text to be fairly wealthy according to standards and we see that by different things that he does throughout the text.
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Many assume that poverty is more spiritual than wealth. Have you ever heard that preached? Poverty more spiritual than wealth?
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Have any of you ever heard the flip side of that? That wealth is more spiritual than poverty? I dare say that very few people in our culture have a good healthy balance on wealth.
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Either it's worshiped or it's denigrated as the devil and it's ultimately evil.
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Either it's what God wants for the life of faith or it's the opposite of the life of faith. And where do we find balance in that?
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Because we encounter here one of the patriarchs, one of the founders of faith being a wealthy individual.
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Jesus made it clear though in the New Testament that wealth can and often does get in the way of faith. Is that accurate?
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Did you see where Jesus talks about that? And is that real? Have you seen any of that in your life? Almost all of us in this room have more than we need.
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So there's a reality in that. But then it's very true also that poverty can get in the way of faith as well.
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Right? Is that true? In a couple of chapters, we're going to see
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Abram. He's going to be able to field his own private military force. He's got like his people.
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He's got his posse and they've all got, you know, AKs and stuff. No, I don't know. But he's got his people.
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He's got his own protective force. And I mean, he's going to field like 318 soldiers, I think is the number.
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I haven't gotten that. His personal. He's going to give some of his soldiers to this band that's going to try to get back his nephew.
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He has money to buy property at full price. And he even shows him is shown throughout the text to have ample flocks.
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He's doing okay, whatever he does. He's doing well. So he and his posse show up in Canaan, stopping at Shechem, which is one of the first places the
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Israelites visit. We went through the book of Joshua a couple summers ago. And a handful of you that are here that went through that with us, you recognize that Shechem, you may probably don't remember this by now, but there's the first town taken when they conquer the land is
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Jericho. Then they go to Ai, which is going to be mentioned here in a second. And then they all take a break from battle and go up to a place called
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Shechem and make sacrifices and offerings and have a reading of the law together. I think it's interesting that one of the first places that Israel, when they enter the land, goes is
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Shechem, which is the first place that Abram goes and builds an altar. And I think that there's a connection.
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I think the people of Israel are saying we we trace ourselves back to Abram and we want to identify with him in the taking of the land as they are finally coming into the land of promise in the book of Joshua that's promised to Abram.
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And so there's a there's a connection point with Shechem there. Well, and at Shechem, it says he basically sets up his place down by the big oak tree, which is really funny.
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You think about the way the scripture speaks in verse six. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem to the oak of Morah.
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At that time the Canaanites were in the land. So there's a big oak tree and then he sets up shop down by the big oak. The interesting thing is, how many of you have been to our property?
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Have any of you seen the new property that we just bought here in Mattawa? Have any of you seen the oak tree that's on that property?
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It is amazing. Take notice of it the next time that you're out there, the next time you drive by. There's this massive oak and I was reading this and I was like, do you want us to set up an altar down by the oak tree?
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I don't know. How does God speak? I don't know. Reading the text, big oak, walk the property, like 20 foot circumference oak on our property.
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Super sweet. Love to see a church built there. I'm gonna look forward to that day when he does that.
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The Lord appears to Abram, appears to him before he spoke to him in verse one.
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Now when we get down to verse seven, look at it. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said to your offspring,
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I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Now God appears to people throughout scripture, throughout the
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Old Testament. Sometimes he appears as a soldier in shining armor. Sometimes he appears as a a thundercloud over the mountain.
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Sometimes he appears as a a burning bush. We know all different kinds of ways that God has manifested himself.
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So it's unclear. It doesn't say what Abram saw. Maybe it was a burning bush just like Moses. Hard to tell.
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But again, he's confident. He's met with God and God promises him the land that he's standing on.
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So Abram builds an altar there. It's likely that he offers sacrifices. It doesn't say that, but to build an altar without offering sacrifices would be kind of silly and that's probably what he did.
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From there, he heads further south, probably moving for his flocks. We're going to find out in just a little bit here that there's an actual famine that hits the land in verse 10.
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We're not going to get to that this week, but we'll get there next week. So it's likely that things are drying out and he's heading further south and further south to find pasture land for his flocks.
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He settles for a short time between Bethel and Ai, Ai being the second city that was conquered in the taking of the land.
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And he builds another altar there and calls upon the name of the Lord there. The text tells us the phrase implies a more formalized relationship with God, with Yahweh.
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He has routine devotional time there near Bethel, worshiping
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God and praying to him and offering sacrifices. And what we've seen is we see Abram called out from Haran by this voice.
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And again, God, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to follow you. He doesn't really know who he's following yet. I mean, he's this pagan guy and it's like he's getting to know him.
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And slowly but surely, he's falling in love with this God. And you see him finally by the point that he settles in Bethel, he's like calling upon the name of the
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Lord. He's seeking him. He's looking for him. He's pursuing him. And in verse 9,
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Abram moves even further south and west towards Egypt, but not after he's left several altars throughout the promised land.
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Interesting thing about the altars is they show that there was a focus on sacrifice even before the giving of the law.
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But equally, it's like he's marking the land for the worship of God. So that when those people will come in eventually down through the ages, there will be altars that are set up there for the worship of God already there.
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So what we saw in our text, God speaks to a man, tells him to uproot his family, tells him to go to a land. He will show him.
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The man is not particularly unique. He likely was a pagan just like the rest of his society. But God promises blessings if he will follow him by faith.
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And so Abram follows and winds up in Canaan where the Lord appears to him and promises that land to his offspring.
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And Abram's wife is barren. And so what we have in the text is that the nomad, the wanderer, is promised land.
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There's all kinds of ironies in this. The man with a barren wife is promised offspring. The man severed from his people is promised to become a great people.
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And the homeless wanderer is the one through whom the whole earth will be blessed. It's just like God to take the weak things of the world, the silly things of the world, and use them to forward his purposes.
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To use the weak things of the world as his conduit for blessing others. And there's three specific applications that come to my mind from this text where we live before we wrap things up.
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I'm giving them to you in reverse order in regard to importance, but I want you to just think about these things.
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The first is the step of faith. How many of you, like as I'm reading this, you're thinking Abram was called to do something pretty radical.
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You see that? So was there a step of faith involved in this? And I think it's a pretty logical thing for us to then go, what is our step of faith?
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If we are here at Recast Church, we say that regarding simplicity, one of the things that we say everybody needs to be doing is just basically three things for you to grow in Christ.
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You need to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service. And so we talk about growing in faith, but how many of you know that you probably ought to know the definition of faith if you're going to grow in it?
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Would you agree that that might be valuable, might be helpful? Well, growing in faith is coming in contact with God, understanding what he wants for us, and then doing it.
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That's growing in faith. And that's one of the reasons Sunday morning is about growing in faith, because we're hearing from God's word. Now what are we going to do with it?
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What's going to happen here? And I want to point out that faith, there is action and risk involved in faith.
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Action and risk involved in faith. Faith is not a passive concept, as many of us have probably mistakenly thought.
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Many have thought that the best way to express faith is by sitting back and just waiting. God will do something.
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God's going to do something. So I'm just going to sit back and wait. Have you ever heard that taught?
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That the best posture for a Christian is waiting? That that's where God wants you? Well, are there times when
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God wants you to wait? Yeah, yeah. And so what we do is we end up taking that and making that the centerpiece.
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But more often, go ahead and look it up and do the study yourself. More often in scripture, faith looks like stark action.
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It looks like little tiny David, shepherd David, running at a giant with five smooth stones and a sling.
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You want a picture of faith? That's what faith looks like, okay? It looks like timid
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Moses. Now, how did Moses approach the burning bush? What was his attitude towards God when
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God was calling him to lead the nation out to Exodus? Oh, God, not me.
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Call somebody else. I don't, I'm not very good at speaking. How about my brother? He's volunteering other people to do it, right?
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Like, you should take my brother. Don't do this with me. I'm timid. I'm shy. And then you see him with power and authority leading the people of God out.
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See him with power and authority opposing Pharaoh, the ruler of the world. What a change.
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What happened? Faith happened to Moses. He encountered God. He met him and he believed in him and he trusted in him.
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Faith happened to Moses. Or faith looks like Abram uprooting his family on the basis of meeting
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God and going to who knows where. Doesn't even know where he's going.
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And the question is, what is your next step of faith? There's all different kinds of things and I can't list them all.
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There might be something different for everyone in the room. Some of them might look like awful similar. Some of us, maybe the next step of faith for us is obedience to the call of God as we see it in scripture to be bold with our testimony of what
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God has done for us. To actually speak it into the lives of those around us.
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To be a conduit of the blessing of God and to actually speak it and share it with others. Maybe it's in your workplace.
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Maybe it's your neighbor. Maybe it's a friend or a family member that you've been shy to share the truth with.
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Scared of what they're going to think of you. Maybe that's the next step of faith for you. Maybe for some of you, the next step is throwing the computer out the window in order to overcome lust and pornography.
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Maybe that's the next step for you. You don't have to have internet at your house. Did you know that? You're making excuses.
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If you're addicted to pornography and you've got internet at your house, you are lying to yourself. You don't have to have it, okay?
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And so maybe there's some radical steps. And I mentioned pornography, but maybe there's something else. I mean, there's all different kinds of sins.
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And in a room with this many people in it, some of us are owned by sin. Some of us have a sin that has us in its clutches and it is destroying us.
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And we feel like we've got no power. We've got no authority in our lives. We've got very little of God in our lives because all we've got room for is cowering before him because we're scared of him because we've got this sin that is running us.
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And so maybe a step of faith is to actually say, I need to set up an appointment with Don or with one of the elders or with my small group leader.
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And I need to just get this exposed to the light and get some accountability and get some work on this to actually get some victory in my life and get to the place where I can take the steps that are necessary by faith to overcome this sin.
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Maybe that's the thing that needs to happen in your life. Maybe it's setting up a meeting with me and saying, you know what,
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I think I'm the next church planner. I'd love that. I'm looking forward to that meeting. I haven't had it yet. I mean, reproducing is our core value here.
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And you can sit there and go, we've been going four years and we haven't planted a church yet. I haven't met a church planner yet.
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Nobody's come to me and said, I feel that. But maybe you're sitting here and you're going, you know, I think God has been working in my heart and in my life.
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And I think so. I don't know if I'm ready. Come and talk with me. Or maybe it's to literally forsake country and family and home to go overseas as a missionary.
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Maybe God would be calling some of you here to actually do what Abraham did. And be uprooted and leave for the cause of Christ.
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He does that kind of thing still. What is your next step? I encourage you to think through and let the
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Holy Spirit work in your life, even through the remainder of this service, to think through what is my next step of faith.
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And I encourage you to write it down. I'd encourage you to put it in writing. Maybe it's in the front of your
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Bible or, you know, someplace you have a journal or whatever, but write it down. What is my next step of faith?
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But don't do that before you listen to these final two points. Because these final two points might adjust that a little bit.
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I want to be clear that not every step of faith is an adventure, going out and doing amazing things.
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But I would suggest to you that every step of faith must be based upon God for it to be faith.
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I'm not just saying go write something down and go do something. That's not faith.
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You see, Abram met God first and then acted on faith because he had met God. He didn't just guess what he should do.
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God told him what he should do. And so maybe I put the cart before the horse because our first step must be to get to know
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God in order to see what our faith step needs to be. David had experienced the deliverance of God from the lion and from the bear before he took on the giant, right?
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He had encountered God and he had some cause to believe in God's deliverance. His faith was based on knowing
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God. Moses had met a physical manifestation of God in the bush before he moved out to become a great leader.
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Abram heard the call of God before he stepped out in faith and moved his family. And so my second application is get to know
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God. That's how we know what our step of faith ought to be, is getting to know
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God. And how do we get to know God? God has approached us, not in the same way that he approached
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Abram, not in the same way that he approached Moses, but he's approached us here.
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We can dig in here and get to know God and this is where we're going to find the steps of faith that we need to take on, right?
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He's given us enough. How many of you know that if you just make it your goal to follow God and what he's revealed of himself in scripture, you have your lifetime ahead of you.
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You're not going to get that done. Do you agree with me on that? There's ample in here, ample stuff for us to be working on from in here to keep us busy for a lifetime.
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We get so caught up on God. Would you tell me which car to buy? Would you tell me which shoes to buy? Would you tell me what to do here or how to respond to this?
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But a lot of it is principles that we find in scripture that we need to be following and applying. So maybe for some of you, the next step of faith is get to know
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God from the pages of scripture. Grow in him. But all of that, again, goes back to my third application.
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And lastly, it's an application from our overarching story of God. His promises for blessing are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.
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And what that means is that none of these steps of faith we might take matter unless they are rooted firmly in the work of Jesus Christ in our lives.
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We can do amazing things for God. We could sacrifice big sacrifices. We could give big time.
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We could give big money. And on the outward, we can look like giants of the faith and we can do all of those things without faith.
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Right? You can play the part. We're pretty good at fooling one another.
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Humans are pretty good at that. If we want to fool people, we can get away with it. And I'm not going to confess to you as your pastor. Just in all honesty,
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I'm pretty easy to fool. You can fool me. Okay, so I can come to you and you can share with me your testimony of how when you were eight years old at a day club, you did this or that or whatever.
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You prayed a prayer. I'm going to celebrate with you. I'm going to be like delighted that God is changing your life and is working in you.
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How many of you know you're not going to stand before me? So fooling me is pointless. I can be fooled.
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God's not going to be fooled. And so my last application is for all of us to consider whether we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation.
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Where does your hope lie? Just like Abram had to take it or leave it, this offer from God.
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Just like Abram had to come to God on his terms. Just like God was the one setting up the plan, we are each one faced with a similar decision.
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Either we come to God through Jesus and experience his blessing of salvation or we don't. There's really not a graded scale on this.
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As if we could say we're mostly in with Jesus. I think for the most part I'm in. It's an awful lot like standing on the dock.
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How many of you know that you can tell whether someone's standing on the dock or whether they're all the way in the water? Can you tell that? Uh, it's like we're standing on the dock and God is beckoning for us to just jump into the water with him.
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Come on in. Either your feet are on the dock or not. And so the question that I have to pose to all of you in this final application is to answer the question, have your feet left the dock by faith in the
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Son of God? The faith that he will keep his promises to save those who are in him.
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If so, then join together with your brothers and sisters here this morning by taking communion. We take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us.
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We take the juice that represents his blood shed for us. And we remember Jesus this morning.
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He is the fulfillment of the promise to bless all tribes through Abram. Three basic applications that kind of go in concentric circles.
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The center question, have I left the dock? Am I all in with Jesus? Then do
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I know enough of him? Have I gotten to know him enough to be able to make further plans on my left? Is there more research that I need?
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Do I need to get to know him and draw closer to him and figure out his, the way he moves and the way he plans things?
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And then lastly is to take that step and write something down that you, that God is pressing on your heart to take that next step of faith.
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What is that? That's the application that I have for you this morning from the text. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the example of Abram.
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He was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination, and yet you called him out. And created in him a sense of faith and gave him the faith that he needed.
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And ultimately he walked with you. Father, I thank you for that example. I pray that you would help us as we go throughout our week to recognize that you are calling us to a life of risk.
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You are calling us to not just sit by and watch life happen, but that there are things that you desire of us. I ask that you would open our hearts and our minds and our ears to your voice, guiding us and directing us,
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Father, that you would convict us where conviction is necessary. And for those who are here and being owned by sin,
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Father, that you would give them the strength and the power to, by faith, share that with somebody who could hold them accountable or to take the radical steps that are necessary to overcome sin.
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Father, that you would change us. You would change us as a people. You would change us as individuals by the power of your
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Holy Spirit. Father, that as we get an opportunity to take communion and remember the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf, that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us, that he stood in the place that we deserve.
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We deserve to be crucified, and he took that for us. Father, not just that, but took your wrath and took hell itself on him, taking and bearing the sin of the world that we might be set free.
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Rejoice in that. If there's any here that haven't made that decision to leap up off the dock into the water and realize that you're there to embrace them as they hit the water,
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I pray that you would open their eyes to see the truth, that this is the hope that is given to mankind according to Scripture.
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I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. God, we thank you that you're Lord. We thank you that you gave us your
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Son, you erased our sin, and Lord, you've made a way to reconcile us to you.
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Lord, we pray that you change us and make us more like you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.