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Abraham - Genesis 12
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
K. Well, welcome tonight. Today, we start a new series. And tonight and for the next eight weeks, we are going from Jesus all the way back to Abraham. And this has become a bit of a pattern for us or at least for me that at some point in the year, and it seems to fall in the fall a lot, I take an Old Testament book or character or a narrative and spend some extended time, working through that story.
Speaker 1:And so that's our plan for Abraham this fall. Over the past few years, in my teaching, I've been able to walk through Moses and Joseph and Jacob, and all of those sermons are actually available on our podcast if you wanna backtrack and catch any of them. But that leaves Abraham as one of the last major early figures in the story of the Hebrew scriptures. And so it made sense for us to spend at least some time with this story this year. Now Abraham is a great character, and I I will get to him in a moment here.
Speaker 1:But I do wanna take some time to recap the last series that we just came out of. Because for the last three weeks, we're a significant for the shape and tenor of the community that we're trying to build together. We believe that God looks like Jesus. That was the premise. And I get it.
Speaker 1:Right? Every church believes those things. But there's also something very radical about honestly, actually, truly affirming that we see God most clearly when we look at Jesus. As Paul says in Colossians two, that the fullness of the divine lives in Jesus. I mean, theology is hard.
Speaker 1:Right? Systematics, that's what we call it when we try to line up all of the pieces and make every part of the bible work together and still make sense. It's a very big task. People have been doing it for all of their lives, and we've still never quite figured it all out. But at the center of that pursuit for the Christian is this conviction that everything we truly need to understand about God, Everything that God felt was necessary to reveal to us.
Speaker 1:All of that is present when we look at the Christ. Now, I'm a bit of a bible nerd, and I really like theology. And I, as much as anyone, think that Jesus would hate it when people are buying, selling swag with his name on it. But what would Jesus do is actually honestly a pretty good start sometimes. And maybe, if we're really honest, sometimes that's a good place to end as well.
Speaker 1:Because that's what Christianity is about, trying to be little Christs. It's as simple as that. You know that's actually where the term Christian originally meant? The Christians in the early church called themselves the people of the way. And then, others started making fun of them by calling them little Christs.
Speaker 1:And then, they were like, you know what? That's actually not bad. Maybe we'll just stick with that. We'll use that one too. And so, hence, the term that we're stuck with today.
Speaker 1:And so, for the last three weeks, that's what we talked about. What does it mean to be little Christ? How putting Christ back at the center of our imagination of God changes things. And so we started by saying that Christ means God is not generic. God is not just an impersonal force and energy that animates the universe.
Speaker 1:He is that. But Jesus shows us that God is also personal and present and intimately invested. Next, we said that Christ means God is not defined by his power. Now, God is powerful and, the experience of creation just looking around at the world shows us that. And yet, God in his infinite power chose not to prove any of that to us.
Speaker 1:Nothing to prove to us except for his love. Now, the way I said it a couple weeks ago was that there's a difference between being so powerful that you're driven to prove it, and being infinitely powerful, where the only thing left is to give it all away. And, that's what we see in Jesus. God empties himself. He pours himself out.
Speaker 1:He gives himself away. Now, I like how Greg Boyd says it. He says that when God flexes his omnipotent bicep, it looks like the cross. And then finally, Joel took us into a conversation about the comfortable God last week. This imagination of God that sometimes puts an unhealthy, unrealistic, unnecessary weight on our shoulders to be happy all the time.
Speaker 1:I mean, we imagine God wants us to be happy. And because we tend to have a one track mind, we assume that means he wants us to be happy all the time. And if God wants us to be happy and God can do anything, then if we're not happy, well, then we must be the problem. And Christ, by descending into the human experience, the joy and the laughter and the pain and the tears, he shows us that, yes, absolutely God wants good for us, but that God is also deeply present in the midst of our pain. God has not forgotten us or left us when we hurt.
Speaker 1:And so, if you struggle with depression, you are not the problem. And, if you are hurting right now at some point in your life, this is not your fault. When you are weak or sick or confused, then God is still present to you, walking with you in the midst of it. Because absolutely, God wants you to be happy. He just wants it so deeply that he's willing to walk the entire journey of your life with you, the good and the bad.
Speaker 1:And so that's what we see in Jesus. And, as Christians, it's so incredibly deeply important that we always remember that God looks like Jesus. Because if we forget that, we get off track. Now, that was our last series. Today, we still have Abraham.
Speaker 1:And so, let's pray, and then we'll dive into this. Great and good God, may we learn to set aside images and imaginations that have clouded our perceptions perceptions of of you. You. Perhaps Perhaps cultural, cultural, perhaps religious, at times born of those who've misrepresented you. And may we learn instead instead to look to your own son for the clarity of vision that we need in order to see you perfectly in the Christ.
Speaker 1:Would you send your spirit into the cracks cracks and the gaps of our hearts in order to heal and to repair and to reignite a passion to know you well? And then, as we turn our attention to the opening steps steps of the story. To the character of Abraham and the birth of your plan to redeem and heal the world. May we read amidst an ancient world we have very little in common with. The always beating heart of grace, and that desire to search and to seek and to find and to bring each of us back to you.
Speaker 1:Despite our flaws and despite our sins, despite our misunderstandings of you, we would ask that we would hear the voice of your spirit today, calling us into new understandings, new places, and into a deeper walk with you. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. I started today with a very brief mention of Abraham before I got sidetracked into recapping the last series.
Speaker 1:But that's really all that we have on the agenda for the next couple months, to talk about the story of Abraham. And I find myself, as we start this series, needing to talk about the significance of Abraham in the larger story. Last year, I said that no character has influenced the shape and tenor of the Old Testament the way that Moses has. Now, I still stand by that. The theme of Exodus and God being on the side of the oppressed is all over the Hebrew scriptures.
Speaker 1:But, the story of Abraham is really what sets us up for the New Testament and the story of Jesus. Because it is all the way back at Abraham where God says that all peoples, the entire world, not just the Hebrews, will be blessed by the plan that he has. And so as important as Moses is, Abraham is no slouch himself. We gotta know this guy. But before we get into the opening steps of his story, I do wanna give you a bit of an overview so we know know where Abraham fits into the bible.
Speaker 1:And I will use this as a moment to strategically plug our new backstory class that starts this Tuesday at 06:30PM. That's all that that story is about. It's sort of putting context to a lot of the stories in the bible. That said, Abraham is the first of what we call the patriarchs. So Genesis one to 11.
Speaker 1:This is really all about creation and fall. It's one big story of how the world got it wrong. Abraham and Genesis 12 is where God now starts to put in place a plan to fix things. And Abraham starts that story off. Now his son Isaac plays a pretty small but significant role, and we'll get to him in this series.
Speaker 1:But he sets us up for the next major character Jacob. Jacob has a ton of wacky adventures and a bunch of sons, one of whom is Joseph He of the Technicolor Dreamcoat. And despite his fantastic coat, Joseph ends up being sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Fortunately, he ends up rising to the ranks, becomes an adviser to the pharaoh. And so when there's a famine in the land, Joseph's family comes to Egypt and Joseph is there to enable to help them, and they're reunited reunited in Egypt.
Speaker 1:Exodus, the second book of the bible, skips forward a few hundred years and picks up at the time where Joseph's descendants, the Hebrews, are now slaves in Egypt. And so that's where Moses shows up to lead them out of oppression, oppression, and that's the story we looked at last fall. But this is where Abraham fits in the story, way back at the start. So this is before the 10 commandments. This is before any of the rules or the regulations of the nation of Israel are in place.
Speaker 1:This is actually before anyone even really knows who this God Yahweh is. He hasn't introduced himself to Moses yet. In fact, this is how the story starts. Terah took his son Abram. Now, that's Abraham.
Speaker 1:He's gonna change his name in a little bit, and we'll get to that. His grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram. And together together, they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived two hundred and five years.
Speaker 1:Yes, he was an old dude, and he died in Haran. Now, that is the end of chapter 11. This is the beginning of chapter 12, very next verse. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land that I will show you. Yes.
Speaker 1:That is where we're stopping today. We're only covering one verse of the story of Abraham, but we've got eight weeks to get through this. So buckle up. But, if you've read Old Testament stories before, this probably seems like no big deal. Right?
Speaker 1:This guy begets that guy, and that guy begets this guy, and he hears God, so he goes where God tells him to go. It's all very biblical sounding. It's nice. But if we pull back, even just for a second here, there are a few things that are really interesting to me just here in this introduction. First of all, I mentioned this, that there's a break between chapter eleven and twelve.
Speaker 1:In the structure structure of of Genesis, Genesis, it's it's the end of one story, 11, and the beginning of a new story, chapter 12. And and you can see that even in the passage that I read. But Walter Brueggemann, one of my favorite Old Testament scholars, says it this way, and I quote him here. This is perhaps the single most important structural break in the Old Testament and certainly in Genesis. It distinguishes between the history of humankind and the history of Israel.
Speaker 1:Between the history of the fall and the history of blessing. And yet, if you notice this, Abraham is actually on both sides of that divide. And see the biblical writers love to do this kind of thing, especially in Torah. Does anyone remember back to last year when we started the story of Moses? Did anyone hear back then?
Speaker 1:Do you remember how that story starts? Well, Exodus chapter one says, then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt. So, you can't read about Moses and Pharaoh until you take a second to remember Joseph and his people and how they ended up in Egypt. That's what the writer's saying there. For the Hebrews, stories, even God's stories, they don't start in a vacuum.
Speaker 1:They start in the midst of life, in the midst of family. And this may seem like a very small thing, but it's not. Because in the Hebrew imagination, these writers wanted to make sure that when they spoke of God, even fantastical stories of God, they grounded it in the stuff of life. Even this story about God calling Abram to leave his home to go to a new land, the beginning of a completely new tale. It starts with Abram and Sarai and his dad and a plan that they had that never came to fruition.
Speaker 1:Now, his dad is dead. He's living in Haran halfway to where he thought he meant to go, and he wonders what's next. Now, I don't know about you, but all of a sudden, that makes the story a lot more relatable. Doesn't it? I mean, of father Abraham, progenitor of nations, this is just Abram mourning the death of his dad, stuck in some podunk town he never meant to go to, wondering to himself, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1:Maybe you have ended up somewhere in life that you just never intended to be. It wasn't bad. Like, it's not like it was wrong. It just wasn't particularly purposeful. Now, this too is where God speaks to us from.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think that sometimes part of the lesson here is that this is sometimes how God speaks to us. The the time that you spent before you heard, but before you knew what was next, that wasn't wasted. It was shaping, and it was preparing, and it was forming you to hear what was coming. That space that you're in now where you feel restless because you're waiting for God and you're looking for the next opportunity. This isn't wasted space.
Speaker 1:It's preparing. It's building. It's drawing together the angst inside of you that you need in order to hear God well. Now, one of the questions that I get from time to time is, how did you become a priest anyway? And I say, well, first of all, I'm not a priest.
Speaker 1:That's a slightly different thing. But, yeah, sure. Okay. Fine, pastor. Despite the fact that sometimes, some people sometimes think I look a little bit like Jesus.
Speaker 1:I'm not mentioning any names here. And I hope it was worth it, Joel, because you can only make that I joke once. So hope you got it. But I just don't look like a pastor to most people. I don't know what that's about, but that's fine.
Speaker 1:And truthfully, I grew up in a home that wasn't particularly religious. And so the question is a good one, because we can be honest. Being a pastor is kind of an odd occupation to choose. I think we can all admit that. But without going into a of details about my journey, generally, answer to how did you become a pastor goes something like this.
Speaker 1:Well, there was a time I was a pastor, and then there was a time I wasn't, and now there's a time that I am again. It's not a great answer, but that's what I go with. If anything is, the time that I wasn't, for a couple years, about ten years ago, was actually probably the years that informed my identity as a pastor today more than anything else. When I got out of church work the first time, I never really thought I'd go back to it. I didn't think I'd do this gig again.
Speaker 1:It was also a very anxious period in my life. Because I mean, what else do you do when you've got a theology degree? And I spent a lot of money on that thing. What you know? And but also, beyond that, I had to come to terms with who I was if I wasn't a pastor.
Speaker 1:If I'm not my career, what's left? At the time, I was working at Best Buy. Less tough to build your identity around. Ironically, I ended up back in the same career a couple years later, and things are going pretty well this time. I'll I'll leave that to you.
Speaker 1:You can tell me after not right now. Can't handle your rejection mid sermon. Now here's the thing. The anxious, lost space that I spent for a couple years wondering what was next and what was I gonna do. And not actually thinking I'd end up in the church world again, that was preparing me for what was next.
Speaker 1:And to come back and do it well and not be defined by my career. And to come back and understand how I wanted to be a pastor in a healthy, mature way. And and maybe you're in that space like Abram halfway to where you wanted to go. And it's a little confusing. It's hard to be there.
Speaker 1:My advice is this. Don't go too fast. Because your next chapter doesn't start when. It starts now. Even while you wait, and even while you sit, and even when God sometimes seems silent.
Speaker 1:This is why this is important. Because when God speaks and when opportunity knocks, and I see this in my own life as much as I do in in Abram's, two things become apparent. There will be a yes, and there will be a no. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. Now, sometimes this yes and no is as simple as physics.
Speaker 1:You're just not ready to go somewhere new until you're ready to leave somewhere old. Like, that's just how it works. It just doesn't happen any other way. You can't go until you're ready to leave. And so sometimes that that waiting, that that anxiousness, that angst of anticipating something new is actually really deeply important.
Speaker 1:Because without it, we're not sure we're actually ready to leave. You ever talk to somebody and they say, oh, I hate my job. And so you ask, well, why don't you quit? Why don't you go get a new one? Like, oh, I could never do that.
Speaker 1:That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. And sometimes we say we hate our job because we had a bad day, but we don't really mean it. Even when you're a pastor, you might say that once or twice in your career. So we don't really want to leave.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great. Because sometimes you sit with the angst, you're upset, you had a bad day, and it fades, and you know you're actually where you should be. That's a really beautiful thing. But sometimes, God says, go from your country, and from your people, and from your father's household, and from everything that's safe, and comfortable, and familiar to you right now. And in that moment, because you've felt with it, and you've sat with it, and you've owned it.
Speaker 1:Because you've waited there long enough, you know you're actually ready to go. Because there's a yes to what's new, but there's always a no to what's been. And we we can talk about this in terms of moving or terms of career. We can talk about this in all kinds of different ways in our life. One of the real problems, I think, at times in our culture and society is this perpetual yes that we all live with.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know this, but even with all of our modern technology, there's still only fifty two weeks in a year. We haven't figured that out yet. And there's still only seven days in a week, and there's still only twenty four hours in a day, and you will still need to sleep for at least a couple of those. And so you just can't say yes to everything that comes across your plate. Not if you want to do something beautiful and meaningful with your life.
Speaker 1:And getting married means saying yes to somebody, but also means saying no to every other potential romance you could enter into. Ashley Madison notwithstanding. Being successful in your career means giving up on the dream that you had when you were 19 to be a mime on streets the of Paris. You're gonna have to get out of that box sooner or later. One person got that joke.
Speaker 1:That's good. Having a child and bringing a tiny little life back into your home with you means you say no to an entire social life. Poof. It's gone. Just out into the ether.
Speaker 1:At least that's been my experience of it. Maybe yours is different. But waiting for the right yeses means that the right no's aren't more than you can let go of. There's a website that I love called The Minimalists. And these are guys that write about how to declutter your life down to the absolute bare minimum.
Speaker 1:Now, Rachel and I live a pretty minimal lifestyle, but these guys make us look like hoarders. They're ridiculous. Even still, I appreciate what I learned from them about simplicity. But one of the things that they talk about are the three most dangerous words in our western society. According to the minimalists, minimalists, those three words are, just in case.
Speaker 1:As in, I don't really need this, but I'll keep it just in case. Or, I haven't used this in years, but I'll hang on to it just in case. Or I don't really need this new shirt, but I you know what? I'm just gonna buy it just in case I never get a chance to buy a new shirt again in my life. I just should I should probably get it.
Speaker 1:In fact, they have a rule where they say that anything you have ever said just in case about in your life, you could almost always replace in less than $20 in less than twenty minutes. And if that's the case, then why are you possibly holding on to all this stuff? Get rid of it. Give it away. Stop hanging on and saying yes to so much stuff.
Speaker 1:Their motto is this, love people, use things, the opposite never works. Which I love by the way. But this is problem. We think we can say yes to more and more and more stuff indefinitely without it hurting us, without it shaping how we think about the world. But we can't.
Speaker 1:Because a good yes always has a good no on the other side. Even when it's just stuff. In fact, I would say that if you can't do this with stuff, you're probably not doing it with your important decisions either. Up stuff, you know, consumerism, this is a symptom of a way of approaching and thinking the world. Right?
Speaker 1:So here's a very simple choice that Rachel and I have made for years that's been really helpful. Most of us have everything we need here in this room. Definitely not everything we want, but everything we need. And so every single time you see something you want to buy, new shirt, new pair of shoes, I don't know, say like a new iPhone 6s. Before you buy it, you have to decide then and there, right there in the store, what shirt, shoes, or iPhone you will sell, give away, or donate to make room when you get home.
Speaker 1:If you can't make that decision, then you're not ready to say yes to more stuff. And honestly, I started doing this out of necessity because we live in a small house and there's only so much room for my gray shirts. But I promise, if you can start doing this with really small choices in your life, it begins to invade and infect and transform your imagination of what yes and no mean to each other. Maybe it seems like I'm making a really big deal out about this. I mean, who who cares if you have one more shirt than you need in your closet?
Speaker 1:But the rabbis believed that every word in Torah was there for a reason. I think I've told you about this before, but later in Genesis, after Jacob wakes after he wrestles with an angel, he says this, surely God was in this place and I, I did not know. For thousands of years now, rabbis have argued about why there are two I's in that statement. Surely, God was in this place and I, I did not know. It's all there for a reason, they say.
Speaker 1:Well, here, God could have very easily come to Abram and said, go to the place I will show you. Trust me. Have faith. Do it. But the first thing that God says to Abram, he pulls him out of his place of waiting, is leave behind what you know so that I can take you somewhere new.
Speaker 1:Because he wants him to reflect on, to think about, to know what it is that he's saying no to. Because it's really important. And trust me, you're not different than Abraham. Now, sure, in some ways you are. You probably wear sandals a little bit less, and you're probably never gonna try to sacrifice your kid.
Speaker 1:We'll get to that story in a couple weeks. But in this way, you are not different than Abraham. It doesn't matter how extroverted you think you are. You still need downtime, alone time, white space in your world to think and reflect and notice what's happening in your soul. Your yes needs a no.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't matter how high capacity, a type, achiever profile you think you are, you still need rest and Sabbath and time to intentionally decompress without a goal on the table. Your yes needs a no. Because life and living is about this rhythm of inhale, exhale. It's about experiencing and moving forward as all living things do. But sometimes that means leaving one place behind to to somewhere new.
Speaker 1:And often, when you're stuck, the most profound thing that you can do for yourself is to simply stop and sit and breathe. And then ask yourself, is God calling you to breathe in for a time? Or is he asking you to let go, to leave something behind for a season? Is there a yes that God is calling you to? Or is there a no that he's asking from you?
Speaker 1:And this is why the waiting is so important in this story. It's why the introduction of Abram is so important to the story of Abraham. Because going somewhere new means leaving somewhere familiar. And, maybe you have some sense today of where God is calling you to something new. Something exciting and fresh and a little bit scary.
Speaker 1:Maybe career or family, a season of growth and maturity. That's great. I wanna celebrate with that. Yeah. I wanna cheer you on with that.
Speaker 1:But if you haven't waited and listened and honestly reflected on what you're gonna need to leave behind, moving forward will be a lot tougher than you think it will be. On the other hand, maybe you find yourself in this season of waiting right now. And it's frustrating because you haven't heard God clearly. In fact, you probably haven't even heard him for a very long time. Can I suggest that this is not because God has forgotten about you?
Speaker 1:This is because this is how maturity works. Maybe God is preparing you to see your yes clearly enough when it comes. That you can commit to your no, and you can own both sides of a really good story. So, maybe that's as simple as a shirt that you're gonna buy this week. And the old one, you're gonna give away when you get home.
Speaker 1:And that's gonna help you feel good about the purchase. Because you'll know that it wasn't excessive, and it wasn't impulsive, and it wasn't driven by ramping consumerism. It was your choice, not the advertising. Maybe it's as simple as a choice you'll make to sponsor one child in in Zambia. And it's $20 and probably not gonna break the budget for most of us here.
Speaker 1:But you're gonna take a moment to reflect on what you would need to give up to free up $20. And so from now on, every time you make that choice not to have a latte on Tuesday morning, you'll be reminded of one life, of one kid, in one community, that that simple choice transforms every single time you make it. Maybe for you, this is as big as it possibly gets. A move or a career change, a choice to dive head first into a relationship that you've been standing at the edge of for a very long time. But first, you will pause to think about what it is you're leaving on the table to say yes to this something new.
Speaker 1:And you'll reflect on it, and maybe you'll mourn what you're leaving behind for a bit. But, then when you're ready, you'll move forward into a new season knowing exactly why you chose to go that way. The Lord said to Abram, leave your country. Leave your people. Leave your father's household behind, and go to the land I will show you.
Speaker 1:May you learn to say no today so that you will be free to say yes when God speaks. Let's pray. God, help us engage with the story of Abraham in these coming weeks and to place ourselves into the life of someone who lived great distance from us geographically, culturally, at time. But to see in this story the very human experiences that we all go through. The ways in which your spirit speaks to us as human beings and teaches us what it means to be healthy, to live, to move forward.
Speaker 1:And, God, help us to be courageous when it's time to say yes. Help us to be strong and convicted when it's time to say no. And, teach us what it means to embrace both sides of a good story so that we can move forward with purpose and direction, but also with conviction of what it takes to follow through on those choices. In our purchases, in our conversations, in our imagination of who you are and what you're calling us to become, Would you speak clearly and gently to us as we need it? In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Next week, we will move on to chapter 12 verse two. And pick we'll up the story of Abraham and keep going from there. But we'll end as we always do with this, love God, love people, tell the story,