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Abraham - Genesis 12
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome. We are in the second week of our new series on Abraham where we're going to be for the next couple months. And last work last week, we covered an entire verse of the story, so that was good. This week, we're gonna get at least a little bit farther than that and move through a few more verses here. But let me say this before we really start rolling.
Speaker 1:Our first backstory class was this past Tuesday, and it was amazing. Registration went way beyond what we expected. I kinda prepped the classes as maybe 15 or 20 of us sit down and have a conversation. And we had close to a 100 people, 80 people sign up for the class, which is amazing. So we moved it up into the sanctuary and did here.
Speaker 1:But to see that many people interested in kind of doing an intro to the bible was great. But we're fine tuning the material as we go because it's our first time through, and so I am figuring out what I can reasonably cover in one hour lecture. On the first week, I realized I had a bit too much for you. But we're offering the course again in the spring. And so if you couldn't make it this fall, then by all means, mark it on your calendar.
Speaker 1:We're gonna run it again in the spring for you. And unfortunately, we're not recording it the first time through, but we are looking at making that available online as well. A lot of people have been asking, saying they can't make Tuesday night, but they'd like to watch it. And so that will be coming in the next couple months as well. Now, Abraham.
Speaker 1:Abraham is a major character in our story. He is the point of origin that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all trace their story back to at some level. And so he is the transition from the story of creation and fall, which Genesis one through 11, into the story of God's plan for redemption that begins in chapter 12. In fact, last week, we left off at chapter 12 verse one. Well, in verses two and three, God says this, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.
Speaker 1:I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, curse those who curse you, and all peoples everywhere will be blessed through you. So Abraham begins the story of God's blessing blessing all all peoples. Peoples. He begins the story that culminates in Jesus.
Speaker 1:And it's a story of God bringing healing and hope and renewal to all things. But last week, we talked about two major pieces in the set up to this story. First, that Abraham begins in a place of waiting. At the end of chapter 11, actually tells us that Abram and his dad and his family had always intended to go to the land of Canaan. But they got stuck in a place called Haran, and they got comfortable there.
Speaker 1:So they settled down and they got stuck there. And my guess is this is not a completely unfamiliar story to most of us. We started out with some kind of big ambitious plan, a clear goal, an idea of where we wanted to head. But then somehow, we stopped for a while. And that's not always bad.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's actually really good. Because sometimes the waiting and the wondering and the dreaming about what's next is what prepares us to hear well. But Abraham ends up in this intended place for longer than he intended to be, and his dad passes away and he's left without a lot of clear direction for what comes next. And this place is where God speaks to him. And God says, leave your country, leave your people, leave your father's household, and go to the land that I will show you.
Speaker 1:And so we spent a lot of time last week talking about the yes and no of life. That you can't go somewhere new even if God calls you to it until you're ready to leave somewhere old. This is how things work. Right? Can't go someplace new until you're ready to leave where you are.
Speaker 1:John Calvin in his commentary several hundred years ago on Genesis said it this way, that Abraham and Sarah Sarah are called to go with closed eyes. For until having left their country, they could not have given themselves fully to God. And this is important because sometimes what you move on from is actually really good. It's not bad. It's not broken.
Speaker 1:It isn't wrong. It's just not what God has for you now in this season. And that can be a physical move to a new city like Abraham. Abraham. That can be a change in a career.
Speaker 1:That can even be as simple as the yeses and nos of stuff. And so I spent a lot of time there last week because I think that a lot of the time our our relationship to stuff in our culture is just a symptom of how we approach life. That we want more and more and more all the time. And then we gather all this stuff and then we just hang on to it all just in case. And I don't know if I'll use it, but I'm gonna keep it just in case because we all, at some level, have this crippling sense of FOMO.
Speaker 1:Do you know this term? Right? F o m o, the fear of missing out? I mean, sure. I just got a new gray shirt.
Speaker 1:But what if someday I want to wear that old gray shirt that I haven't worn in eighteen months? I should probably just hang on to it, keep it in my closet, never let go of anything because I don't wanna miss out. That approach ends up leading to a life where we never take any new opportunities if they ask us to leave something behind. Because it's just too scary. And if we do that, we miss out on most of life.
Speaker 1:And the proliferation of choice in our world actually makes this worse. If I offered you a Coke or a Pepsi, you could probably answer that pretty quickly. Most of you know which one you would drink. By the way, the correct answer is no, thanks. I'll take a water.
Speaker 1:That write that down. That will save you a lot in the future. But if I was to offer you one of the 97 different flavors of brown bubbly sugar liquid on the market today, it might be more difficult. You would probably struggle to decide between vanilla cherry chocolate sugar free diet coke and doctor pepper, who I'm sure is not a doctor anyway. So what's the point?
Speaker 1:And listen, I get it. Right? Nobody wants to miss out on anything. We wanna try it all. But if you don't learn how to leave some things behind, leave some things on the shelf, you never end up experiencing what God has for you in particular.
Speaker 1:And so I don't think it's insignificant that the first thing God says to Abram when he calls him is leave your country and leave your people, leave your father's household, leave what's familiar because I have something new and beautiful in mind for you. There are times we need to leave things behind to move towards new. Now, that was last week. This week, we wanna talk about the difference between direction and directions. But first, let's pray.
Speaker 1:God of our father Abraham, would you speak good yeses and healthy noes to our spirit? So that we would hear and understand and have the courage to move forward as you call us. Where we have been more afraid of missing out on what we already have than of missing out on what you have for us. Would you forgive us? Where we have wanted more and more and more without me learning what it means to let go and to give away and to leave behind.
Speaker 1:We would ask for your grace. And where we have allowed a sense of vulnerability or scarcity to teach us that the most important thing in life is to grab and to hold on and to acquire more. We would ask for your spirit to heal and to renew and to teach us what it means to trust all over again. As we continue into the story of Abraham this morning, would you help us to root our experience of his story in the conviction that you are good and that you are at work in history to bring all things back to yourself. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Last week, we left off with Abram having been called by God to leave his country and go somewhere new. And then I read you already today the next couple verses, verses two and three, where God makes a prayer a promise to Abram. He says he's gonna bless them.
Speaker 1:He says these descendants are going to become a great nation. But the reason for that blessing, God says, is that Abram would become a blessing. And this is probably familiar stuff. I think we actually touched on these verses back in the spring a little earlier this year, but it's a good reminder for a moment here. The all blessing comes with responsibility.
Speaker 1:You don't need to feel guilty for being born or living in Canada with all of the advantages that come along with that. You do need to feel the weight of responsibility to turn that into blessing and good news for somebody else. That's just how this works. I have to steal a line from Spider Man with great blessing comes great responsibility. Right?
Speaker 1:Two people read Marvel comics. That's fine. Now, here's why guilt is not a good motivator in our lives. Because when guilt makes you do something, even something good, it's fundamentally a selfish thing. You feel guilty.
Speaker 1:You don't like feeling this way, and so you do something that makes you feel better for a time. That's not what God is looking for in this story. God didn't bless Abram in order to make him feel guilty about it later. Blessing is blessing because it's about what you get to do with it. And so we're talking a lot about Zambia right now.
Speaker 1:And we're gonna push this month on top of everything else we're doing to make sure we can get 50 kids sponsored, cared for, and safe in the Calende community. Well, if you're in a place where you can afford $20 a month, you don't have to do anything with that. And honestly, I don't want you to feel guilty about that. There are lots of good things you can do with your resources, and to be honest, you probably are already. The the reason we put our offering boxes at the back of the room instead of passing a plate around in front of everyone is because the last thing that I wanted when I started at church was to have it built on the uncomfortable moment where you feel guilty because someone else is looking at what you put in the play.
Speaker 1:I just didn't want that. And yes, of course, we need money to do this, church. But I want that to be exciting and joyful and part of your worship if you decide to participate that way. And so if you are in the place where you can afford $20 a month and you can invest that in a child and that becomes a source of joy and celebration on your bank statement every month, that is not what you have to do, it's what you get to do. And that's the kind of relationship we're supposed to have with our blessing.
Speaker 1:That's what I think God is calling Abraham to. I will bless you and you will get to bless the world. I will make you a great nation and bless you and all peoples on earth everywhere will be blessed through you. You get to be a part of this Abraham. Now, the next verse is where I really wanna pick up the story for us this week.
Speaker 1:It says this, so Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and all the people they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan. And they arrived there.
Speaker 1:Abraham traveled to the land as far as the great tree of Mora at Shechem. At the time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there, he went on toward the hills east Bethel and pitched his tent.
Speaker 1:Bethel on the West and Ai on the East, there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. This is verses four to nine. Now, couple things here. Thomas Cahill writes in his book, The Gift of the Jews, that Abraham went are two of the boldest words in all literature.
Speaker 1:They signal a complete departure from everything that has gone before. Out of ancient humanity, which knows in its bones that all striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he's been given an impossible dream. A dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something in the future. In every other ancient society, society, Abraham would have been given the same advice. Do not journey, but sit.
Speaker 1:Compose yourself by the river of life. Meditate on its ceaseless and meaningless flow. Flow. But Abraham went. Now, the realization that Cahill is making here is that this is more than a move from one town to another town.
Speaker 1:This is a significant investment investment and belief in the future that Abraham is showing here. And when we couple that with the narrative that we just read from Genesis where Abraham basically shows up in Canaan as God told him to and then just starts wandering around checking out the place. This is what brings me to this language I used before we prayed. That there's a difference between direction and directions. Now, I'll come back to that.
Speaker 1:But if notes in Genesis are to be taken literally, and there's really no reason not to, then Bethel and Shechem would have been up in the northern part of the land. Now, the tree of Mora, we have no idea what that was. If it really was just a big tree, it is obviously long gone. But Shechem was an ancient city that we actually know a lot about from something called the Amarna tablets. These are a collection of clay tablets.
Speaker 1:They're written in an ancient language called Akkadian. And the leaders of Shechem are negotiating with the rulers of an Egyptian city called Amarna. These things are literally over 3,000 years old, and they confirm a lot of what we understand from the Bible, but they actually give us a lot of insight into some of these pre Abrahamic communities. They're pretty fascinating. You can see them in different museums around the world.
Speaker 1:Then Negev on the other hand is a large desert area in what is now called Southern Israel. And what this little travel log shows us is that Abraham is called to go to Canaan, but that doesn't mean that God lays out every step along the journey. Walter Brueggemann says it this way, these particular references are to be understood not only as historical or geographical notes, but as a theological program. The life of faith is one which keeps Israel in pursuit of the promise. Abraham is not one who finally arrives at his destination.
Speaker 1:He trusts the promise. The metaphor of journey or sojourn is a radical one. It is a challenge to the dominant ideologies of our time which yearn for settlement, security, and placement. This is what I'm talking about in the difference between direction and directions. Because I think a lot of the time when we say things like, wish I would hear from God.
Speaker 1:Or we read a story like Abraham and say, I wish I wish God would speak to me the way that he spoke to Abraham. What we really mean is not so much that we want a direction to head in like Abraham, as much as we want directions about how to get to where it is we already want to go. Bruggemann says that Abraham's journey is a challenge to settlement, security, and placement. I think those are precisely the things that we're looking for when we want God to speak to us. Make it secure for me.
Speaker 1:Make it settled. Make my place secure. Tell me where to go. But then tell me how to get there. Tell me what to do once I get there.
Speaker 1:Tell me that it's all going to be okay. That's what I wanna hear from God. And don't get me wrong, Abraham gets some of that. And God says, this journey is for your good. You will be blessed.
Speaker 1:I will be with you along the way. But the directions, the specifics, the details that would take Abraham out of the story, the details that would relieve Abraham from making any choices or decisions along the way, that's just not there in the text. Go to Canaan. What do you do once you get there? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Figure it out. God says, here's the direction. Go that way. But when Abraham gets to Canaan, he's gotta look around. He's gotta decide where he wants to settle.
Speaker 1:He's he's gotta figure out how he wants to relate to and deal with the people who are already living there in the land. I mean, this is a story about faith, but it's not a story that removes Abraham from the place of making real, meaningful, sometimes hard decisions about life. I talked about my job last week a bit. And I I realized being a pastor is probably a discussion that is only marginally relevant for most of us here in the room. I get it.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't really matter what it is you think you're called to or what it is you do for a living. There's still all kinds of choices you have to make for yourself. Did you know this? That when you plant a church, God doesn't tell you what accounting software you should use? This is not in my experience anyway.
Speaker 1:If if I was more spiritual, maybe we would have had a prayer meeting and figured it out that way. But I'm only half being facetious here. And God speaks. I believe that. I've experienced that in my life at times.
Speaker 1:But sometimes, some things still decided with the wisdom that's between your ears. And that doesn't diminish faith. It makes it a relationship. Because as I learn to listen and to hear and to trust trust God when he speaks, I begin to recognize that he also trusts me to respond and to move and make decisions in the light of the relationship I'm building with him. Listen listen.
Speaker 1:I firmly believe that God speaks clearly, definitively, and specifically to some people at some times. But for the vast majority of us, I think God says this is out of bounds and that is out of the bounds. And you've got all this room here in the middle to live and learn and explore. To give and to forgive and to bless the world with everything that I've trusted you with. And, yeah, that's your money and your resources, but it's also your intellect and your intuition.
Speaker 1:It's your passion. All of this is part of what God is counting on you to bring into his kingdom. Having a direction in life is not the same thing as having every step laid out for you. It's not directions. In fact, having a direction in life, really, truly having direction you know you're supposed to go, this will require more hard decisions and more strategic choices.
Speaker 1:It will require more investment from you than a step by step outline ever could. Because that's what mature faith is. You and God in concert. In fact, this is part of what makes Christianity so different than most other religious traditions. There really are no rules for this.
Speaker 1:And sure, there are those things that are out of bounds. Don't murder, don't steal, don't abuse each other, of course. But the details of how to actually live out what it means to be a Christian, when to pray, what to eat, how to dress. There's just none of that there. These these are choices you have to make.
Speaker 1:There's a very old story, about a young man who came to a famous rabbi who was well known before the time of Jesus. And the young man said to rabbi Shema, if you can explain Torah to me while I stand on one foot, I will convert here on the spot. And rabbi Shema replied, that is ridiculous. Torah is law. Not a single word could ever be reduced.
Speaker 1:And he chased the young man away throwing stones at him. When Jesus is presented with pretty much the same question, albeit without the theatrics, what does he say? He quotes from Deuteronomy four and Leviticus 19. He says, love God, love people, there is no law greater than these. That right there is the difference between direction, head this way, and directions, tell me what to do with my life.
Speaker 1:And then, fortunately, at times, that means that even when we're on a mission from God, even when we are heading in the right directions, we still get it wrong. If you wanna see what I'm talking about, just look at the next verse in Abram's story. Next verse. Verse 10 says this, now there was a famine in the land and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was so severe. So first of all, God tells Abram, go to Canaan.
Speaker 1:There's a famine. And so he makes the decision to leave Canaan and go to Egypt. So good decision or bad decision, that's Abram's decision. As he's about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarah, I know what a beautiful woman you are. It starts first you're like, this is gonna be a good story.
Speaker 1:So romantic? No. Then he says this, the Egyptians will see you and they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me and they'll let you live. So say you are my sister so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.
Speaker 1:Not as romantic romantic as as how how it it started. Started. When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarah was a beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And so she was taken into his palace.
Speaker 1:He treated Abram well for her sake and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife, Sarah. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. What have you done to me? Why did you tell me she was your wife or didn't you tell me she was your wife?
Speaker 1:Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go. Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way with his wife and everything he had. So couple things here.
Speaker 1:First of all, yes, absolutely, of course, 100% Abram should have known this was a terrible idea. He should not need directions from God telling him to do not to do this. You don't misrepresent yourself. You certainly don't misrepresent the people who trust you. And you don't put someone else in a vulnerable spot just to protect yourself.
Speaker 1:So Abraham here is at his worst. Self Selfish, self serving, duplicitous and devious and he should not need directions to tell him to stop. But look at the story. God says, go to the land I'll show you. He doesn't tell him what to do when a famine hits and food gets scarce.
Speaker 1:He doesn't tell him what to do when he meets Pharaoh and he's afraid of him. God expects him to make good decisions in those moments. God calls Abram, but he expects him to make good, honest, trustworthy decisions based on the relationship he's been developing with God. And here, Abraham blows it. That's what the story is about.
Speaker 1:Now you can argue that God is in the background here protecting Abraham, looking out for him, making sure things turn out well for him. I think that's true. But don't think for a second that this story is any kind of endorsement from God. In fact, the way that the story is written, it seems to be foreshadowing the Jews going down into Egypt at the end of Genesis and ending up as slaves in the book of Exodus. Central narrative of the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:So everyone already knows that Pharaoh was the bad guy in the bigger story. You're supposed to read this story and think, oh my goodness, Abraham. How can you be so dull that even Pharaoh has better moral grounding than you? In fact, if you read this story closely, closely, you notice God doesn't need to tell Pharaoh that adultery is wrong and that you shouldn't pass your wife off as your sister. He doesn't need directions.
Speaker 1:Why on earth does Abraham need this? But second, we should notice this. Abraham is told to go to Canaan and when he gets there, there's a famine. He goes to Egypt, passes his wife off as his sister, completely misses the mark, and yet somehow still ends up with sheep, cattle, donkeys, slaves. I mean, this might not sound all that exciting to you.
Speaker 1:For him, this is like winning the lottery. Can I suggest here that just because things are hard, it doesn't necessarily mean you're in the wrong place? Sometimes the right place is the hard place where it feels like famine. That's where God called Abram to go. On the flip side of that though, is that just because things turned out well in the end, it doesn't necessarily mean God is pleased with how you got there.
Speaker 1:Wealth is not the measure of the man in this story, at least not yet. Now, God is gracious. God is forgiving. God welcomes us back every single time. But if we start to assume that the ends justify the means, that our privilege, however we got it, whoever we took it from, is somehow God's will for us, then we have drastically misinterpreted the story.
Speaker 1:Because God means to bless Abram. He told him that. But mistreating his wife and misrepresenting himself, this is not how God wanted to do it. And we'll start to see this more and more as the story develops and we work our way through it. That Abraham is not in tune with God in this moment, but slowly he becomes more and more in tune with the God who speaks to him.
Speaker 1:Slowly he becomes more and more willing to give things away and to put himself at risk. And yes, he continues to make mistakes. In fact, he actually makes the same mistake with his wife again a little later if you can believe it. We'll get to that story in a bit. Can't imagine how that conversation went down for the second time.
Speaker 1:But slowly, as we watch Abraham grow, we watch him mature and he becomes the kind of person that's worthy of a calling and worthy of being given a direction to head, someone who doesn't doesn't need to be given directions by God at every step. Because his faith becomes mature enough to work in concert with God. And maybe you've been praying for direction in your life. But maybe in the back of your head, in the back of your mind, what you've really been looking for is God to lay it all out for you step by step every direction along the way. So that nothing will rest on you and the choices you have to make.
Speaker 1:You just don't want that pressure. That's not how it works. Because mature faith is you and God in concert. And even if you are faithful, you will still need to make good choices. Maybe you've been praying for direction in your life.
Speaker 1:But the truth is if you're really honest about things, you already know where it is that you need to head. You you know where God is calling you to. And you know the choices that you need to make in your life somewhere, but you're scared to take the first step because you don't know exactly what the next step will look like once you do. That's okay. It's alright to be scared, but mature faith is about you and God in concert.
Speaker 1:And it's about trusting that if God has given you the right direction to head, that when you take that first step, you will be mature enough to make the next one. Abram went are two of the boldest words in all literature. Because out of humanity, which knows in its bones that all striving must end in death, comes a voice who says, you have been given an impossible dream. A dream of something new, something better, something in the future. And maybe in any other situation, you would be given the same advice, do not journey but sit.
Speaker 1:Compose yourself and reflect on the ceaseless and meaningless flow. But you will go. May you sense the spirit's direction for you today. And may you faithfully leave the need for directions behind in order to discover yourself with God along the way because he trusts you. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, help us to balance these ideas in our hearts and our minds. This fact that sometimes we need to wait and sit and listen for you. That we can't just get up and go. We can't just pick our direction out of thin air and move. That in our space of waiting and listening, you will by your spirit speak to us.
Speaker 1:But then God, couple that with the courage to go, and to get up when we've been given direction and take the first step and trust that you will be with us as we go and as we mature in our faith, we come to know you more, you will shape us. You'll transform us. You will help us to know what choices to make. God help us to see our faith as a relationship between you and us. Not simply awaiting for you all the time, but partnership, the paradox of you waiting for us at times.
Speaker 1:May we each have a sense of where you're calling us to head. And may you by your spirit give us the courage to take that first step next and then the next as you guide. You're a great God and in the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Next week we'll pick up with Abraham part three, but we'll end here as we always do with this. Love God, love people, tell the story, have a great Thanksgiving. We'll see you back here next Sunday. Thanks everyone.