John Gunter: Morning. Glad you're here with us this morning. Anybody ever had fluid on your ear? That's what I've got going on this morning. So, if you guys start spinning, I may have to lay down just a second.
But we'll make it through. Certainly glad that you're all with us this morning as we worship god together and as we start chapter two of the story. I hope you're reading ahead and again, I will say this. Well, right now, you've got plenty of time. If you haven't been reading, you can catch up.
As we get along, it's probably going be hard to catch up for twenty weeks in a row. So, just go on. Just keep going. We began as you've been hearing and if you were here for class, you're what you've heard is we began the story of Abraham. Last week, we talked about kind of how how the world was created and how sin came into the world and and how it began to spread.
Yeah, what we found out and what we know is is that god did not just abandon us in that, right? That god decided, okay, well, the the plan may need to change here but I'm not leaving you alone and so god continues to make that relationship right. Well, this week, god chooses Abraham and Sarah and promises through these people, old people by the way, through these people to build a nation. Well, how will this work? They are old and they have no kids and if you think me saying they are old is mean, the scripture says, almost as good as dead.
And that's at 70. I mean, come on. Sometimes, I I'm at I'm at 44 now and sometimes I get up from a chair and think, oh my goodness, I'm almost as good as dead. I told I told my kids, my kids are both goalies and both of them have bruises from tournaments this week and I said, just just wait till you get older and you can't figure out why you hurt when you get up or do whatever. Now, you know what happened then.
And so today, we begin with this this question of how is this going to work when nothing about the situation makes sense for the promise god gives him. Like, nothing you could look around and say, oh, here's how god's going to work this out. Makes any sense. You ever been in that situation before? And and so, how are you going to get through this?
And so, can you can you get through that situation when you look around and go, I don't know how god's going to take me out of this. William said in class this morning, it is it is one of those things where I think a lot of times, you can't see it in the moment. Now, let me get down the road a little bit and maybe I can look back and go, oh, I got you, right? But I don't think any of us enjoy that, do we? How many of you would like to know right now what's going to happen, how it's going?
Let me get through this, god. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Amen.
Well, let me ask you this. How many of you like to be surprised with where you're going? Like your your spouse or a friend says, hey, let's go. We're going to go. I'm not even going to tell you where we're going.
You want to go. How many of you up for a night like that? Some of us are planners and that's like, well, can you give me a little more information? What I need to bring? Anything like that?
Okay? How about if you are going to move and your spouse says, I can't tell you where we're going. Yeah. Not ever going to happen in my mind. Uh-uh.
I don't want to do that. What if you were aware that even your spouse didn't know where you were going? Because the first couple of things implies that the person you're with knows where you're going, right? And for us, if we said, hey, we're going to I'm not going to tell you where we're going. The implication is, it's a surprise.
It's going to be great. You're going to end up at the place you love to shop or the place you love to eat or something like that, right? But the last one and what we all know that Abraham experiences is god has given them a promise and Abraham Abraham says, yes, but there's nothing figured out. Not how we're gonna have this nation. We're we're older people.
I don't know where we're going to go. I'm going to give you a land. Okay, where is it? Just go. And that's what we're going to experience this morning.
From Genesis twelve one through three. 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, 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 I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That sounds wonderful, doesn't it?
But again, Abraham knows nothing about what is going to happen. He's just basically just says, go. Now, I would love for god to promise me, you know, through you, all these things are going to happen. That that sound may even puff me up a little bit, right? Oh, I'm glad to do that but it's kind of like that that Jeremiah twenty nine eleven that I I talk about sometimes, right?
I love to hear about I have plans to prosper you. I love to hear about that. I don't love the fifty to seventy years it's going to be before that happens. Yeah? Because we are a society that wants everything immediately.
Yes? I want to know how it's going to work out. I want everything immediately. I want I want results. Even if those results aren't ideal, at least I have results so I know kind of how to compare them, how to change, all of those things.
What I don't want is a a cloud of mystery. You've heard me say before, I drive my wife nuts because she will ask me something seemingly simple and I'll have to think about it. Anybody got a relationship like that? Or everybody hate me right now? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, William. I appreciate that. At least one other processor in here and I I need time to think.
What I don't want is just a cloud of mystery around everything that's going on but that's what we see here is that god gives Abraham a promise with no answers and no solution. We get in Hebrews eleven eight that's already on the screen there. 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. Ever been somewhere you didn't know where you were going? I can't imagine going to a place and say and and and just following god to a place that I don't know.
Even as a minister, I I moved here a little over five years ago. At least I knew where I was going. I had an opportunity to to meet some of you and form, you know, for some of you, good opinion, right? Stayed with some of you for a little while. I at least had a a hint or an opening.
I knew where it was. I had things to evaluate and and to me, that was a big step of faith, right? Because still there are unanswered questions like, how's it going to go? I don't know how it's going to go. But I, can you wrap your mind around going somewhere where you have nothing?
Statistic I looked up this morning because I'd heard it before is that I think it's 60% of us don't move further than about 10 miles from where we grew up. 80% and this was a study done I think in the nineties, 80% of us are a 100 miles or less close to where we grew up. And that makes sense, right? Because home brings comfort, all the things about it, family, all the support, and different things you have and so if you go outside of those bounds, even in a culture like ours where we can travel very quickly and we can get on a plane. If you got the money, can get on a plane.
You can get on a train. By the way, trains are way too expensive. Y'all looked at that? I think I would like to ride a trainer once when every time I look prices up, I was like, well, man, I can get there two days earlier on a plane and cost less but yeah, we have the opportunity to do all of that but we still reside close to home because again, the support, the love, all the things that you eat even nostalgia, right? I like going back home just to remember all the things we did and you know, I was riding my foiler out to my buddy's house or whatever.
There's comfort that comes with that but it says, by faith, Abraham obeyed. Not understanding what that meant for him, how it's going to go, what do we do now? And so, it says it's a response of faith. The writer of Hebrews says, because he trusted god enough to act on what god had said. So, it wasn't enough just to believe god but you see there is an action involved.
James will talk about this as well, right? Faith without action is what? Church? Say a little bit louder. Dead.
Dead. Right. Because it's it's merely talk really to say, oh, I just believe I have faith. What does that faith cause you to do? And And that's what we see here that Abraham had a faith that not only do I believe you lord, that have been really easy to say, I believe you lord.
That's it. Doesn't call, I don't change anything about my life. Let's go on about it. But it says, his faith drove him to do something. He had an action that I am going to move and again, he could not control where that obedience led him.
Now, that's scary. That you don't know where your obedience is gonna lead lead you in life. Now, what we try to do is control where the that obedience leads us, don't we? We come up with excuses for why we can't do that. Lord, thank you.
I believe you that through me, you're going to make a great nation. Now, let me tell you the reasons why I can't leave here. Right? That's how we think or let me tell you the reasons why some other person would be the better fit for this job. We try to control our obedience when god and when faith in god requires us to follow him and see what he can do Because often what we do is in our mind, we come up when we come up with all those excuses, we can't see in ourselves the way that this could happen.
We limit god and what he can do and we think we're thinking more in terms of what I believe I can accomplish. Have you ever seen in yourself something accomplished you didn't think was possible? William taught our class this morning. He said, I'm not a public speaker. He was this morning.
Amen. Did a great job. Yeah, there are there are things in life that you may not think are even possible for you but with god, through god's help and guidance are very much possible. But what that requires of you is to step out of the way and let God lead. That make sense?
That we have to get out of the way because a lot of times the only person blocking you is you. Get out of the way, allow God to lead, have faith in him. It is a scary thought to know to not know where I'm going. But with God, what I've been reminded over and over that all those times that I have stepped out in faith that I don't know the way forward, I don't know how it's going to work out. God has blessed me.
I hope you've experienced that in your life. I stare at a room of people this morning that had I not taken some some steps of faith myself, I wouldn't know. You're probably here because you took some steps of faith that you wouldn't be here otherwise. You said yes to somebody, you did something that changed your life, that you you clung to god, you you had a faith that led you here this morning. You didn't know the way that was going to work out, did you?
How many of you saw for Saul sitting in this room this morning, right? A lot of you that were at Lakewood didn't foresee sitting in this room this morning, right? But god can handle all of our uncertainty. In Genesis 15 starting in verse one, after these things, the word of the lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram.
I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, oh lord god, what will you give me? For I continued childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Now what we see through Abraham here, Abram at this point, is a very human trait, trying to figure out what God is doing. Yeah? Amen. And and that's why this I love the story breaks it down into the upper story, what god's doing, what we wish we knew, and the lower story kind of how we're experiencing it. Right?
Trying to figure it out and so his question is, you know, his only thought is, I'm old. I don't have any kids. I believe god has promised me this but right now, it looks like this other man is, you know, a member of my house is going to end up being the heir and so in his mind, he's working out, okay, well, maybe what god is doing is not going to give me a child. Maybe I was wrong on that but what he's going to do is he's going to make this guy my heir and through that, you know, somehow kind of closely related But then god says, None of that. But you see how he was limiting himself.
Abraham was limiting himself to what he thought was possible. And that is a very limited view. That is not a God view, is it? That's not the upper story view. That is a, here's what I believe is possible.
Here's what God can do. How many of you have lived through experiences where you didn't think something was possible? You think that was gonna happen? No, it absolutely happened. Yeah.
Absolutely. Again, that's the difference often between what we limit ourselves to thinking can happen versus what god can actually have happen. And so, Abraham does not pretend that this this waiting is easy. Anybody love to wait? Like, I just told you, I'm a processor.
Like, I need to I need to work through the stuff but I still don't like waiting. Like, once I've made a decision, let's go. Right? My wife says, I will drive 10 miles out of the way to to have clear traffic and clear driving instead of sitting in traffic. Anybody else?
Yes. You drove 10 more miles. Don't care. It felt like I made, you know, I made up thirty minutes in that drive. I don't want to wait.
Pay the toll. Pay the toll? I don't care. Yeah. Doesn't matter.
I don't want to wait and so Abraham doesn't show us that he believed that that waiting was easy. He had questions. He was trying to figure it out. How is god going to do this and god's not giving him all the answers, right? In this amount of time and we're talking about when god came to him in his seventies and and then he gets to a hundred.
Thirty years. How many of you if if it's thirty years, you were certain that god talked to you thirty years ago and god told you this is the way it's going to be, how many of you start questioning within thirty years going, Maybe I had a bad batch of Taco Bell that night. I don't know what happened. Right? But in your mind, right?
You're trying to to to to figure out what is happening here. Is it going to happen? Is it not? I don't know how old Abraham thought he was going to be but you gotta gotta be thinking about that time. Okay.
Well, am I going to live to see it? Am I going to live to see god's promises fulfilled? But Genesis 16 will then show us what what happens next. As they're trying to to figure this out and and remember, what we'll read in scripture is that Sarah was barren. Now, we don't know that it was technically Sarah, do we?
They assumed that if a woman didn't have a child, it was her fault. Now, that could, that could bring shame, shame upon a person. She wasn't able to experience motherhood in the same way and we don't know that to be the case but you can see within the account that they're trying to figure this out in so many different ways because Sarah probably was looking at herself going, I wish I could could make this happen. Not only are we old but I I'm bare. I couldn't do it in the first place.
And so then they bring in Hagar, and Sarah gives Hagar to Abraham and tries to help God out. It's always good when God's struggling on a Monday, and you need to help God out. Right? Because again, their their thinking was limited. She's barren.
God must need help to make this happen. That's why it's been so long. And so they go the route of Hagar, and Hagar has a son from Abraham, but all that produces is pain and jealousy and even conflict. And did God promise any of that? No?
But because they decided to not have faith or have a faith that was very limited, they helped God out by introducing this conflict that they wouldn't have had otherwise. They had this impatience which I also have. Anybody else this morning? I am impatient at times. I would love to see the the result immediately.
I would love to see what god is doing but sometimes, it takes time. You know that? And a lot of times, it's the it's the big things in life that take more time, right? We've looked around and you've heard it said already this morning and what a blessing this congregation has been. I think god is working through this church in ways that I couldn't have imagined.
Year and a half, two years ago, and here we are. It didn't happen from one Sunday to the next. Other people started coming more and more. People who didn't didn't just come but got involved. And to where you see, okay, god is working here.
And again, I would love for that to happen and one day go, oh, I don't know what's happening here. The next day going, oh, here we go but often things take a lot of time. And so, Hagar ends up bearing much of the cost of this. She is not allowed in with the rest of the family but god does meet her in the wilderness and tells her that she will be blessed and he sees her as the person that she is and not just this outcast which is a a very unfortunate thing byproduct of this lack of faith but in Genesis 21 starting in verse one, we read this, the lord visited Sarah as he had said and the lord did to Sarah as he had promise And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.
And so Abraham is now 100 years old. Do we have any bordering a 100 in here? Where's miss Merle when you need her? Right? How old is miss Merle now?
97. 97 years old. And she would tell you if she was sitting here too. But but this is something that we just can't wrap our minds around, right? But church, god is faithful.
You believe that? Amen. God is faithful in his promises and even when we don't understand how it's going to work out, god is faithful and so, it it Genesis says this I guess the two different ways. Says, as he had said and it says it again, as he had said, not as he had or just as he had promised the the one one the In the next chapter in Genesis 22, after these things, God tested is Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on the on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.
What do you think Abraham's thinking right now? Through you, I will make a great nation. Thirty years, finally have a son. Oh, by the way, go offer him as a sacrifice. Would you have questions in that moment?
The fact that Abraham does not throw a y'all say wall eyed fit? Okay. Is that just Arkansas? He doesn't throw a wall eyed fit at this point. Right?
Says something about his learning experience with god, doesn't it? Okay? He's telling him to take his one and only son you finally gave him and go offer him as a sacrifice, okay? In verse three, so Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood and the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took his hand, took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father.
And he said, here I am, my son. He said, behold, the fire of the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So, they went both of them together. Now, a couple of things I want to point on before we finish this passage.
Number one, Isaac, you know, sometimes we see Isaac as some kind of like three or four year old. He is not. He is old enough to look at the situation and go, hold up just a second. What's happening? Did you notice who's carrying the wood?
Right? Do you think there were just a couple of pieces of wood to to start a fire for a burnt offering? Absolutely not. He was probably 15, 16 years old. And so, this is not, this is not some kid that doesn't know any better.
This is this is an older teen that is aware of the situation and Abraham's response is god will provide for himself a lamb. Do you notice how Abraham has grown in this? No more is it I'm going to substitute. Let me let me fix this for god. It is, I've seen god work before and I don't know but god will provide.
Yeah? And when when they came to the place of which god had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Again, a 15 year old kid. You wrestled a teenager lately? I can't imagine what he was going through and maybe that's why we don't get a lot out of Isaac in the in the Bible, to be honest with you.
Maybe he had his own wrestling with this issue. What what was going on here? Yeah. But he bound up Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Abraham called the name of the place the Lord will provide as it is said to this day, on the mount of the lord, it shall be provided. Now, it's hard to kind of move on from that because I I can't imagine that situation. Can you? To have a faith that says, okay, god's going to work through this. I don't know how.
I don't know what's going to go on. The the writer of Hebrews gives us a little little bit more. It says in Hebrews 11 verse 17, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said, through Isaac shall your offspring be named. So, he knew this is gonna be through Isaac that all these things are gonna happen. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking, he did not he did receive him back.
And so you get from this, from the writer of Hebrews saying, okay, Abraham was working it over in his head. He felt, okay, I'm gonna be faithful to God, and I know God can do things I can't even imagine. So maybe God's plan in this is to even raise him from the dead. Now, that still doesn't make it an easy thing, does it? If this morning, we said, hey, we're going to sacrifice one of your children or grandchildren.
By the way, god can raise him from the dead. So, no big deal, right? Don't ask me that, right? Yeah, that's still a very difficult thing. But even in his mind, he's like, well, I've seen god do some wonderful things and maybe this is his plan.
I don't know. But god commanded him to do it. He said, I'm going to do it and he concluded even death does not prevent god from doing something. And that was before the cross. Church, we live on the other side of the cross.
I deal with death quite a bit my role as a chaplain, and there's a lot of fear around death. But I'll tell you, when you meet someone who's a believer, who knows the power of God, that's a different conversation. To say with boldness and conviction that even the power of death is not gonna stop my lord. Amen? Amen.
We understand that that god is not done at the point of death and Abraham was as he worked through all of this thought, no. Now, if I can have a kid at a 100, even god can can raise my son. Well, the generations go on and you have Isaac and Jacob. Isaac and Rebecca wait twenty years for children. Jacob then receives the covenant line through a family marked by really this favoritism.
They have deception. They have conflict. They have a lot of things going on but god's story, the upper story keeps moving, doesn't it? You don't get to a point where god ever gets stumped and goes, oh no, what do I do now? They've they've made the wrong choice.
Because the the story of the Bible that we will see repeated over and over is that some days, we're doing okay and it seems like that is shortly followed by, you know what? I want to travel my own path today. And that probably mirrors your life this week or this month, doesn't? Some days, I feel like I'm following god and some days, I do my own thing but god's story still continues. I wanna skip down to Genesis chapter 35 and verse nine.
God appeared to Jacob again. When he came from Padanaram and blessed him and god said to him, your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob but Israel shall be your name. Alright, where does Israel come from? The name Jacob.
You got that? Israel, Jacob. Now you will be called Israel. So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am God Almighty.
Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I give to Abraham or that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. And so at this point, we see that the promises of God are actually being fulfilled. Now again, we could read this in a course of a short afternoon.
Right? But these were real people having real life trying to figure it out in their own minds and asking the question, is god going to be faithful or maybe, how is god going to be faithful or when is god going to be faithful? And every single one of us in this room have had those same questions, haven't we? That maybe it's god. I'm trying to follow you and things aren't going the way I I I thought they would.
I told you about stories where I thought, you know, because I've chosen this, I know god's going to bless it. God had no no desire at all to bless that path. John chose that path and sometimes that's the case. I try to put into god's mind what I desire instead of following what god would have or I try to because it's been too long, I try to step in for god and tell God now it's time and this is how it's gonna go. But that is not the path of God.
And so, when God has made that next faithful step clear, can we obey without demanding all the answers? Not whether you want to or not, but can you? When you know what door God is asking you to step through, can you do that without demanding all the answers of the how and the when and the why, or maybe even the why me? Or can we say, yes, lord. Here I am.
I'm going to walk through that door because that is a maturity thing within Christ, right? Maybe maybe today, you are not in that place but what we don't want to do is say, well, maybe they would be better. Maybe we start praying a prayer of god, I want you to use me. I don't know what that looks like and that's a scary prayer But God, use me the way you want to use me for the benefit of your kingdom. Don't even limit it to this congregation.
Right? Let's let's say, God, to your kingdom, I want you to use me. And if we submit ourselves to god, I believe god can do far greater because I know scripture, far greater than anything we perceive, right? And can we pray a prayer like that? And so, chapter two this morning began with a childless couple, the promise of a nation to two people in their seventies.
Thirty years passes where they have a lot of questions, a lot of god, what are you doing? We'll try to help you out here because you're struggling and it turns out into exactly what god says that they have a son and this begins to, okay, well, there is a nation and from Jacob, we get how many sons? 12. The 12 nations of Israel. Jacob.
Through you are going to be many nations. You see how God is faithful? God is working it out in his own timeline, and as frustrating as that can be at times, if we are people of faith, we have to just have faith in him. And that's most difficult for me when I don't know the when or the how or even the why. And so let's finish with this question.
What might God be doing that we are unable to see right now? What is God doing within this church that we're not able to see and really put a finger on right now? What do you desire God to be doing in this place, in this community, or the community where you live or work that we haven't been able to put a finger on yet? And can we align with that? And so, I want to end with a prayer this morning.
Would you pray with me? Our father in heaven and god, we just we come to you this morning. Again, thanking you for your faithfulness. Lord, for the way that you show up in our lives and lord, we readily admit, Lord, that oftentimes because we don't know, we have questions. Lord, sometimes we have demands.
Lord, often we may try to fill in the blanks for you. God, help us to be people who trust. Help us to be people of faith that know because of the way you showed up in our lives, lord, that that you are faithful and lord that you can handle anything thrown at us. Lord, thank you for showing us that even death is not the end. God, help us to live with that that courage and and boldness that we can go out and, Lord, our lives are not gonna be perfect, but Lord, you are, and you walk beside us every step of the way.
Lord, I pray right now for this congregation, Lord, that you work in ways that we cannot imagine. Lord, we all have desires for what we would like this congregation to look like, But Lord, we know that you're capable of so much more than our limited understanding. Lord, would you allow us to be vessels for you to go out from this place and Lord to impact your kingdom, not just now, not just thirty years from now, but Lord, that what we do here today, lord, has lasting implications throughout the kingdom of god. Lord, it's in the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Amen. Wanna encourage you. If you like the prayers of this church, we'd love to pray with you. Tyler's got an invitation song picked out and if you'd like to put on the lord in baptism, I think we baptized five people within the last couple of weeks. Let's keep it going.
Let's keep the McCartney's having to filter that pool out. I told, I told Heath earlier that there may be a lot of sins in your pool. We've washed them all away. I hope you're cleaning it. But why not today?
Allow God to work in your life in ways that you don't comprehend. Would you come as we stand and say.