The Story - Chapter 2

If you have your book, The Story, I'm going to use that this morning. I don't know if you know this or not, but the word Bible comes from the Greek language. It's the Greek word Biblos, and it simply means book. But in the days of the Bible, the book that they referred to were simply scrolls rolled up in the time of the Old Testament, even the New Testament. Sometimes they would have stuff written on paper, and they would kind of sew it together, and that was the first one. But before we had a book like this with all of the books of the Bible collected in it, it was 1,500. For 3,500 years, people read the Word of God not in a book, but in a different method. So whenever a preacher stands up to preach, and he reads one passage of Scripture, and then he reads another and another, he takes out of the book, the Scripture, the words of God, and puts them together for a sermon. That's what this story is. It's a long, long sermon about how God has been at work in the world, and the words in it are the words of God. If you write the words of God on a napkin and give it to a friend, it's the Word of God. It has power. It doesn't have to be in a book, because the Word of God has power. So reading out of this means that God's Word is collected in a way so that you can follow the sermon as you discuss it in your groups. I want to start today with chapter 2 on page 13 in the book that you have. If you have your Bible with you, you can turn to chapter 12, verses 1 through 5. It's the very same thing from the NIV, at least, as we read that. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who God made. He put them in this garden, and he said, I want to be with you, and I want to be the God, your God, and I will come with you and talk with you. All I ask is you do everything I tell you to do. There's one thing I don't want you to do. So they were at ease with each other. We don't know how long in the Garden of Eden, but one day they decided, we know what God has told us to do, and we're not going to do it. I want you to know that the fruit they ate is irrelevant to that story. They decided to do the opposite of what God told them to do. It broke the relationship between them and God. No longer was he the ruler of their lives. They in place were ruling their own lives, by their own will, and their own desire, and their own interest. And from that day on to today, every human being who's ever come into the world, except for Jesus, has been influenced by that decision. So today, every person who grows up in this world makes their choices about what they want to do, and every one of us has said to God, sometime or other in our lives, I know what you want me to do, but I choose to do what I want. Now from the time that happened, God had a vision in his own mind of restoring what was found in the garden, where there were two people and God, and the two people said, God, we will do everything you tell us to do. He wanted to have that relationship with people that's proper. I mean, he made them, he's the ruler of the universe. He wanted them to live by the way he told them was right, so that their life would flourish and be full, but he couldn't do it with those two. He found Noah, and Noah was a man who had some promise, but God chose not to start over again with Noah. Instead, he waited till the time came when he found a man whose name was Abram. This man Abram was a person that God chose. He said, I want to start a whole new stream of world history, filled with people who will recognize my authority and my instructions and will live in this world the way I made them to live. So all the world will know what I'm like, and all the world will know what happens when people listen to my instructions and live as I tell them is best for them. And the story comes to us this way, chapter 12, verse 1 in the Bible and page 13. The Lord had said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. Whoever curses you, I will curse. All the people on the earth will be blessed through you. The call of God to Abraham is the very same call of God that comes to people. It's the same call that people hear today. Everyone who encounters God, God chooses to invite them to be his followers. Haley experienced that. She heard what God said to her over the period of time. Doug heard the same thing. God says, I want you to be different. I want you to leave the life that you're living and live the way I tell you. Now every time God calls us, he does the same thing he did to Abram. He said to Abram, now what I want you to do is to leave your country. It means that he had lived in this place for a long time. He was familiar with it. It was his home. It was a promised land. You ever hear people who move here from Texas keep talking about Texas being the promised land or Oklahoma or Minnesota or wherever they're from? It's the promised land. He was asked to leave the place that he loved and knew. That's one thing to go to South Africa for a week or two weeks. It's another to pull up stakes and leave the place that you know. God always when he calls us, asks us to do something that is sacrificial, that is leave what we were, what we were doing, the way we're living and become something different. You're to leave your people. He means by this, the people group he was a part of, the people that he knew, spoke the same language, you had the same background. Leave that and come to a different place where people are different than you. You're to leave your father's household, he said. All of his relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, all those people he was to leave behind and go to a place where he knew not a single solitary person with no telephone, no way to communicate and no way to get back home. He was to cut all these ties. And when God asks you to do something that strong, you have to really believe that what he's saying to you is from a position of authority. When he heard God say to him, Abram, I want you to come and follow me, he recognized in some way the divine voice of the creator of the universe. And he knew that this is what he must do. And so without any background in religion with God, any kind of connection with the things that had gone on before, he leaves behind all these things and starts out. God said to him, here's what I'm going to do. And when God asks you to follow him and he asks you to sacrifice, it is give up things of value for something of greater value, which is what a sacrifice is. Give up your family, your people, your country for something greater. You have to know what the greater is. And so he spelled out to Abram what the contract was. Now the Bible calls this a covenant, but I'm going to call it a contract because it's easier for us to understand what it is. We make contracts all the time, but most of the time we don't make something, we call a covenant. A contract has two different parties to it and two different commitments to it and two different promises and two different rewards. And in this one, he said to Abram, this is what I promise you. I will make you into a great nation. Now when he says that, we need to understand that the word nation, as it's used in the Bible all the way through the Bible, doesn't refer to what we think of as a nation. If somebody says what a nation is, we say, well, it's United States or Germany or Russia or China. But for the people in the Bible, a nation had to do with a group of people who were common in their heritage and common in their culture. Sometimes I drive around, I see an Oklahoma tag and it might have on the bottom of it the Cherokee nation. What they mean by that is they don't have a place down there that has a boundary for the Cherokee people, but it's this group of people who all have a common heritage, the Cherokee background. So he's saying to him, I'm going to make you, you're going to start a whole new group of people. And all these people that are born into that group will look back at you and say, this is our father. I don't know if you've ever heard children sing in Sunday school, Father Abraham. Christians sing that song. Father Abraham. He said to Abraham, I'm going to make you a father of multitudes of people. This is the promise that I'm going to make to you. I will make you a great nation and I will bless you. What he said to Abraham was, I'm going to guide you from where you are to the new place where you're going to be living. I will direct you. You don't know where it is. You don't know how to get there. You won't even know you get there until I say this is it. And then when I get you there, I'm going to make you into a mighty, powerful people. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless you. That is, he promised to him that he would make provision for him. The land would be given to him and it would become a blessing to him. And through his life, other people would be blessed. And then he said, all the people of the earth will be blessed because of you and what you do for me. Now, God hasn't made that specific promise to us, but his promise to us is, I will provide for you. I'll guide you. I will provide for you. And I will make your life a blessing to others. You understand as you heard the stories of people talk about their own life. We come to encounter God because of other people who are in our lives. People who care about us. People who love us. People who know God. And through us, we influence the lives of others. Every person who turns in submission and surrender to God becomes an emissary or a messenger of God's message to the world. And so, we become a blessing. Then he said to Abram, everyone who blesses you, I will bless. And everyone who curses you, I will curse. He said to them, I will stand beside you and between you and your enemies. Every person who's a friend of yours will become a friend of mine. Everyone who becomes an enemy of yours will become an enemy of mine. We look back on this Old Testament passage as the covenant that God made with Abraham. The contract he made with him. The promises that were to impact him all of his life. So Abram went as the Lord told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai and his son Lot. All the possessions they'd accumulated in the people they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Simply with this promise of God and with God's assurance that it would be true, a 75-year-old man left everything that he had and went to follow the voice of God. God still speaks to people just like he did in this story. You may be reading the Bible. You may be sitting in a service. You may hear a song. You may be reflecting. And you will hear in unmistakable terms God say, this is what I want you to do. Some of you have got up out of your seats and come to the front and said, the Lord wants me to say something to these people. Others of you have been asked to stand up here and tell us what God has done in your life and he's directed you in different ways. God still directs his people. But when he does, it is never for something easy. It is always to ask you to do something that costs you, sacrificial to be obedient to him. For faith in our life requires us saying no to ourselves, no to our likes and our special privileges and yes to God. This call of God always demands something that is difficult to do. Not impossible, but that we do not want to do. And so we have to say to ourselves, I'm ready to do not what I want, but what you want. Now I want to change, I want to turn to page 15 in this story and it's chapter 15 in the Bible, verses 1 through 6. As was true in the life of every believer, God worked with Abraham to build him into the person he wanted him to be. And almost all the events that took place in Abram's life were the same. God comes to him, he makes a promise to him, Abram listens to the promise, he responds to it. After this word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward. Now, Abram at this point in his life was struggling with what God's promise was going to be. How could all these great things take place when nothing seemed to happen? He was an older man, he was 75 years old when all this started. How could these things come to pass? God says, don't be afraid of what you see in your future or of your limited ability or the circumstances around you. Instead, remember this, I am your shield. I will stand between you and any danger or enemies that you have. Why is it hard to do some things God wants us to do? Because we think it's going to backfire. We can see from where we are that something bad might occur. And so the Lord comes to his people and says, do not be afraid of anything I ask you to do or anything that you face or anything that comes against you, for I stand between you and your danger. And then he said, remember this, I am your great reward. The reward for us is having God on our side. The reward for us is having the most powerful person in the entire universe as our partner in this life. So Abram now was doing what God asked him to do and he'd become afraid that the promises of God would not come to pass. And so he has this word of assurance. Now if you've walked with God very long, you've run into circumstances where you say, whoa, I don't know about this. I can't see how this is going to work out. I'm afraid that this is going to cost me more than I'll ever get. I'm afraid that this is going to make me ridiculous. I'm afraid for what might happen. God always needs to assure us as we walk with him. I am standing between you and your dangers and I am your reward. Don't look to your boss. Don't look to your friends or your family. I am the great reward that you're going to receive. You can be all alone in the world. Everyone turned against you. But if you have God on your side, remember you have the creator of the universe. With all power, all authority, all finances to stand with you, Abram needed the assurance to God. But Abram said, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? That was his worry. God said, I'm going to make you into a great nation. There are going to be many people who are your descendants. Well, you know, you have to start with one child. And he didn't get that. I'll tell you, if you walk with God, what you're going to find is that many of the promises he makes to you do not come to pass in the way and the time that you want them. What God wants to teach us is, if you really trust me, live because of my promise, not because of what you see. Abram looked around him and he said, Okay, how am I going to have a lot of descendants if I don't even have a boy or a girl? Reasonable, isn't it? It isn't going to work. Now, what, ninety-five? We shouldn't be upset that he thought that. Who would think otherwise? But the Lord said, I am your reward. The only one I have to inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus. He wasn't even part of Abram's family. And Abram said, You've given me no children, so a servant in my household would be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, the message of God. This man will not be your heir. What you see, close your eyes to. But a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look at the sky and count the stars. And we live in a place where there's a lot of lights. I don't know if you've ever been in a desert area, the mountains of Arkansas or somewhere, and you look up at the sky and you see stars everywhere in the world. That's what he saw. Look at the sky and count the stars. If indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. Don't look at the fact that you don't have any children. Look at me. I've promised you and it's going to come to pass. Then the most powerful words about Abram were written here. The message of Abram, the message that came from him was, Abram believed the Lord. And he credited it to him as righteousness. When he believed that what God said to him was true and lived as if it was true, God said, Now you're a man who's just like me. What God wants us to do is to believe the promises and words He gives us as if they're true and live as if they're true. Now it was a long time after Abram's first encounter with God that he came to the place where he did this and God placed him in a situation. You can see now why He did. I want you to live a long time and this promise is not going to come to pass and I want to see if you quit. Boy, I've had a lot of people come to me and they want to keep Jesus in their life. Because they want to get their marriage hooked up, they want to get their kids straightened out, they want to get their finances straightened out. They don't want God. They want to get their life the way they want it. So what God oftentimes does is He says, Will you still serve me if you can't see coming to you what you really want? Do you trust me that much? And with Abram, he looked at the fact that he had no children and now he said, If you say this Lord, I believe it. And God said, You are the kind of man I want. I want to turn to chapter 15, verse 1-6 and page 17 in your book if you'd read that. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am almighty God. Walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my contract or covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers. Now, this hadn't happened to him yet before and God speaks to him again. I want you to understand Abram's situation. He didn't go to church every Sunday. There wasn't any church. He didn't read the Bible daily. There wasn't any Bible. All he did was listen to the voice of God speaking to him without any help outside of himself. And these encounters with God were rare and powerful for him. When he recognized that the thoughts in his head was the voice of God, he fell on his face. A sign of his humility in the presence of almighty God. Abram fell face down and God said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram. Your name will be Abraham for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful. I will make nations of you and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for generations to come. To be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan as a foreigner I will give as an everlasting possession to you and all of your descendants after you. I will be their God. Now, what he spells out in this contract is a little bit more specific. But it's the same thing he said at the beginning. I have guided you to this land and I will continue to guide you. I provide this land to you which is a permanent source of financial support for you and everything that you need. I will protect you from your here and I will make you a powerful influence in all the world. Those four elements are the consistent contract God makes with everyone who tries to follow him. Everyone who surrenders to him those are the promises that he makes. You live in obedience to me and all of these things will come to pass. God was providing for Abraham spelling out particularly for him what the promises he was making would come to. I will be their God. What Abraham did was listen to God. Over and over again he heard the promise that was to come. And God was now saying you are my child, my person. You'll notice in this story that Abraham changes his name. Abram changes his name to Abraham. He does this because God says you are now a new person. I have made you different. Now when we talk about conversion giving our life to Christ we have people come in the baptistry and we bury them in the water and say your old life, self-controlled life is over you're raised up to live a life now in obedience and submission to God. In many places where missionaries work when someone does this they take a new name as a way of saying my old life is over. From this moment on I am living a new life. I am a different person. Doug talked about in his testimony that when he came back his friends said to him you're a whole different person. God still transforms people. The transformation came because Abraham believed God and he lived a life of trust and so his life was completely and totally changed. So God said now I give you a new name. A name that will signify that you are my person living in obedience to me. Chapter 17 of the book of Genesis and I'm going to read from page 19 if you'd like to find that in your in your Bibles. Sometime later I think maybe this is chapter 22 did I get that wrong? 22 verse 1. Now sometime later God tested Abraham. Now when you start walking with God you need to expect that God is going to test you. Because what he wants to see is if you're real and your faith is real. We look around at each other and we can't tell anything about what goes in a person's mind. But God wanted to make sure that Abraham believed him and trusted him. He wanted to make sure that this man he said was now Abraham was really trustworthy. He gave him a son. Here I am. And then God said take your son, your only son whom you love Isaac go to the region of Moriah sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey and he took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he cut enough wood for the burnt offering he set out for the place God told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance said to his servants stay here with the donkeys while I go over there, while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, placed it on his son Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham father? Yes my son, Abraham replied the fire and the wood are here Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered him God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering my son and the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there arranged the wood on it he bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. We read this story in the scriptures sometimes we don't think of these people as real people Imagine for a moment that Isaac's situation What would a son do if his father bound him and laid him on what he knew was an altar where a burnt offering was going to be made? How terrifying that must have been for this young man We don't know what happened at home but Jewish legend tells us that Sarah never ever forgave Abraham for this She didn't have any part in what he had to do but you can imagine even though the son came back with her father what the mother might have felt if she found out that her husband took their only son and was perfectly willing to kill him and burn him as an offering to God This act of Abraham was not without problems Can you imagine the dysfunctioning in that family? The son could he ever trust his father again? Could his wife ever really trust her husband again? Would he go off and do some harebrained thing that she couldn't imagine would ever happen? Sometimes what God asks us to do is powerful and strong and not everyone around you will agree with it and the most difficult thing in the world to do is when other people are critical of the choices you know God wants you to make but God is looking at our lives to see if we weigh His word against all the other opinions of people around us Who do you really trust? I can't tell you how many people I've heard say I know what God wants me to do Sunday morning I knew I should go forward I grabbed hold of the seat and held on to it so hard Why didn't you do it? Well I thought maybe it would look silly I thought I would get up there and cry and I'd look foolish The opinions of other people so control our lives What God is looking for is a person who says to him Lord whatever you want I will do That was the test Abraham had Will you give me everything even this promised son? Well it would have been easy for Abraham to say well you know you promised this boy for so many years and that's my only child and if I kill him what's going to happen? All of us reasonably would have thought that but he trusted God all these years of walking with God he came to the place where he trusted him and he trusted him without any evidence that it would get better Here I am Here am I he replied Do not lay a hand on the boy he said Do not do anything to him Now I know that you fear God because you've not withheld from me your son your only son Abraham looked up and saw in the thicket looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns he went over and took the ram and sacrificed as a burnt offering instead of his son By faith Abraham when God tested him offered Isaac as a sacrifice he who had embraced the promise was about to sacrifice his one and only son even though God had said to him it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned he could have said to God you told me this was the one through which it is going to be done so I can't do this it would be violating your word to me Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death so Abraham called this place the Lord will provide and to this day it said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided what Abraham discovered was that God's promise is true and that even in the most difficult circumstances when he says this is what I want for you and we do it God provides his promise is if you will let me be the Lord of your life I will guide you in all the choices that you make even though some of them may be a long way away from where you thought even though you may never see them come to pass even though they may be costly and difficult and even though they may be the most difficult choices you ever make I will guide you in all of them and he did he said I will provide for you he gave him a land children, family all the things he promised he said I will protect you I will protect you even when you don't know it he was ready to take the knife and plunge it into his son but the Lord stopped him so even if you think you've misunderstood God he will protect you from making that mistake so long as you act in faith believing that you're doing what God tells you and today around the world there are millions and millions and millions of people who call Abraham Father God will keep his promise to you but there's one thing you need to do you need to believe him so that what he tells you you're supposed to do becomes the priority of your life it will be hard the promises he makes to you won't come to won't come to pass when you want them but he asks you to continue to believe him even though you can't see them and the promises that God makes he will protect you no one can keep you from doing what God has told you to do and as a result of that your life will influence and touch and change the lives of others in this world God made this covenant with Abraham hundreds of years ago thousands of years ago and he is still making this contract with people maybe he said to you in the past I want you to follow me you changed your life you said okay God I'm going to start reading the Bible listening to you and do what you tell me to do have you drifted away from that a little bit or maybe you're not so faithful in what you thought you look back and were the most loyal faithful days of your life following God in the past or are they today have you done that because you sort of drifted away from the promises God made to you and you've lost faith in them I want to urge you don't do that God cannot fulfill what he told you he'd do with your life until you stay faithful with what he asked of you maybe you've never made that promise to God I want to say to you today inside of you you hear God say you should do what this guy did you should place your life in my hands that's God talking to you like Abraham he's reaching out to call you and say come be follower if that thought is in your head God is talking to you now I'll tell you there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't do it only one why you should God's saying follow me would you bow your heads please for a moment I want to ask you to listen to the voice in your head what do you feel or think that you ought to do maybe you're at the place where you know that this is a place where God wants you to serve in this Christian environment this family church family if he's made that clear to you do it maybe he's told you of someone that you should be praying for you should invite to church do it this is the time in which is in Abraham's day in the quietness of the moment almighty God calls your name he says come follow me I'll be at the front Carl will be here if there's some commitment you want to make to God you come and share that with us Debbie will be here with us this is the time in which God speaks you listen you obey music music music would you stand please for a moment of prayer if God has spoken to you this morning you'll hear it monday tuesday wednesday thursday all week long you can always call and say this is what I know God wants and I'll help you know how to make that come to pass so Lord Jesus as Abraham listened to you years ago yes he's touched his life as you changed his future so we listen to you we place our lives in your hands and know that for us you have a great future we depend on you as our Lord it's in the name of Jesus Christ that we can do this amen we're going to sing hallelujah God be praised hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah your love makes me sing hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah your love makes me sing your love makes me sing have a great week