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Oct 13, 2019

Following God

Passage: Genesis 12:1-20

Preacher: Tim Badal

Series:Abraham

Detail:

Turn in God’s Word to the book of Genesis, at the beginning of your Bible. We’re starting a new series that will follow the life of Abraham, which was an all-in life, because he was willing to go wherever God called him. He didn’t do it perfectly, but he always sought to honor God.

Let me start by asking have you ever been asked to do something that seemed impossible? Was there something so big, so unexpected that it would change the trajectory of your life? For me, that took place when I was about 27 years old, about 17 years ago.

Like you, I was sitting in the pew and enjoying being part of a good church. I believed God had called other people to ministry, but not me. Then over the course of a year, I came to the conclusion God in fact was calling me to change course. It was a scary thing. When we talk about going into ministry, there are some things that can make that easier.

First, you feel the sense of calling, so you go to Bible school. But none of that happened to me. I hadn’t gone to Bible school, nor had I felt God was calling me to be a preacher. Yet at the age of 26, that’s exactly what He did. It was so unexpected and brought such fear that I knew from a human standpoint I would fail. But I found that God was going to lead not only me, but also my family and this church to do something that seemed so out of character for all of us. Churches don’t usually ask one of their own members to be their pastor. Yet I’ve come to realize—and what we’ll see in Abraham’s life—is that when we open our hearts to God, when we tell Him, “I’ll go wherever You call me to go,” He gives us everything we need. He meets us, sustains us and fulfills His plans through His people.

God was calling Abraham to something bigger than himself, in spite of his faults and frailties. Abraham never would have thought of what God was calling him to on his own. God led him to a place of great blessing. Over the next seven weeks we’re going to dig into the life of Abraham, a man who was far from perfect. We’ll see right from the beginning of the story that he made some big mistakes. Abraham was minding his own business, when all of a sudden God called him to something much bigger than anything he could have imagined. God called Abraham to go all in for His kingdom and this call would impact not only his life, but it would reverberate through all of human history. Every subsequent generation has looked back at Abraham and realized he was a man of destiny—a man God called His friend.

Abraham is about as big as you can get from a notoriety standpoint. Three world religions—Judaism, Islam and Christianity—all point to this one man as the founder of their faith. Abraham’s place in the Bible is also impressive. He is named over 300 times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and in the majority of these references it’s all good. He was a great man.

In fact, when the writer of Hebrews talks about what it means to live by faith in the great “hall of faith” chapter—Hebrews 11—Abraham is given the most coverage of all the patriarchs and prophets, letting Christians know that a life of faith is worthwhile. Scholars say Abraham was the pre-eminent man in the Old Testament, with Jesus being pre-eminent in the New Testament. I think it’s a little ironic that when Matthew begins his Gospel by introducing Jesus, he says He’s a descendent of Father Abraham. This man was a great man. What was it about him that made him so great? Was it his amazing birth story? No. We know nothing of that. Was it because he was born into nobility? No. There was no royalty in his lineage. We know his father was named Terah who was a common man, just like you and me.

Or maybe he was great because of where he came from. We’re told he was born in Ur of the Chaldeans, which is today’s northern Iraq. While this was a large city—200,000 in the days of Abraham, so about the size of Aurora—there were other ancient cities that were far more prestigious.

If it wasn’t his family or his community that made him great, maybe it was because he was a great man of faith before God called him. Maybe he was a worshiper. Maybe God looked down from heaven and said, “Let me find the best worshiper I can find,” and Abraham was that man. But that’s not the case either. We’re told in the book of Joshua that Abraham’s family had a family business where they built idols to many different gods. We know his father Terah’s name comes from the celebration of the moon god Nanna. Abraham wasn’t a man who had faith in Yahweh. He worshiped other gods, just like the many polytheistic people of his day.

So what was it about Abraham? Why did God show favor to him, giving him all kinds of promises and blessings? If it wasn’t something he did, what was it? It was simply God’s unmerited favor and grace. God took a nobody and made him a somebody for His Kingdom and purposes—not because that somebody had something to offer, but because God saw fit to take that in which there was nothing and make it into something.

That same God is doing that same work in and through us. By that same amazing grace, He is calling us into a relationship with Him, calling us to follow and serve and honor Him. He’s calling us to go away from that which is familiar and comfortable, following Him to the place where He leads. Friends, the life and time and journey of Abraham is a model for us of what it means to live a life of faith. God has called us, as He called Abraham, to go to a land He will show us. For Abraham, that was Canaan. For us, it’s a place in glory. Our job is to live in light of the promise of a place we’ve never seen or experienced, but we can believe God will be faithful to bring us there.

As we endeavor to go on this journey of faith, as we step out of our comfort zone to see how we might sacrifice in the days to come, we are struck by Abraham’s model of faith. He went out toward a place that he knew nothing about, with the anxiety that comes to anyone who is called to a place they’ve never been before. It was only Abraham and God. As we’ll see in Abraham’s life, while there were pitfalls and problems along the way, God was faithful to grow his faith—and He wants to do the same thing in and through us this morning. Abraham’s story begins in Genesis 12 and right away, we’ll see God’s call to Abraham.

Before we read it, let’s consider where Abraham fits into the larger story of Genesis. By God’s divine hand, Moses wrote this history of events he wasn’t even part of. In Genesis 1 through 11, through Moses, God gives us a sweeping history of all that took place. We know that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. As the pinnacle of creation, God made man and women in His own image. Although they were a little lower than the angels, they were still the central focus of creation and their relationship with God was central to history. God put Adam and Eve in a garden where they were to enjoy and tend it. They were to be fruitful and multiply, building a world that would give glory to God in all that was said and done. But Adam and Eve failed to remain committed to God, choosing instead to sin against Him. They fell into a place of rebellion like the devil before them.

Genesis 3 and the chapters that follow then chronicle the story of a world marred with sin. They were kicked out of the garden and there was enmity between them and God, as well as between each other. Sin caused brother to hate brother in the story of Cain and Abel. It caused all kinds of wickedness to grow in and through humanity, to the point that in the days of Noah, every inclination of the human heart was to do evil. God became remorseful that He had created man and brought a world-wide flood to destroy them. But like Abraham, Noah found grace. God saved Noah and his family through the building of an ark. Then after Genesis 7 and 8, we learn what life after the flood was like. The world repopulated itself, so we know there were many generations that came over hundreds of years.

In Genesis 11, we reach the point when the inhabitants of the world wanted to reach God. They committed themselves to make a name for themselves by building a tower that would reach to the heavens, so they began to build the Tower of Babel. God came in and judged them for this arrogance.

We’ve been reading the high points in human history and now we come to Genesis 12. Here we find the spotlight pinpointed on one man. In the comings and goings of this one man, we’re given more details than for anyone else up to this point in Scripture. God invested a lot of time in this man Abram. This is how the story begins:

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. 2 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. 3 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.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” 14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. 16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. 18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” 20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

Like I said, he’s not a perfect man. But in Genesis 12, what we see is a blueprint for our lives and what it means to follow God. I’m going to address five things about following God.

Following God means listening to God.

At the beginning of Genesis 12, God spoke to Abraham, asking him to make a journey to a place God would show him. We are told by Moses that Abraham was 75 years old. Now, don’t think about that age in 21st century terms. Back in those days, people lived much longer. Abraham lived to be a couple hundred years old. So in our day, he was probably the equivalent of being in his 40s.

By this point in his life, he was pretty well established. He had a wife and a career when God met and called him. God told him he would be the father of a great nation, which seemed out of place to him. Even though at that age Abram and Sarai should have had children, they did not. Sarai was barren. Essentially God told him He would do something through him that he could not do on his own. Humanly speaking, that made little sense. Month after month, Abram and Sarai had learned that they had failed at becoming parents. So God’s promise seemed to be a bombastic statement.

But notice in verse four what Abraham did. “Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  We need to realize Abraham would never have experienced God’s blessing and goodness if he had not obeyed this first step of following God. Abraham listened to God. We tell our children all the time, “You’re not listening.” To be honest, listening is a lost art in our day and age. Too many of us are doing too much talking. Too many of us are distracted by the things in this world. Then we wonder why God isn’t speaking to us like He did to Abraham.

Now, we don’t know exactly how God spoke to Abraham. It could have been through an angel or through something like Moses’ burning bush. However God spoke to him, Abram was receptive to God’s instructions. Later in his life we read about one-on-one conversations God had with him.

We need to ask ourselves how receptive are we to hearing God. We might say, “Hey, I’m not experiencing God like Abraham did.” No, but we are able to experience Him through His Word and by His Spirit. Are our antennas up to hear from Him? Are we tuned in to Him, so that when He speaks, we’re willing to listen? The first step of listening is being ready to hear.

Secondly, listening means that when God speaks, we don’t talk. God said to Abraham, “Hey, old man, you and your wife are going to have a family.” The irony here is that “Abram” literally means “Daddy,” and “Abraham” means “Big Daddy.” But at that point, he wasn’t a daddy. So Abraham could have responded to God, “That’s a cruel joke. You want me to be a dad? We can’t be parents; it’s not working that way.” But Abraham didn’t argue with God or made excuses. “I wish I could help you, God, but I can’t.” He was willing to listen to God, then he obeyed.

First we need to be receptive, second we need to hear God without coming up with excuses for why we can’t do what He asks, then third, when we hear Him tell us what to do. “I want you to go from point A to point B.” We need to obey. And that’s exactly what Abraham did.

So ask yourself: how good are you at listening to God? Have you gone to the Lord and said, “God, speak to me. I want to know how to lead my family. I want to know how to position myself for the future. What do You have for me?” If we’re not listening to God, we’ll miss out on blessings in this all-in initiative.

The most important first step is for us to quiet ourselves and let God speak, to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). Abraham did that right. He listened and He obeyed what the Lord asked him to do.

Following God means leaving your comfort zone.

We’re told in Genesis 12:1 that God told Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” God was telling Abraham to leave three things that were comfortable to him.

First, he had to leave his country, that is, his culture. It was his familiar place, including things like his language and currency. Then God told Abram to leave his “kindred” —that is, his community, friends, career and everything familiar on which he had built his life. Finally, Abram was asked to leave his “father’s house.” That meant leaving the source of his security, his 401k, his real estate holdings—all that he and his father Terah had accumulated. In essence, God was telling him to leave everything that made him comfortable.

Now, it would have been great if God had said to Abraham, “I want you to leave all these things, but I’m going to send you to a place where there will already be a house and a job and family and friends. You’ll be getting a wonderful opportunity to build a new life.” But God didn’t say anything like that. There were no travel brochures, no wonderful video montage of what his future would look like. Instead, God said, “Leave everything that makes you comfortable and go to a place I will show you.” Abraham had to leave before God would show him anything. That will be true for us as well in this initiative. God isn’t going to say, “If you give to Me, I’ll make sure you’ve got a great house, a great car and the kids’ college fund is going to be taken care of.” That’s not how He works. Instead, God says, “I want you to trust Me by faith and not by sight. I’m going to show you some awesome things, but first you’re going to have to step out in faith and live out the truth of My promises.” There’s no crystal ball. God did not paint the future for Abraham, other than the one promise that God would go with him. He would show Abraham the land. So Abraham left his comfort zone. Anxiety and fear of the unknown could have stopped him, but it didn’t.

I remember when I was asked to become the preacher here. I was comfortable where I was. I had taken over my parents’ business which was thriving. Amanda and I were about to start our family. And when I took the position here, the church was not in a good place. It seemed that everything was going to go south. For a while I thought God had brought me to the church just to close it down, with my name attached to the failure called Village Bible Church. Yet God had bigger plans. In order to see God at work in my own life, I had to leave my comfort zone. I had to leave what I thought was going to be my life and go to a new life He would show me—although it would take a long journey before I would see it.

That’s what God is calling each of us to. He is going to do a great work in our midst, but if we’re going to see His plan realized across our campuses, we can’t stay where we are now, even though it’s comfortable. I wrote in my notes, “You’ve got to leave the warm spot.” On a cold morning like today, those warm spots in bed feel really nice, don’t they? But in order to embrace the day, we have to leave them.

Following God means letting go of control.

Abraham was willing to leave his comfort zone, yet he held onto something. The third thing that following God means is that we have to let go of our own control. Abraham headed out on his journey to follow God, knowing that God had given him three promises. First, he was going to be the father of a great nation. Second, he would be given land. And third, he would be a blessing to all the world. As God would bless him, so he would bless many others.

That sounded really good, didn’t it? God said, “You’re going to have a son. I’m going to give you land for you and for your descendants. Generation upon generation will enjoy this land. And from your blessing will come the blessing of many others.” Abraham knew what God had promised him when he started on his journey.

Yet due to his fear and his awareness of what he was leaving behind, he hedged his bets a little. Isn’t that what we do as well? God calls us to something big, but we respond. “God, I’ll do it...if.”

Notice three things according to the three promises.

First, God told Abraham he would have a son. Abraham didn’t believe it, so he decided to take his family with him. Of course, he would take his wife, but he also took Lot, his brother’s son. Scholars believe this was the first hedging of the bet in Abraham’s life. Why would he take his nephew with him? He was probably thinking, “When I get to the land God gives me, and if God doesn’t give me a son, I will have someone in my family who will take care of me in my old age and who can become my heir.” But that’s not what God said. God had promised him a son, not a nephew. Abraham didn’t trust God in that, so he had a contingency plan that allowed him to obey God, but not completely.

If Abraham was standing here today, he would probably tell us the biggest mistake he ever made was bringing Lot with him. Lot drove him crazy. Lot got into the worst predicaments, then Abraham had to rescue him. We’ll see over and over again how bad Abraham’s decision was to bring Lot along. Because Abraham’s faith wasn’t strong enough, he brought a crutch with him to help fulfill God’s plan.

Second, God promised Abraham land. When he got to Canaan, he rested there for a while, as we see in Genesis 12:7-8. Then in verse ten, a great famine came. What did Abraham do? He went to Egypt. But back in verse seven, we read that God again appeared to him and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”  Not Egypt, but Canaan. But who can blame Abraham? There was a great famine.

Even though God told him to stay in Canaan, Abraham went to Egypt where he got into trouble, none of which would have happened if he had stayed in Canaan. He should have trusted that in good times or bad, famine or plenty, God had called him to that land and He would take care of him there.

In Egypt, knowing his wife was beautiful, Abraham came up with a plan. “Tell everybody you’re my sister; that way they won’t kill me so they can take you.” Sarah went along with the plan and was taken into Pharaoh’s house. But before anything bad happened, God protected both Abraham and Sarah by bringing plagues on Pharaoh’s house. Wait a minute? Doesn’t it say in Genesis 12:1-3 that God was going to bless the nations through Abraham? Pharaoh didn’t see that happening. He was afflicted by plagues instead. Abraham, who was intended to be a blessing, instead took control of the wheel. He brought Lot with him, didn’t stay in the land God promised, then lied to the Egyptians. As a result, he was not a blessing to the nations, but brought a plague.

Do you see what happens when we take control of our lives? We’ll take a step of faith. Maybe we’ll fill out a commitment card and say, “God, I’m going to give this much to this campaign.” Then a famine comes and we say, “Oh, no, I’ve got to grab the wheel again, because, God, You didn’t know this was coming and now I’ve got to address this new situation.”

I have learned in my 43 short years on earth that when I take my life into my hands, I do a royal job of screwing it up. That’s what Abraham did as well. Through three decisions, he chose to take control. Instead of believing God and being faithful to Him, he became faithful to himself. In doing this, he created a boatload of issues that took a lifetime to extricate himself from. This is why, when we step out in faith, we have to let go of control. We have to tell God, “No reservations. No restrictions.” We have to have an open hand with all we are. As the country music singer says, “God, take the wheel.” And when you don’t like where Jesus is steering your life, you still don’t grab the wheel and try to turn it another way.

Following God means living for God, not yourself.

Yet in spite of Abraham’s bad decisions, he did some great things. Following God means living for God, not for ourselves. All-in living means living by God’s agenda, using His calendar and pocketbook, for His purposes and not our own. This means we have to deny ourselves. Isn’t that what Jesus said? “You want to come after Me? Then deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16: 24-28).

An all-in life for God looks means you say no more to yourself than you say yes. It’s saying yes to God before we ever say yes to ourselves. Look at Genesis 12:7-9. Abraham demonstrated to us what this looks like. With two phrases, Moses paints a picture that is important.

First, Abraham “pitched his tent.” He set up camp. Abraham was given the land of Canaan, the land God promised would be his for many generations to come. You would have thought his first act would be to build a house, set up some fences and create a life for himself. But he doesn’t. He put up a tent. Tents are temporary. Tents are for sojourners which is exactly what Abraham was. You might say, “Well, that’s how they lived.” It’s not how they lived; they lived in houses. Some of them lived in palaces.

By contrast, see what else Abraham did. In verse eight, it says Abraham “built an altar.” There’s a difference between setting up a tent and building something. Abraham realized something we too need to realize: our life is but a vapor. We are aliens and strangers in this world. Yes, God has given us the ability to have wealth and homes. But are we building a life for ourselves, or are we building a life for God?

Abraham knew that future generations would see the altars he built. Generations later would look to Bethel as the place where Abraham built his altar to the Lord. Samuel, David, Solomon—all these men would go to Bethel and worship God where Abraham had built his altar, but none of them could have found where he had set up his tent.

Abraham’s life was not about his possessions. Eventually he was even willing to sacrifice the son he was given. He knew that life was not about himself—and it’s not about us. We need to say, “Life is all about You, God. I will order my life so at the end, people won’t remember me as much as they’ll remember You.”

Can that be said of you this morning? Are you building your life in such a way that at the end of it, people will remember God and not you? People will think about where God showed up, not where you laid down roots. The greatest legacy we can have is to live a life that builds altars to God instead of houses for ourselves. Right away you might think, “Wait a minute, Tim. I’ve got to have a house.” Yes, we need to live life. But remember this: God calls us to live sufficiently so that we can give generously to Him and His work. If you’ve got that backwards, then you’re living an all-in life for yourself, not for God. Essentially you’re saying, “I can live extravagantly so that I can give sufficiently to God.” But that’s not good enough. God wants all of us. He knows our life is but a vapor; that we’re here today and gone tomorrow. Our greatest legacy—and the greatest legacy this church will have—is not what we did for ourselves but what we did for God. Either you’re living all-in for yourself or you’re living all-in for God. Abraham lived in tents, but built altars—because God was far more important than him and what he had.

Following God means learning as you go.

In this chapter we see the best of Abraham and the worst. We see his faith and we see his fear. We see his great assurance and we see his anxiety. We see great wisdom and we see his great foolishness.

Can we just stop and realize Abraham is more like us than we would have ever thought? He’s wise one minute and foolish the next. He’s anxious one minute and assured the next. He’s full of wisdom and full of stupidity. You might wonder why God has patience with us, but He does.

Abraham was a flawed man, but God was growing his faith. We are flawed and broken people, but God is welcoming us to a journey. He’s calling us to listen to Him and leave our comfort zone. It’s a journey where we have to let go of control. It will involve us living for God and not for ourselves. And finally, we’ll be learning things from God along the way.

There will be ups and downs. There will be curves along the way. Every once in a while we may even crash. But the story of Abraham reminds us that when we go all-in for God, He goes all-in for us. He leads us, guides us and redeems us. He gives and blesses.

Are you willing to follow the God Who says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has for His people” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)? Will you go where God is calling you? Will you follow Him? Will you let Him show you the way? I know that when we step out in faith and leave it all on the table, when we tell God and the world we’re going to be all-in for Him, we can be assured that just like with Abraham, our best days are yet to come. We have a God Who began a great work in us and He will be faithful to see it through to completion.

Along the journey, no matter what comes, we will know that because of Christ we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:31-39). Amen? So we can trust Him, but it’s going to mean leaving some things that are dear. It’s going to mean letting go of the control of our lives and living for God and not ourselves. When we do, that road to heaven will be sweet and glorious, because along the journey God says, “You and I will be friends ” (James 2:21-23). So your Friend, your God-Creator, is inviting you on a journey. My prayer is that you will accept it and walk faithfully with Him.

 

Village Bible Church  |  847 North State Route 47, Sugar Grove, IL 60554  |  (630) 466-7198  |  www.villagebible.org/sugar-grove

All Scriptures quoted directly from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.                                                                               

Note: This transcription has been provided by Sermon Transcribers (www.sermontranscribers.com).