Sermon - June 8, 2014 - The Story Week 2 - God Builds a Nation

I hope everyone is enjoying The Story so far! I think it is going to be a great experience for us as a church as we walk through the Bible.

Last week we took at look at God’s vision in creation. We saw how all aspects of creation tied together and supported His ultimate goal of creating humans so that we could be in a relationship with Him. Adam and Eve were the first to have a choice on whether they were going to adhere to God’s plan or choose a different path. They chose that different path and sin entered them and all of human kind that came after them. Cain slew Abel and so forth. As time went on and humans turned their back on God and the wickedness prevailed in all of creation God regretted making humans. God found one man and his family and decided to use Noah to give human race a chance to restart. While the floods wiped away all the wicked people of the time it did not change the sinful nature of His creation. Thankfully God is not content to be the creator and to let His creation do whatever. He wants to be in a relationship with us and is pursuing us at great cost. As we continue in the Story today, we are going to discover that God decides to build a nation. It is through this new nation that He plans to win us back.

To see how God does this we need to turn to the man you read about in chapter 2 this past week, Abraham.

Genesis 12:1-3

“12 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram started out in the city of Ur, the city of his father. Ur had an interesting history in that it was where the Tower of Babel was being built before God scattered the people and made it so they spoke different languages. That must have been interesting. One moment you are having a conversation with a group of people and then everyone starts speaking different languages.

Genesis chapter 11 tells us that Terah, Abram’s father, took his family from Ur to Haran. Abram was to leave Haran and head to the west and eventually end up in Canaan. It is on this journey and in this new land that God begins to build a nation.

Abram, who God renames as Abraham is to be the father of a great nation. Some would question why God would use Abram, as he came from a family of idol worshipers. Terah, Abram’s father was an idol worshiper. Ur and Haran were known for worshipping a moon god. In addition Abram and his wife Sarai, later known as Sarah, were old and had no kids. Abram and Sarai were not the obvious choice to build a nation. God does not always use who we would expect or pick through our worldly eyes. He uses people who the world sees as weak to fulfil His purposes. Think about it, the Bible is full of people who were perfect ... NO, the Bible is full of imperfect people used by God to further His will. God uses those the world would toss aside to accomplish amazing things.

Let’s read Genesis 12:1-3 again.

Genesis 12:1-3

“12 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

In these verses God has laid out His plan.

1.      God will make the new nation great.

2.      God will make Abraham’s name great.

3.      God will bless all who bless Abraham and curse those who curse him.

4.      God will bless everyone through Abraham and the new nation. In other words He will use the new nation to reveal His plan to win us back.

We have the benefit of hindsight and can see that God did these things. We have hundreds of years of documented history and the Bible that point to how the nation of Israel has had its ups and down but it has had an impact on history and the world today. Abraham’s story should remind each of us that no matter where we are at in life, no matter what our circumstances are, and no matter how difficult the challenge seems to be, God can use us to do amazing things. We also know that a young baby was born to Mary who is a descendant of Abraham has had the biggest impact on the World. Little Jesus was a blessing to all human kind and was the instrument used to win us back.

For all of this to happen, one man who is the son of an idol worshipper had to have faith in what he was being told by God. God told Abram to leave his family and go to a new land. Abram and Sarai probably had doubts, might have wondered if they were going to see their families again, probably wondered if it was safe especially at their age.

Genesis 12:4

“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.”

Regardless of the doubts he may have had, Abram simply obeyed God in faith. Faith is obeying God even when you are not sure of where you are going. Abram had faith and went. Abram and Sarai leave their home town of Ur, then they leave Haran, and they head toward Canaan. Overall they travel roughly 800 miles to arrive at their destination, the land given to them by God.

Here they arrive in the new land and when the Lord appears to Abram in a vision, Abram asks how he is going to be the father of a nation as he and Sarai are both too old for children. God speaks in Genesis 15:5.

“⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.”

Having faith is believe God period.

Romans 4:18-21

“¹⁸ He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be. ¹⁹ He considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about 100 years old) and also considered the deadness of Sarah’s womb, without weakening in the faith. ²⁰ He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ because he was fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.”

Abraham believed in God.

So Abram and Sarai were advanced in years and obviously passed the child bearing years and God says Abram will be the father of a great nation. Abram believe that God could and would do it. The issue comes in play when Sarai is not sure she is going to be the mother of the nation and they take matters into their own hands. Sarai offers up her servant, Hagar to be a surrogate mother. This was not unusual in that day and age. If women were unable to conceive their servant would take their place to give their husbands a child. Hagar did have a son who was named Ishmael, but he is not the child that is promised by God. God does only what He can and allows Sarai or Sarah to become pregnant and she gives birth to a son, Isaac. Image how strong Abraham’s and Sarah’s faith would have been when Isaac was born. There were fully dependent on God and believed that He would provide.

Abraham and Sarah’s faith was to be tested yet again. One key aspect of having faith is trusting God even when it doesn't make sense.

Genesis 22:1-2

“22 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. ² “Take your son,” He said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

It is hard to imagine how Abraham must have felt getting this message from God. Could you imagine how much his faith must have been tested. Isaac was roughly 15 years old at this time so to say they had become attached would be an understatement. No matter how much your teenagers test you and drive you crazy, you still love them. I am sure it was the same with Isaac and his parents. At times he drove them crazy, but they loved him as much as any mother and father would their child.

If it was me, I would be devastated that God was asking such a thing. My faith would be tested beyond belief.

Genesis 22:3

“³ So Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac. He split wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told him about.”

Abraham got up and went. Why do you think Abraham did that? One, he believed all that God had told him and that Isaac was the beginning of a nation, but Hebrews 11:19 tells us:

“¹⁹ He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead,”

Abraham believed that if God was really going to have him sacrifice his son, who was the first of many of the decedents needed to build a nation, God was going to raise Isaac from the dead.

Believed whole heartedly, with faith that is hard to imagine, Abraham went up that hill, laid his son on the altar and raised the knife to sacrifice his only child to God as commanded. It was only when Abraham had shown to be faithful that God sent an angel to stop him at the last possible moment.

Genesis 22:12

“¹² Then He said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from Me.”

Then, in place of Isaac God provided a ram to be sacrificed. God said the world would be blessed by the nation that Abraham fathered. On that same hill, which is known as Calvary another lamb would be sacrificed. It was on that hill that Jesus Christ, would be THE Lamb that would pay for the sins of all of us. God provided His only begotten Son to be offered in our place on that hill to pay for our sins, and the resurrection of Jesus defeating death brought us one step closer to God’s ultimate passion.

God’s passion and plan is to be in a relationship with us and having Abram move from Ur, to Haran, to Canaan was just one step in the process to make that happen. Abraham had faith and that faith was necessary for all of us to be able to spend eternity with God. Think about it, a couple of people who the world would not have chosen to begin a nation were instrumental pieces in God’s plan to have our sins cleansed.

If God can use the faith of Abraham and Sarah to build a nation and pave the way for the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ… what can He do through you if you have faith in Him? God can do amazing things, all it takes is faith.

In our reading this week, we also saw that Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. God gives Jacob the name of Israel and he has 12 sons, who become the head of the 12 tribes of Israel and a nation is born. This week we get to read about how God takes Joseph from being a slave to the second most powerful person in Egypt.

I am looking forward to continuing our journey through the Bible with the help of the Story.

God Bless and Thanks for reading,

Robert