Good morning everyone, really glad to see you out today on this cold Sunday morning. You had plenty of excuse not to come in this morning. So thank you very much for taking the time and weathering the freezing weather. For somebody from Florida, this is very cold. I almost didn't come. So thank you very much for coming. If you're visiting with us today, we do want to extend a very special welcome to you and thank you for gracing us with your presence today. You honor us by being here. So thank you and I hope you'll introduce yourself to somebody that knows like they know what's going on around here. They're looking for you and if you're looking for them, then maybe the two of you can meet. It would be great. If you have a Bible, would you please turn to Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12? And while you're turning there, let me remind you that we are in a series of sermons on the mission of the church going all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible where God first put humanity on this planet and gave it a mission. We are carrying on with that same mission. And we saw for a number of weeks that one of the important things that we are to be doing is what we call worship, that is doing things in the presence of God that honor God and worship Him. But now for a number of weeks, we have been focusing our attention on something else that God put humanity to do right here on this planet. And that is to extend his kingdom throughout the world by making more and more and more holy images of God everywhere. It's what we call an hour day, outreach, reaching out to people who need to be transformed by Christ into the kinds of images of God that do extend his kingdom. This morning we're going to be looking at one particular passage in the Bible that gives us another angle, another perspective on what you and I are to be doing as followers of Christ by looking at the life of Father Abraham. Take a look with me now at Genesis chapter 12 beginning in verse 1. The Lord had said to Abram, leave your country, your people, and your Father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. May God at His rich blessing to the reading of His Word, let's pray together. Our Lord Jesus, we bow before you at this moment knowing that you are the Son of Abraham, and that what happened to your Father so long ago is very important to you, and we want to say it's important to us too because we are His children because we are one with you. And so we come now asking you to send Holy Spirit to us. For those of us that know you, we pray that you will teach us how to live as children of Abraham, and for those of us who do not know you, we pray that Holy Spirit will make it evident how to become one of the children of Abraham. We adore you, Lord Jesus. Open your word to us now, and we will give you thanks for it. Amen. People describe life on this planet in many different ways, with many different metaphors and images. I guess the skeptics or the cynics speak in terms of life being moments of quiet desperation. That's about all you get out of some people. Other people would say, well, you know, life is a lot like a roller coaster ride, like that. Other people have more positive metaphors and images for what it means to live a life from beginning to end, but one of those that we use quite frequently is that of a journey, that life is a journey. And that's certainly appropriate for the passage that we just read because we're reading about Abraham taking a journey. And this is no ordinary journey or trip by just one particular man who lived thousands of years ago. This is a very significant man. He is so significant in the history of the world that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all look back at him as the father of their faiths. He's so important that the journey of his life actually teaches us about the journeys that we are on from birth to death and even beyond. And so as we take a look at what God was doing in the life of father Abraham, we can learn things about how we are to live, how we are to walk this journey called life. There are a number of things in this passage that we could reflect upon this morning, but I think that the first thing we want to do is this. We need to notice that God called Abraham to take a journey of trust, a journey that required enormous trust. Listen to what God said to Abraham beginning in verse 1. The Lord had said to Abraham, leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. Did you notice here that God did not tell Abraham where he was going to take him? All he said was, I want you to take a trip, and I'll show you where to go. Now let me ask you this question. If you were walking out of here today, shaking my hand, good sermon, good sermon, that thing. If you do that today, and I stop you, and I say, okay, come on, get in my car with me, we're going to take a trip. What's the first question you're going to ask me? You're going to ask me, where are you going? But if I just say to you, oh, don't worry about that, just trust me. Come on, it's going to be a long one, but come on, let's get in the car and go, I would dare to say that nobody in this room would just hop in the car with me. And the reason is, is because you don't trust me that much, and for good reason. To take a trip with someone, not knowing what the destiny is, not even knowing how you're going to get there, requires a lot of trust. And that's what Abraham was experiencing. When God looked at him and said, I want you to go to the land that I will show you. He did not know which land it was, there were plenty of them. In order to take this journey, he had to have what we often call faith, or now trust, but trust in whom Abraham had to trust in the only one who is completely worthy of our trust. God himself. I'm sure it was hard for him. Because Abraham is a lot like you and me. I know sometimes we get the impression from movies and television shows that Abraham was just this fellow that happened to own a camel, and he was just sort of hanging around the desert, call it Err or the Caldeans, and it was a terrible place to be, and so one day he gets a vision, and God tells him to go and say, may as well, what's he got to lose? Well the reality is, that's not the way Err or the Caldeans was. In fact, cities in that region of the world are not like the ruins of them today. They were quite sophisticated, even cities prior to 2000 BC, when Abraham lived in Err of the Caldeans. Some cities actually had running water in their homes, and as we read the story of Abraham when we find out how many camels he had, and how many servants he had, and how many friends and family members he had, we find out that Abraham was not a lonely homeless fellow who got a vision from God to go to another land, whether he got to lose, he had everything to lose. He was well healed. He was a part of society. He was wealthy, and God calls him to stop trusting all the things that he had trusted all of his life to secure him and to secure his future, all the money, all the status, all the relationships, all the networking he had established for all of his life, and to pick up and go somewhere and did not even tell him where he was to go. He said, just get moving, and I'll show you when you get there. I say that's a lot like you and me, because if you are here today, and you're not a follower of Christ, you know as well as I do that we do want to know what the future holds for us. We'd love it if somebody could just give us a preview. I think we like that idea, unless we saw the preview, then we'd regret having seen it because of all the troubles, but we'd love to have a preview. We'd love to know where we're going, and so what we do is we tend to put our plans, our hopes and our dreams and the hands of things that are not trustworthy. We do bizarre things, actually, like trusting our bodies to get us where we need to go in life. I say trust your body, don't you realize how weak it is, how unreliable it is? We trust in relationships between human beings, like marriages and friendships and the love, haven't you noticed how they fall apart and how friends and family members are never everything you needed them to be? We trust in jobs to get us down the path of life and to take us toward our hopes and our dreams. We'll trust the economy to do it, we'll trust our investments. Have you noticed that none of these things are actually trustworthy? Sadly, it's not just those who don't follow Jesus that have that problem. It's even we who claim Him as our Lord, even we who have given ourselves over to Him. It doesn't take long before even you and I begin to wonder, what can I trust in? I've been putting my trust in so many things that I lose sight, I've lost sight of trust in God Himself.
You want a little barometer, a little test to see where you're trust lies? Then ask yourself this question, what's your level of panic right now? What's your level of anxiety right now as you see the world's economy going through the struggles that it experiences at this moment? How do you feel when you see your retirement funds dwindling? What kind of concern does it raise in you? How much anxiety does it create within you when you see that you may not have a job in just a few weeks and you see your friends and neighbors right here in this church losing their jobs? What does it do to you when family members betray you? If what you find is that life just goes into ruins, then you have to ask the question in whom are you trusting for your hope and for your destiny and for your dreams in this life and in the life to come? Abraham had to cut himself loose from those things and he had to follow the voice of only one and we as followers of Jesus follow the same voice. What do you know is so great about this one that called Abraham and calls you and me today? When he says follow me, you don't have to worry anymore. If you just put your trust in him, he's fully reliable because he controls everything. He knows everything and he has good intentions for his followers. In many ways, the journey of life is a journey of trust and everybody's trusting in something so where is yours? But God goes on to speak to Abraham and he says, Abraham, if you'll take this trip that I'm calling you to take, if you'll go ahead and go out on this journey of trusting in me, then certain things are going to happen to you. I'm going to pour out blessings like you could not imagine on you. Listen to what he says in verse 2, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great. Now to understand the implication of this, you have to grasp what it is that's going on in this world in which Abraham lived. In Abraham's world, there were basically two kinds of people. People who lived in cities that were rather large and because they were large and they had a strong king and imperial city with an army, they had great security. They had tremendous prosperity usually and things went well for people in such cities. But people who lived in little villages and people who wandered around in the desert and people who didn't have the safety and security of being a great nation, well life was tenuous at best. Hardships were constantly there. They ran and moved from one place to another trying to find just enough food to keep their families alive. They were constantly harassed by bandits and robbers and thieves. They were the victims of war, victims of nature. You name it. People outside of those great nations, you didn't want to be one of those. Now here is Abraham living within one of those empires. Living well within one of those empires and God calls him to get up and leave. It reminds me a lot of American pioneers moving from the east to the west. Go west young man. Well I can understand telling people in Philadelphia or in Atlanta or some other eastern city that you don't have any money here, you don't have any security here. So pick up and go because if you go out west you might strike it rich. You might find gold. Let's go. I can imagine people like that getting a covered wagons and going through all the difficulties and all the struggles that they had to make it to the west. At least they would get some land out there. At least there'd be hope for the future that they did not have back here in the cities. But I cannot imagine someone who was wealthy and educated and secure in society and prospering from society in the east selling everything they had for a covered wagon and getting on the wagon train and going west. Such a person would have to be crazy. But that is exactly what God was calling Abraham to do. And why? Because God said if you will go through this journey it will not be in vain. Because I will bless you. I will make you Abraham into a great nation. And I will make your name great among the nations of the earth. Now I know that sometimes when we hear things like that in our modern culture we think, wow, that's not something you should want. I mean we're supposed to be humble aren't we? Just let me have my little quiet personal life and go on and die. Well I think all of us also understand that down deep inside there's something good about what God said to Abraham here. It would be a nice thing to be chosen to be the one who created a great nation. That would be so wonderfully blessed and whose name would never be forgotten. Doesn't it trouble you that your great grandchildren will not remember your name? Don't you wish that they would remember your name for generation after generation after generation? Like we remember Abraham's name? Of course you do. Why? Because that's part of what it means to be the image and the likeness of God that you would be honored in that way. And God says to Abraham, if you'll take the journey of trust in me I will give you what is right for the blessed image of God to have. And when Jesus looked at his disciples and said follow me, these were the same men to whom he said, seek first the kingdom of God. These were the same men to whom he said, I have great treasures waiting for you. These were the same men to whom he said, you will reign with me in the new heavens and the new earth. And as the Father gave me all things, I will give them to you too. Why follow Jesus through all the hardships? Why follow Jesus with trust? Because great will be your reward in heaven. Great will be your reward in the world to come. And you will be greatly honored even as Jesus himself is honored. It would be easy to think of that for Abraham as more or less pie in the sky. You know, you make it through life and you just sort of struggle through and you live with all the pain and the suffering of this life but you do it and smile a little bit as you do it. And then when you die and you fly off to heaven, then you get some great reward up there in the sky. Okay. Well, there's a lot of truth in that that if you do remain faithful to Jesus, if you do trust in him and take that journey, then your reward will be great in the new world to come. But in Abraham's life, like ours, those blessings of the world to come actually come back to us in bits and pieces even now. The blessings of God, for those that are on the journey of trust in him, are not reserved simply for the distant future, they actually come into life here and now. Now we always have to remind ourselves that there's a difference between what God guarantees for those that follow Jesus and what God sometimes does for people who follow Jesus. God does guarantee a rich blessing to those who follow Christ but he has identified exactly what that is. Are you ready? Here it goes again. The deposit that guarantees our great inheritance in the next world is the gift of the Holy Spirit living in us today. That is what he guarantees, the joy, the peace, the patience, the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and harmony with others and strength from others who have Holy Spirit in them as well. This is the source of our assurance that we are destined for great and unbelievable glory in the future. It's guaranteed to us but God is so kind even as he was to Abraham that he doesn't just give us what he guarantees. He also, from time to time, will lay more and more and more blessings on us in this life. Oh yes, he'll take them away sometimes too but they still come to us as well. When you get married, you make promises to each other and you hope that those promises will be kept and I guess so long as those vows are kept between a married couple, there's not a lot of room for complaining. Well, you're not doing what you said you would, yes I am. But isn't it nice when your spouse comes to you and does something that's a little extra? Something that goes beyond what's required, something that was not promised back there on that wedding day. Aren't children happy when their parents do more than take care of them? And actually love on them in special ways, these extra things that we have not guaranteed but at the same time are very important for the person that receives them. This is you and me as people who are on this journey. It was Abraham as he went around and met different people, God protected him, God increased his wealth, increased his servants, gave him a little piece of property in the promised land in which he buried his wife and then he himself was buried there as well as other patriarchs. God gave him bits and pieces of the great world that one day, Father Abraham would inherit and you and I have the same experience today, not that we are guaranteed these things but can you begin even to count the numbers of ways that God has gone beyond what he has promised you in this life. He's promised Holy Spirit but do you know what he gives you? Things like good health, things like children, things like a spouse that loves you, things like a house to live in that keeps you warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime, things like a car, things like a church, like this where you have friends that actually care for you and a building that we don't have to worry, the roof is going to fall down on us. These are not things that we are entitled to, these are things that are icing on the cake we live in a day when entitlement is the motif. People actually believe in this country that because they're breathing the air of this planet that they are entitled to certain things and man that list is long. My generation was the most entitled generation that America has ever seen but I wonder what that makes our children, the super entitlement generation and so it's no wonder that we throw our hands up in anxiety and panic when we see our retirement or dwindling, I have a right to our retirement. It's no wonder that we wonder what are we going to do. I have no health care anymore, I can't afford it anymore has been cut back by my company. We're entitled to it, so we panic. What are we going to do? My spouse just left me, I'm entitled to a spouse that loves me. Now you're not, what are we going to do? I'm losing my job, I'm not sure how I'm going to feed my family. I'm entitled to a job, I'm breathing air. No, you're not. Even as a follower of Jesus, you are entitled to the gift of the Holy Spirit and throughout the millennia, followers of Jesus have lost everything that this world has to offer because they were on the journey of faith and trust in God. They lost their mothers and fathers, they lost their families, they lost their health, they lost their jobs, they lost their lives,
but Jesus never once broke his guarantee to them. So long as we have a sense that we are entitled to all the icing on the cake, we will never understand how to live through the journey of faith.
So why does God do that? Why does He guarantee us some things and not just stop there? Why does He keep on laying more and more and more and more and more honest as He does? He tells Abraham precisely why He was going to bless Him. So let's see what He said. Look at the end of verse 2, we'll begin there. And you, Abraham, will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Why is Abraham's name so great in the history of humanity? It's because he took this journey of trusting God. And because God gave him bits and pieces or tastes of the world to come in his own life, but for what end? For what purpose? Here God says, Abraham, I have chosen you to be a conduit, a pipeline, a means to a greater end than you receiving my love. I have blessed you so that my love and my blessings will reach the ends of the earth through you. God had a strategy to reach the goal of this earth being filled with His holy images, for His glory and for His name's sake. And the strategy was this, through Abraham, my mercies will pour out to the ends of the earth. And here we are today. We are followers of the greatest descendant of Abraham ever to have lived. The one who inherits these kinds of promises. And in fact, he's even the one who receives this inheritance and then fulfills it and then shares it with others. I'm talking about Jesus. Jesus who died for sinners, Jesus who was resurrected for sinners so that we could have our sins, a tone for, taken care of, and so that we could live everlasting life with Him. This Jesus has put His finger on you. He has touched your life. And He has called you into the blessings of Abraham. Yes, that cake of the Holy Spirit that's guaranteed, but more and more and more every day of your life you can see it, can't you? But for what in, just for your honor, just so you can bear with the pain of life a little more easily, just so that you can be happy. Oh no, nothing so small as that. Jesus said to you, follow me and you started following so that the blessings he gives to you become your opportunity to spread His blessings to others.
To further the spread of God's kingdom, to our friends and neighbors and family members, to the city, to the ends of the earth, to cover this planet with holy and good images of God just like God had planned from the beginning. He's ordained you and me. He's ordained independent Presbyterian Church of all places to be the conduit of those kinds of gifts to the rest of humanity. In here we are surrounded by the blessings of God. There are so many and so vast, we could not write them all down. But people outside of the body of Christ are under the judgment of God. How will God's blessings come to them? It is by you and me reaching out to them and being willing to share the wonders of knowing the...