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Last week we discussed how Abram doesn't have to fight in order to obtain the blessing of the Lord, but we did end it with the fact that Abram doesn't have to be a doormat and is to fight for what the Lord calls him to. Here in chapter 14, we see that call come. As one scholar put it, "Sometimes it requires more faith to take action than to remain passive" (Waltke, 237). Sometimes you need to commit to action, and fighting for the protection of his family calls Abram to arms. But as we will note here, Abram isn't saved by the sword but by the Lord and acts accordingly in his tithe to this mysterious Melchizedek. So let's dive into this passage looking at our two points today: Fight the Lord's battles when called, and Win or "lose," return to the Lord His due. The nature of our conflicts and the weapons we use today as Christians are different, but there is much that we can learn and take comfort in in this passage. Fight the Lord's battles when called Chapter 14 begins with trouble in the land. To boil it down, these kings led by Chedorlaomer, are warring against these other nations in order to get them to give the tribute they were supposed to. Now, what you should always do to every Bible passage is to ask, "Why is this here?" We could be satisfied that we are just setting up the conflict so we have a reason for Abram to go to war. That's fair enough, but one should also ask what this might have meant to the original audience. One scholar notices something in that vein. It turns out that the path that these invading kings are taking is the same road that Israel will be walking on its way in from Egypt! If God sustains Abram here, then they can take comfort that He fights for them, too (Matthews, 144). This is no slouch force either. They have come in an conquered a people who were remembered as the giants of the ancient word (Matthews, 143)! We see these armies advancing seemingly with nothing to stop them on and on and now Lot himself has been captured! It is worth pointing out, that had he not been settled in Sodom (Waltke notes the difference in the Hebrew between Abram's temporary dwelling and Lot's more permanent dwelling, 231), he would have had the protection of Abram in the first place (Belcher, 118). The disadvantage of sin begins almost immediately. One would think that this would have woken Lot up to what kind of risks he was taking, but then how many times do we have to suffer the same consequences of our sins before it sticks? Ok, so we seem to have this unstoppable force that is ravaging the land that has now taken Lot. Interestingly, Abram is so far removed from these problems, that the only way he even knows about it is someone escapes to tell him! Abram now has a choice, let Lot suffer the fate of his choices (ha! serves him right for his selfishness) or risk his own life to go and get him. Like a good king, Abram goes on a rescue mission. Is our God not the same way? While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. But how do we know that Abram is doing the right thing here? Well, we can see the way he is blessed by Melchizedek it was the right course of action, but how could we have known that put in his position? Should we just not pray and let God smite them? While each situation is different and requires wisdom, in general, trust in God does not mean the abandoning of reasonable actions of responsibility. God will work through those things, but we MUST remember that the victory is always the Lord's. As a personal example, when I was wrapping up my last year of seminary, I was searching for a church job. I applied to church after church with no offers or interviews that led to rejections. I was getting married in a few months after seminary, so I needed a job that would support more than just me! It was getting towards the last two months of time in seminary, so I applied for a job in a world I knew, Apple computers. Thanks to the generosity of friends in the company, I was granted the chance to be interviewed in a few weeks time. Right before the interview, I was approached by a church in a little town called Brewton, but motivated by the desire to provide for my future wife, I kept myself in the computer system at Apple in case it didn't work out. Curiously, in the midst of the Brewton interview, I was mysteriously removed from the computer system at Apple, and my interview canceled. Through this and just so many other circumstances that would take too long to outline here, God made it clear He wanted me in Brewton, and even my responsible actions motivated from a godly desire to provide couldn't keep me from it. For Abram, he has the forces, the allies, and a clear crisis to address, so off he goes. He goes out with his forces and is victorious! But notice how little time is actually spent here on this. In just a couple of verses Abram is done! Remember, when the narrative speeds up, Genesis isn't as interested in your focus. But when the story slows down, details lingered over, concepts repeated, Genesis wants to point out to you that this is the important bit. Win or "lose," return to the Lord His due. In verse 17, we find what is the actual climax of the story (Waltke, 255). Here Abram is meeting with two kings whose contrast could not be clearer in this passage. We've met the king of Sodom already in this story, but here we are introduced to a new character, the mysterious priest-king from Salem. There is no history for us to draw from here. Even the book of Hebrews (the only other place other than Psalm 110 where he is mentioned) doesn't have anything to add about where he came from or where he went. As near as we can tell, Salem is Jerusalem, and the name "Melchizedek" literally means "King of Righteousness." He is apparently a true priest of God and the king of Salem. This is unique in Biblical history because once we have the Mosaic covenant, the promise that God made to Moses and the people and the system set up with it, the role of King and Priest are separate. In fact, whenever the kings of Israel would try to mix those two roles, the Lord would punish (2 Chronicles 26). That being said, there was the prophesy in Psalm 110, which we sang this morning, that anticipates the joining of those two roles. Of course, this King-Priest anticipated in Psalm 110 is none other than Jesus Himself. Hebrews 7 lays out the argument that Jesus is this priest after the order of Melchizedek, the priest that was there before any other priest existed. This has led some to think that this figure in Genesis 14 is actually Jesus before the incarnation! As tempting as that is to think, this is not likely. Hebrews 7 says that Melchizedek was *like* the son of man, and if there would ever had been a place to assert that, it would have been Hebrews 7. That being said, Melchizedek is certainly a type of Christ, a shadowy figure that sounds the first few notes of what is to come. He is like Jesus, but Jesus will be far more than him. So what are they doing here? Well, this passage starts by contrasting the two kings from the very beginning. King of Sodom "comes out" whereas King of Salem "brings out" (a pun in Hebrew, Waltke, 233); the first words of Melchizedek "blessed" whereas the first words of Sodom are "give me" (Matthews, 146). Considering what we know about Sodom, this is a wicked king, and the king of Salem is literally named "king of righteousness." So who is Abram going to go with? Mr. Melchizedek speaks first, after laying out a banquet to feast (bread and wine being a figure of speech for this, Waltke, 233), with a blessing for....God! He launches into this beautiful doxology reiterating the fact that Abram is blessed by God the Creator. The word "Creator" here is also filled with meaning. According to one scholar, "Creator" has the sense of "source of life, buoyancy, and joy in the trials of the day, not just the source of origins...intimately involved in this present reality." (Waltke, 234-5). He is making it very clear who has actually laid the ground work for Abram's victory here. It wasn't because he had the best army, latest in sword technology, or military tactics. He was blessed of the Lord, and that is why he was successful. Then, Abram responds by giving Melchizedek a tenth, a tithe, of the plunder. Because he is a priest, Abram's giving to him is acknowledging that God has given him the victory and thus presents some of that spoil to Him. Now, King of Sodom comes up. Notice we don't even refer to him by name anymore. It got mentioned once at the start of the chapter, but Moses doesn't want you to forget who it is that Abram is about to be dealing with. This isn't just any old guy. This is the king of the place that has become a byword for evil not only in Moses' time but even until our own day. After a command to Abram (Sodom is hardly in a position to command anything of Abram), he makes an admittedly generous offer. He only wants his people back, but Abram can keep the rest of the stuff. Abram has a choice. Will he accept this offer? One commentator put it this way: "The king of Sodom, on the other hand, makes a handsome and businesslike offer; its sole disadvantage is perceptible, again, only to faith" (Kinder). What is that sole disadvantage? Abram zeros right in on it: "You'll say that Sodom made Abram rich." What Abram is afraid of is that Sodom will take credit for God's work. And it is a risk even today. My old seminary professor put it like this: "The people of God may win spiritual struggles, but in the limelight of their success they may give away all the glory to some pagan pretender who would be delighted to rob God of the credit for spiritual success. While believer must use all the resources God has given to them to fight their spiritual battles, they must also keep in mind the true source of their victory and their blessings so that they may discern the confusion from the world" (Ross, 302). Abram maintains his honor. He allows those that fought with him to take what they want, but as for him, God's blessings are quite enough, thank you. So would Abram had been wrong to accept this gift from Sodom? Yes. Receiving from a gift from Sodom isn't how God's blessing was going to come through. God doesn't need Sodom to give His people what they need. To use a modern example, Knollwood would not accept money from Planned Parenthood. God doesn't need that murderous organization to advance His purposes. For examples that are less clear cut, once again, there is some wisdom from Dr. Ross: How to discern a blessing from a burden: One, consider the person's nature and motives for giving the alleged blessing, second "can it be explained in no other way than from God—miraculous, spiritual, enduring? Abram was simply not willing to say that the best that Sodom had to offer was the blessing of God!" (Ross, 301). In other words, if an alleged blessing is only offered through evil means intended for evil ends, you can safely refuse it. I remember a seminary colleague of mine tell me a story of his father who was a pastor. A man approached him from his church wanting to change something about it that would be a turn from faithfulness to God. When the pastor rightly refused, the man threatened to leave the church and take his substantial tithe check with him. To the man's surprise, the pastor responded, "Take your money and perish with it." The church turned out just fine, even without that tithe check. Abram doesn't take up Sodom's offer. He won't take as much as a sandal strap from the guy! He is going to continue to trust the Lord of heaven and earth. So what do we take away from this passage? Obviously, we aren't taking up swords and slashing our neighbors! But we are taking up the Word of God and fighting for truth in our culture. The church isn't here to win elections. If we do, great. But that is not the sum total of our mission. "For the weapons, as 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says, "of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete." That is our fight. We aren't here to destroy people but lofty opinions against God. Is it easier to do that in a free country? Yes. Is it therefore a good thing to vote faithfully to that end? Yes. Do we give the credit to that political leader for the blessing of being able to freely preach? No. This fight isn't physical for us anymore. We don't go out with swords anymore (2 Cor. 10:3-6). We use something far more powerful than that: the gospel. That is what we have. There is no other fix to our problems than that. Let's be wary of enemies who would seem to offer us something to good to be true. Let us not be dependent on those who would like to see the gospel fail. Don't place your hope in compromise because that seems to be the only way forward. Are there times in our fallen world where you have to make the least bad choice? Yes. It comes up every four years. But then we get right back to preaching the only hope that we have. No matter who our earthly rulers are, we still have our Priest-King who rules and reigns forever. He is the King who rules all things and the priest who redeems all things. Like Abram, He came to save us from our own sins. While Abram only risked his life, Christ gave up His. And now today the choice stands before you: Which King will you serve? Sodom will give to you in the immediate. The riches and "blessings" of the world are tangible. You can touch them. But they will fail. What good is it even if you were to gain the whole world but lose your soul. Don't do that. Instead be willing to "lose" in the world to win in Christ. That is why the second point has the word "lose" in quotes. In Christ there is no losing, not in the eternal sense. No you won't have as much money or stuff, but you will have Christ. And he who has Christ has everything, the Creator of heaven and earth.
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Chapter 13 of Genesis is a life changing chapter for Abram and Lot. Neither of them knew it at the time that this moment sets up the path for the rest of their family's history. Don't you wish you could know when those moments were in your life? While the Bible doesn't promise you that you will be able to know when those moments are, it does show you have to live your life such that it won't matter. If you live by faith, in accordance with God's Word, the right decision will be made. Our two points today: Faith doesn't need a fight, and Faith doesn't need a sight. For this sermon, Dr. Ross has been very helpful in forming thoughts here. Faith Doesn't Need a Fight Chapter 13 picks up right where we left off with Abram walking out of Egypt. He went down there to avoid a famine, and, through lying to the Pharaoh about his wife, cause a calamity in Pharaoh's household. He was dismissed from Egypt (much richer than before), and now we find ourselves back in the land of promise. We are back to the place where Abram worshiped God, back to where he has been promised a place. The trouble is, the place is a little cramped now! Abram has gotten much richer in Egypt and so has his nephew, Lot. There is not enough food growing for the animals to all be fed as there are so many of them! Lot's herdsmen are fighting Abram's herdsman for resources. The passage doesn't seem to be criticizing either men for having things. It is crowded in this one section, yes, but clearly by Abram's offer to Lot here, there is enough space in God's land for each of them to have the livestock that they do. Abram offers Lot first choice in the land. Whatever portion he chooses, Abram will take what is left. This is a very generous choice. For us to make this offer, one piece of property is about as good as another. Most of us when we are buying a house think more about distance to work or the view from the windows than we do soil quality. From the outside looking in, for Abram and Lot, the choice that Lot makes can seriously alter what Abram is able to do. What if Lot takes the highest quality land? Well, Abram might not be able to provide for his family as well. If the grasses don't grow as well here than they do in Lot's land, that means less access to calories, clothes, and all the other things in life. This would be like offering a family member who has just been fighting with you the opportunity to potentially take the dream job you would otherwise have. Sure you could find a similar job, but what if you can't? How will you support your family? At least we have access to things like savings or stores. For Abram, yes, he has livestock, but as any farmer knows, they are not impervious to disease or predators. If the food doesn't come up (as it already hasn't just one chapter before), you may not eat. He has just burned the bridge back in Egypt, so this land has *got* to work. But he doesn't want to fight with Lot, so he offers him whatever portion of the land he wants. How does Abram do that? The answer is that he believes God. Dr. Ross puts it this way, "...Abram's faith showed that there was a better way of solving potential conflict, the way of self-renunciation." (289) How is Abram not favoring himself the better way? Well, he says in another place, "The one who believed that God promised to give him the land did not have to reserve it for himself. Rather, as the clan leader, he had the primary responsibility for maintaining peace, and he used the land to do so." (285) Abram doesn't fight because he knows he doesn't have to. God has specifically promised to give Abram this land, so he doesn't have to resort to anything other than trust in God's provision for him. Now, is that how you approach people who are in your way? Is that how you approach conflict with your spouse? Is this how you approach needs from your children? Unselfishly putting their needs ahead of your own? Why do we often take the opposite approach than Abram does here?Could it be that deep down we believe that God won't take care of us if we are unselfish? We will be miserable if we are servants of others? Now, you may say, "So are you telling me I just need to give, give, give with reckless abandon and never taking responsible self-care?" No, but given how selfish most of us are, it may feel like that at first. It's true, Abram has a direct promise from God that he will both have children and a land. He has a sure word that He will be provided for in this specific way, and that is exactly what makes him generous in this specific way. He trusts God. He has seen how he was protected in Egypt, and has faith that God will continue to provide for him here. What sort of promises do you have from God? Well, as we looked at during Easter, there is a land coming for us. There is a time of ultimate peace, joy, and satisfaction that we will reach one day that will make everything that we have done here not worthy of comparison. It is promised that there is joy in God's presence (Psalm 16:11) and a blessing for those who meditate on God's Law day and night (Psalm 1). We are told to seek first the Kingdom of God and all of these things (food, clothing, the things needed for life) will be added to us (Matthew 6). Do we believe them? Do we live as if that is true? You might say, "Well, are you saying that I just stop taking any responsibility for myself?" No. God's promises aren't an excuse for laziness, but they are an invitation to be more generous with ourselves than we are. One commentator put it this way, "'There is room in God's plan for every man to follow his most generous impulses.'" (Dobs, quoted by Ross, 288). Abram doesn't have to walk by fight. He can walk by faith. But let's see what happens when we do walk by sight. Faith Doesn't Need a Sight. Now, Lot takes a different tactic. There are several ominous signs of Lot's choice. For one, Lot is looking. This is the same set up for Eve when she lifts up her eyes to see the fruit. Here, Lot is lifting up his eyes, and he sees beauty. There is a well-watered land over there. It's a gorgeous place. And how can anything gorgeous be dangerous? There is just one problem. It is the location of Sodom and Gomorrah. The people hearing this for the first time know what is coming for that city. The text also reminds us of it just in case we forgot where we are in the timeline. Saying that will instantly fill the people with dread on behalf of Lot. Whenever I meet fellow ministers, almost every time, the questions start with, "where do you serve" and "how long have you been there?" I always answer, "I serve at Knollwood, and I got started there in December of 2019." I watch the math calculate in their brain, and what do you think is the first thing that they think of? Indeed, the 2020 pandemic. I remember in January, someone in our Sunday School said that this would be the year of clear "20/20 vision." Oh my. It has become proverbial, a meme in our culture. And likewise, we see here. There is doom heading for this city! Lot journeys east (side note, this is often a statement of moving away from God's purposes), and settles his tent just outside of Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse 13 gives us a very striking description of the citizens there. Describing these people as "wicked, great sinners" is a unique phrase in Hebrew (Matthews, 137). This is underlining, bolding, all-caps shouting that these people were uniquely bad and sinful. "But hey, the grass is very green. Yes, yes, the people that I am going to be around are doing things that are hugely offensive to God, but let's try to see what sort of arrangement we can work out." Sadly, Lot doesn't stay in his tent. As we go through the rest of the story in the coming chapters, we will find that Lot doesn't just dwell near them, but he actually moves in. By the time God is ready to destroy the place, Lot meets the angels while he is sitting in the gate. Sitting in the gate means that you have gotten to a place of leadership in the community. I'd say that Lot has been pretty well acclimated. But it started with sight. Sight is so subtle in what it sees and doesn't. No one is immune. Lot makes, from a farming perspective, the best decision. He just doesn't calculate God's perspective on the matter. It will take many years, but we will see Lot at the end of his story hiding in a cave somewhere with nothing. A sad ending to a faithless start. How do we avoid such a fate? We have to keep our eyes in God's Word. It sounds so simple because it is. Our sinful world is literally hell bent on getting you to look at anything else other than what God says. Find some other purpose to your life other than serving God. Find happiness in literally anything else other than your Savior. Find security in money, family, secret online knowledge, anything other than God's Word because if they can get you to do that, they've won half the battle. All the world has to do now is wait. The more you stare at that thing, the less you'll see God's perspective on it. The culture pulls on your eyes constantly. Things that were once seen clearly sin have been laughed into the mainstream through our entertainment choices. We hardly notice it anymore. Our culture looks more and more like Sodom and our churches look more and more like Lot. How do we resist the forces of change? It isn't through similar underhanded techniques that they have used to get into power. It comes through trusting God's promises. Here at the end of the chapter, Ross points out that God calls Abram to look up—and see the stars (Ross, 283). They are going to provide a picture of God's promise to Him. And Abram believes and worships. So that's what we do. So what is our takeaway here? One, we don't have to fight to get what we need. God has promised us joy in Himself. That means that we don't have to fight our spouse to have joy. We don't have to overwork ourselves to find contentment. We don't have to always have life just the way we want it but can afford to serve others the way they need it. God will provide it for us. This doesn't mean that we become doormats. Quite the opposite. We fiercely contend for what God calls us to contend for. Yes, push back on the culture, now that you are free from your dependance on it. Yes, call your kids to obedience, now that God's opinion on your parenting is all that matters. Yes, give generously now that money doesn't hold your heart. Yes, give people the time of day that "don't deserve it" because God's glory isn't about checking off every item on your list. Those things take strength that only faith in God can realize. And that faith is grown in worship and the preaching of the gospel to yourself. Your knowledge of God should make an Abram sized difference in your life. It won't be perfect, but it will be so freeing. I came across a quote online that was something to this effect: "You can always tell when you are around a soul that is free because they are so pleasant to be around." Isn't that true? When your soul is at rest not because of what you have or have accomplished but what you have in Christ and His accomplishments, nothing can disturb that peace. It can make a nation in a wasteland, a child from a barren womb because with God all things are possible.
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Have you ever overreacted before? Have you ever responded vastly out of proportion to the supposed threat in front of you? We've all had a piece of fuzz land on our arm that we thought was a spider. We've all been startled by the most innocuous things. Just this past week, I was alone working on the sound system deep in thought when I suddenly heard Keith's voice. I don't know why I made such a screechy, guttural sound in response, but it was out of proportion! We always feel a bit humbled by such an experience. What's worse is overreacting to something and thinking that it is what saved us from harm. There are people feeling safe only because they've washed their hands in the last ten minutes. There are people feeling secure in their work because they belittle their employees. Feeling secure in their parenting because of their harsh treatment of their children. Feeling like their marriage will only work because one is having an emotional affair online. Feeling confident because they got their morning drink in. Relaxed, because they got their fix. People will talk about needing an outlet, needing the help of some sin in order to stay sane, to stay ahead, and it works! For a while. This is what we see with Abram. Abram is terrified of interacting with the kings of the earth. The situation that we see Abram in happens twice in his life (once here and again in chapter 20). Twice he is presented with a situation that God has explicitly addressed. All the nations will be blessed or cursed based on how they respond to Abram. Abram has no need to fear these countries. One has to wonder how many times Abram needs to drastically affect other people's lives before he decides to trust God. One wonders how many times we need to learn the same lesson. Today we are going to look at two points: God is faithful to His glory even when you are faithless, and Sin never makes you safer; God's mercy does. God is faithful to His glory even when you are faithless It all gets started when Canaan runs out of rain. Unlike Egypt, Canaan is completely dependent on rainfall in order to have a crop. Egypt has the Nile river which means that there was always a source for water and thus food (Matthews, 127). With a severe famine in the Promised Land, Abram makes the journey to a place where the food is consistent. Commentators differ on whether or not Abram sins in the moment of leaving the Promised Land. One source points out that Hagar is an Egyptian woman (Genesis 16:1), likely acquired here in this visit to Egypt (Bible Talk Podcast). Obviously, this visit sets Abram up to make bad decisions about his telling the truth, and Hagar is set up here for what will come in Genesis 16. Genesis itself doesn't make a comment one way or the other on the rightness or wrongness of leaving the Promised Land itself. In Genesis 46, God explicitly tells Jacob not to be afraid to go down to Egypt, but that doesn't necessarily mean that God was forbidding Abram to go here in Genesis 12. What Abram is condemned for in this story is what he does when he gets there. Abram could have said, "Sarai, it is clear that we need food here, and it is equally clear that it is risky. Nevertheless, God has promised protection and a seed for us, so we will depend on him and be honest with the locals." We would have responded, "What a wise and godly man." However, once he was in this situation (both times, really), he folded on this matter of self-protection. We are in no higher a position. There will be plenty of times in which we do things that are morally neutral in and of themselves (having an internet connection, for example), but because of our personalities, set us up for sin. Sometimes those situations are unavoidable. Abram needed to eat. But he would have done well to seek out help from the Lord to help Abram stay faithful. We should do the same. There is a reason "and lead us not into temptation" exists in the Lord's prayer. One is not able to avoid every possible arena of temptation, so we must go into the day expecting it and praying for help. Now, let's see what Abram actually does here. Abram's fears are not trivial. Women didn't have rights as we have them today, so the idea that if the king likes your wife, you can be dead is a real fear. As one commentator pointed out, King David does exactly this with Bathsheba. The beauty of this particular lie is that it is half-true (as Genesis 20 confirms). Abram and Sarai are from the same father (20:12) but have different mothers. However, a half-truth leads to a full sin as Pharaoh takes Sarai for his wife. The language used of the things that Pharaoh gives to Abram, at least according to one scholar, are more in line with compensation rather than a wedding gift (Matthews 128-9). I can only imagine what that interaction between Sarai and Abram would have been during, and especially after, this event! Beyond lying, Abram is also not trusting in God and actively putting the promise in jeopardy. While God hasn't explicitly said that the seed is coming from Sarai, that was clearly the assumption of the both of them as by Genesis 15, he is saying that God hasn't provided a seed. Humanly speaking, he would have known even better than we do that Sarai wasn't going to have kids unless God moved, so if he really thought that it wasn't going to be through Sarai, he had plenty of opportunity with his other servants to make that happen. So for him to willingly put Sarai into the hands of Pharaoh, indicates that he doesn't value the promise given to him. He gives it up at the first sign of danger. We find out what we value when there is a threat. There is a famous story of Sherlock Holmes where he needs to find a photograph of great value hidden inside a woman's house. In his surprising way, he stages what would appear to be a fire in the woman's home while she is there! As soon as the smoke rises, she runs to a hidden panel on the wall, revealing where the prized photo is. Here at this point in the story, Abram runs when his self-preservation is threatened. Later, of course, we will see him grow, as he is willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING that he has been following God for in Genesis 22. What do you run to protect when a threat is on the loose? It doesn't have to be a life-ending threat. It could be as simple as a threat to your peace and quiet. A threat to your schedule. What keeps you from being faithful to God? I hate it when my plans are interrupted. God so often doesn't check my calendar before asking me to do something. So often, I have JUST sat down after a long day. I prize my comfort. Do you prize your reputation? Your time? Money? Effort? Here, Abram is unfaithful to God, but God won't let His promises get thrown off due to the failure of His servants. Nothing would ever get done! God is about to move in this story. It is worth mentioning here, as one commentator noticed, that this whole story revolves around Sarai: "By virtue of Sarai's beauty, not Abram's ability, the family was enriched. Reportedly, the passage insists that the events turn on account of Sarai (vv. 13, 16, 17), though she is mute throughout the story" (Matthews, 122-123). The whole reason that Pharaoh gives things to Abram is because of Sarai. And the Lord moves *because of Sarai.* She doesn't have any power here to keep herself out of this situation. God is going to step up where Abram failed to. He protects and delivers her, but not without consequences on Pharaoh's part, including his household! Let's pause for a moment and ask, "Is this fair?" I mean, Pharaoh is a victim of Abram's deception. He operated on the assumption that he wasn't taking someone else's wife. There are no public records he could pull up. He didn't *have* to give Abram anything, yet he does. So why is the Lord punishing Pharaoh? I've got a few responses to that. One, this is a temporary measure to get his attention. Two, God doesn't owe us anything, nor is bound to rules we make up for Him. He is God and, therefore, not bound to our concepts of fairness. Three, God made a promise that He would curse those who dishonor Abram, and now we see that God takes that promise so seriously that even unintentional cursing on Abram will be dealt with severely. Fourth, this shows how seriously God is going to take marriage. Fifthly, there may have been other circumstances at the time the author doesn't make us aware of. Maybe Pharaoh stole Sarai! We are not owed a full explanation. We can't forget who we are in relation to God. Therefore, we do well to make sure that our lives are in conformity to God. God is very merciful, but we shouldn't presume on God's mercy. If God has something to say about a decision that we are about to make, we should be quite sure what He would want us to do. Ignorance doesn't shield from consequences. This narrative should also bring us some comfort. God is so committed to keeping His promises to Abram, He won't allow anything to derail it. God isn't some sort of overly permissive ruler that keeps ending up folding on His promises because someone found a loophole. God is a very strong and capable promise-keeper. He takes His word more seriously than we take it or take our own. Sin never makes you safer; God's mercy does. Now, after the plagues are over, Abram is sent out of Egypt. He leaves richer than when he came in. Does that mean that his path to this was right? Do the ends justify the means? No. As we will see, part of that wealth was made up with Hagar. Her being employed by Abram wasn't the problem. It was what he did with her later that was. But those consequences wouldn't show up for some time. For the moment, God bails Abram out of what he fears, but there will be further set up that will later turn out to be a sin that causes the conflicts that we have seen rage in the Middle East for thousands of years. What saved Abram was not his clever lie. What saved Abram wasn't even Sarai. What saved Abram was God's movement *despite* what he did. And the same holds true for us. We can think that we can patch over parts of our lives with sin. Now that patch will often (but not always) hold for a minute. That is part of sin's deceptive power. It doesn't always fail immediately. But it will fail. It is a promise in Scripture that your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23). It is only a matter of time. Anything that goes well for you seemingly because of a sin is only the mercy of God giving you time to repent of that sin. If the world hasn't collapsed on you yet, take that as God's mercy towards you to make it right. Don't wait until lives are devastated. Abram's life won't be devastated by this until later, buy Pharaoh and his household sure felt it. Don't wait on sin. And because of Jesus you don't have to. You have been given promises that your sin can and will be forgiven if you ask. The promised Seed, Jesus Christ, took drastic action on Himself to free you from sin. Don't mock God and the sacrifice of His Son to sin. Don't say, "Well, how dangerous can this be? It only took the death of the Son of God to deal with." Instead, rest in what God will do. It might not be pleasant. God doesn't promise to remove consequences when your sin is dealt with. But He does promise to erase its guilt. One day, if you are in Christ, you will see heaven. And you will know that turning from that sin was worth it all.
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What does the Resurrection of Christ mean for washing dishes? I don't ask that question to be funny. I ask that question because if the resurrection of Christ has nothing to say to washing the dishes, then it has nothing to say to the majority of your life. Our lives are stuffed with mundane, everyday tasks that we struggle to connect to the Bible's story, particularly its ending. We can do this in specific areas of our lives when national stories hit the headlines. For example, recently you've all thought a bit more about the bridges you drive over in your daily commutes, haven't you? That is connecting your mundane task to a larger story. The Maryland bridge impacts how you think about your otherwise everyday commute. But that story, large as it is, doesn't impact the way you raise your children. It has nothing to say to the way you act at work. It is silent at your kitchen sink. The resurrection of Christ, however, is the biggest story. And it has much to say to you today, even in your dishwashing. The resurrection of Christ isn't just one event of a man rising from the dead (category shattering as that alone is). It is a preview for the end goal for all creation, and the starting point for that goal. And we are all a part of that story. When I was a child, I had a little book called "Bible Answers for Kids," or something to that effect, and the question that I still remember was "When did Bible times end?" That's a pretty good question. The picture had a character standing outside a clothing store where people were coming in with togas and head wrappings and leaving the store in modern suits and dresses, as if there was a specific day in which we entered modern times. The answer rightly said that we are still in the Bible times, as there are aspects of God's work that haven't been fully completed yet. We are still in the story. Our passage today holds up the destination for followers of Christ. And it is a glorious place in heaven! So if this is our place, our for sure ending to the story, why do we forget about it so easily? Perhaps we forget because we have grown so used to how the world currently works. Technology has made living in a cursed world far easier than it used to be. I'm not even talking about air conditioning or endless entertainment whenever we want it. I'm talking about how the constant access to information of the brokenness of the world numbs us to that very brokenness. We scroll through horrors of war, disease, famine, and political strife on a worldwide scale, and the personalized internet allows us to see the same things even within our own friends lives. Abby and I are struck by how many of our friends are going through great suffering. It's become a pattern that you can almost predict. The first dozen or so times it truly hurts. The second dozen times, you come to expect it. The third dozen times, you are surprised when it doesn't happen. This is the effect of omnipresent bad news. We have conditioned ourselves to think that the book ending of "happily ever after" is to help children to go to sleep rather than the echo of sure hope that God has given to us at the end of His book. Today, I'd like to break through some clouds. I encourage you to lift up your face from your rectangles of doom for a moment to behold the world as it will be, a world made possible ONLY because Jesus arose from the grave. And when we are done, when you set your face back down into the everyday of life, you will remember this vision of what it is all going. Let's jump into Revelation 22. Revelation is a mysterious book, mostly because we are less familiar with its references to the Old Testament. I've heard various estimates that Revelation while never directly quoting the OT, alludes to the Old Testament from once every three verses to two times for each verse. However that breaks down, God is a great Author, and He has callbacks to His previous chapters. This book is dripping with them. To set our scene, the Apostle John is laying out for us what the world will be like in the end. After a whirlwind tour of the future, we settle here, the final "then." We see creation made new, a creation of life and light where the servants of God will live and reign forever(vs 3-5). Our Old Testament references begin from our first verse where we see the water of life flowing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb (note the Lamb reference, that will be important later). This is a callback to the prophet Ezekiel who saw a similar river in chapter 47. For our purposes however, I want us to look at what is next to the river, the Tree of Life. This reference should be familiar to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. In the Garden that God makes at the beginning of time, He places Adam and Eve in the Garden where the Tree of Life is. If they are obedient to the command of God, they will be able to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever. Of course, they don't obey and bring sin into the world such that the world they inhabit and depend on had to be cursed (for God cannot sweep sin under the rug, yet also shows mercy). But rather than live in a cursed place forever, God removes them from eating of the Tree of Life and banishes them from the Garden. He does all of this with the Promise that He will send a Chosen One to set everything right. Here in Revelation 22, we see that come to culmination in this beautiful place. One scholar asks the obvious but profoundly answered question, What kind of place is this? (Christopher Watkin, *Biblical Critical Theory*, 560-563). Is it a city? Well, sort of. It clearly isn't a city like what we have come to expect, what with all the rivers and trees and such. Is it a return to the Garden of Eden? Well, sort of! It clearly alludes to that. But there is more. God neither dispenses with nor returns to the past. Instead, He combines the best of both. One scholar said, "There is nothing quite so traditional as God making all things new in unimaginably lavish superabundance" (Watkins, 563). Would you like an example? In verse 2, we see the Tree of Life from Genesis 2 again! But how is it on both sides of the river? Is it in the middle with the river splitting around it? I think that once again, we depend on the Old Testament. From Ez. 47:7, the prophet, in seeing how all things will be made new: "As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other." It's not just THE Tree of Life here, but a Grove of Trees of Life! Jesus takes the Old and Remakes it New! What do those trees do? They are not enjoyed by just two people. The Nations of the World will come, wearied from the journey on Earth, and find healing in its branches! Further, it won't just provide leaves like the Fig tree outside of the Temple (although these are pretty special leaves!). But it will have fruit, not just every year, but every month! So what will we do in a place that is both City and Garden? Well, the answer comes from the architecture of the city. Go one chapter back to Revelation 21:16 "the city lies foursquare" or a cube! Now that didn't mean anything to me, until one scholar pointed out that there is only one other cube in the Bible. It is the innermost part of the Old Testament Temple, the Holy of Holies, the room where the very presence of God lived. Here in Revelation 22, God and the Lamb are enthroned in the city dwelling with the servants of God who will see His face! This isn't just a Garden-City; this is a Temple-Garden-City (Watkins, 562). Now, why should that blow your mind? Well, the Holy of Holies was the most exclusive room in all the world. Only one person could enter it, the High Priest, and even he, only once a year. And he couldn't just walk in there. He had to sacrifice and animal for his own sins. Something had to bleed and die to pay the penalty for his sins so that He could enter the presence of God. As part of that worship, he entered into this room concealed by a curtain and thick smoke of incense inside with a rope tied around his ankle. If he brought sin into the presence of God, he would die instantly and would need to be pulled out. No one else could go in even to retrieve the dead. That's how holy, how separate God is from us. And yet, and YET, this chapter is telling us that all believers in Christ will not only be in God's presence as priests in the Temple-Garden-City, we will see His face! That is something even Moses was denied while he was taking dictation of the Ten Commandments (Leon Morris, Revelation, Tyndale)! All of this is possible because nothing accursed exists in this place anymore (22:3). It is all gone. How? Because Jesus rose from the dead. What does Jesus' rising from the dead have to do with all of that? Well, as you may remember from your Sunday school days, you may have learned Romans 6:23, the wages (or payment) of sin is death. In other words, sin is always going to bring the penalty of death. What is sin? Anything that is against God's commands either doing something you shouldn't or not doing something that you should've. That sin, no matter how small *we* think it is, is rebellion against the King of the Universe! High Treason. An infinite crime demands an infinite penalty, hell fire forever. That's the penalty that Jesus took on the cross. He was God and man together. A man to take the penalty, and God to make the payment infinite. Now when Jesus died, we saw the penalty of sin put on Him. But if He stayed dead, then the penalty wouldn't have been fully paid. If I get sent to jail for a crime, how do you know that I haven't finished my sentence? I'm still in jail! Check the cell! If I'm in there, the penalty isn't satisfied. Well for the world's sin, the tomb is the punishment. So how do you know that the sentence has been fully served? Check the tomb! You'll find He isn't there! Instead, He is gloriously raised and as you'll see at the end of Matthew, "All authority has been given to Him." You can't be dead and have authority! Only the living! So He ascends into heaven. What He commands you to do now is respond to that news. Turn away from your sins, stop trusting in yourself, and turn to Jesus Christ. Putting your faith in Him is an act of trust and surrender. And Revelation 22 is the future to which you are heading. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ isn't raised, then we are a people to be most pitied, because none of what we have been describing would be true. But since Christ is raised, as Paul says in Romans 8, we are more than conquerors since that is our future. So what do we do in the meantime? What does this have to do with the dishes? This is the kind of hope that can survive anything. How does it do that? This is a hope that is beyond time and death. Like, this is hope at a cosmic level that you can access in any part of life! This isn't just a hope that only comes in handy when someone dies. Remember what the Bible says here when you are overwhelmed with the dishes. When your world is shattered or just a little frustrated, remember where you are going, and who's story you're telling. The God who can pull off Revelation 22 can work through and with your unexpected car repair. When you are exhausted after a long day of work, plus kids, plus house stuff, remember where you are going and that everything you are going through is directly moving you towards this moment. When the pain just won't go away, you can say to it that it won't have the last word. Pain and disease are temporary. They won't last because Jesus didn't stay dead. No matter what bad news you scroll through, you can say with confidence, "Not for long." The “What ifs” are all taken care of. And when you get in the habit of doing that, you'll get to experience a taste of heaven here in worship. Heaven is a time of worship, but you don't have to wait until you get there to start. Just think about all that Jesus has done for you here, spend some deep time repeating to yourself that everything said here is true and try NOT to worship.
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Good Friday is a reminder of the greatest exchange that has ever been made. Jesus was substituted for you and me. It is in this moment that our sin was paid for, and we could go freely to heaven. While there are some who dislike the church calendar, I think setting aside some time to contemplate Christ’s sufferings is helpful. We tend to avoid thinking about pain and sadness because they are unpleasant, but it is exactly this pain that we need to focus on here. In our lives as Christians, we can spend far more time thinking about the positive moments in Jesus’ life, His teachings, His miracles, and His resurrection. All of these are important, but we mustn't skip over Jesus’ suffering and death. After all, that is a major part of why Jesus came to Earth in the first place and one of the main reasons Jesus was born in a physical body. Think about it. What is the one thing that Jesus needed a body for? He could have healed without a body. He could have done miracles without a body. God did that all the time in the Old Testament. But Jesus couldn’t die without a body. God, having a divine nature, cannot die, but when He takes on humanity, now it is possible to experience pain and death in His humanity. On the cross, Jesus experiences physical pain and spiritual pain. Sometimes we can be overly descriptive on each side of this. We can exalt the physical pain over the spiritual pain because that is what we can most clearly see, understand, and relate to. On the other hand, we can point out that bearing the wrath of God that was aimed at us is far harder than the physical pain of crucifixion. After all, many have endured crucifixion that physically was harder than Jesus’, but no one has been crucified and simultaneously borne the wrath of God for the sin of the elect. This is absolutely true, but we don’t use that fairly abstract concept to numb the horror of the physical pain that He endured. On the physical side, Jesus would have been whipped first, a tremendously painful punishment. The whips would have contained bits of glass, bone, and other sharp things to make the damage to one’s back substantial. Some even died just from that experience alone. The blood loss and pain are almost unimaginable from this experience alone. From there, Jesus was told to carry His own cross, but He was too weak to do it. This isn’t because Jesus didn’t have the arm strength due to a lack of training in the gym. He would have been just as strong as anyone else in that time. If anything, due to His likely work as a carpenter prior to His ministry, He was probably physically strong as they wouldn’t have had power tools or easy means of lifting and sawing trees. He would have been too weak to carry the cross due to the beating He has already received. He likely has lost a lot of blood. So another man, Simeon of Cyrene is compelled to carry the cross for Jesus. The cross as we imagine it, indeed, as it is depicted behind me, may have been different from what Jesus actually was hung on. One source I came across described a cross beam nailed to an already existing tree, with the feet hammered into the trunk of the tree and the hands nailed to the cross beam (Martin, Beck, and Hansen, 180). There were a couple ways to die on a cross like this. One has the victim eventually unable to breathe, as the position the body is placed in would only allow breathing when pulling on the nails in the hands and pushing on the nails in the feet. This would have been even more painful given the flogging that has already happened, and the roughness of the tree bark. The other way to die would be simple dehydration or blood loss (Keener, 684), which might take days. Regardless of how Jesus would have died (and it is key to realize that Jesus gave up His life rather than had it taken from Him (John 10:18) or exactly what shape the cross was, there is a shame component as well. In the Old Testament, it is clear that whoever hangs on a tree is cursed of God (Deu. 21:23), and now Jesus is hanging in that spot! What’s worse, He is hanging on a cross in the midst of other criminals. Anyone walking by would assume that Jesus was guilty of the same sorts of crimes that they were. Have you ever been in a group where a couple of people in your group did something wrong or stupid and the whole group was implicated, including you? Even though you had nothing really to do with the act in question, you feel the heat of judgment from those around you. They assume you did it, too, or were at least in agreement with the act. That shame by association that you feel is something that was thrown towards Jesus as well. And here is where we transition to the spiritual pain of Jesus. It is here where we don’t have as much clear Scripture to guide us on how to think about it. In some way, Jesus, God the Son Himself, is absorbing the wrath of the Father aimed towards us. How that works is a mystery, but it is clear that Jesus became sin for us so that we might have His righteousness. In some way, He was turning away a real wrath from God towards Himself away from us, and it is difficult to even begin to imagine what that must have been like. He endured the wrath of God so that the elect would not have to. This is something that Jesus dreaded tremendously yet willingly suffered on our behalf. How people respond to this death is dramatically portrayed in the two criminals on either side of Him (for the following, I am indebted to Martin, Beck, and Hansen, 178-9). One responds in mockery based only on what he saw with his eyes. A bleeding victim of crucifixion is hardly the Messiah everyone is looking for. What kind of savior is unable to save Himself? Yet the other looks to Jesus and despite what he saw with his eyes, he could see with the eyes of faith a vision of a King about to enter into His Kingdom. Is this not what Jesus pictured in Matthew 25:31-46? The sheep on the one hand and the goats on the other. (Martin, Beck, and Hansen, 179). These are the only two responses to Jesus. Anything less than trust in Christ is against Him. That one thief with the eyes of faith saw his Lord, and was given the incredible promise that today he would be with Jesus in paradise. Jesus knew what was going to happen, and He was going to His exaltation. The thief could see that by grace, and asked Jesus for help. Note he doesn’t ask to get down from the cross. He simply asks Jesus to remember Him in His kingdom. The thief's hope lay beyond this life and comprehended what was important. What comfort would it be to get off the cross only to die later in life to eternal judgment? The thief knew what was truly important and knew the only person He needed to be united to. There wasn’t time to do good works, join a church, or even read the Bible. The thief only trusted Jesus, and based on Jesus’ invitation alone was he worthy to enter heaven. I’m sure if we could speak to the thief today, we would have loved to get to live and serve Christ here on Earth, which is our privilege, but the promise is still the same: look to Jesus, and you will live. What is your reaction to Christ? You will have one. Is it the eyes of faith like the faithful thief? Is it with the understanding that you can’t save yourself, but Jesus can save you? Is it with a vote of no-confidence in yourself but every confidence in Christ? Or is it like the other thief? Are you only interested in Jesus as long as you think it might pay off for you in gaining some other goal? Either way, Jesus stands ready to save you. Just ask Him! From here, Jesus gives up His life, is taken down from the cross and buried in a tomb. It is here that we leave Jesus and wait.
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What is Maundy-Thursday? This is the day of Holy Week in which we come together to remember the Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples. It isn't the Last Supper in the sense that this is the last time that Jesus will eat with His disciples, as He will after His resurrection. It is the Last Supper because this is the Last Passover meal that will ever be observed in the Old Testament way. This is the moment where Redemptive History reaches a tipping point. Everything is going to be new. Elements that used to represent freedom from Egypt for over a thousand of years, are, in a single meal, going to be redefined, given their true meaning. Bread and wine are now going to represent the body and blood of Jesus poured out for them in the ultimate expression of love ever demonstrated. They will become the new signs, sacraments, of the New Covenant, a source of blessing and spiritual nourishment for Christians in the coming millennia. So what does Jesus do after that? Jesus changed the Passover and is about to go to the cross. What is he going to say to His disciples? What does He want them to know before He dies? Here we come to John chapter 15. It is an immensely popular passage for a reason. Doubtless you've all heard sermons out of it and maybe even have portions of it memorized. I'm willing to bet, though, if you are anything like me, you probably don't rejoice in it as much as you should. So I am going to lead you through this passage as we look together at some of the wonderfully comforting and challenging chapters in John's Gospel. We are going to look at How we are connected to God and How we grow in our connection with Christ. At the end of chapter 13, Jesus tells His disciples that they are going to leave the upper room. Jesus is likely teaching along the way. Perhaps they passed the Temple along their way. At the time of Jesus, over the entrance of the temple was a golden vine with clusters of grapes the size of a man according to Josephus (Kruse)! Jesus could have pointed to that and then Himself with the immortal phrase "I am the true vine." This was one of seven of Jesus' "I am" statements. For Jesus to say "I am," He isn't just making a comparison. He is invoking the name that God gave to Moses in Exodus chapter 3 (I am that I am). So of all things to compare yourself to, why a grape vine? He could have chosen anything. A cedar tree would have suggested strength! An olive tree would have had a nice tie back to the Tabernacle furniture. Maybe even a mustard seed would have worked! But He chose grape vine for a very particular reason. As one scholar pointed out, often in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel is compared to a vine. Unfortunately, that vine is often missing fruit when it should have it. We can see an example of this in Isaiah 5:1-8 (Kruse). Israel was going to be the one to provide a blessing to the nations by pointing them to God. Consistently, however, they didn't. But now, the True Vine, the true Israel, is going to change that. Jesus is going to be the connection to Divine life. He will be the vine, and we will be the branches. This is a stunning picture Jesus draws for us. When He tells us later to "abide in Him," He doesn't have in mind living in Him like one would a house. When you live in a house, it provides safety and a predictable place to live the life that you want. The house doesn't have an opinion on that. In this picture, however, Jesus isn't telling us to live inside Him. Abiding as He uses it here is a deep connection. A branch not abiding on the vine isn’t just out in the elements, exposed; it’s dead. You don’t just live IN Jesus; you live BECAUSE of Jesus. Your heart beats because of His. His life pulsates into your own. This picture of Jesus' life embracing and empowering your own gives us a whole new perspective on what it means to keep His commandments. Verse 10 tells us that abiding in His love means obeying His commandments. Abiding in Jesus is nothing less than obeying His word. If we say we love Christ than don't do what He tells us to do, we can't claim to love Him. Obviously, no one is perfect, but Christians can't help but produce fruit when they are connected to Christ. In fact, once you see just how involved the Trinity is in this picture, I think you will be very encouraged to produce fruit. Often, when we read this passage we zero in on Jesus being the true vine, but we can't lose what else is happening in this passage. Yes, Jesus is the True Vine, the culmination of Israel's history. Yes, we are the branches, pulsating with Jesus' own life in our souls. But there is another character in this passage: the Father. The Father is compared to the vinedresser. He has a specific role He is filling in this picture that of the remover and the pruner. One scholar points to vinedressing practices in Jesus' time. In the spring time, the gardener would cut back that which he wanted to produce more grapes. Those of us with hedges know how that works! In the fall time, however, branches that weren't producing fruit were cut off and burned (Kruse). One wouldn't want a vine's energy going towards leaf production when what you really want is fruit, so you get rid of those branches. How does this work in our lives? The Father will trim those who are producing fruit. Oftentimes that can look like things going well then all of a sudden a great loss that ultimately drives you closer to God. In the midst of it, it doesn't make sense. But when you see the fruit that comes of it, you can see why you went through it. The Father isn't doing this to be mean. In fact, as we are about to see, all of this is an act of love, but perhaps not in the direction that you think. You see, in verse 8, we see that the Father is glorified by you producing much fruit. And who is it that is making you produce the fruit in the first place? The Son, Jesus Christ. And Who connected you to Jesus? The Holy Spirit. John 14:17 tells us that the Holy Spirit is going to be the one living inside us! So, the entire Trinity is involved in this metaphor (with the Holy Spirit in the background as He often is!), all of them working towards your producing fruit. The Holy Spirit connects us to Christ, who provides the power to produce fruit, which is further enhanced by the Father! Now, why do they do that? Would it surprise you to know that it is simply because they love each other? We see in verses 9-10 there is a great love that is between the Father and the Son, displayed by the Son's obedience to His Father. A couple of chapters later in John 17:6-7 we get a glimpse into that relationship and how it works. Jesus thanks the Father for the people He has given Him (including us, v 24) and joyfully reports that he hasn't lost any of them except Judas, and only because the prophecy of God was to be fulfilled. In this prayer, you can see the obsession that Jesus has with the Father's glory, and in the end of the Bible, we see the Father's joy in placing all things under the Son's feet. The Father glorifies the Son, the Spirit glorifies the Son (John 16:14), which ultimately glorifies the Father! The Son's loving obedience was rescuing God's people, and empowering them to bring Him glory by producing fruit! So what does all of that mean for you? If you struggle with assurance of salvation, let me set this out for you very plainly as it was for me by old John MacArthur, probably 15 years ago for me. You, as a Christian, are a love gift from the Father to the Son whom the Son redeems and gives back to the Father all with the Holy Spirit revealing the Son to the people and sanctifying them to glory to live with them forever in heaven. This doesn't diminish any of the Trinity's love for you. Jesus loves you the same way the Father does Him. All I'm telling you is that you are being drawn up into a love between the Godhead that staggers the mind to even comprehend! Further, your salvation couldn't be more secure. Jesus isn't going to drop you not only because He loves you, but ALSO because to do so would bring dishonor to His Father. The Father won't let you coast in bearing fruit NOT ONLY because He loves you (after all, He did send His Son for you), but ALSO because He has a people He wants to give to His Son as a bride. Therefore, as one scholar put it, "No fruit-bearing branch is exempt" (Carson, 514). But what about those branches that get cut off? Given all that we have said here, this isn't talking about real believers who slipped away. Jesus doesn't lose anyone. As one scholar argues, you can't stretch the image too much (Kruse). But there is a real warning there. If you aren't producing fruit, it isn't because Jesus isn't putting in the work. The entire Trinity is on it! If you aren't producing fruit, you probably aren't connected. Y'all now is the time. Abide in Christ. Put your trust in Him. Maybe you've been producing fruit, but you've hit a dry spell. There's been some pruning going on. Do you feel that cut from the sheer? Listen to it. The Father is working on you! He sees your branch! He is saying, "Son, let's work on this one." Don't resist. Instead pursue obedience to Him, because when you do you will find joy. How do I know? Because that is what He says in verse 11. One scholar put it this way, "The Son does not give his disciples his joy as a discreet package; he shares his joy insofar as they share his obedience, the obedience that willingly faces death to self interest (12:24-26)" (Carson, 521). Have you lacked joy? Is there something you are resisting? Let it go. The whole Trinity loves you. They love each other. So join the party.
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Do certain passages in the Bible make you scratch your head? The temptation is to go, "Well, I'm just going to chalk that up to divine mystery and move on." The other temptation is to ask different questions than the text wants you to ask. We could look at a passage like this and spend more time wondering why this happens in a different order than Mark has it. It's fine to ask those questions, but only as long as we are asking what this text wants us to ask: "Why is this here?" So that is the question that we are going to ask today! As we dive into Holy Week this week, we are going to be looking at some of the little details on our way down the road to the cross. Since we have taken in the forest on our past journeys through Holy Week, I thought we would look at the trees, in this case, literally. Jesus makes important points about the Christian life, often using imagery of plants to help us see the point clearly if we take the time to see it. So today, we are going to look at our main point of this passage: Religious actions are no substitute for real faith in Christ. Religious actions are no substitute for real faith in Christ. Let's take a moment to remind ourselves where we are. We are coming up on the last week of Jesus' ministry before the cross, so Jesus has been teaching, healing, and fulfilling prophecy for the last three years. On this day, we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, fulfilling the prophecy we read out of Zechariah a few moments ago. That day must have been quite a scene, one of those once in a lifetime sort of experiences you remember forever. I remember fondly those times in my late childhood when my dad and I would go to Ligonier conferences. It was three days of some of the best preaching you could hear (this was before the podcast was everywhere, so this was quite a privilege). But what I remember at those conferences, something I still look forward to whenever I have the chance to go is the singing. When you are surrounded by thousands of people who are *singing,* having just heard one of the best sermons you'll hear that year, it's an experience. Here in Jerusalem, it would have been my experience times a thousand. The pilgrim coming to Jerusalem would have been special enough on its own. Here you are in the holiest nation in the world, coming to the holiest place in the world, the Temple, the place where you could encounter God, during the holiest point in the year, the Passover, the remembrance when God Himself delivered your people out of Egypt, surrounded by the holiest people in that nation, it must have been incredible all on its own. On top of all of that, here comes the Teacher. The one who has been healing, raising the dead, and providing food for the masses, is riding on a donkey into the Holy City. Their hands must have shook as they took down the palm branches, as their throats sang out, "Save Now!" It's the Son of David, the Christ, the Messiah come to take His throne! It is the culmination of the world! The final act! If there was ever a time for the Messiah to come, it is now. But then. According to Mark's account (most likely Matthew is condensing the story to save space) Jesus walks up to a fig tree in full leaf (a sign that there is fruit on it), finds nothing and curses the fig tree. Then, Jesus walks into the Temple and throws everything going on in there down. He calls it a den of thieves and walks out. The next day, the disciples come across this fig tree Jesus cursed and finds it withered to the root. What should the disciples have asked at this point? They should have asked "Why? What are you trying to tell us here?" But what do they ask? "How did you do that?!" (Keener, 505). By taking a second to think about it, this is a stupid question. What have they spent the last three years looking at? Honestly, of all the things that Jesus has done, this is down near the least impressive. Jesus has raised dead people, like, multiple times! Have they forgotten the widow's son, Jarius' daughter, and even Lazarus (and that one was dead for four days, which is completely dead, not even mostly dead)? What about calming the storm, multiplying bread, and walking on water? Surely withering a fig tree is not beyond the Son of God. Now Jesus does answer their question, but let's pause and ask the question they should have asked. Why does He do this? Mark's account of this points more glaringly at the temple. Mark inserts the story of the Temple in the middle drawing us to conclude that this is a statement about the Temple. Some point to the idea that Jesus is perhaps making an allusion to Micah 7:1, as that prophet laments about the state of the country. God has just announced judgement for the sins of the nation in the prior chapter, and Micah laments that "I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires." Why? Verse 2, "The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net." Here, indeed, there is no ripe fruit. The fig tree puts out its fruit first and *then* the leaves. But this one is all show. And, devastatingly, so is the Temple. As we will see in a few days, there are indeed the very "holiest" of people lying in wait for Jesus' blood. Its a sham, and Jesus knows it. And here, Jesus shows it. He points to the holiest nation with all of its pageantry at its holiest time in its holiest place and says it is all just show and will be judged. Rightly understood, that is devastating. Have you ever had something that you thought was pretty good that you produced only to have it torn down by someone whose opinion actually matters? Whether it is a work assignment or a creative project, that can really sting. But this has eternal implications what Jesus is saying here. It should have us look at ourselves for a minute. What do we think Jesus is impressed with in our lives? What are you proud of in your life? What boosts your confidence? Or put negatively, what terrifies you? Your job? Your church title? Your kids? Your grades? Your payscale? Your relationship status? Your knowledge of the Bible? Your church attendance? Your kid's church attendance? All fig leaves. Now, don't get me wrong those things can be significant, but they aren't saving. They aren't the fruit, the heart, that Jesus is looking for. You can have everything I just said and lack what is most important: faith in Him. That should terrify. Everything can look great from a distance, but on closer inspection have nothing to eat, nothing to sustain. Now, how do I know that faith is the key to this? Because this is what Jesus goes on to talk about. The disciples ask the wrong question in that it was the wrong "how" question. The first question should have been why, and the second question should have been this "how" question, "how do we avoid the same fate as the fig? How can we possibly do the work God has called us to do when even the holiest place, in the holiest city, at the holiest time can't do it?" Jesus points to the instrument that could do far more than wither a fig tree. Why, this instrument can move mountains! But how? It isn't anything to do with "the power of faith" or the power of positive thinking. The people who crucified Jesus had faith. It just wasn't faith in the right thing. Their faith was in mad up laws, customs, and the physical structure of the Temple. As such, that faith was powerless to help, and powerful to kill. It was pulling away from the real power source: Jesus Himself. So how does this faith connect with Christ? Jesus tells us through prayer. It is a position of utter dependance. You don't move that mountain. You ask God to move it for you. He makes a rather stark claim that anything we ask in prayer will be granted to us if we don't doubt. Is Jesus giving us a blank check to get whatever we want? No. To think that way doesn't understand prayer. Prayer isn't wish list time, and we should be reminded of that every time we say, "In Jesus' name." That isn't some sort of magic stamp to get your prayer mailed to heaven. It is saying, "I have license from Jesus Himself to say this. I am praying a prayer that Jesus would pray for me." Whoa. Well, no wonder that has power! How much more confidently would we pray knowing that. So how do you know what to pray? Well, Jesus has told you. The Lord's prayer is a good place to start. He did say that when you pray, pray like this. Go into the Psalms. Those are divinely inspired prayers. Look to the promises of Scripture. What has God promised you? He told you that if you are weary and heavy laden and come to Him, He will give you rest. He told you that if you come to Him, He won't cast you out. He's told you that the suffers of this present time aren't worth comparing for the glory He has prepared for you. He has promised to heal all of your diseases and wipe away all your tears. So pray for that. He's promised! Is it immediately answered all the time? No, but faith looks beyond even vast stretches of trying times. It only sees Christ! It looks beyond religious pageantry. It looks beyond grand buildings and week-long ceremonies. It looks beyond pain. It looks beyond cancer. It looks beyond the death of children. It strains its face forward to Christ even though the reigns of the joy and pain tear on the bits in your mouth to look at anything else. Sin will make it hurt to look to Christ. It knows just how to tug on your mouth. But remember who you are looking at! Jesus will hold your face! Come to Him! Ask and do not doubt, and mountains will move. He's promised. It will happen. It fact, Jesus is probably alluding to Zechariah to make his point (Keener, 505). Zechariah prophesied to the recently returned Jewish exiles from Babylon to rebuild their Temple 500 years before this moment here with Jesus. They started but gave up. There was much to overcome. But hear what God tells the governor of Israel at the time, Zerubbabel, Jesus Great times 8 Grandfather in Zech. 4:6 "Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’” They could probably see Mount Olivet and the Dead Sea from where they were standing making the visual powerful (Keener, 505). So what's our takeaway? That same Spirit is at work in you. God has called you to a work. The things you are proud of won't get you there. Be grateful to God for those things, but don't trust those things above Him. See those things for what they are. They are leaves. Joy and color, but let them point to the substance of it all: faith in Christ. This is a week where many of us reexamine our lives. We hear once again of Christ on the cross, buried, and raised into glory. Do you believe it? Are you putting all of your hopes and fears at His feet? Do you trust that God will make possible what He has promised? Have you laid aside all that would keep you back from trusting Him, anything that might turn your face away from Him? Now, maybe you are sitting here and saying, "I think I'm the barren fig tree. All leaves and no fruit. Is my only fate withering?" Oh, my friend, there is another fig tree. It too was barren for three years according to Luke 13. The owner of the tree told his groundskeeper that for three years this tree has been barren. Cut it down and make room for something more productive. But the groundskeeper said, "Let me fertilize this tree this one last year, and let's see what happens. If fruit, let's keep it, and if not, we'll cut it down." We never find out what happened to that tree in Jesus' parable. Your life will show the end of the story. If you have been wandering and are hearing the sound of my voice, Jesus is giving your tree some more fertilizer. If you have been fruitless, surrender to Jesus' work, abide in Christ, as we will see on Thursday, and you will see Him move mountains.
Image by Tracy Lundgren
Do you journal? If you don't you probably should. It is impossible to keep up with all the ways that God moves in your life unless you write them down. In my own practice, I try to sum up the major points of the day into a small, single page. Flipping through the journal shows me how I thought about a particular problem. Something that seemed absolutely *dominating* at the time, upon flipping through it, was only relevant for a couple weeks. It started, resolved, and now I've moved on. Some problems seemed to be the theme of life for a year or two, but again, those things resolved firmly and are behind me. It didn't seem like that at the time, though. The Bible, and our passage here before us, is like decades worth of journal entries summarized in a line or two. As we will see, vast stretches of time were spent between chapters, or even between sentences! Because you can read Abraham's life from start to finish in thirty minutes or so, we lose that sense of daily obedience that Abraham offers when it seems like nothing is happening. The majority of journal entries for me start with "Today was a long day," which once you've flipped through ten or fifteen straight pages of that, can feel discouraging. But looking back on the course of years, one can see what the Lord was doing all that time. That is what we are going to see with Abram. God is working in his life, but that does not mean that Abram sits back and does nothing. As we will see, in our single point today, God's authority and control does not eliminate your responsibility to obey. God's authority and control does not eliminate your responsibility to obey. We left off last time looking at the incredible promises that God makes to Abram of a land, seed, and a blessing. He is going to have a place for his descendants to call home, there are going to be descendants in the first place, and there is going to be divine blessing that will flow from them to the nations of the world! Crazy good stuff! However, though those things are promised by the grace of God *before* Abram takes the first step, he still needs to listen to God and leave his country, clan, and father's house. This isn't Abram believing God AND adding works to his faith. Abram's faith is being displayed by his works (John Redd, 137). Abram doesn't earn those promises by doing these things, but the doing of these things truly demonstrates that he believes God is going to do what He said He will. That's faith! This faith isn't also some one time deal. Calvin comments, "It is however certain, that in this place the obedience of faith is commended, and not as one act simply, but as a constant and perpetual course of life." (350) In other words, Abram didn't make a decision at a camp meeting, wander out a ways away from his home, and then go back to Ur. No, Abram started a journey of long obedience in the same direction, to borrow from a book title. Long obedience in the same direction. What does this mean? Let's take a look at how long obedience translates into a travel itinerary for Abram. We through out all of these strange city names like Ur, Haran, and Shechem, but what does that mean? Well, the first leg of Abram's journey from Ur to Haran is about 600 miles! That's *walking.* And let's even judge Abram as hard as we possibly can and say that Haran was like Ur, so the last leg of the journey is all that counts (I don't think that is the case, but let's say that it is!). From Haran to Shechem is another 430 miles! That's like from here to Lexington, Kentucky! Assuming that Abram kept a brisk pace of 20 miles per day everyday, that is around three weeks on just the last leg of the journey. Plus you have camp to set up and animals to feed as you go along. Can you imagine slogging along for weeks, possibly months, each day wondering, "Ok, is *this* the land of promise? Exactly how far am I supposed to walk, here?" It is one thing when you know exactly where the destination is, but God hasn't even told him specifically how far he was supposed to go! Wouldn't that be maddening? Isn't that maddening? Is that not how our lives are lived? God tells us in His word to go. And we go. Doesn't the journey feel long sometimes? Each day you wonder, "Is this part of the journey over yet?" And each day, the stakes get pulled up, and off to another day's walk. Then there are unexpected issues along the way, aren't there? The day finally comes for Abram when he arrives in Shechem, a place that is going to come up a time or two later in the Old Testament. It is here that Abram reaches the promised land, and lo and behold, there are people already there! I bet when Abram reached this spot he said to himself, "Well, at least I know that this isn't the land! Look at all these people already in it." But no, here is the place that God is going to give to his descendants. What? There's a surprise! God reiterates his promise to Abram that this is indeed the land He will give to Abram's descendants. Calvin notices something here in these verses. He points out that from a human perspective, this is almost an insult (353)! Abram could look at God and say, "What land? This land? The one that is full of other people! How am I supposed to clear this out, and while we are talking, what descendant? I've walked a thousand miles at this point from Ur! It's been months! Where is even one child?" If we didn't know better, we say that this has all been an elaborate tease! But with God it is not. God's bare word is enough (Calvin, 353). It is not because of what is said but Who is saying it. Yes, if I promise you a land and a child, that doesn't mean much. I can't actually give you those things, but God can. So why does He do it this way? Why does God insist on such delays and impossible circumstances? God wants to show us Himself. And the way that God presents Himself is not the way that we present things. If you want to show your house for sale, you light it better than it ever could be, clean it like it has never been cleaned before, and stage the furniture in impractical ways to make sure that it photographs well. That isn't the right metaphor. God tends to present Himself like a car crash safety test footage. have you ever watched those? They take this perfectly nice car, and then they sling it as hard as they can into a wall or a barrier. They stick crash test dummies in there to show how safe the car is for the people inside. For the cars that do well in this test, you tend to see them put up on tv. It's nerve wracking watching it race for the wall, but then amazing when they keep everyone safe. In that instance, you want to show people the car conquering anything life can throw at it. But in the end, you have to get into the car. That's where, if you'll excuse the extended metaphor, the rubber meets the road. Abram gets into the car, and it hurtles towards the wall. But as we will see, the Lord works through it all. Abram stays the course. He keeps on the road God is taking him. And that isn't an easy journey. I'm sure Abram thought about going back the further and further away God took him from everything He knew. Every day was a decision to keep walking because He trusted what God said. Do you? I bet Abram had to remind himself of God's promises everyday. Do you? If you don't, that may be why you are discouraged this morning. It is hard to walk a long way and not know why. That feels pointless, doesn't it? But if you know what you are walking towards, then the journey is still long, but it means something. So what made Abram different? Abram didn't set out to the promised land and sneak up on God. He didn't climb the mountain and God say, "Well, look who found me!" God chose Abram as His own. We will see this again with Jacob later on. Neither Esau nor Jacob are particularly nice, Christian people at the start. Yet God calls the "trickster" to be His. Why? Because He wanted to. When told to "go" in chapter 11, what did they do? They built a tower! No one wanted to follow after God. Behold! All they like sheep have gone astray! With Abram, however, God called, and he answered. It works the same way with us and our salvation, too, by the way. God doesn't just drag people into heaven whether they want to go there or not. No one is going to heaven kicking and screaming, and likewise no one is pounding at the gate, genuinely wanting a relationship with Jesus who is going to be shut out. John 6:37 puts this together perfectly. The second half of the verse says "whoever comes to me I will never cast out," and yet we see the first half of the verse tells us how that is: "All that the Father gives me will come to me, AND whoever comes to me I will never cast out." If you are coming to Jesus, it is because the Father has given you to Him, and because the Father has given you to Him, Jesus will NEVER cast away a gift from the Father. Now, because people will go there, folks try to predict who is elect or not based on what they are doing right now. Quit betting against God like that. That is a bad bet. Look at Jonah. God has ways of getting it done. Look at Paul. Come on. He can handle your atheistic uncle. As Jonah teaches us, God can get you where He wants you to be. But not even that gets you out of following what God says. You still gotta do it. Jonah still needed to go to Nineveh in the end. And you still need to obey. Is God the one empowering that obedience? Yes. Are you still responsible to do it? Also yes. How does that work? I don't know. Abram still took every step on that road. God didn't teleport him Star Trek style into Shechem. And He doesn't do the same for us either. We live out that salvation here on earth with all of the hard situations and tests of faith. Our works don't create faith, but faith does create our works. And what does Abram do while he walks and waits? He worships. He builds an altar and calls on the name of the Lord. This can mean worship, or it can mean proclaiming God's word to people. Calvin happens to think it is both (354). Worship like that is a bold move. Here he is setting up an altar in the midst of a pagan people! It would be like starting a church in Mecca and putting a cross on your building. That's some witnessing, right there! Perhaps that's why he has to keep moving! But all of that hardship was to point Abram up. If he was greeted with ease in the land, perhaps he would just be satisfied with that. God keeps moving him, because ultimately, his home isn't here. It is in heaven. It is with God. That is what Jesus promises us. He doesn't promise ease, material wealth, or even the idea that life is going to make sense all of the time. What He does promise us is Himself. And He has shown us the ultimate test of His love for us in that while we were still sinners He died for us. We have not only heard God's Word, but we have beheld God's Word in the flesh. The ultimate revelation of Himself, the ultimate test of God's trustworthiness is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Do you trust Him? Do you show that through your obedience? That's really our takeaway from this. Yes, God is absolutely gracious and sovereign who pulls the most unlikely people towards Himself, but that doesn't negate your responsibility to trust Him, to follow Him. Abram wasn't going to get to the promised land by deciding Egypt was better (which we will see after Easter). But as we will see even there, God's hand guiding us through every step that He empowers us to take. Image by Gerd Altmann
Can you imagine a world in which the Jews didn't exist? It's impossible for us to do so as Western people. The default religion from a human population standpoint is polytheism or some faceless, person-less Law that governs the universe for no apparent reason. For us to walk around as even secular Americans assuming "a" God who runs the world is due to God making His promise to Abraham. We as Gentiles would have no idea at all that such a concept even exists. We couldn't form a category for this without God revealing Himself to Abram through words and demonstrations of His character. Even more than that, can you imagine a world without the Ten Commandments? It forms the basis of nearly all of our laws, including the principle of the punishment fitting the crime! But God has done far more than give us some new way of thinking or governing; God has also saved us from our old way of living. Both have been achieved through this promise to Abram. True, without God's promise to Abram there is no concept of monotheism or modern law, but more importantly without this promise to Abram there is no Jesus. There is no assurance that God could fulfill any of His promises without a demonstration of God's faithfulness to Abram. He promises that He will make Abram a great nation and that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him. And as we can see today, we have been. Today, we are going to finish off point 2, God gives His people a Savior. God provides His people a Savior We saw last week that God gave His people a land, a place, and we saw that ultimately this is heaven. But the question remains as to how exactly that is going to happen. How on earth is God going to move from one old and barren couple to a nation great enough that all the nations of the world would be blessed? On paper, this doesn't look possible! Looking at the facts on the ground, God bringing life to an empty womb AND that life resulting in worldwide blessing seems unlikely at best. So how does God do this? The first step, of course is Sarah being pregnant. We will discuss that more when we get there, but suffice it to say that promise looked so impossible that it borders on irresponsibility to believe it and act on it. We are used to scams, aren't we? I remember getting a message once where a man was so glad to finally get in contact with me. A relative of mine had passed away leaving me tens of millions of dollars, and in order to get this money, all I would need to do was email back some personal information. Now, I knew this wasn't true based on two things. One, based on the country of origin of this message, I had absolutely no family there. Second, at the time, the entire living Jessup family could have fit in two booths at Denny's (we're a small family, is what I'm saying, and we love breakfast). And I knew where everyone was and knew that they were quite alive. I could discount that promise. What would have been even less believable, however, would be to say that my grandfather (whom for the remaining fifty years of his life after his wife died remained unmarried) would have a son who would provide me with millions of dollars! But this is exactly what happens to Abram! God looks at Him squarely in the face and tells him that the impossible is definitely going to happen. Now, as the chapters in Genesis go on, we will see that this takes a while from an individual human standpoint, and there are going to be some false steps and foibles before we get there. It is far from a direct and speedy path from childless Abram to mighty Solomon (to say nothing of the distance between Abram and Jesus!), but a quick glance at history shows that this has always been the case. It has always been the case that God makes a people where there used to be no people. Let's take a look at the nation of Israel from a political standpoint. When they arrive in Egypt, they start out as a shepherd family of 70 people (Gen. 47:1 and Ex. 1:5). They had to *leave* the land that they were promised because there was no food there to reside in Egypt. At first, this works out well. They've got a direct line to the king of the country who gives them the best of the land. You can imagine that this might be where they get to flourish. After all, they've got a privileged position in a wealthy nation that is currently feeding the rest of the world. Sound familiar? They do begin to multiply in this context, as that is what Pharaoh fears, but when did they begin to multiply more? When they were persecuted and enslaved (Ex. 1:12). How did we get from slaves to the richest king in the world? It wasn't from their throwing off of Egypt. They didn't revolt and conquer Egypt. God did that. As promised (those who curse you I will curse). It wasn't their resolve out in the desert. Even after escaping, they wanted to go back (Numbers 14:1-4)! It wasn't their courage in battle (Numbers 13). It was God's mercy. Skipping ahead a few hundred years, it wasn't David proving himself out in the shepherd's field that made him king. It was God's protection of his life, not just from Goliath, but from Israel's own king several times, that brought him to the throne. Finally, it was God's blessing of Solomon with both wisdom and riches that brought both to him and the now firmly established political entity of Israel. There is a lot to draw from for our own lives in just this little survey. One is that God works through ordinary, unimpressive people. God uses barren people to have children and uses slaves to rule. He uses imperfect parents to raise children. He takes grandparents who feel their relevance has gone and gives them ministries. You are not "too anything" for God to use you. Now, there may be some specific areas you aren't able to work in (for instance, there are specific qualifications for a church officer), but that doesn't mean that you can't serve the Lord in great ways as He considers them. The second thing that we should draw from this is humility. It is terrifyingly easy to assume that because things are going well in your life that you are definitely the only reason why. Does God reward obedience? Of course, and we will see that more next week, but obedience to a command that God gave you doesn't then give you all the glory. That is what Luke 17:9-10 is getting at. At best, we are only doing what we should have been doing. Honestly, just doing the things that are ultimately best for *us* and the wider world. As we turn back to the history of Israel with all that in mind, we can answer the question of why God does all of this. Why did God make Israel a great nation? Yes, it is because He promised, but the answer isn't so that Israel could be a political tour de force (notice that David and Solomon's reign together add up to only eighty years of prosperity and political influence before things begin to slip downhill). It was to be a blessing to the nations. God wasn't building politicians to be world policy makers. He was building priests to be Kingdom promise proclaimers. How do I know this? It is because that is exactly what God said that He was doing with them in Exodus 19:6. Listen to what God tells Moses to preach to the Israelites: "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”" What does a priest do in the Old Testament? He connects you to God. He provided the means by which you could offer appropriate sacrifice to God to receive forgiveness and acceptance from God. What a gift that would be to the world! When I was in seminary, I had the chance to talk to international students a lot. There was one who impacted me the most as he described wanting to come to America so he could learn the truth about his own country. Information is very tightly controlled there, and he viewed America as a place where he could not only get information, but a chance a better life back home. Our country has been a beacon of hope for many other students like him. In my travels, I will see people look at me with wonder that I get to *live* in a place like America. Our country does hold much for the world, but access to money, information, and entertainment has nothing on Israel who had access to God. When Solomon built the temple, God's presence filled it. That's astonishing. You could point to a particular coordinate on the map and say, "You can meet with God there. Do you have sin you need to get rid of? Take to those Israel priests over there, and they can sacrifice to God to take care of that for you." Do you have any idea what kind of gift that was to the world? Do you have any idea what it must have been like to encounter the Living God of all Creation just down the street. Well, you should. Because that's your job now. Israel, as we know from the rest of the Old Testament, didn't always do their priestly job very well. Yet, even when Israel was exiled, Isaiah prophesies that they will have this job again. In Isaiah 61:1-7, God tells them that not only will return to their land, they will resume their role as priests once again, providing access to God. But how did God do that? Luke 4:16-21. Israel would one day produce Jesus. He would be the Temple who would be broken down, and in three days be raised up (John 2:19)! He would be the one where it could be accurately said that "Whoever who has seen me as seen the Father" (John 14:9). He would be the one who dwells with us (John 1:14). He is the blessing of the nations! Paul says so in Galatians 3:16. Christ was the whole point as it says in verses 7-9 of that same chapter. He is the one who is proclaiming forgiveness of sins! He is the one who welcomes us into the promises! Now, WE have a land, a seed, and a blessing for the nations! But how? Because, as you may notice, Jesus isn't physically here anymore. How is that blessing communicated to the nations now? The answer is "you." How do I know this? That is what 1 Peter 2:4-9 says. This language might be familiar to you by now. We are now the priests. We are now the temple! When people want to encounter God, they should look for you. This isn't because you have become divine (you, just like Abram, are ordinary), but because God lives in you now. You can provide people the gospel, the knowledge that a sacrifice has already been made on their behalf. When they see you, they should see someone who has been transformed by God. They should see someone who looks like the promises made to Abram were real. They should see someone who has a blessing for them, news of a savior for them. Application: You are part of this great Nation, this Kingdom. As a citizen-priest, there are responsibilities that you have. We are now the Holy Nation, and every nation is the sum of its parts. We talk about nations being built on the back of the nuclear family, and there is no escaping that responsibility in the heavenly Kingdom. Personal holiness makes a real difference. Ordinary faithfulness moves mountains. In the same way, unfaithfulness creates mountains. Nothing does damage quite like heavenly citizens acting like the sons of disobedience. No one will turn against the banking industry because one teller was a criminal, but boy will they do that because of a Christian. In the same way, no one joins the banking industry because one teller went slightly out of their way to help them, but boy does that happen in the church. People will join a church because of a can of soup given in love. Ordinary faithfulness. Finally, we are going to have to be comfortable with likely not seeing the effect of our priesthood. One scholar put what Abram was doing in this way: "Abram must exchange the known for the unknown (Heb. 11:8), and find his reward in what he could not live to see (a great nation), in what was intangible (thy name) and in what he would impart (blessing)" (Kinder). At the end of the story where Abram is promised a nation, a seed, and a blessing, he has been protected (blessing), has one son from Sarah (seed), and just enough land to bury his wife (land). From Abram's perspective, that would probably be disappointing. But what would arise in the future! Abram wouldn't even have a category for his spiritual children through Jesus to be talking about his story in Sylacauga. What might He do through you? You probably won't find out until heaven, but you'll never find out if you don't follow after Jesus. Answer the call that He is putting on your life.
Image by Terje Ansgar Eriksen
What is the biggest promise you've ever made? Most of the time, we don't realize we are making such a promise at the front end. Most of the time, we realize just how big of a promise we've made when we are halfway into that commitment. It can be something small like a bake sale that gets out of control, or it can be something profoundly large like a marriage that needs deep forgiveness within it. When we make big promises, sometimes we can rise to the occasion, and other times we just can't. We often put God in that box. We assume that God may or may not be able to keep up with the promises that He has made. As we will see today, God absolutely fulfills His promises to us, in particular, His promises for our salvation. It is hard for us to imagine that our salvation is being worked out here with a little man with a funny name from a distant town, but they are. What is happening in these short few verses is nothing less than the shaping of history. This is the working out of one of the most important promise made in the Bible, the Abrahamic covenant. We are going to explore just how important this covenant is by looking at the fulfillment of the three separate promises God makes. God provides His people a place, God provides His people a Savior, and God provides His people a blessing. God Provides His People a Place Last week, we saw that God forms relationships with His people via a covenant and had the opportunity to enjoy the signs of the new covenant with us. Now, we are going to look into how the covenant with Abram leads us to where we are today, and that must start by looking at the covenant with Abraham itself. This particular covenant, as one scholar points out, develops and gets details and things revealed as we go from chapter 12 to 22 (Redd, 135-6). The core of the promise that is made though can be found right here at the very beginning of God's relationship with Abraham. We will see this core promise echo through the rest of Genesis (and the rest of the Bible, really) either explicitly or implicitly. God promises Abraham three things: a land, a seed, and a blessing. Though, this will play out over seven "wills" that are contained in these verses (Waltke, 203). In order to understand what is at stake here, let's start with where Abram is at the start of our passage. Abram is just another guy (Joshua 24:2 tells us that he was another idol worshiper living in Ur) in the world. Ur was actually a pretty great place to live, and we know more about this particular city than any other ancient city of that time (CITE). Even if he was just near the city of Ur, it was quite a place to be close to! The walls around the city were more than a mile around, and there were two ports where trading could take place! There were houses, streets, and possibly even a sewer system! The walls of buildings at the corner of streets were curved to allow carts to pass by without clipping the building! More than the technological advancements, there was a huge ziggurat in the city, something that Abram probably worshiped at. God is about to call Abram to leave all of that, and the leaving of the city isn't even the hard part. When Abby and I were about to get married, I was looking for a ministerial job. I had been on the hunt for the better part of a year, and despite the sending of resumes and a handful of interviews, just nothing was coming up. There was one more place to apply to: Brewton, Alabama. Population: 4,000. My wife grew up just outside of Metro Birmingham, populations: 250,000. The most recent thing that had happened in Brewton was a new Taco Bell. It shut down the roads. The call came. We accepted. Passing chickens and ponies, we drove down the winding two lane road into Brewton. That was an exercise in faith and love for my new bride. She was going to leave everything that she knew to throw in her lot with some youth pastor who couldn't find a place to even live in that town until 10 days before the move! Now, like Abram, when we went we found a blessing. The people there embraced us, and we could find a place to be for the time that God had us there. Abram's situation was very different. At least Brewton had a Walmart (and honestly, a pretty nice one at that). Abram is being called away truly from everything, and this is seen in his call away from family. This would have been harder than leaving the conveniences of a city. Every safety net would need to be left behind. He is being called to leave his country, his culture, even down to the smallest family unit possible (Matthews, 111). As Matthews points out, "So strong was the identity of a person with his father's household that an individual’s behavior had implications for the entire family (Josh 2:18; 1 Sam 17:25; 2 Sam 14:9; 24:17)." (Matthews, 111). In other words, Abram is being asked to be completely undone. This won't be the only time that he will be asked to do this either. One commentator noticed that this bookends Abram's life: "In Genesis 12 Abraham is called to leave his past out of simple trust in God's promises, and in Genesis 22 Abraham is called to abandon his future out of simple trust in God." (Waltke, 196). In return, Abram is going to be given, among other things, a place, a land. Do you long to have a place? People crave that. We see in the news how hard it is to own a home nowadays, but people still seek it. Even more dramatically we see in the news the wars that are going on are ultimately about place. Who is going to live where and why? The importance of this question rises to the level of bombs. This tells us something. There is this longing in our souls to *be* somewhere, to put roots down, to merge our souls with the surrounding people. I think we feel this now more than ever. The internet told us that we could form our own lands anywhere and everywhere. But what we found is if anywhere and everywhere is home, then nothing is. God is offering Abram a place where he can belong. Where he can have his family. Where he can be secure (what place would be more secure than the one chartered to you by the almighty Himself?). But Abram was looking beyond even that. Look at Hebrews 11:8-16, "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." Abraham was looking towards heaven! God wasn't just offering another spot of dirt (although He was doing that, too); He was offering a spot in heaven. Jesus picks up on this for us as well when we get to John 14:1-3 "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." Jesus is promising us a land. By fulfilling what He said to Abraham for this patch of land, we can know that He will do the same for us in heaven. Hold onto that. Sometimes you are told to do the same thing that Abram was told. Calvin restates it so well: "I command thee to go forth with closed eyes...until, having renounced thy country, thou shalt have given thyself wholly to me." (quoted in Waltke, 205). In other words, God almost never tells us beforehand where we are going when we start out on a journey on Earth. But He has told us where we are ULTIMATELY going. He is leading us to a land that He will show us. No, we can’t see it right now. We are called to exercise, as one commentator put it, a "divine imagination (i.e., seeing things that are not, as though they were)..." (Waltke, 196-7). I love this concept of "divine imagination" because I can't do this very well. I am not able to visualize something that isn't there. Abby can do this very well. I'm told to imagine what it would look like to move the couch from this end of the room to the other, and if I concentrate EXTREMELY hard, I can sort of do it. What I have found to work easier is to simply trust my wife for aesthetic decisions. If she thinks the couch will look great over there, then it will, whether I can imagine it or not. And the same is true of God. Our imaginations are really broken, so they need something to be guided towards. We can't see what isn't there most of the time. But we trust God when He tells us that there is going to be a thing there. When God tells us that He will work all things for our good, we have to believe Him, even when there is nothing that we can possibly see to make it so. When God tells us to be obedient to Him even when it is going to cost us our jobs, our family relationships, our own reputation, our time, our imagination can't see it working out. But God will make it so. I know that because God has promised us a land. He has promised us a place that we are journeying towards. It is as sure as it was for Abram. What is holding you back from embracing that promise? What is keeping you from exercising that divine imagination? If you are like me, the thing that distracts the hardest are the supposed facts on the ground, what I can see right here, right now. You look at your marriage that has been sour for, well, as long as either of you can remember. It seems like that if God really cared about it, He would have done something by now. Yes, we’ve prayed, we’ve gone to counseling, but we just want to give up. Don’t settle there. On one interpretation of this passage, Abram left part of the way but settled in Haran with his father. Settling before God tells you to doesn’t bring you His blessing. Instead He calls us, as Eugene Peterson put it, long obedience in one direction. What does that look like? What does it look like to embrace God’s promises? It looks like a trust in God that doesn’t leave you bitter and cynical. It is a trust that looks beyond the present moment. Why did Abram take that step away? Because he believed God. When Abram took that first step away from what he knew and who he loved, it must have felt nuts. I’m sure when Abram first brought it up to his clan they tried to talk him out of it. Wouldn’t you try to talk your family members out of packing up, leaving the United States, burning up their social security card, and not providing a means of contact? I would! Sometimes that’s what faith looks like. It means praying for that daughter or son when years of it has not yielded what you want for them. It means continuing through trial of physical pain and still saying, “God is good.” How do we do that? We believe God when He says that there is a place that we are going. We believe God that we are on our way to heaven. So what is our takeaway from this passage? God made Abram a promise, among other things that we will look at next week, that there would be a land for him, but it would require leaving behind his way of life to go to it. In this, God was giving the Israelites the divine right to this land, something that they would take hold of in the coming centuries when they were lead by Joshua. This promise extends far beyond a geographical region, but looks towards what the Ultimate Descendant, Jesus Christ, would lead us into. He has granted us a place, and we are going to it. We are called to leave behind former things, and follow Jesus where He leads. That may sometimes look like leaving everything. That may sometimes mean losing everything. But what it always means is that God will grant us more than we have sacrificed in the land to come. |
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