1 Valley View Chapel September 27, 2015 The Story, Part 2 God Builds a Nation Genesis 12:1-5; Hebrews 11:8-10; John 8:56 Introduction For 62 years 1892 through 1954 12.5 million people were processed into the United States on Ellis Island. Over 100 million Americans (that s about 1/3 of us) can trace our ancestral roots back to that plot of earth in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is particularly precious to my wife Emily. Her paternal grandfather Giovanni Paterno was 28 years-old and one of 2,166 passengers on a ship named Canada that departed from Palermo Sicily and docked in New York on November 26, 1912. Giovanni settled in the Boston area and worked for seven years so that he could eventually bring the rest of his family from Vezzini Sicily to the new world in 1919. Emily s father Anthony, then a 12 year-old boy was among them. Giovanni Paterno, along with over 12.5 million others, left behind family, friends, language, occupation and all that was familiar in search of a better life. Most of those who came to America from other shores had more to gain than they had to lose when they boarded the ships that took them across the ocean. The Story of Abraham Today s story is about another man who left his native land for a faraway place. But unlike Giovanni Paterno, Abraham was immensely wealthy and fabulously successful. He was already enjoying the good life such as the good life could be enjoyed two-thousand years before Christ. By leaving one country for another humanly speaking Abraham had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Then why did he do it? In short, because God told him to. Look with me at Genesis 12:1 (Page 13), The Lord said to Abram, Leave your country, your people and your father s household and go to the land I will show you. The Old Testament scholar John Goldingay observed: There are more polite ways of bidding someone to go somewhere, and God uses none of these. This was not an invitation. It was a command. The wording makes clear that God left no room for negotiation. So we are left with another question: Why did God ask this man to leave his homeland and go to a yet unspecified country? To answer that we need to review God s story as recorded in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. The first man and woman disobeyed God and were cast out of the Garden. Their eldest son Cain murdered his brother Abel and then lied about it. Humanity became so corrupt that God cleansed the earth with a flood. After the world was repopulated, men built a city and a tower to showcase their pride and independence of God. The Lord had to send confusion to end their rebellion. After I read the first 11 chapters of the Bible, I can understand why the British playwright and religious skeptic George Bernard Shaw quipped: "If the other planets are inhabited, then they must be using the earth for their insane asylum." The people God created in his own image had made an unholy mess of things.
2 In his commentary on Genesis Warren Wiersbe explained why God made such an outrageous demand on Abraham: God called a man and his wife to leave their home and go to a new land, so that He might give humanity a new beginning. Sometimes things are so bad that the only thing to do is start again from scratch. And that s what Genesis 12:1-5 is all about (Page 13) The Lord had said to Abram, Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. God made an amazing guarantee to Abraham: All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. That is a pretty inclusive statement! Somehow, some way, all peoples from Abraham down to the present day and beyond will be blessed through Abraham. The word bless in Hebrew is barak and it means to cause to kneel. This does not mean kneeling in worship but kneeling in gratitude. Abraham was told that all peoples would kneel in gratitude for what God would do through Abraham. The implications of Genesis 12:3 are staggering - All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. It means that Abraham s blessing has fallen on us here in Long Valley, New Jersey four thousand years later and on the other side of the world! Here s another obvious question: How can a man who has been dead for 4,000 years bless us today? Abraham s Blessing The answer is found in the opening verses of the New Testament the verses that nobody ever reads - Matthew 1:1-2, A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. (NIV) It s interesting that the New Testament begins with Abraham! We see the descendents of Abraham for generation after generation until we finally come to verse 16, And Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Matthew 1:16 (NIV) Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. That is a foundational New Testament truth. But to the world of his day, Jesus was considered the son of Joseph and Joseph was a direct descendent of Abraham. So from the standpoint of a human family tree, Abraham was Jesus grandfather, fourteen times removed! Matthew and Luke both traced his family tree back to Abraham. Because Abraham was his ancestor, Jesus was a Jew. That s why Jesus told the Samaritan woman in John 4:22, Salvation is from the Jews. (NIV)
3 But there was no Jewish nation and thus there were no Jews before Abraham. God was putting his plan in action to bring the Savior to the world and he was going to do it through the Jewish people. Salvation is from the Jews. Abraham was the father of the Jews. Jesus a descendent of Abraham by human measurement - died on the cross for the sins of the whole world. That s why God seeing perfectly down the corridor of the ages could say to Abraham with absolute confidence 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus: All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So What? So Abraham was the father of the Jews and Jesus was a Jew. How does this affect us? The Apostle Paul answered that question in Galatians 3:6-7, Consider Abraham: He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. (NIV) If you believe God s Word and acted on God s Word, then you are a child of Abraham. How does that work? Abraham was credited with righteousness because he believed what God told him in Genesis 12:1-3. We are credited with righteousness when we believe that Jesus died on the cross as our substitute to pay the debt of our sins. Abraham s faith and our faith are the same in that we both believed the Word of God and acted on it. And in Abraham s case and in our case, saving faith always results in life-altering changes. As followers of Jesus Christ we are declared to be spiritually speaking - children of Abraham. And as children of Abraham God requires the same things of us that he required of Abraham. If we are children of Abraham, then we need to know what was required of Abraham so that we can know what is required of us. Abraham Applications To follow Christ means leaving something or someone behind. God told Abraham in Genesis 12:1, Leave your country, your people, and your father s household. Jesus told the woman taken in adultery that if she wanted to be one of his followers, she had to leave her life of sin. Jesus told the crowd in Matthew 15:14 that they had to leave their blind guides, the Jewish religious authorities. Matthew 4:20 tells us that Peter and Andrew left their nets to follow Jesus. Matthew 4:22 says that James and John left their boat and their father to attach themselves to Christ. Luke 5:28 stated that Matthew the tax collector literally left everything to become a follower of Jesus Christ. If you have never left something significant then you are not a true follower of Jesus Christ.
4 We need to leave our sins that keep us in their grip and marginalize our spiritual effectiveness; leave our blind guides friends and media and influences that deliver a message contrary to the gospel and the principles of God s Word. Sometimes we have to leave otherwise good things to walk in the will of God. Peter, Andrew, James and John left their jobs, their families, and their communities to stay close to Christ. On a cold February night in 1980 Emily and I took our two little boys, left our home of over 30 years, and drove to Chicago where we knew no one, because the call of God came to us as it did to Abraham. Chris and Rachel Wichert left the comforts of home for the challenge of China. What have you left to follow Christ? To follow Christ means going somewhere far better. Abraham went from being a farmer with an eight-figure net worth to being the founder of a nation, a human ancestor of the Messiah, and the spiritual father of every child of God. Peter, Andrew, James and John were ordinary fishermen like thousands of others in Galilee. Matthew was a notorious tax collector. They would have lived and died in utter obscurity if they hadn t left their jobs and security to follow Christ. So when they left their nets and their boats and tax collector s booth, what became of them? Peter, James, John, and Matthew became apostles! Three of them wrote Scripture. They suffered for their testimony. They became great men. They are known and talked about and held up as heroes more than nineteen hundred years after they died! Abraham left some things and some people behind. And so must we. Abraham went somewhere far better than where he used to be. And so will we. The call of God takes us to a place of high and holy responsibility. There is no greater privilege than that which Paul described in 2 Corinthians 5:19-20, And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (NIV) Is there anything better in life than that - than being the channels through whom God makes his appeal to spiritually lost people? Is there anything better that could be said of a man or a woman than what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:27? Now you are the body of Christ. (NIV) To follow Christ means to live by faith. Abraham lived by faith and so must we. This is clearly set forth in Hebrews 11:8-10, By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (NIV) One of our favorite movies during the Christmas season is the 1947 version of Miracle on 34 th Street. In one memorable scene Fred Gailey is trying to convince a skeptical Doris Walker to believe in Santa Claus. Ever the pragmatist, Doris is stubbornly resistant to the
5 idea. Fred then makes an iconic statement for which the movie is so well known and loved: Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to. Suppose Abraham operated by common sense? There would be no salvation; no Bible; and no Church. While the Christian faith is logical, it also flies in the face of common sense. We are asked to believe in a God we ve never seen and a Savior we ve never heard with our ears or touched with our hands. We are told to entrust our eternal destiny to a man who died on a cross outside the city of Jerusalem almost two-thousand years ago. We are told to believe that this God-Man rose from the dead after three days in the grave and lives today to save us from the penalty of sin, death, and hell. Fred Gailey, you were definitely on to something: Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to. That is what Abraham did when God s call came to him 4,000 years ago and it s what we are to do when God s call for faith comes to us. Conclusion The late Scottish pastor and professor William Barclay summed up the Christian life as an extension of Abraham s faith and courage: Abraham s faith was the faith that was ready for adventure. God s summons meant that he had to leave home and family and business; yet he went. He had to go out into the unknown; yet he went. To live the Christian life, it is necessary to have a certain reckless willingness to be adventurous. If faith can see every step of the way, it is not really faith. William Barclay The eleventh-century archbishop of Canterbury Saint Anselm once said Faith is to believe what you can t see. And the reward of faith is to see what you believe. What we can t see at the moment is what Abraham now sees with perfect vision: the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. The children of Abraham look forward with glad anticipation to the day when faith will be sight and we will dwell forever with Abraham in the eternal city, the land of the redeemed.