The Story that Shapes Us 3: Called into a New Future

This podcast is brought to you by Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley, D.C., in the hope that it will draw you closer to the one who loves you most.

One of the good friendships I made while I was at seminary was during my first year of classes there with a fellow classmate named Kevin Bernhardt.

And Kevin's wife, Susan, was a director of parish services.

So years later, when I was pastoring in Saskatchewan, Susan was in charge of organizing the program for the Sabbath Conference, which is a retreat for deacons in Lutheran Church Canada.

And she invited me to come and present at this conference.

And I accepted the invitation, and so I went from Saskatchewan to Alberta and presented at the conference.

And there I got to know somebody by the name of Lynn Gergens, whom many of you know.

And Lynn said, Hey, our church is calling a second pastor.

And I said, Well, I already have our a call.

That's the standard pastor answer when somebody says that to you.

But we prayed about it, and then after the conference, Lynn put my name on the call list of pastors that this church was considering as they went through the call process.

And the rest is history.

Now, however, if just one of those details in that long chain of events had been changed.

So, for example, if Kevin and I had not become friends, if uh his wife Susan had not asked me to present at the conference, or if my car had broken down on the way and I didn't get there, I probably would not be standing before you as your pastor today.

Now, this illustrates something that is called the butterfly effect.

And it was discovered by a mathematician and a meteorologist who wanted to find out why weather forecasts were so inherently inaccurate.

And what he found was that small details at the beginning of a process can have massive results later on.

So the way this effect is often explained is a butterfly in the Amazon river basin flapping its wings can change the direction of a tornado tearing through Texas weeks later.

And the butterfly effect is not just a pop culture myth.

There is some truth to it.

So here's some historical examples.

Because of cloud cover over the intended target, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki instead of Koroco.

So a change in weather altered history.

The driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's car made a wrong turn onto a street, and there was an assassin waiting there, and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand sparked World War I.

And during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a Russian officer vetoed the launch of a nuclear torpedo, which likely prevented the beginning of World War III.

So there is something to this butterfly effect, but it can also be scary to us.

Because with all of the brokenness in the world, the chances of some tiny negative thing happening are very high.

And no one likes to think that accidentally spilling your coffee on your clothes before you go to work in the morning could result in you being homeless and living under a bridge later on.

Like nobody wants to think that.

Now you might remember from previous passages that we looked at in the book of Genesis, that everything started out when God created the world and all that exists, and he declared it to be very good.

He blessed Adam and Eve, the first humans, and through that blessing, God gave them three things.

He gave them a fruitful place, the Garden of Eden.

He endowed them with fertility so that they could multiply.

And God made Adam and Eve rulers over his creation to care for it.

Then, the week after that, just last week, we heard and read and thought about the fall.

How our first parents disobeyed God and ate fruit from the tree that he told them not to.

And one small sin had a massive impact.

God's blessing seemed to be totally undone, and his creation was ruined entirely, it seemed.

Humanity was cast out of paradise, and suffering and sorrow became normal in human existence.

And then chapters four to eleven of Genesis give us a bleak narrative of humanity spiraling downward into further alienation from God and from each other, and while violence and pride and confusion spread and expanded and grew.

Now, if God's word ended with Genesis chapter 11, we would be left with a story of decline, fragmentation, and despair.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

A story where sin has ruined everything and human beings are powerless to stop the chaos.

But God's word does not end at Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

And Genesis chapter 12 begins with four words that change everything.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Now the Lord said, When God speaks, the story turns.

When God calls, the future opens.

When God promises, blessing begins again.

God's first words to Abram are challenging.

He said, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household.

God calls Abram away from everything familiar to him, away from his land, away from his identity, his security, and his past.

And Abram's not given a map.

He's not given a timeline.

He's not even given a guarantee that the journey will be easy.

He is only given this.

Go to the land I will show you.

In other words, God is saying, leave what you know.

Step into what I know.

Trust me with what you cannot see, as Carolyn said in her children's message.

And this is always how God begins a new future with a call that loosens our grip on the past.

For Abram, that meant leaving Haran.

For Israel, it meant leaving Egypt.

For the disciples, it meant leaving nets and boats.

And for us, it means leaving the illusion that we are in control.

Tiny details can have a massive impact.

But where the butterfly effect says that those details are random and arising from chaos, Genesis 12 says that they are not.

Your destiny is not shaped by chaos.

Your destiny is shaped by the living God.

And so God restores the blessing that was lost in Eden.

You see, God has a good and grand purpose for everything He does.

So remember in Eden, God blessed Adam and Eve and gave them three gifts: a fruitful place, fertility to multiply, rulership over creation.

The fall shattered all three.

The ground became cursed, childbearing became painful, dominion was distorted into distort into domination.

And Genesis three to one shows the unraveling of creation's blessing.

But here in Genesis twelve, God begins to reverse the curse, not by fixing humanity in general, but by choosing one family to represent him in the world.

And so God gave Abram three promises that mirror Eden's original blessing.

God promised to give Abram land, a fruitful place.

He said, To your offspring, I will give this land.

A land flowing with milk and honey, a restored garden, a place where God's people can flourish.

And God also told Abram that he would give to him a great nation, a new multiplying family.

He said, I will make you a great nation to Abram.

The fertility lost in Eden is restored as God creates a people as numerous as the stars.

And God also promised Abram kingship, a new kind of rule.

Kings will come from you, God promises him later on in Genesis.

And he's referring to a line of rulers that will culminate in the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

In other words, what humanity lost in Adam, God begins to restore through Abraham.

The story that shapes us is not a story of decline, it's a story of God rebuilding blessing through promise, presence, and grace.

So what does this mean for us here and now, today?

We are all called into that same future.

Through Jesus Christ, the true son of Abraham, we are grafted into this story.

In 1 Peter, we read, He that is God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And so here, God is giving you those same promises: a living hope, a resurrection-shaped future, a calling that is not fragile, not random, not derailed by unknown factors.

In Christ, you are given a new place, the kingdom of God, which is already breaking into our lives.

You are given, you are made part of a great people, the church, a family from every tribe and nation.

And you are given a share in God's royal calling to reign with Christ, to steward creation, to bless the world.

God's call to Abraham is God's call to us.

Leave the old story, step into the new one.

Trust the God who writes the future.

In May 2013, Harrison Okone was working on a tugboat off the coast of Nigeria.

He got up early one morning to use the washroom.

He was the cook on that boat.

And while he was in the washroom, a huge wave hit the boat, flipped it over, and it capsized, eventually submerging under 30 meters of water.

Harrison found an air pocket within the boat, and there he waited.

And he thought of his wife and his children, and he prayed.

And included in his prayers was Psalm 54.

Save me, O God, by your name, vindicate me by your might.

After 60 hours, Harrison was found and rescued by divers who were looking for bodies, not survivors.

Eventually Harrison became a diver himself, and now he works for the same company that employed the divers who saved him.

A faithless view of the world says that small things can destroy us.

But the Bible tells us that small things are woven into God's larger story of rescue and blessing.

So how do we journey through life with confident hope when the world seems so fragile?

We do what Abram did.

We take the next faithful step.

Not because we know the future, but we because we know the God who holds the future.

And stepping into God's new future looks like trusting God with the parts of your life that you cannot map out.

It looks like letting go of the illusion that you or I can control every variable, because we can't.

It looks like choosing obedience even when the path ahead is unclear, believing that God's promise is stronger than your fear, watching for the small moments where God is already at work and stepping into those.

Just as Abram stepped into a land he had never seen, you and I are all stepping into a week that we cannot predict.

But the God who raised Jesus from the dead is already there.

Your future is not fragile.

Your life is not random.

Your story is not at the mercy of chaos.

You are held by the God who brings blessings out of brokenness, order out of confusion, and resurrection out of death.

Remember that you are called out of the old, called into the new, called into a future that only God can give you.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Dear Jesus, we thank you for coming into the world and changing the direction of all creation.

We thank you for the life that you we have with you now.

We thank you for the forgiveness and the healing that you are doing in our soul.

We also thank you for the promise of complete and full salvation in the life to come.

When you heal and restore us and all creation, and we get to live with you forever in the new heaven and earth.

Bless us, Lord, and help us to be a blessing as we follow you.

In your holy name we ask this, and all God's people said.

Amen.

If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to support the work that we are doing at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church of leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus, please go to WGLC.org slash donate.

Any gift that you would like to give will be greatly appreciated.