The Blessing: Settling Cities, Building Altars (Andrew Meher)

Andrew Meher: And today we're going to look at how we begin to operate in God's blessing in our world today, by looking at the first story of Abraham, or at this point in the story, he's called Abram. So let's read this together: Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 9. It says this: 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 has 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. Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moray at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. And so he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and I on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord, and called on the name of the Lord. And then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Lord Jesus, as we come under your word this morning, we do believe that you speak to us through it, Jesus. And that your presence is here with us. And so we just ask, God, that you would open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our hearts to understand and receive what the Spirit is saying through. this text today. In your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen. ⁓ As we we come here to chapter twelve of Genesis, We we've now come to the second of two main sections of the book of Genesis. The first section, chapters one through eleven. The second section is twelve through fifty. And by the way, as I I mentioned, and I think an email went out about this as well, ⁓ if you are interested in doing a deep dive through ⁓ the book of Genesis, we're gonna it's not gonna be a regularly occurring thing, but there's gonna be some sporadic times throughout the sender s ⁓ throughout the summer when we kind of complete some big Chunks of Genesis, some different sections that I'll we'll send out the word to anyone who's interested in coming together and just kind of doing a deep dive to answer all the questions we are not answering on Sunday mornings. So the first one of those we're gonna do is actually Wednesday, July 1st in the evening. ⁓ there'll be an email going out this week about it. And ⁓ the the location is TBD depending on the weather. ⁓ and so we will put out more information, but I've had a number of people ask if we could do that, and so I wanted to. To let you know that that is going to happen. And the first one will be on Wednesday evening, July 1st. But here we come to Genesis chapter 12. As I said, we've closed out the first of the two main sections. And in the first section. Of the story, as we mentioned, we talked about creation, and we also last week talked about the story of the Great Flood, or Noah and the Ark, as it's sometimes called. And there's other stories that are in those first eleven chapters, and we call that primordial history. The style of writing in those first eleven chapters, the kinds of stories that are being told in those first eleven chapters are very much kind of larger than life stories in a lot of ways. And they are they are written. In to sort of mirror similar stories in the surrounding cultures to the Hebrew people. But it's done in such a way to point out how the God of the Hebrews, the God of Scripture, is vastly different than the gods who are served and worshipped by the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and others. So, in many ways, what we've encountered in chapters 1 through 11, and even more specifically in chapters 3 to 11, has just been a Big description of how bad the problem of evil has gotten in the world. These chapters show us just kind of how deep and muddled our sinful nature goes, and that we really cannot escape it. If you remember, last week God, after flooding the earth, he said, I won't flood the earth ever again, even though every inclination of humanity is evil from childhood. How many of you want to encourage your your kids at your next birthday with that on their birthday card? You've been evil from childhood. This is but this is an honest summation of all of us. This is not to say that some of us are not this way. It's to say, folks, we're all in this together. It's it's a mess. This is the human condition. The blessing that was given to humanity in Genesis chapter 1, the grace that humanity still is receiving from God to be blessed, has as a result of sin become horrifically distorted. And each of chapters 3 to 11 in Genesis has shown the problem get worse and worse and worse and worse. And worse. Even after the flood, like we talked about ⁓ last week, ⁓ there's a story of these people that come together and they decide they're gonna build a great city. You might notice the story of the Tower of Babel. And in that city, they decide to build this tower, and they say, Let's build a tower that reaches to the sky, or in some translations, reaches to the heavens. Now, whenever you see a reference to that, especially in the Old Testament, what they're saying is, Let's be like the gods. In fact, let's be gods ourselves. Let's reach up to where they live, and we will be there too. Now, in a sense. There is something good about wanting to be like God, isn't there? This is what God said in Genesis 1. Let us make humans in our image and in our likeness. God actually, in some sense, wants us to be like Himself. This is true. And this is true in the New Testament as well, to be like Jesus, right? But sin has distorted the way this happens. And so all of us, along with all of humanity, are constantly trying to be like God on our own terms. We ignore our limits, how much time we do or don't have. We try to do too much. We often try to grasp for money or possessions or fame or accomplishments much more than what God has given us. And then we live with this inherent lack of trust that kind of plagues humanity. We have this mistrust that I need to kind of ⁓ figure out and get what I need on my own terms because I don't know if God really is good. And I don't know if God really can be trusted. We don't know if God really will bring the blessing offered in Genesis 1. So we have to take charge of the situation and we'll just figure it out on our own, God. Thank you very much. This is what's happening in Genesis 11, right before the text that we just read this morning. The people decide to build a great city and a tower to the heavens to be like God. They say, so that the people will not scatter, they say. And they also say, so that we can become famous. You see the ambition there. Let's do this so that we can be really famous and that we can keep the people from scattering. These words are implying a couple of things that are really important for the human condition and naming what's going on in our hearts. They want to be in control of the people. The people that are saying this want to be in control of everyone because if if the people scatter, they won't be able to keep them under their thumb. Therefore, let's do a big building project so we can keep everyone busy and keep them here. There's an implication here that there's forced labor involved in this activity. This wasn't necessarily a great cooperative human effort. There were some people that were in charge and they were telling everyone else what to do and keeping them ⁓ under their control. And they also wanted to do this so that they could become famous. There was a ⁓ power grasp here, trying to be like God and receive blessing on their own terms. Well, what happens? God comes down and scatters them. God frustrates their project and provides out of the frustration of that a surprise blessing. Everyone starts speaking these different languages and they don't understand each other, and so they scatter all over the world, which if we remember this is part of the original blessing. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Don't all congregate in one place. Fill the earth. Spread out. This whole world is for you. But now we have this kind of blessing that's come out of it. Cultures have divided, and humanity can't control one another in quite the same way. These various languages and cultures are now only able to be truly united by the God who made them. Now, what's sort of implied in the story leading up to Abram here is that we now have a situation where things have gotten so confusing and so unraveled that there's now these various nations and peoples scattered throughout the world, and they have no clue of the God who gave them their various blessings. They have no idea. And they have no knowledge that they are supposed to be created in God's image. And so they have this innate sense that there's something great that they're supposed to do because they're created for it, but they have no idea how to frame it. And so everyone does what is right in their own eyes. How is God going to rectify this problem? His blessing's supposed to continue to be at work through humanity, right? That's what we've been learning about the first two weeks here. So so how is he going to work amongst amongst a humanity that's even more fractured than ever? It's like things went from pretty bad with Adam and Eve's disobedience, right? To whoop, got worse, their kids are killing each other now, to now we've got a flood that's destroying everyone, and I gotta start over, and then all of these people think that they can be gods and they're trying to control everyone, and now we have to scatter them. It's just gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. Have you ever found yourself in a season of life where you thought it couldn't get any worse? And then all of a sudden it got worse. And then you're like, okay, now it can't get any worse. But then guess what happened? It got worse. Anyone ever been there and had a season like that in life? Maybe you're in that season this morning. I've had seasons where I thought I had finally hit rock bottom and then the bottom fell out from underneath me and I just kept falling. Sometimes it it was a mess I created through my own sins. Sometimes I was experiencing the consequences of other people's sins and mistakes. Sometimes stuff just happened. Either way, I know that when I'm in that place where everything seems to be getting worse and worse and worse, I feel like I'm getting farther and farther from the promises and the blessings of God. It's incredibly tempting for my type A personality to just try and fix everything. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It's tempting to say, I think I'm gonna have to step in because God doesn't know what he's doing right now. Do you go into panic mode in those seasons? Do you do you want to hunker down when everything feels like it's been stripped away? We feel the temptation to try and I just need to consolidate some kind of sense of control over my life right now because it's so chaotic. Do you feel that? I I think that's often how we operate when things keep getting worse and worse and worse. We pray things like, God, just just let me get my life under control a little bit, and then we can move forward with what you want me to do. God, let me just settle in here for a little bit so so I can I can feel like I'm blessed again. I gotta I gotta get just back back in the back in the mindset. We we often, as I said earlier, equate blessing with a sense of comfort and security, and we think about blessing in in terms of our safety. But we know this is not what the scriptures teach, even as Jesus said, Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted, and so on. There are not descriptions really of comfort in these blessings, but instead these blessings point to a way to live that is in keeping with God's blessing. So, with the introduction now of Abram into the story. We see this very, very different attitude of walking in God's blessing being demonstrated. At least it's very different from what I would want to do in this kind of a situation. Walking in God's blessing, we see here in Abram's story, requires from us a tremendous amount of discomfort. Someone say Amen. Everyone's like, nervous laughter. We're gonna talk about nervous laughter next week. Let me show you what I mean in the text here. When I say this, that God's blessing requires tremendous amounts of discomfort. God says to Abraham, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. One translation says, Did you know that the same words that the people of Babel spoke about becoming famous, God actually says to Abram, the people of Babel say, Let's make ourselves famous. And God says, No. It's not how this works. But then God turns around to Abram and says, I will make you famous. But here's why this is particularly interesting, because we love this. I'll make you a great nation, right? I'll bless you. I'll make your name great. I'm going to make you famous. Here's what's really interesting about these first two verses in the Hebrew grammar, all of these blessings that God says He's going to do for Abram, that He's going to be a blessed nation, all these things, they sound great. The Hebrew grammar, the tense is contingent. What does that mean? None of that will happen unless something that's prior to it in the sentence happens first. Are you following me? This blessing, this famous fame-making, this greatness, it's contingent upon what came right before it in the sentence. Verse one shows us what it was contingent upon. God says to Abraham, Go from your country. From your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. You see, just before chapter twelve began, the very end of chapter eleven, after God had scattered the people at the Tower of Babel and everything. Just before that, Abram had was actually living in Ur, which is in modern day southern Iraq. That's about where the Tower of Babel was supposed to be located. And Abram and his father Terah, along with their homes, they had actually already left there. And the the text says at the end of chapter 11, they were on their way to Canaan. They were going to leave those who were grasping for power, trying to do blessing on their own terms, but then chapter eleven ends saying that Terah, Abram's father, settled in Haran. He stopped short. Of where he was meant to go. And many commentators actually think that Terah was called by God first, before Abram, to leave the land of his fathers and go to a new land that was being promised. But Terah settled in Haran. Now, chapter 12 opens, and Abram is invited to do what was laid out for his father. God began promising Abram something that was only available to those who were unwilling to settle. But for Abram to receive that, he would need to do the exact opposite of all of the people around him. While everyone is trying to settle and consolidate and secure and find safety, what God was calling Abram to do was to wander. Abram would need to lead a life of following God to places he had never been before. He would need to make a regular habit of going to uncomfortable places. How do you respond when God calls you to uncomfortable places? How do you react when God asks you to step into what is not only uncomfortable but unknown? How do you react when God asks you to step into not only what's uncomfortable and unknown, but probably looks foolish to all of the people who are settling around you? You're called to leave what's familiar and within your control, what seems logical, what makes sense. This is not an easy thing to do, is it? No. If we know what we're really being asked, we truly understand that this is not an easy thing to do. I mean, surely the upside could be amazing, right? For Abram and for us. Think about it. To be blessed like Abram, to become a great nation, to be famous. Obviously, you and I read Abram's story like a Monday morning quarterback, and we're like, Abram, of course, go. You're about to be blessed. Everyone knows about you. But honestly, how many times does God prompt you and I to do things with great blessing available to us, and we quickly ignore or dismiss it with, ooh, it's not the right time. I have a lot going on in my life right now. This is too scary, God. Or I need a little more certainty. I need a little bit more of a plan in place to know what this is gonna be, God. This often makes me think of ⁓ of George Mueller. Anyone know who George Mueller is? He he was ⁓ a man born in Germany, moved to Victoria in England, and he started an orphanage in the city of Bristol, and and he did not know what he was called to there except to care for the poor and abandoned children in the city of Bristol. They had no money for the orphanage, they had no regular income or a way to be sure that they were going. To be able to take care of the children. Many of us would say that's irresponsible and foolish, and we want to call the authorities on people like George Mueller, don't we? But he knew he was called to this, and he, his wife, and a small team of people established this orphanage, and he walked in the unknown and discomfort daily. And saw incredible provision every day, financially, food, material, clothing for the children, for themselves, furniture, everything they needed. Like you and I think it's scary to live paycheck to paycheck. George Muller said, Hold my beer. There's one story absolutely amazing. I never forget it whenever it's such a cool story about him. There's one morning in particular where they didn't have any milk for breakfast, and it was, you know, it had all the fats in and stuff because they didn't do what they do today with it. So it just had all of the stuff in it. So it's like really like filling for the kids, right? And they're like, man, we don't have any milk for the children for breakfast today. What are we gonna do? They get a knock on the door, and the milkman and his wagon were outside. His wagon broke down, the wheel axle snapped right in front of the orphanage. And he's like, ⁓ my. milk's gonna go bad. What am I gonna do? Maybe the orphanage can use it and I'll just give it to them. This happened over and over. He'd get a random ⁓ bit of money from a pastor friend somewhere or from a church that was praying for them. The baker would decide to be up all night and make extra loaves of bread for the children. Constantly, this would happen over and over. Walking and wandering through the unknown and the uncomfortable, by walking in this kind of faith, George Muller, over the course of his life, he and his wife and their team served over 10,000 children. And they went with no plan. Just a conviction that God had called them, and they were not to settle where they were, but they were to follow him into the unknown. How many of you would respond to God's call like George Muller did? How many of you would respond like Abram was asked to and leave everything that you know? For example, how many of you would ⁓ respond if God asked you to empty your retirement account and give it to people in need? How many of you would intentionally take a lower paying job because it would provide you the opportunity to step into the places and with the people that God has called you to minister to? Or maybe you're called like in the early days of our denomination, there there were stories so many stories of people who would sell their diamond engagement rings and jewelry to help people in need. around the city of New York, old dock workers, Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants in the late eighteen hundreds. The Lord needs this more than me, they would say. Okay, that's that's a really these are really big things, right? But maybe for you right now there's a small step that feels really risky and unknown. Maybe God is calling you to make space for practicing your discipleship and following Jesus in some simple ways that seem daunting to you. Maybe it's making space for your prayer life. Maybe it's it's engaging in the Christian community that's before you and making space for your life to be with people, to follow Jesus. Maybe there's a commitment to serve your neighbor on a regular basis, no matter what you will miss out on in the rest of your life. All of these things carry with it the risk of missing out on something, big or small. It's often hard for us to do even these simple things that God calls us to, and I believe it's because most of us are living like the people of Babel or living like Abram's father Terah. We are worried about our future. We're worried about our own security. We're we're fearful about our own fame and control of our lives, and so we would prefer to settle and build a comfortable city rather than to strike out into the unknown. Yet we see this unknown is set before Abram. If he chooses not to settle, the blessing is incredible. What would Abram do? I love what our text says. It just simply says in verse 4, Abram went as the Lord had told him. Abram went as the Lord had told him. That's it. It wasn't Abram went after he did a risk analysis and thought the outcome was likely to be pretty good. It wasn't Abram when after he ensured he has at least three months of income set aside to cover any mistakes. And and we'll see if God can work in three months and we'll be okay. Abram chose to follow just because the Lord had told him. And he would spend the rest of his life as a perpetual pilgrim, as a traveler without a home, journeying and trusting that God would do as he promised. And as Abraham continued to obey, God continued to reveal. And it just started in tiny ways. As we see as our story continues, Abram makes the journey and he ends up in the land of Canaan. He finally stops at a particular place, and the Lord meets him and he says, This is what I'm gonna give to your descendants. This is it, you're here. So what did Abram do? Was he like, yes, all right, we're here, let's set up shop, let's settle in, let's build our city. We'll kick everyone else out that's here. Hey guys, this is mine now. You can all leave, go somewhere else. No, if Abram had done any of this, this would have been a half-cooked obedience. This would have been obedience halfway. It would have been the kind of obedience that I've made the mistake of making, where God says, this is what I want to do in your life, and then I just try and go and do it on my own terms. Never asking, God, how do you want me to learn how to receive what you're doing in my life? God, how do you want me to prepare for what you are going to do in my life? I just jump right to, this is my type A thing, guys. I just right jump right to, okay, God said I can I'm supposed to do this, I'm just gonna start doing it. Abram could have interpreted God's promises as permission to just go on a military campaign if he wanted and wipe the Canaanites out from the land, or he he could have ⁓ just started to build a city called Abramsburg or something like that, you know. Instead, here's what Abram does. I thought this was amazing. He ends up moving two more times, just in the text that we read. In fact, he just the entire story of Abram, he's just moving from place to place, wandering around the land. Abram never settles the land. Even though God said, this is all gonna be yours. Abram never settles the land despite having a promise from God. Abram never tries to settle. He is willing to wander. Abram has been promised this land, but he does not presume that it is his to take. He trusts that God is going to give it to his descendants. But this raises a very, very big question for you and I because how many of you are like, wandering's hard? The unknown is hard. Are we just supposed to be stressed out of our minds all the time, living in uncertainty? Is that what God's calling us to? No, of course not. I want you to notice that Abram does not settle a city. But Abram does build altars. Abram does not settle a city, but over and over again, throughout this text that we read and throughout the entire story of Abram, he will build altar after altar after altar after altar, and at each altar he will continue to call on the name of the Lord. The thing that would anchor Abram in his new wandering lifestyle would not be settling a city that he could be in control of. But building an altar to the God who can't be controlled. Abram was never willing to trust in his own abilities or his own creative ⁓ cleverness or control or construct anything. He never trusted in any of that. He only trusted in the Lord. Abram was able to spend the rest of his life as a pilgrim in a foreign land amid constant uncertainty and change because he was anchored in God. Because he continually built off altars to seek God, to be in God's presence instead of trusting his own cleverness. Brothers and sisters, are you settling? Are you conserving and holding back out of fear of being out of control or being uncomfortable? Are you trusting in your own cleverness and your own abilities? Are you afraid that maybe God is not good and maybe he can't be trusted? Is that keeping you from obeying where God has called you to go? Are you trying to settle a city, or are you obediently building an altar? Is your foundation your own strength? Or are you so trusting in God's promises that it will look like wandering to the world around you? Everyone's gonna think you're crazy. Are you trusting that Christ has truly supplied us with all we need through the Holy Spirit? That we lack no good thing, and that the Father, as Jesus said, is pleased to give you the kingdom which has everything that you need. Did you know as Christians, we're actually called to be pilgrims and wander in the land, just like Abram did? Jesus says in John's Gospel that we are to be in this world, but we are not of this world. And 1 Peter even says that we are exiles and foreigners in this land. We are not to settle here. We are waiting and we are longing for that city which we will settle when God's city comes from heaven and dwells with us forever. This is what the writer of Hebrews tells us 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. Which city are you living for? Have you accumulated money and resources or used your time and talents or cultivated relationships or career ambitions in such a way that it has been about settling your own city for now? That city will not last. You and I can settle a city now and lose it later, or we can build altars in the unknown and risky places and gain God's heavenly city for eternity. as a a new church here in the highlands of New Jersey. We have to ask ourselves collectively too, are we going to try and build our own city here? We could make our brand really great. Or are we going to be a community that is continually building altars out of obedience and faithfulness to God, looking forward to a city whose foundations and architect and builder is God? Can we refuse to settle? And can we set up altars of faithfulness all over the highlands, trusting that as we obey the Lord, the Lord will bless us so we can be a blessing to our neighbors? This is our call and this is our mission as God's people here in this place. Would you stand with me as we pray? Prepare for communion.

Genesis 12:1–9 Genesis 12 · chapter mention Genesis 1 · chapter mention