Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Encouragement in the Call - Genesis 11:27-12:20(Jan 8) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Let's pray, Church.

Father, we were grateful to proclaim the greatness of your name.

And Lord, we praise you because in every way you're worthy of it, God.

Lord, all of our of our hallelujahs, all of the reasons that we could account for, of reasons you are to be praised and worthy of it, God, we could never begin to scratch the surface of how worthy of praise you truly are.

And so, God, as we enter into this moment and open up your word, God, we pray that the praise would not stop here, God, but that you would receive the praise of our hearts as they bow in submission to you.

And they hear your call to your servants and respond in faith, God.

And so speak to us, Lord, and find here hearts that are eager to listen, hear from the living God, God who created this world, and the God who now sustains it.

And so, God, we lift you the praise and we continue to praise you now as we open your word.

God, we pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You guys can grab your seat.

And as you grab your seat, you can take your Bibles and open them up to Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

We uh are heading back to our series in Genesis as we consider God's faithfulness to the people of Genesis, and consider as a church how because of God's faithfulness, we can be encouraged that He'll be faithful to us.

I shared with you last week just how encouraged I am as the pastor of this church by the fact that God has been overwhelmingly faithful to us.

The elders of this church decided that kind of our theme for the year would be God's faithfulness.

And we just feel that God has been so overwhelmingly faithful.

When people ask me how things are going at the church, my answer is this.

There's nothing that I can think of but blessings.

Nothing I can think of but blessings.

God has been so overwhelmingly faithful to our church.

Now I want to just share the uh specifics of one area of faithfulness, and that's in our giving.

I'd shared uh about a month and a half ago that our church was pretty far behind in a budget deficit.

We were about$73,000 behind in our uh budget, which for a church of our side is is very significant.

And so we urged you as a church to commit to the Lord and to give faithfully, and so many of you responded and gave so generously.

And I just want you to know that I praise the Lord for you.

I'm so thankful for the way that this church rose up to the occasion and gave.

Uh we were about 73,000 behind.

And uh we ended the year in a deficit of 10,000, which is incredible.

So that's something to praise the Lord for.

Now, some of you are thinking, 10,000, that's still in the red.

However, we also sold a truck that we were no longer using, which actually puts us above about 10,000.

And so we're praising the Lord that we got through a transition year, a difficult year for our church, and God was overwhelmingly faithful to respond to our need.

God has called us as a church to be a witness to Newmarket and the surrounding area.

God has called us as Christians, committed to this church, to be committed to His Great Commission.

We are a church that is committed to making disciples.

And I hope as you uh hear this news this morning and as you have experienced over these last few weeks, that you are encouraged in the call that God has given to you to be a disciple-making Christian.

We have every reason to be encouraged.

But as we open up God's word this morning to Genesis 11, and specifically we see the call of one faithful man, the call of Abram, I want to spend this morning thinking about the many reasons we have to be encouraged and the call that God has given to each one of us.

See, God has called you.

If you're in Christ, to be a Christian is to be called by God.

Now, I don't mean called in some sort of like mystical way, as though you sort of have this divine will for your life that you must follow as though it's like a path or a target that you must hit, these specific things that you must do in terms of who you must marry and what school you must go to and what job you must do and what promotion you must take and what friends you must hang out with.

As I talk about God's call, I'm not talking about it in the sort of mystical sense.

I'm talking about it instead in the sense of that Jesus has called all of his disciples to be followers of him.

Jesus has called all of his disciples to take up this commission that he has given them to make disciples of all nations.

If you're in Christ, you have been called by Jesus to follow Christ, to be a Christian, to be committed to the Great Commission, to live as Christ calls you to.

All of us who are in Christ are called.

And as we consider Abram's call and the call that God gave to him, I want us to find encouragement in the fact that the God who is moving in our midst in this church was the God that was moving in the midst of Abram's life.

And he's the God who's moving in the midst of our life as we commit ourselves to his call.

And so I want you to see this in the call of Abram.

I'm going to read this whole text together.

Genesis 11, 27 to the end of chapter 12.

This is what Moses writes for us.

Now these are the generations of Terah.

Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife, Milkah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milkah, and Iscah.

Now Sarai was barren, she had no child.

Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, and his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran they settled there.

The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country, and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and to him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Huron, and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brothers, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go out to the land of Canaan.

When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moray.

At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west, and I on the east.

And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord, and Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Najeb.

Now there was a famine in the land.

So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.

And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife, then they will kill me, but they will let you live.

Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.

When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful, and when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and for her sake she he he dealt with Abram, and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, and male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh in his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this you have done to me?

Why did you not tell me she was your wife?

Why did you say she is my sister, so that I took her for my wife?

Now then here is your wife, take her and go.

And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

As we consider the call of Abram, we in our walk with Christ, in our following of Christ, have every reason to be encouraged in our call.

I want you to see this first, this first encouragement, as we consider Abram's call.

The first encouragement is that in your call, your weakness is required.

Your weakness is required.

This is the first thing you must understand about the people that God calls.

There is one common similarity in all of the people that God calls throughout Scripture, and that is that those people are called in weakness.

When God considers who to call, he's not looking for the strong, he's not looking for the abled, he's not looking for the healthy, he is looking for the weak.

The more desperate your situation for him, the more you respond to God's call with, there's no way I can do this, God.

That is not wrong person, wrong address, that's not my call, the more God is eager to use you.

And so isn't it interesting as we think through scripture and the people that God calls, that God most often calls people who are too weak to accomplish the task that He's calling them to.

Think about Moses.

Remember when God calls Moses?

God says to Moses, Go and tell the Hebrews, my people, go and tell them this.

And what does Moses say?

I can't speak.

I can't talk to Pharaoh, I can't talk to my people.

The very thing you are asking me to do, I cannot do.

Think about David standing in front of Goliath, not even considered by Samuel.

A small boy in the presence of a giant who believes in the glory and might of his God, used in his weakness, used in his littleness, used in his boyhood for the glory of God.

Finally, think about Jesus.

What do they say about Jesus?

Oh, he's just a carpenter.

He's just a carpenter.

He can never be a king.

We knew him as a boy.

And so it is that the people that God uses, the people that God calls, the requirement of them is weakness.

And so as we open up to Abram's life and see his call, what we see is that Abram is called in weakness.

I want you to notice here in these last verses of chapter 11 a number of ways that Abram is called in weakness.

Notice that Abram is living in a world that is plagued with death.

So then in verse 28, Abram's very own brother, likely his oldest brother, Haran, dies.

You know, we called Genesis the book of beginnings, and in many ways it is the book of beginnings.

But since Genesis 3, one thing that we've been constantly reminded of is that it is also the book of endings.

It really is a book that is quite morbid.

As there's death after death, we're reminded of the reality of death, and we're reminded that despite the fact that we are mortal, despite the fact that uh one in one of us are going to die, God desires to use us.

Just because Abram is human doesn't mean that God is unwilling to use him.

Notice also the weakness of Abram's humanity.

Look at verse 30 with me.

This again is a verse that should be a gasp verse for us.

As Moses reveals to us that Sarai was barren with no child.

Now, in a few verses, God is going to call this man and his wife to be the father of many nations.

I need to know from the very outset that this is an impossible call.

It is impossible to be the father of many nations.

It's impossible for Abram to take God's command to be fruitful and multiply, to respond to that command in obedience because his wife is barren.

This is an impossible situation.

This would be a massive problem for Abram, where really your worth as a your net worth as a person is not the amount of wealth you've accumulated, but really your family.

How many people do you have to carry on your lineage?

And Abram looks at his situation, looks at the call that God has given him to be the father of many nations, and you can believe that Abram would look at his wife and look at himself and his uh age and say, God, this is impossible.

This situation's impossible.

You've called the wrong person.

The call to be fruitful and multiply, the call to be a father of nations, it must be for someone else.

It cannot be for me, God.

I'm too weak.

I can't do it.

But God loves to call his people to the impossible.

That's the business that God is in.

God is in the business of calling his people to do things that are seemingly impossible.

And God's word to Abram and God's word to us is that this is where we need to be.

Church, this is a great application for us.

You need to set yourself in a position where you are serving in a way that is beyond your strength.

You ever get to a place in your Christian life where you're you're kind of in this place where like it's you're you're able to do what God's called you to do?

You figured it out.

Maybe it's your serving in a ministry.

For me, I just experienced this quite recently.

There was a kind of like a gear shift in that for eight years I had been serving the Lord in youth ministry, and God had been using me in that capacity, but in some ways, I wouldn't have said this, but it had begun to be a little bit comfortable.

I had people around me that were serving and leaders that were using their gifts, and in my weaknesses, the Lord had provided leaders to support that ministry.

And then came the day that I heard God's call, the potential to come and do ministry at Redemption New Market.

And you can imagine my expression.

God, I don't know if I'm ready for this.

Well, there's something that amazing that happens when you hear God's call to do something that you aren't sure you're able to do.

What happens is God calls you to that thing and he gives you the power that you need in order to do that thing.

And my question for you this morning is have you grown comfortable in the way that you are serving the Lord?

Are the tasks that God has for you to do so big that as you consider them, you're like Abram, who says, God, I just can't do it.

Because when you're in that place, you are in a good position.

You are in a good position where the only choice you have is to lean into God.

The only choice you have is to say, God, you're gonna have to do this for me.

My prayer is that as a church, we never find ourselves in that comfort.

My prayer is that as a Christian, you never find yourself in a place where you say, Okay, God, I got this.

I'm on cruise control, I got this.

I love what Crawford Laritz says.

He says, do not pray for tasks equal to your power.

He says, pray for power equal to your tasks.

And as we take this truth to heart, it changes the way that we live.

It changes the way that we serve, doesn't it?

The way that we serve the church, the way that we serve our family, the way that we serve unbelievers in our life.

Because all of a sudden we're no longer looking for the call that is comfortable.

We're no longer looking for the task that we're like, yeah, okay, my resume, I've got this under control.

Now we're looking for the task that stretches us.

Now we're looking for the thing that is too great for us, that's too hard for us, knowing that God calls us to the impossible to make what is impossible possible.

It changes the way you serve, it changes the way you evangelize.

You ever been afraid to share the gospel because you just don't know if you have the answers?

Church, that is the perfect place to be, to share the gospel.

You know the person who shared the gospel with you?

You know they didn't have all the answers.

It's likely that that person wasn't an apologist, wasn't like a PhD in defending the Bible.

It's likely that all that they had was faith.

Faith that God would use what little they had to offer for greater purposes, for your salvation.

And so it is with your evangelism.

As you share, God will use, even though you don't have all the answers.

Maybe someone in here does, but I certainly don't.

God's promise here is that he's going to do the impossible through the weakness of his servants.

I want you also to notice what Abram is called from.

God uses us in our weakness and that he calls Abram really from a position of strength to a position of utter weakness and dependence.

What we find at the end of verse 27 is that Abram has it pretty good.

Look at verse 31.

It says, Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, son of Haran.

For that that language shows us that Abram is living in the care of his father.

This is how families worked.

If a father were to have sons, their sons would live with them until the death of their father.

Some of us fathers are pretty glad that things have changed since then.

Pretty eager to get our family out of the house.

However, in these days, these families really lived as family units.

And the sons in their families would live under the care and protection and resource of their father.

And so in verse 31, we find that Abram in every way is living under the security, comfort, and care of his father as he's being taken around by his father and led by his father.

Notice that Abram is also living in the comfort of at least a home.

And so it says at the end of verse 31 that they came to Haran and they settled there.

In every way, verse 31 shows us that Abram, he has a pretty good.

And yet God is going to come to him in the comfort of being in his father's care, in the comfort of at least having a place to settle down to him.

God is going to come to him and call him from these comforts.

Look what he's going to say in chapter 12, verse 1.

He's going to say this go from your country, from your kindred, and from your father's house.

God would call Abram from a position where Abram might look around and feel like he's strong to a position where Abram realizes that he is weak.

So it is in our life.

Was it not the problem that Jesus faced?

He called his followers to deny themselves, to take up their cross, and to follow him.

And what was often the response to that?

Well, okay, Jesus, I'll follow you.

Just let me go bury my father.

Jesus, I'll follow you so long as I don't have to sell everything that I own.

Jesus' call is always too great because it calls us from our comfort, it calls us from our perceived strength into the weakness of depending on Him.

Again, this is God reminding us that it is good when we feel that we can't do what God has called us to do.

Like we can't bear the weight that God is putting on our shoulders right now.

Because in that moment, we only have two options.

When God calls us from our comfort, when God calls us from our security, when God calls us from the things of this world that we love so greatly, we only have two options.

The options are despair or dependence.

And I wonder if some of you right now are in a moment where under the suffering that God has placed you in and in the place of life that you're in, you feel like you're suffering, you feel like you're bearing a great weight, you just feel like life is hard.

And the question for you is this will you live in despair with that weight that you bear?

Or will you live in dependence?

This is the great blessing that God gives us.

He calls us from often positions of strength where we say, God, I'm just content to live here forever.

God, I'm comfortable here.

God says to us, just like he says to Abram, go.

Go.

And we say, God, how?

God, how am I going to leave the comfort of my home?

How am I going to leave the comfort of my securities?

God says, go.

Because your weakness is required.

Your dependence is required.

I want you to notice this also about the call that in your call, obedience is instrumental.

Your obedience is instrumental.

This is the second thing I want you to see from Abram is that your obedience is instrumental.

Now remember the storyline of Genesis.

The storyline of Genesis is really the story of God's people falling, and from that very moment, God committing to crush the Head of his enemy.

You remember in Genesis 3:15 that God said to the serpent that he would crush his head, that the serpent would bruise his heel, and really the story of all scripture erupts from this place of how is God going to do that?

Genesis 3:15

God has a mission to accomplish in this world.

From the very moment that Adam and Eve sin, God has a mission of redemption to accomplish.

God has a purpose.

It's not as though, as some theologies kind of suggest, that God's just kind of floating along according to the whim and movement of man.

No, God has a mission.

And the question that we need to continually ask as we read scripture, if we're going to get a sense of the story of redemptive history, the question that we constantly need to ask is what is God up to?

How's God gonna accomplish his mission?

How is God gonna do what he said he was gonna do?

Like here is this great, amazing God who created the universe, who spoke the universe into existence.

How is he gonna establish his plan?

How is he gonna accomplish his purpose?

And I want you to notice here and be encouraged by this truth that God will use Abram.

God desires to use people to accomplish his purposes.

This should kind of like blow our mind, because I think there's probably a thousand other ways God could accomplish his purposes.

This is like coming to an NHL game with a Timbitz hockey team.

God is using the weakness of Abram, God is using the weakness of people, God is using our weakness as people to accomplish his purposes.

It's important for us to understand.

Abram's life and his obedience will become instrumental in accomplishing God's purpose on earth.

Now I want you to see what God's purpose is.

This is very important.

In fact, in all of Genesis, maybe even in all of Scripture, you can make this argument, this is one of the most important passages there is.

It's been said that all of Genesis so far has looked forward to this point.

And in reality, all of Scripture looks back to this point.

The storyline of Scripture really becomes how is God going to fulfill to his people the promise that he gives to Abram here.

The promise that God gives to Abram is threefold.

First thing that God will do through Abram, the first blessing and promise that he will fulfill is that Abram would be given a land.

So look at what God says to Abram.

He says, Go from your country, your kindred, and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

Remember that God establishing his own land, that he would be the sovereign ruler of, was always the plan in Scripture.

You remember in Genesis 1 to 2, as the garden was created and then Adam and Eve were planted in that garden to live there, the plan was that they would work it and keep it.

The plan was that in Eden they would expand the borders of the garden until eventually the garden covered the whole earth.

The land was always in God's plan.

But when Adam and Eve failed, they were taken out of the land.

And the question from there would be: how would God restore the land to his people?

And God says this to Abram I'm gonna give you a land, and you are to go to it.

Second blessing that God would give to Abram was that he would be the father of many nations.

This would be the promise given to Abram that through him many nations would be born.

Now again, remember that this is an impossible task.

And this was really the narrative of Abram's life.

How is God going to accomplish this impossible task in the life of Abram and Sarah?

And God has called into this impossible task, but look at what he says in verse 2.

He says, I'll make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and to make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

There's an important truth that needs to encourage our hearts in these verses.

See, Abram is encouraged that in this impossible task to be made into a great nation, to have many children, that number so great that it could be considered a nation.

Abram's encouraged with this verse that it's God who's going to make his name great.

It's God who's going to make his name great.

It's significant that we read this because just a chapter ago, if this were fresh on our memories and we hadn't taken a few-week break from Genesis, we would remember that in Genesis 11, look there with me, in Genesis 11, 4, the people had decided to make a great name for themselves.

You remember that?

When they built the Tower of Babel, they decided, hey, we can make a name for ourselves.

So it says in 11, verse 4, it says, Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

Church, this is what God wants us to hear this morning.

This is what God wants us to consider this morning is how do we acquire for ourselves a great name?

How do we acquire for ourselves a great name?

And here it is, God is showing us that your name will be great so long as you look to the Lord.

Isn't that so true in our own experience?

We know people, and we've even been sucked into the journey of trying to build a great name for ourselves, haven't we?

Whether it's in business, maybe it's business, you decide, well, I'm gonna keep getting that promotion.

I want them to change my my name on the wall, the plaque on the wall.

I'm gonna build myself higher and higher and higher in this company.

And then retirement day comes, and maybe there's a cake to celebrate you, and the day's over, and what happens the next day?

When you go home, someone's filled that position.

And very quickly, you're forgotten.

Maybe we try to build a name for ourselves in our parenting.

If I'm gonna be a parent that changes out, I'm gonna be the best of all parents, okay?

I don't know if anyone in this room is saying that, I'm certainly not.

But we can try to create these accomplishments in our parenting and try to make a name for ourselves in our parenting.

But then what happens?

Well, hopefully your kids remember you for their entire life.

But then your kids have kids and you're the grandparent, which is great.

But then that those kids have kids and you're the great-grandparent.

And suddenly you're a little more forgotten.

And I don't know how many of you could could even list the name, let alone the life, character, and accomplishments of your great-great-grandparents.

See, even in our parenting, when we try to build a name for ourselves, we are quickly forgot.

And what God is doing here by telling Abram that he will make him a name is reminding us that our legacy weighs upon the fact that we are regarded by God.

The question for you is how not how great of a name have you built for yourself.

The question for you is, what name is God building for you?

What are you doing in your life that is for the Lord?

This is the most important thing.

This is the thing that is of lasting value.

It's the things that you do for the Lord.

Now, the first blessing is land.

The second blessing is that he would be made the father of many nations.

The third blessing and promise that is given to Abram is that he would be a blessing to the nations.

And so look what it says in verse 3.

God says, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Now imagine Abram in this moment.

Abram is one man with his brother Lot, his father's just died, and what God is saying to Abram should absolutely blow Abram's mind as it does blow our mind.

God's telling Abram, you are gonna be a nation that is so great that one day all the other nations are gonna look to you for help.

This is the promise that's given to Abram, that he would become a nation that would be such a great nation that all the other nations of earth would come to him for blessing.

All the other nations of earth would see what's being accomplished through Abram's family and turn to him.

It's a wild promise, but it's a promise that Abram believes.

And so notice that not only does God promise Abram these things, Abram also responds in obedience to these promises.

Often people will look at these verses and say, well, these verses are all grace, has nothing to do with Abram, everything to do with God.

But I want you to notice here that Abram has a role.

Abram is told to go.

You see that in verse 1?

Abram's told to go.

He says, Go from your country.

See, these promises, the fulfillment of them, depend on Abram's obedience.

If Abram's gonna experience the fulfillment of these promises in his life, he must go.

You know what's so amazing about this story?

I thought about this week.

Maybe we make this, these two verses, like the verse of our church.

I love these verses.

Look what it says in verse 1 of chapter 12.

Go.

And look what it says in verse 4.

And Abram went.

Church, if there is anything that can be true of your life at the end of it, let it be that God called you to go, and the response to that call was as simple as that, that you went.

I pray that at the end of my life, what can be said of me is that God called me to go, and my response was that I went.

This is the way it should be, shouldn't it?

When God calls us, when we're convicted about something that God has said in Scripture, well, then the response, there should be no other argument beyond that.

Our response should be like, okay, God, you said it, I'm gonna do it.

I was so encouraged this week as I met with a woman and a woman in our church who very much uh expressed this faith currently and look back on our life and can say, This has always been my faith.

God's word says it, so I'm going to believe it.

That should be the way it is, but isn't it so true that so often when it comes to God's word, it's more like a wrestling match that God has to have with us.

Like God, God, you better accomplish a lot in me if I'm gonna listen to your word.

God, you better show me the way if I'm gonna listen to your word.

You better give me a firm foundation to stand on if I'm gonna listen to your word.

Notice that with Abram, he has almost nothing to go on.

All of these promises seem so absurd.

That he would be a nation, that he would be given a land when he really has nothing.

And that he would be a blessing to all the all the surrounding nations.

All of these things seem impossible.

All of these things could be responded with an argument, and yet look at the faith of Abraham.

Abram went.

Abram went.

The truth that this reminds us of is that our obedience is instrumental.

Because Abram went, God is going to fulfill these promises to him and to eventually his children.

And the application for us that we need to hear is this that God doesn't need to use you.

God could have accomplished all these things apart from Abram.

But in everything that God calls you to, he desires to use you.

I mean, that that should really be a mind shift change for us, shouldn't it?

Mindset shift.

Our acts of obedience fulfill God's purpose in this world.

You know the problem is, I think so often as we consider our Christian life, as we consider following Christ, we kind of treat our following of Christ kind of like picking a movie.

You guys ever have that in your household?

The trouble of picking a movie or two people, or maybe sometimes even more.

Sometimes it's the whole family.

You guys gotta decide what movie you're gonna watch.

And so what do you do?

You open up Netflix, it's the worst thing you can do.

The best thing you can do, father, is take this application, go in there with a mission and a plan.

But then this is what we do.

We we open up maybe Netflix, or we look at all the movies and we say, Well, what are we gonna watch?

Well, this person wants to be entertained, and this person wants to watch a romance, and this person wants to watch an action movie.

And we ask this question: what is gonna make me feel the best?

What is gonna fill me with the most joy?

And I think as many of us consider serving God, we we bring kind of like this movie-picking mindset to it.

What's gonna be the best for me?

And so we may even pick or think about those things as we pick a church.

We think questions like this.

Well, well, how's this church gonna serve me best?

How's the worship gonna be according to my tastes?

How's the preaching gonna make me laugh as much as I want to, or not laugh because it's so serious?

How are the people gonna treat me?

We think only about the things that will bring us joy.

And what God wants to change in our Christianity and the way that we follow Christ is to recognize this.

It's not so much about how you are filled up, of course that's important.

What's more important is how you can be used for God to accomplish the purposes that He has for you in this world.

See, God desires to use you.

It's important that we say this because often we kind of have this mentality in church, like, okay, God's gonna use the pastor, you know, he's preaching the gospel.

That's just not the way it is.

If you're called in Christ, God's desire is to use you for his purposes.

His purpose is not just to put you in the right place so that he can pour into you, pour into you, pour into you, pour into you, pour into you without you being a vessel for his work in the world.

And church, this should encourage you.

Your life, your life is an offering to God.

God's desire is to use your life to accomplish his purposes.

That means that every act of obedience that you take, every step forward you take in faith, is a step that God uses for his purposes.

God can do it a thousand other ways.

God can save people by writing in the clouds with the gospel.

God doesn't need us, and yet he desires to use us, he desires to use our obedience.

And the question that should be on our hearts is why?

Why does God want to do this?

Why would God want to use our obedience when so often it's so weak, so often it's plagued with failure?

Well, it leads us to our next purpose, our next point.

It's because our purpose is praise.

God wants to use our obedience as an instrument to accomplish his purpose, his promise, fulfill his promise, because our purpose is his praise.

And so notice what Abram does.

When Abram leaves, when Abram listens to God's word to go in verse 4, he goes, but notice the very first thing he does.

He says in verse 6 that he passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moray.

At that time the Canaanites were in the land, and then God appears to Abram and says, This, to your offspring I will give this land.

So what does Abram do?

He builds an altar to the Lord.

The very first thing that Abram does is praise God.

And this answers the question for us: why does God want to use it?

Why does God want to use your act of obedience of obedience?

Why does God want to use your faith to accomplish his purpose?

Because when he does that, he gets the praise.

And what God is accomplishing in Abram's life as Abram responds in obedience is the fulfillment of his praise.

So the very first thing that Abram does is praise God.

And you need to know, church, your purpose is praise.

The reason you exist is praise.

You exist to bring glory to God.

Everything that God calls you to, every step that you take in faith is a step that is taken in order to give the glory to God.

See, Abram's really teaching us about our life.

He's teaching us that our life is really a life of praise, that we are on this earth for no other purpose than to bring glory and praise to God through the way that we live in obedience to Him.

And so Abram is really teaching us about praise.

Well, what's he teaching us about praise?

Well, Abram's teaching us here that we praise not just at the destination, but our life is to be a praise to God in the waiting, in the journey to the destination.

See, what you'd expect is when should Abram praise God?

When should he give God the glory?

Well, maybe once God has fulfilled his promise to Abram.

And some of us reserve our praise for God for that moment.

Like, okay, God, I'm gonna praise you once everything's great in my life.

Once you accomplish all my prayer requests, okay, then I'll be praising you.

Abram's teaching us that praise is not reserved for the destination, but praise is to be lifted to God throughout the whole journey.

I was thinking about this this morning as I drove here.

You know, it's it's a horrible way for a preacher to line up his schedule that the worst hour of the week is the hour before he preaches.

But because I still live in Oshawa and haven't moved to Newmarket here, I have about an hour drive with three kids that I don't know if they like schedule this out beforehand, but they seem to always make sure that two-thirds of them are crying.

And so as I'm, you know, preparing, I spend the morning preparing my heart to preach, ready to just share God's word with people, you know, 15 people are gonna be saved, 30 people are gonna sign up to serve after I preach this sermon that God has for me, and then I get into the car and it's an hour of just me trying not to yell at my kids and hoping that we can just make it there, and I'm still a Christian by the time we've made it to Newmarket.

And as on our way, part of the hard thing is that every five minutes, one of the other things the kids schedule is to ask, are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

How much longer until we're there?

Oh, 30 minutes.

Is 30 minutes a long time?

It's a medium time.

You got to categorize all these things as parents.

And our kids, they hate the journey.

And I wonder how many of us are like that with God.

It's not about the journey that God has us on, it's about the destination.

God, I'll praise you once we get there.

You know, I got a few prayer requests on my sheet that you've been holding out for a long time, God, and I'm ready to pour out all the praise.

I'll be at every prayer night once you do that thing for me, God.

And Abram's teaching us that praise is to be offered up all through the journey.

That we praise God in the waiting.

This is the hardest thing, isn't it?

When God hasn't accomplished that thing in your life that you're waiting for him to accomplish, and yet he calls you to praise.

And yet in the waiting, so often he gets so much more praise.

Because really, you're praising with nothing.

Nothing but faith and trust that God is going to be a good God, reveal himself again to be good to you.

And so Abram leaves with nothing.

He's got no land, no blessing, no family.

And yet he praises.

Because praise isn't a destination, praise is given to God in a journey.

I want you to notice also that praise is not an afterthought, but our primary purpose.

And so notice that the very first thing, before Abram even builds a tent, before he even builds a home for himself, he builds an altar to the Lord.

You can imagine like some logical reasoning with Abram.

Hey, Abram, maybe figure out your tent for your family first, then build an altar to the Lord.

But Abram says, no, because praise isn't an afterthought.

Praise is my primary purpose.

I'm out here on the way to Canaan because I am here to praise God.

I wonder if the same thing is true of your own life.

Is your primary purpose praise?

See, for so many of us, God's praise is reserved kind of for like this morning of the week, or maybe like a few minutes in the morning, we reserve God's worship for those moments.

But Abram is teaching us that God's worship is to be a continual offering to Him.

God is worthy of all of our worship.

It's the primary purpose that we live for.

And so let me ask you this is praise the primary purpose.

If people were looking outside in your life, would they see that your primary desire in life is to bring exaltation and glory to God?

There's another application I want to draw out of here, and that's at the one of the most important things that you can do as a Christian.

And I speak this from this text, but also from the wisdom of having done years in ministry.

One of the most important things Important things that you can do is before you find a home, you find a place to worship.

Before you settle into a home, you find a place to worship.

I have experienced so many people who, for the glory of cheaper real estate, have moved away from places to a city where there just is no church.

Maybe there are churches, but there's just no healthy church.

No church that they can become a part of and begin to grow.

And I've seen people's faith absolutely shipwrecked because they really move to an island where there's no place to gather with other believers who are like-minded.

And let me just put that before you that before you find a place to settle, you need to find a place to praise.

It's the most important thing is that you are connected to a healthy church.

Abraham, he doesn't praise as an afterthought, he praises as his primary purpose.

This is our purpose, is to praise.

I want you to see it in the last verses of this text.

One more encouragement.

And that's that your failure is redeemed.

Your failure is redeemed.

You see, maybe we're thinking about all these things, we're thinking about the fact that God calls us in weakness, we're thinking about the fact that God calls us to be obedient, we're thinking about the fact that God calls us to praise.

And our overwhelming feeling is that we could never do it.

We look back on life and we've failed in all these things, haven't we?

We've never been perfectly obedient, we've never offered perfect praise.

We've done nothing but, in many ways, fail.

And it's significant that in verses 10 to 20, Abram experiences failure.

Well, what's the failure experiences?

Well, Abram in this text really fails in two ways.

One is that God's command is in verse one is to go from his country and his kindred and his father's house.

But you'll notice that in verse 4, Abram still has Lot with him.

And in many ways, this is a failure of the command Abram's given to go to separate himself from all the comforts that he's experienced.

He brings his brother Lot with him.

It's significant that next week God will deal with that failure and he'll separate Lot and Abram.

But there's another bigger failure.

The bigger failure is that in these verses, remember that famine drives Abram and his family down to Egypt.

And what was Abram to be to the nations?

We just read it in verse 3, didn't we?

Abram was supposed to go into the nations and be a blessing.

Instead, out of a desire to save himself, out of a desire to care for himself, Abram enters into Egypt, the bold-faced lie that Sarai, his wife, that had been given to him by God, is not his wife, it's his sister.

And we read how Pharaoh takes Sarai as his own, but then comes to realize that this is not Abram's sister, this is his wife.

And so look at what happens in verse 17.

Instead of being in the blessing that he was called by God to be to the nations, look what happens in verse 17.

The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

I want you to notice something else important here.

What happens in these verses really parallels what happened in the garden in Genesis chapter 2 and 3.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

In fact, we could point out many things that are similarities.

The writer wants to draw our attention as we read these verses in verse chapter 12, verses 10 to 20.

He wants to draw our attention back to the garden.

Notice the similarities in stories.

Both of these stories involve food.

Adam and Eve are driven from the garden because of an abundance of food there.

And Abram is driven to Egypt because of a famine.

Notice that both of these stories involve deception.

The deception of Adam and Eve being deceived by the serpent and thus trying to deceive God.

And the deception of Abram with Sarai.

Notice that both of these stories have the wife in a critical role.

As the husband is called to respond in obedience, the wife plays a critical role in the disobedience.

Notice also that both of these stories have an interrogation, where in Genesis 3, God interrogates Adam and Eve.

In Genesis 12, Pharaoh interrogates Abram.

Not only do these share similar themes, but if we were to look at the language, especially you would notice this in the original languages, they share similar vocabulary.

And we could create a long list of the ways that both of these passages share similar phrases.

But the idea is this that as Moses writes this passage, what he's trying to do is draw our attention to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

See, the details are the same, but notice something significantly different.

The outcome is reversed.

In Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve sin before the Lord, everything they have is taken from them.

They're expelled from the garden, outside of God's presence.

They lose everything.

Only thing they gain is the curse of death.

But look what happens with Abram in verse 20.

Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

And so then in chapter 13, we find that Abram left Egypt very rich.

Verse 2, chapter 13, says, Now Abram was very rich in livestock and in silver and in gold.

Abram and Sarai are given everything.

What is this telling us?

Is this telling us that God condones sin?

Well, the answer to that is no.

But it is telling us something significant.

That there's a difference between Adam and Abram.

And the difference is that for Abram, he will be blessed despite his failure.

His failure will be redeemed.

Adam's failure, it expels him from the garden.

But for Abram, even though he fails, the blessing that comes to him is dependent not on his own obedience, but on the blessing that God had given to him, of the covenant that God had entered into him to bless him, to make him the father of many nations, to make him the blessing to all the nations.

This is the reality that we stand in.

The truth that we stand upon is that if you are in Christ, your failures cannot jeopardize the blessings that are reserved for you in Christ.

That is an amazing gospel truth for our hearts to hear this morning.

That there is no failure so deep if you are in Christ that can cast you outside of the love of God.

Why?

Because the blessing reserved for you in heaven is no longer dependent on your obedience.

Now it's dependent on the obedience of God's own Son, who obeyed perfectly.

Jesus lived in perfect obedience.

So that despite your failings, despite your sinfulness, the blessing would be reserved for you.

Why?

Because it's not a blessing that you ever earned by yourself.

It's a blessing that was given to you by God.

And indeed, the story of God's people is a story of failures redeemed.

We sit in this place and often we know intimately our failures, don't we?

We know the failures we've experienced as parents, the things we've said that we wish we never said, the failures we've experienced as people, but we often bear the weight of our failures.

As we look at this verse, we're reminded that God is a God who redeems failures.

You know what heaven is going to be filled with?

The praises, the hallelujahs, the song of all God's redeemed failures.

This is what God is in the business of doing.

He calls failures to him so that he can redeem their lives for his praise and for his glory.

And that so from their lips they can offer him all the praise because he deserves all of it.

Church was praying, Father, we do give you the praise.

And God, thank you that you have called us to such a great and weighty calling that we could never respond to in our own strength.

God, to be obedient to you.

And yet, Lord, we are reminded of our sinfulness, reminded of our weakness, reminded of our many failures.

God, we're amazed that you would desire to use us.

And so, God, we pray that the response here would be that of Abrams, Lord.

Knowing that you desire to use us, knowing that you still call us, despite our weakness, despite our failure, despite our sinfulness.

God, would you find in this place hearts that are eager to give you all the praise for not casting us off because of our sinfulness, but to committing to us all the more and sending us your Son Jesus Christ.

And so, God, we give you this praise.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

You stand and sing with me.