God's Faithfulness When We Don't Get the Break | Promises Made, Promises Kept | Pastor Jimmy Kozy

Genesis thirteen one through 18. So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him into the Negeb. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there, Abram called upon the name of the Lord.

And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together. For their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. At that time, the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land. Then Abram said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen.

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zoar.

This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley and Lot journeyed east. Thus, they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward. For all the land that you see, I will give to you and to your offspring. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which were at Hebron.

And there, he built an altar to the Lord. Well, hey. Welcome to the West service at Christ Community Chapel. It's so great to see you today. My name is Jimmy Kozy.

I'm one of the pastors here. So glad to be with you today as we are continuing our series called Promises Made, Promises Kept, where we are looking at the life of Abraham, whom for the rest of this message we will refer to as Abram. And Abram's story begins with a promise. If you recall, Abram's family are idol worshipers, he worships the moon, and one day God interrupts him and says, Abram, start walking. I'm gonna bless you.

I'm gonna give you land. I'm gonna give you people and I'm going to make your name great. But if you've ever been promised anything, you know that there's always a gap between the time a promise is made and when that promise is delivered upon. And the only option that we have when we're in that gap is to trust the one who made the promise. And that's exactly where we find Abram today.

So if you've ever wondered whether or not God is for you, if you've ever questioned his plan or whether he's trustworthy, if you've ever wondered why sometimes it seems like it's harder to go down the path that God wants you to go on than it might be to go down another path. This passage is for you. That's where Abram is today. Because he experiences three things that are helpful for all of us when it comes to what it means to trust God. He experiences the need for trust, the challenge of trust, and then the assurance of trust.

And those will serve as my outline for today. We'll start with that first one, the need for trust. I love to be in control. I like to make decisions, I like to make plans, I like to be the engineer of my own outcome. I don't like anybody else to control my destiny.

And one of the times in my life where I was an outcome engineer extraordinaire, where I was at my best, was the night that I proposed to my wife Emily. I will never forget this night. So Emily and I had been married for almost fifteen years and so I was putting together a plan to try to propose to her. It started with purchasing a ring. So I got a ring and I took that ring and I wrapped it and then I put a bigger box on it and I wrapped it and I went progressively bigger and bigger until it was unrecognizable so that it looked like this big mystery gift.

And then I started looking for an opportunity. So at the time, Emily was living at her parents' house here in Hudson and I became aware of a weekend where her parents were gonna go out of town to visit one of her siblings that lived out of state and I thought that this is my opportunity. So what I did was I snuck into their garage and I stole the spare key to their house. You might call that breaking or breaking and entering. From my perspective, it seems like more of a gray area.

So I arranged for one of her friends to take her out. They went out shopping and got out of the house, and so I took my stolen spare key and I went in and I was gonna cook a really nice meal, I was gonna make dessert, I was gonna have everything set and surprise her when they got back, and then I would ask her to marry me, and hopefully she would say yes. So I had everything all set, precisely planned. I had the meal ready, I had the stuff ready, but there were a few things that night that I was not able to account for. The first of which is that Emily and I have very different relationships with the concept of time.

I don't know if you've experienced this with your spouse. Then the second is that it was February and so, while they were out a big snowstorm hit and so all that led to me sitting in this kitchen, sending unanswered texts, watching food get cold on the counter, and seeing my perfectly precisely prepared proposal, that's a lot of p's, fall apart. And what I learned in that moment was that despite my best efforts to engineer the outcome that evening, there were factors that were going to impact that evening that I had no control. My control was an illusion. And of course, Emily eventually got there and I eventually asked her to marry me, and after a few rounds of negotiation, she agreed.

But I think we are all familiar with the concept of outcome engineering. I think this is something that we do. We're always thinking about how to arrange our desired future. This is why we deposit withdrawals from our paycheck into our four zero one k. This is why we get our kids into extracurricular activities to build their college resume for admissions.

This is why we try to eat healthy. This is why we try to grow in our careers. A lot of the things we do, we do with our future, with our outcome in mind that we would like to engineer. Well, Abram is also an outcome engineer that I wanna show you. Let me read for you from verses eight through 10 of chapter 13.

Here's what it says. Then Abram said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.

And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zoar. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Now when you first read this, it sounds like Abraham is releasing control, but I don't think that's what's actually happening. And in order to see that, I think we have to gather some of the context of what's going on around this. So Abram's story starts with God calling him and he starts walking and he ends up with Lot in the land of Canaan.

And God makes it clear to Abram that the land of Canaan is the land that God has in mind for him. So much so that Abram actually builds an altar there as a reminder, this is the land that God has for me. So they're in Canaan and a famine arises. They start to run out of food and that forces them to leave the land and they have to go into Egypt. And in Egypt, we see Abram doing some pretty serious outcome engineering.

There's this peculiar scenario that arises where Abram is in Egypt and now the Bible says that Abram's wife Sarai was very beautiful. And so Abram is in Egypt and he's scheming. He's nervous that because his wife is so beautiful, Pharaoh, who is the king of Egypt, is gonna become jealous, is gonna kill Abram so that he can take Sarai to be his own wife. So here's what he comes up with. He says, he decides he's gonna go and lie to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh that Sarai is not his sister, but that or not his wife, but that she is his sister.

And then in that way he can save his own skin. Can you imagine what that conversation around the dinner table was like between Abram and Sarai? How was your day, honey? Well, I was out tending the goats. Oh, I had a meeting, with the king.

So he might at some point think you're my sister and try to take you as his own wife, so you might need to go along with that so that he doesn't kill me. And Sarah probably says, yeah, but now I'm gonna kill you, so what are you gonna do? So then they come out of Egypt and they end up in this event that you saw described today where Abram and Lot, they have prospered, their families have grown. It's to the point where they've realized they need to part ways. So they stand in front of the land, and to the east there's the land toward Zoar and it looks like good land.

It's green, it's lush, it's profitable, it's it's fertile. To the West, there's the land toward Canaan and it doesn't look as good. It's dusty, it's rocky, it doesn't look as good as the land to the East. And so Abram takes a step back and he says, Lot, you choose first. You take the land that you want.

And at first, that appears like generosity, but what I think it actually is is exacerbation. I think Abram is grasping for control of his own outcome and simultaneously becoming aware of just how little control he has over his own outcome, because the fact of the matter is Abram knows where he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be to the West. He's supposed to be in Canaan. He built an altar there.

That is his land. That's the land that God has directed him to. But Abram takes a step back, I think, in hopes that Lot will, by some chance, take the bad land so that Abram can head off into the land that he really wants. Because what's happening for Abram is he is coming to reckon with the fact that his control over his outcome is an illusion. And I think that that is also true for you and I, that our control over our outcome is not nearly as strong as we think it is.

Every single one of us is one phone call, one meeting with our boss, one diagnosis, one drop in the stock market away from the outcomes that we have carefully engineered for ourselves unraveling. And the more you become aware of your lack of control over your outcome, the more you become aware of your need to be able to trust God, and that's exactly what happens with Abram here. But that's easier said than done, which leads me to my second point, the challenge of trust, the challenge of trust. Let me read for you verses eleven and twelve from chapter 13. It says this.

So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley and Lot journeyed east. Thus, they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. So as I studied this passage this week, this was one of the moments that I could not stop thinking about. And the question that I kept asking was, what was this moment like for Abraham?

He has come all this way. He started walking. He's left everything he's ever known behind. Now he is watching Lot walk off into the green land, the better land, the profitable valley while he has to head into the ground that doesn't look as good. I wonder if he had some questions.

God, why did you bring me here? Are you really for me? Is this really what you want? Is your plan really good? Are you really going to bless me like you said you were going to bless me?

Abraham is experiencing something that I think we've all experienced before. I coach football at Hudson Middle School, seventh grade football. And because of that, that's forced me to keep up with some vernacular that you may not be familiar with because I spend time around twelve and thirteen year old boys. So there are terms that they use that to you would sound like gibberish, but to me, I know what they mean. These are terms like riz.

Have you heard of this one? Yes. Riz, he has. Riz is in reference to somebody who is skilled in their relationships with the opposite sex. So you might say as a noun, I exhibited great riz in my interactions that I described with Emily earlier.

Or if you wanted to use it as a verb, you would say I riz'd her up. Another one is bussin'. Bussin' is in reference to something that you think is really good. So you might say something like, wow, this cottage cheese and banana combination is busting. But the one I have in mind today is FOMO, and this is something, maybe it's a little bit older, it's an acronym, F O M O, the fear of missing out.

And I think this is something we've all experienced before. It's that sensation of, have I made a mistake? Have I made the wrong decision? If I had chosen differently, would my life be better? Did that person who chose a different path, was that actually the better path?

And I think that's what Abram is struggling with in this moment and I think that is the challenge of trust. The challenge of trust is this, what do you do when the path that God lays out for you seems like rocky ground and there is a green valley right next to it? How do you act? How do you respond? For Abram, this involves him sitting and watching Lot take the better land while he has to head into Canaan.

But this is something that we all experience in our lives as well. And trusting God is choosing to pursue the right kind of fear of missing out. It's choosing to pursue a fear of missing out on the greater blessing that God has for you, even if it might be more challenging, more costly, more difficult, or more painful in the short term. And that's where Abram sits today as he sits in Canaan. I envision him sitting by a fire.

The moon is out beckoning to him. In the distance he can see Lot's fires burning, he can hear their revelry, he can smell their food cooking, and I would guess in those moments he felt uncertain, he felt like he wasn't sure God was for him, and he felt like he was alone because he had chosen that path. And it's in that moment that God shows up with assurance. And that is my third point, the assurance of trust. Let me read for you from Genesis chapter 13 verses 14 through 17.

Genesis 13:14–17

It says this. The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward. For all the land that you see, I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I will give it to you.

So in this moment, Abram is sitting and God shows up and he says, Abram, get up, let's go for a walk. Just like he said at the beginning of all of this, get up, let's go for a walk. Let me show you the land. Walk through the length and the breadth of the land. Let me tell you all that I am gonna do for you.

Let me tell you about the blessing that I have for you. And here's what I think God is trying to communicate to Abraham. I think God is trying to communicate to Abraham that God's blessing for him is not material, it's personal. It's relational. God's blessing for Abraham is not about land, it's not about offspring, it is about God's personal and relational presence in Abram's life and in the life of his family.

It's about God acting on Abram's behalf. It's about God walking with him and being with him personally and relationally. God's blessing for Abraham is not about material gain, it's about personal presence and relationship. It reminds me of something that happened, early on in my marriage to Emily. So like I said previously, we've been married for about fifteen years.

And, when we first got married, I had also just come on staff here at the church. And at that time, I was working in our student ministry. And so simultaneously to that, I was taking seminary classes nearby. And so there was one particular Saturday that sticks out in my memory because I had an all day lecture for seminary, but on the same day that afternoon and evening, I had to get back here to Hudson to run an event for middle school students. So I was pressed for time.

Now I also had this really bad habit of playing with my wedding ring. So if you've ever been in a meeting with me, or a conversation with me, I do this all the time, I fidget. I play with my ring, I pull it off, I spin it on the table, I try to back spin it and get it to spin back toward me, all kinds of stuff. It's not a good habit. And on this particular day, I was sitting in this seminary lecture and I was doing just that.

I was playing with my ring, and I messed up and the world went into slow motion. I watched the ring fall off the table. It hit the ground just perfectly and started rolling. And I felt helpless and frozen as I watched it roll and then plink down an HVAC grate in the floor of that room. At this point in time, I started to panic because I had to leave.

I had to get back here because I needed to get here on time because that's really important to me. And so in that moment, I did what any loving and responsible young husband would do, I left. My logic was as follows. What was precious to me was not the ring, it was Emily herself. So if Emily had fallen down that great, you better believe I was going down after her.

But what was really precious to me was not the ring itself, it was what the ring represented, which was my and Emily's personal and relational presence in each other's lives. That we had made a commitment that we would be with and for each other. That's what the ring was. It was a representation of that. At least that's what I tried to convince her of as I drove back up to Hudson.

But that concept is what God is communicating to Abram here, That the true blessing is not land. The true blessing is not offspring. The true blessing is not anything material. It is God's presence in his life, his advocacy for him and relationship with him. God is saying to Abraham, get up, walk the land and see.

I am for you, I will be with you and your outcome is secure. Not because you have land or kids or offspring or money, but because you have relationship with me. But because of Jesus, that same blessing is available to you and I if we trust in him. Look with me at Galatians chapter three verse 29. It says this, and if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

What's that what that's saying is that the promise that God made to Abraham, I will be present in your life, is also available to us through Jesus. At the cross, Jesus came and he died. He stepped into human history, took on our sin and our shame and our brokenness, broke down the barrier between us and God so that we could have relationship with him, so that we could have forgiveness of sin. If you ever wondered whether God is for you, look what he was, his own son was willing to do at the cross for you. But God's word also tells us that if we trust in Jesus, God's spirit dwells within us and walks with us, that we are not alone, that his spirit is with us, guiding us, giving us wisdom, that God walks with us.

Then we also can know this, if we trust in Jesus, our outcome is secure. That whatever happens in this life, there is a day coming when we will be personally, relationally present with God, enjoying His love forever, that the ultimate outcome has been engineered on our behalf through Jesus. So if you're here today and you feel like you're facing the rocky ground, you're not quite sure where God is or what He's doing in your life, why He's asking you to take the path He's asking you to take, why it sometimes seems harder to follow Him than to do other things, you can have the same assurance that Abraham has, that he is for you. He demonstrated that at the cross when his own son died for you. He is with you if you trust in him through his spirit.

And one day, your outcome will be secure if you trust in Jesus. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you for the truth of Abraham's story and that you've given it to us to see. We thank you for the way that you work in his life and we also thank you for the ways that you work in our lives. Lord, we pray for the ability to trust in you, to know that through Jesus, you have won on our behalf, you have assured our outcome if we trust in him.

It's in his name that we pray. Amen.