God's Promises to Abraham | Promises Made, Promises Kept | Pastor Joe Coffey

Genesis chapter 11, verses one through nine.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east,

they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there.

And they said to one another,

come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.

And they have brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

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.

And the Lord came down to see the city

and the tower which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, behold, there are one people.

And they have all one language.

And this is only the beginning of what they will do.

And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down in their confuse their language,

so that they may not understand one another. Speech.

So the

Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth.

And they left off building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel.

Because they are the Lord confused the language of all the earth.

And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face

of all the earth.

Genesis chapter

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

12, verses one through three.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, 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.

And I will bless you and make your name great.

So that you will be a blessing.

And 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.

Everybody, good

morning and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.

We're really, really glad that you're here.

Thanks for coming and being a part.

Are we kick off our new sermon series.

This week we're going to spend the next ten weeks

in the Old Testament looking at the life of Abraham.

And we're calling this series promises Made

and Promises Kept.

In 2010, a movie

came out, called Night and Day.

It was a comedy, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

It's a cute movie.

I in the movie, Tom cruise plays

a CIA agent, as usual.

And then, Cameron Diaz is an unsuspecting kind

of civilian who gets roped into the adventure.

And when she realizes the danger she's in, she wants out.

But Tom cruise is trying to explain to her that she would actually

be in more danger if she tried to get out than if she stayed in,

and what he was saying to her.

Annie, there's one scene where he's trying to explain attorney saying,

listen, you need to know that your chances of survival

are higher with me than without me.

With me, without me, with me, without me.

That's what these two passages of scripture are about,

that we just had read to us,

about being with God or without God.

It's actually the theme of the Bible.

It's the theme of your life and mine.

So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn to Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

If you're going to use one of our Bibles in the pews,

and I can tell you it's on page seven, it's really early on.

And then, Genesis chapter 12 will also be looking at that.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

That's on page eight. Right.

And here are the three points that I want to pull out of these two passages.

I want to talk about the rebellion

of the call and the promise.

The rebellion is really life without God.

The the call is an invitation to be with God.

And then the promise is what life is like

when we're with God, when we surrender to him.

At first the rebellion, this is what it says in Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Let me read it again.

So it's fresh in your mind.

It says, now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plane

in the land of Shinar and settled there.

And they said to one another, come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.

And they had breakfast, stone and vitamin for mortar.

And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower

with this top in the heavens, and let us make a name

for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to

see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, behold, they are one people,

and they all have one language.

And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing

that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down.

And they're confused their language, so that they may not understand one another.

Speech.

So the Lord dispersed them

from there over the face of the earth, and they left off building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel,

because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth,

and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The building of the Tower of Babel

is kind of the the last chapter

of a rebellion that started in chapter three.

In Genesis chapter three, Adam and Eve come into contact with Satan,

and Satan tempts them to break relationship with God,

and he does that by kind of selling them

on the idea that true freedom, true flourishing, will only happen

if they take control of their own lives and of their world.

And so Adam and Eve, they

they buy into that lie, they break away from God,

and they take control of their own lives and of their world.

And then chapter three to chapter 11

is kind of chronicling the slow

spiral into darkness,

into greater and greater

oppression, greater and greater corruption, greater

and greater violence, deeper and deeper brokenness.

There's a law in physics that is commonly

referred to as the law of entropy.

The law of entropy is basically that things

in the physical universe go from order to disorder, that

everything disintegrates over time

unless there's an intervention.

I used to do, marriage seminars, and sometimes I would use, a cup of coffee.

I'd have a cup of coffee up here, and I would tell the couples,

when I poured the coffee in there 40 minutes ago, it was hot.

Now it's cold.

That's the law of entropy.

It's not just for the physical world.

It's for our relationships that over time, relationships grow cold.

And that's why

married couples who have a good marriage talk about working on their marriage.

What they're saying is we we add energy back into the system,

otherwise it will slowly deteriorate over time.

The law of entropy is a

law that cuts across physically, emotionally, spiritually,

and what we see in chapter 11

or chapters three through 11 is the further people get away from God,

the more they descend the civilization disintegrates.

So God decides to intervene,

and he does so by, confusing their language.

And that stops the project.

And the reason that stops the project is because

if the language is confused, you ask your buddy for a hammer

and he looks at you all of a sudden confused and hands you a washcloth,

you're not going to get much done.

And that's what happens.

And then the people find other people that understand them.

They understand they form little tribes and they disperse throughout the earth.

So it's a weird story for a number of reasons.

But one of the reasons is that it seems like God is kind of threatened

by the idea of human beings

forming a civilization and leaving him out.

I don't think that's the case.

I don't think God was threatened.

There's an author named William Golding who wrote a book in 1954

that became a classic.

The title is Lord of the flies.

You might have read it when you were a student.

The story is about some school age boys who get

on a on a deserted island, and they're shipwrecked

on a deserted island with no adults.

And the story is really how things just

devolve into greater and greater darkness,

greater and greater violence, greater and greater brokenness.

And at the end of the book, there is a rescue.

A ship comes and rescues the boys.

And you, you kind of realize that if if there had not been a rescue,

then there was no.

And no bottom to the violence and the darkness that was going to happen.

That's what God's doing.

God is initiating a rescue

because there is this slow

devolving into greater and greater

corruption, greater and greater violence.

And he begins this rescue with a man named Abraham.

And that brings me to the second point, which is the call.

So into the darkness, into this spiral,

into confusion of a world that is moving away from him.

God speaks.

And this is what God says.

Now the Lord said to Abram,

go from your country and your kindred in your father's house,

to the land that I will show you,

and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you

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

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.

All right,

so God calls to Abraham.

Now I call him Abraham.

Later on his name will be changed to Abraham.

In chapter 17. God changes it.

Abraham means father, Abraham means father of many.

And that's a promise made and a promise

kept that will cover in a few weeks.

But Abraham is actually introduced at the end of chapter 11.

His father's name is Terah, which means moon,

and they come from a his family comes from a place called

ur of called Dia, which is a center of lunar worship.

So Abraham,

belongs to a family that worships the moon.

They're idol worshipers, and God calls to Abraham.

Okay, there are three things that I want to point out about the call of God.

First, God initiates the call.

God initiates the call.

The call of God always changes you

in responding to the call of God will always involve surrender.

I first God initiates the call,

right?

There is nothing about Abraham that is particularly impressive or outstanding.

You know his family worships the moon and his dad was named after that.

God, there is nothing in Abraham's life

that makes you think that he is special.

You know, there's a commercial that's running right now.

It's, about financial planners,

and a woman is in a doctor's office, and she's becoming increasingly alarmed

at the doctor's cavalier attitude and his obvious lack of medical knowledge.

And finally she says to him, are you even an orthopedist?

And he looks up and he says, no, I'm a Sagittarius.

Okay.

And the point of the commercial is, if you don't

trust your money to somebody who's not qualified, right.

That was that's the exact opposite of the call of God.

God never

calls somebody because he needs them,

because they are so qualified that he

he wants them to be a part of what he's doing.

If you're here, that means that God

has called you

or is calling you, whether you realize it

or not, and God has initiated that call.

It's much more like when when I was a kid and we'd go out in the schoolyard

for recess and we we're going to play kickball or football, whatever.

The two best athletes would be captains, and then they would

begin to pick their team, and they would pick the next best person

each time until everybody was picked.

They were always be a couple of kids that were never picked.

It's much more like God being a captain

and looking at the kids that were never picked and said saying,

I choose you, I pick you, I will carry this team.

I don't need you on this team.

Listen,

you are here because God initiated

a call to you, not because you're particularly qualified,

but because he says, I want you,

I call you.

That's the first thing.

The second thing is that the call of God changes you.

In chapter 11, we find out that that Abraham's family

was moving from earth called Dia.

They were on their way to Canaan.

They stop at a place called heron, and they just.

And the rest of the family says this is good enough.

We're going to settle here.

And God says to Abraham, not you,

not you, you, you keep going, right?

The call of God is very personal.

He calls Abraham

my point is, it's not enough

to be a part of a family that believes in Jesus is strong enough

to be a part of a church that believes in Jesus.

You have to hear the call yourself.

My. My kids grew up in this church.

My kids grew up in a Christian home.

They know Christian morals. They're good people.

That does not make them Christians.

They are not Christians unless they have heard God's call to them

personally and responded in the calls.

God always changes you.

The very first word that God says to Abraham is go,

you go.

This is that.

If you say that you've become

a follower of Jesus, but there's no real change in you

from when you were not to when you are, you probably are not a Christian.

Christianity, always being a Christian, always changes you.

God comes to Abraham where he is, but he doesn't leave him where he is.

He says go.

The final thing is that the call of God response

to the call of God always, always involves surrender.

Trust.

But if you're going to trust someone, that means you surrender control to them.

Oh, for my 10th anniversary

with my wife many years ago, I decided to surprise her.

I took her to dinner down in canton.

That was not the surprise.

But during dinner at the end of dinner, I said, hey, I have a surprise for you.

I'm going to take you away for a long weekend.

I've arranged for the kids to be taken care of.

I packed a bag for you.

Our flight leaves in an hour,

and she said, where are we going?

And what did you pack?

Right.

Now, I was like, don't worry about it.

It's going to be great,

trust me. Right?

But just say, no, I'm not an idiot.

I had her her sister pack the bag.

I had no idea.

But the fact.

My gift to her was this.

Hey, I have plans for you.

They're great plans.

Her gift to me was to say,

okay,

okay, I will trust you, I will surrender.

It's not an uncommon for somebody who's thinking about becoming a Christian

to ask questions like, okay, if I become a Christian,

what will have to stop doing?

What will I have to start doing?

Do I have to quit living with my boyfriend?

Do I have to start going to church?

You have to start reading my Bible.

Do I start giving whatever it is?

And those are the wrong questions.

But because

God is saying, I'm calling you,

it's like he's reaching out his hand

and he's saying, I, I want you to trust me.

To really follow Jesus means to say to Jesus,

okay, okay,

whatever you want me to do,

I'm in whatever you want me to stop doing,

I'm in.

I surrender to you.

And Jesus.

Then, of course, says,

I have great plans for you.

And that brings me to my third point, which is the promise.

This is what God says to Abraham.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred,

and your father's house to the land I will show you,

and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you

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

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.

God says,

Abraham, if you will hear my call, if you will respond,

if you will surrender to me, this is my promise to you.

I will make your name great.

It's interesting to me that you're in this story, that

the Tower of Babel is about a group of people

that get together and they say, let's make a name for ourselves.

What they're saying is, let's make our name great.

We don't know a single one of their names.

No one does.

But everybody knows Abraham.

Every Jewish person knows Abraham.

Every Muslim knows Abraham.

Every Christian knows the name

Abraham.

Because God said to Abraham,

if you will trust me, surrender to me.

I will make your name great.

But in the Bible it's no way.

He's not only saying, I'm going to make your name famous or renowned in the Bible.

Whenever it talks about name, it's talking about character.

Like when it says the name of the Lord shall be praise.

That's talking about the strength of his character.

What what God was telling Abraham is this

if you trust me, surrender to me,

then I will make you the very best version of yourself,

and the very best version of you will be a blessing

to the people around you and to the whole world.

And then in Matthew

chapter one, verse one, this is where it begins.

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David,

the son of Abraham.

God uses Abraham to bring Jesus

to the whole world.

That's the blessing.

Do you see?

Do you see the same invitation

God makes to each one of us,

to you and to me?

God says, and that continue them of you

being in control of your life, in you surrendering to me.

The closer you get to surrendering to me, the better version of yourself

I will make your name great, and the best version of you

will be a blessing to everyone around you,

but can also be a blessing to the whole world.

Henry David Thoreau has a famous quote.

The famous quote is the mass of men

live lives of quiet desperation.

What he's saying is that the the vast majority of humanity

have no idea, no purpose.

And that is just not true.

If you are a follower of G, it's not true.

If you are part of this church.

If you want to know why we are so passionate in this church about

what happens outside of these walls, why we are passionate about 10,000 people

within a ten mile radius coming to know Jesus in the next 30 years.

While we are passionate about planting churches all over Northeast

Ohio, about participating in global missions around the world,

this is why.

Because we are people

that want to be passionate

about moving on that continuum.

I want to trust God.

I want you to trust God more.

This week than you did last week.

To surrender more next week than you did this week.

And each time we take a step to that side of the continuum,

we become a better version of ourselves.

And the very best version of you

will be a blessing to everyone you're sitting around

will be a blessing to your family,

but we'll also be a blessing

to the whole world because God will use you.

Use us

to bring Jesus

to the world.

Do you see?

With God,

without God,

with him, without him.

That's the promise

God makes to you with me.

I will make your name great,

and I will make you a blessing to all the world.

Promises made, promises kept.

Would you pray with me?

Father in heaven.

Thank you that you did not,

just allow us on a free fall into darkness

and just

decay.

But instead, you decided to intervene to rescue us.

And you did it by bringing Jesus into the world.

But you also did it by calling us to yourself.

Initiating a call.

I pray for every person here.

I pray for those who are hearing the call for the first time, that

this could be the day that they surrender and say,

I want to be with you, not without you.

And for those of us that know you, I pray that this would be a day

we will take a step closer to you, surrender more to you

so you can fulfill your promise

to us, to make our name great, to make us a blessing

that the whole world may be blessed through us.

Thank you.

Thanks for your grace. Thanks for Jesus.

We pray this in his name. Amen.