Pastor
Steve Geiger Second Sunday in Lent
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Genesis 12:1-8
1 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.
2 “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.
3 I will bless
those who bless you,
and whoever
curses you I will curse;
and all
peoples on earth
will be
blessed through you.”
4 So Abram
left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five
years old when he set out from Haran. 5 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.
6 Abram
traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at
Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to
Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar
there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
8 From there
he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on
the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on
the name of the LORD.
Yes, Sir! Genesis 12:1-8
1. The plan challenges human understanding
2. The Planner blesses beyond human
understanding
From continent to continent, over oceans far away, there are hundreds and thousands of young men and women who are serving as seaman, soldiers, airmen and marines. No doubt there are many good words that come from the mouths of these heroes of our country. Perhaps there are two words that they use more than any.
Any guesses? Two words, “Yes, sir.” “Yes, sir,” when they are ordered. Yes, sir, when they are spoken to. Yes, sir, whenever their commanding officer gives an instruction. Yes, sir, even if they don’t understand.
There is a trust between private and commander. The one under authority trusts that the commander is asking for the right thing, even if at the moment it doesn’t make sense.
Are there times when you wonder whether your commander is doing the right thing? God is our commander. He gives us commands. He rules our world. Are there times when you’re wondering what God is up to? How could he permit this horrible thing to happen? Are you sure God wants me to do this, when that means I’ll have to give up this and this and . . . ? God, I don’t want to.
We don’t always say, “Yes, sir.” Our reason? “Well, I don’t understand. God’s plan doesn’t ‘feel’ right to me.”
But that shouldn’t seem to us unusual or a sign that God’s plans are bad. God’s perfect plans just naturally challenge human understanding. Look at Abram.
God’s plan for Abram must have gone against everything that Abram’s head was saying. “Abram, leave your land, your relatives, the place where you’ve been for years.”
No doubt he loved his land. He found joy in being close to family. He would have been happy staying where he had lived for years. God’s new plan didn’t make much sense. “Leave behind all that is dear just to obey you?”
What things that we love does God ask us to leave behind in order to obey him? If God has given you children, he may be asking you to give up your time and some favorite hobbies to care for them. Does that ever make you mad? For a moment do you ever wish you didn’t have children?
What things that we love does God ask us to leave behind in order to obey him? Do you like being lazy? Not that it is always wrong to relax, but as you look at your life, would you feel that you have absolutely no time to begin some personal devotion reading or praying? To do that, you know you’d have to give up some personal enjoyment. Do you ignore God’s request to leave things you love behind?
What things that we love does God ask us to leave behind? Do you easily think first of yourself? You have a friend—maybe even a husband or a wife—and you know how you can show love to that friend, but you don’t want to. You love doing what makes you happy. Letting that go to make someone else happy? Don’t think so. That doesn’t make sense. Do you hang on tightly to things you love when God says to let go?
Our way may make more sense. Our way contradicts God’s way. Instead of saying a simple, “Yes, sir,” we come up with “good” reasons for disobeying.
Or distrusting, when God’s promises are too general.
Has that ever bothered you? God promises that he will work everything for the good of his children. Has that ever bothered you? To say it another way, have you always found complete comfort and joy in that? Or do you wish that God would tell you more details so that it will be easier for you to trust him?
Abram didn’t get a lot of details. God told him, “I’ll make you a great nation. I will bless you. I’ll protect you.” Wow. What promises. But not much later, Abram was wondering how that could happen when he and his wife couldn’t have a single child. He then had sinful sex with his wife’s servant to try to get in a wrong way what God had promised to give in a right way. When thinking about that situation, we might say, “But God, if you had just told him that at the age of 100 he would have a child and maybe shown him a miraculous vision of his wife having the baby, and, well, maybe he would have trusted you more.” More specifics. More specifics.
Or for ourselves, when in a difficult situation we may wish, “If only God would show me how this would turn out, with details about the when and the where and the how, then I’ll trust him.”
“I’ll work everything for your good?” Too general. How rebellious. The general, all-inclusive promise is the best you could ask for. Our longing for specifics, our sensed need to understand details, is nothing more than unbelief. So tempted we are not to trust what we can’t see or understand.
God’s perfect plans just naturally challenge human understanding.
When we see evidence that God’s promise now seems impossible for him to keep.
When Abram got to his promised land, what did he find? Canaanites. Somebody lived there already. This doesn’t make sense, he could have thought. This, my land?
Do things you see and feel that appear to be problems ever persuade you that God’s promises won’t be kept? When things go wrong. When death strikes. When confusion occupies your thoughts. “I don’t understand. If God was really in charge, I don’t think this would have happened.”
God’s ways challenge our understanding.
We hesitate to let go of things familiar when asked to obey. We aren’t satisfied with promises that are more general. We feel that bad things happening show God isn’t doing his job. Instead of obeying, trusting, and calmly accepting . . . instead of saying every time, “Yes, sir,” we throw God’s way doubts and fears and “No, sir.”
Do you permit human reason to question and disobey just because it seems God isn’t making sense? Shame on us for questioning the commander. Shame on us for daring to think our lack of understanding must mean he’s wrong. Shame. But worse, punishment. Insubordination. In the military, to disobey a lawful order is to be punished. Would God do any less?
God surely had every right to give Abram a dishonorable discharge. To recall Abram’s sinful relationship with a servant, his permitting his wife to be taken by the Egyptian Pharaoh as the Pharaoh’s wife and then doing a similar thing yet again, after supposedly learning his lesson . . .
Yet what we see in the life of Abram is such patience from God. Undeserved kindness.
Do you ever feel that God must be getting tired with you? When, after so many years, you’re still struggling with your flesh. It is your heart’s desire to sacrifice more, to trust more, to accept trouble with calm . . . still there are moments—you look back now—when you’ve failed. You’ve failed horribly.
Then remember Abram. Highpoints? Yes, he had them. But Abram sinned too. Isn’t it amazing that God can give promises to sinners? Promises. Rock-solid guarantees.
God was going to do what he said he would do. He was going to make Abram a great nation. He was going to bless him. He was going to protect him.
God has made rock-solid promises to you too. You, blessed through Abram. His descendant, Jesus. God said that this descendant was going to take all the times we said, “No, sir,” to our commander and make them his problem. He would take the heat. He would sit through the court martial. He would go to the brig. He would spend an eternity in the spiritual Leavenworth, that maximum security eternal prison. Jesus stood before the commanding officer enraged because of us and trembled. On the cross he endured. In death justice crushed.
That we, the ones who had made the commander so righteously angry, might be released from prison, be declared innocent in the court martial, receive from God not heat but a hug.
That makes no sense. Our commander blesses us beyond our understanding. Forgiveness, undeserved.
With promises, as good as done.
When God speaks Hebrew, he can in a most interesting way make it clear that his promises are as good as done. In English, “I will make you into a great nation.” In Hebrew, “And I made you into a great nation.” Before it even happened. God says, “It has happened.” Say to yourself God’s promises of the future in that same way. “God worked all, from birth to death, for my good. God never tested me, from the day I was born to the day I died, beyond what I was able to bear. God brought me safely through this life to heaven.” Look at life from God’s perspective, looking back over your whole life knowing that God did everything he said he would.
Blessings beyond understanding.
When God knows trouble will attack you. That might not make sense, that God includes in his promise to Abram the assumption that people will curse him unfairly. God totally knows that you’ll have a rough life. What he promises is to stand with you. To triumph, and ultimately on the Last Day, over those who oppose you. He will not permit anything truly harmful to gain victory over the souls of his children. That’s a guarantee, certain no matter how tough life gets.
Blessings beyond understanding.
The ability to praise God for future fulfillments. God said to Abram, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Abram builds God an altar. Abram says thank you, though he had zero offspring, zero children. Yet.
When you know God will do everything he says, you can thank him for things you haven’t even seen yet. You can thank him for filling the next seven days with blessing after blessing. You can thank him for giving you peace in Jesus for the years still to come. You can thank him today for being at your side in the hour of your death, keeping you strong to the end.
That doesn’t make sense. A blessing beyond understanding.
A blessing leading you and me to build an altar too. To decide to do something that shows just how much we love our commander. You pick the project. You pile up the stones. Find a way to praise God and to share with others the love that God has shown to us all.
The love of a commander. With a promised plan. That plan will challenge our human understanding. But the Planner blesses beyond our human understanding.
To such a commander we say, “Yes, sir.”
Amen.