Letting God Be the Star

Genesis 12:1-9
Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 12:1-9, recounts the pivotal moment when a man named Abram--who would later be known as Abraham--left all that was familiar to him in obedience to God’s call and in response to God’s promise.

On first blush, the central character of the lesson seems to be Abram, the one who picks up stakes and moves to who-knows-where with his wife, his nephew Lot, his possessions, and his servants.

But, in truth, the central character is God. Abram was just a member of the supporting cast.

As his life unfolded, Abram did well and played a critical role in the revelation of God’s purposes in the world--in other words, he was blessed--when he remembered Who was the star and who wasn’t.

Abram made a mess of things--in other words, he was cursed--when he thought that he was the star of his own story.

We would do well to remember this, to trust in God to take the lead and to be good for all of His promises in our lives too. That’s a big part of what the lesson can teach us today.

Let’s take a look at it. Verse 1: “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you…’”

The first thing to say about this passage and then move on quickly is that, we may think, “Lucky! God gave Abram clear directions.” But not always; one scholar estimates that God spoke to him about once for every twenty-five years of his life.

The truth is that in discerning God’s direction and will for our lives, we have an advantage over Abram.

• We have the Bible, God’s Word; Abram didn’t. If we want God speak to us as God spoke to Abram, all we need to do is read His Word. 
• We also have the Holy Spirit; Abram didn’t. 

Through a few minutes of daily Bible-reading, followed by prayer in Jesus’ name that’s powered by the Holy Spirit, you and I can hear more from God than Abram ever did in his whole life time.

More importantly, consider who takes the initiative in this verse. God calls Abram to leave behind everything he knows in order to go someplace that God will show Abram.

Imagine how crazy Abram’s decision to leave must have seemed to his family and countrymen. They were all idol-worshipers, their lives spent placating all sorts of gods. The whole notion of there being just one God Who created and cared about His creation would have been foreign to them all. So would the idea of leaving family, friends, and the familiar for parts unknown.

But here’s the deal. If God really is the God of all creation, He has every right to be obeyed when He calls us to do things that may not be easy. Things like putting God first in our lives, or loving even those who hate us, or taking the risk of telling others the good news of new life for who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as their Savior and God. Isaiah 45:9 asks: “Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?'” The creatures--human beings--get in trouble when we start to ignore the Creator Who made us.

We knew some folks who, when their kids were in their teens, moved into an area with a number of Lutheran churches. They finally settled on filled with older people and no youth program. "Why did you do that?" their friends asked. "Why be part of a church that has nothing to offer you?" Our friends explained that, first of all, it wasn't true that the church they decided to join had nothing to offer. But, more than that, they explained, "We were looking for a church where we could serve." That couple understood that God doesn't always call us (or sometimes, command us) to the easy path, only the best path.

Of course, God gives all sorts of commands to the human race, commands that we ignore. Just think of the Ten Commandments. Millions of people push to have the Ten Commandments erected in stone on court house grounds, but only a small number of those millions can actually name more the four of five of them.

We're not good at keeping God's commands either. Abram himself would later show a penchant for ignoring God’s commands.

That penchant for sin has been baked into the human DNA since Adam and Eve fell into sin.

God could bark His commands--His Law--at us from now until Jesus returns and those commands wouldn’t cause us to do what God tells us to do. The most that God's Law can show us is where we fall short as human beings and just how desperately we need God's help and forgiveness.

God’s Law can’t change or move us. But God’s promises can.

And, as we’ll see, when he left his home behind, Abram wasn’t just obeying a command given to him by God; he was also responding to a promise. It was that unlikely promise that compelled Abram to call in the moving vans!

Look, starting at verse 2: [God says:] “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram, as we’ll see, was seventy-five years old when God spoke these words to him. His wife Sarai, later renamed Sarah, was ten years younger. Abram’s name, which means exalted father, hung over him like a sick joke because Abram and Sarai were childless. In that culture, in those times, you were thought to be cursed if you didn’t have children.

But this God Who has chosen to introduce Himself to the idol-worshiping Abram says that the childless exalted father is going to become the father of “a great nation.” God promises that Abram is going to be the conduit through whom God will bring His blessings to the whole world. You and I know that it will be among Abram’s descendants that God’s Son will be enfleshed and raised, will die and rise. Abram didn’t know that then, though. He just believed and acted on that belief.

As we said earlier, if Abram shared the reason for his departure with his family members or friends, they would have undoubtedly thought that he was crazy. “Why can’t he just accept that he’s not going to father a single child, let alone a great nation? Is he out of his mind?”

Listen: Jesus calls you and I to be Abrams, too. We’re to act as God’s OB/GYNs, overseeing the rebirth of friends, family, classmates, and co-workers as we share Christ with them. What if Abram had turned a deaf ear to God’s call? Chances are, God would have found someone else to act as the father of nations. But Abram did believe! And he did obey! And because believed and obeyed, you and I are here this morning!

Verse 4: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…”

Are you and I going where God tells us to go? Are we doing what God tells us to do?

You and I have the promise of God-enfleshed Jesus, “I am with you always…” And we also have the same command as Abram, to “go and make [children of God, that is] disciples of all nations” [Matthew 28:19-20].

This command isn’t just for spiritual superstars. There was never anything spectacular about Abram, nothing in his idolatrous background to commend him to God. But, whenever Abram was able to get out of God’s way and get over himself, God’s word of promise created the gift of faith within him. And through that obedient faith, God was able to set off His salvation plan for the human race. God wants to make us agents of His salvation plan.

God wants to bring His Word of command and promise to the whole world--and to our little corners of it--in and through you and me. God may not call us to pull up stakes and go somewhere He’ll show us on the way. But how can we share God’s Word about Christ in our familiar haunts, places like Dayton, Centerville, Springboro, Miamisburg, West Carrollton, Kettering, ot Lebanon?

In verses 5 and following, we find Abram in the land of Canaan. God is giving Abram a sneak-peak of the land his descendants will one day inherit. “This isn’t your people’s land yet,” God was saying, “but one day, it will be.” Each time God reiterated His promise to Abram, Abram erected an altar to give God thanks and then moved on.

And here’s what Abram learned: This world is temporary. Each of us is mortal and one day, the universe we know will be burned up. As was true of Abram, God calls us to hold onto this world and this life loosely, to be prepared to move on, to do whatever He calls us to do, to live in obedient faith. First Peter 2:11 says: “I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

For whatever sin God calls us to repent, we need to repent today because whatever in this world tempts us to sin is going to die.

For whatever good God would have us to do, we need to do it today, because the clock is running out on this world and because the good we do in Jesus' name will have eternal significance.

And in whatever ways we can encourage each other to lives of obedience and faith, we need to do it today. Hebrews 3:13 tells us to “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.”

Above all, you and I must avoid getting too comfortable with this world or its ways. Like Abram, who became Abraham, we must be prepared to move on to whatever God calls us to next.

The beauty and the comforts of this world are but a glimmer of the eternal beauty that God has in mind for us when Jesus returns and ushers those who have believed in Him into “a new heaven and a new earth” [Revelation 21:1], the place He has prepared for all who believe in Him [John 14:2-3]. That’s the true homeland that Jesus secured for all who believe in Him and in the power of His death and resurrection.

This past week, John Ylvisaker, the Lutheran composer best known for I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry, passed away.

In the next to last verse of that love song from God to baptized believers in Jesus, we sing:

When the evening gently closes in
And you shut your weary eyes
I’ll be there as I have always been
With just one more surprise. 

It no doubt came as an enormous surprise to Abram when God introduced Himself to him, and an even bigger surprise when God told Abram that he would become the father of all who believe in Him.

But, as Ylvisaker’s song reminds us, the greatest surprise of all belongs to those who trust in the God Who revealed Himself to Abram and then ultimately, to all the world through Jesus Christ.

The great surprise is this: Despite our lack of qualifications, despite what we deserve, we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. To those who believe in Christ, God gives an eternal homeland.

And no matter how long we roam on this earth, God will keep calling us to that homeland.

Let the God you know in Jesus Christ be the central character in your life. Be a cast member in His kingdom. It will be the role of an eternal lifetime!

Let God save you.

Let Him guide you.

Let Him love you.

Let Him free you.

Let Him sustain you with the promise and the certainty of citizenship in His eternal homeland that you received at your baptism.

And keep following Him until that day when you too, awaken to see that God is waiting for you “with just one more surprise.”

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message from worship on March 12, 2017.]

I Don't Want to Be Normal

The nurse from my doctor's office called to tell me the results of blood work done during a recent physical. She rattled off the numbers, then said, "All I can say is that you're just normal."

"You know what?" I said, "This may be the first time anyone's ever called me normal." She laughed and told me, "Then maybe I should have said, 'As far as your blood goes, you're normal.'"

Sometimes, being normal is a great thing. That's true of health tests. Normal, in those circumstances, means all is well.

But sometimes, being normal--whether the designation at the time means typical, average, or like everybody else--may not describe a desirable state of being.

And there's one way in which I think I never want to be normal: I don't want to approach life with cynicism.

Cynicism, one online dictionary tells us is "an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others."

Cynicism seems to be today's "normal."

Ever since the deceptions created by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during their presidencies, giving us Vietnam and Watergate, cynicism has taken hold in the United States. We seem to find it hard to trust anyone or anything.

Cynicism also seems to be prevalent among people around my age. (I'm nearing 60.) I can't tell you how often the speech of my contemporaries degenerates into throwing verbal brickbats at societal trends, people in power, the media, celebrities. It's depressing to hear them talk. And I wonder how they stand living with themselves.

People are cynical, I think, for two basic reasons:

(1) One is that they've had overblown ideals about how other human beings should act.

For decades prior to the Vietnam War, for example, more than 70% of the American people consistently told pollsters that their national leaders would never lie to them. That was completely unrealistic idealism. So, when we learned about the deceptions of Johnson and Nixon, the numbers flipped. Now people are more likely to assume that the government always lies.

Cynicism is an unrealistic overreaction to the failure of some leaders all of the time and of all leaders some of the time, to live up to our unrealistic expectations of them.

It's unfair to have unrealistic expectations of others. No matter how great you thought the person to whom you are married or for whom you voted in the last election, may have seemed to you. They're still human beings...like you. That means they're not perfect.

"Put not your trust in princes,...in whom there is no help," says Psalm 146:3.

This doesn't mean we're to repose zero trust in others. It means: "Don't trust human beings to be like God."

The only one worthy of our total trust is the God we know in Jesus Christ. Sinless, Christ went to a cross, where He died for our sins, both yours and that person you don't trust.

The Old Testament tells us that God is patient with human beings because He "remembers that we are dust."

And Jesus teaches us that before we condemn the small splinter in the eye of another, we need to remove the log implanted in our own.

There would be a lot less cynicism in this world if we would seek the power of the Holy Spirit in fulfilling the second part of Jesus' great commandment for the world, which echoes the last seven of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses: Love your neighbor as yourself.

(2) Another reason for cynicism, I think, is disappointment with our own progress in life.

We look at people we deem more successful than ourselves and, secretly believing that we don't measure up, infer that there must be something false about the other person's progress. We doubt that their progress is for real, dismissing it as PR. Or, we cast aspersions on the integrity with which they achieved their "progress."

It should be said that others' money and material well being aren't the only things that spur this cynicism. A happy family, a good marriage, true friendships, educational attainment, or almost anything we observe in others can be an excuse for the person who feels inferior to be cynical. "Yeah, they look happy," the cynic says, "but that's window-dressing." He may even start spewing unsubstantiated gossip about the person to build himself up, while tearing the other person down.

This strain of cynicism is often rooted in envy. And envy is really rooted in self-loathing. The cynic often feels compelled to knock others because, in his secret self, he hates himself. He feels that his life is inferior.

Or, he knows of deficiencies, bad decisions, or sins that keep him from experiencing some of the things he yearns for. Overcoming this form of cynicism involves opening up our eyes and realizing that we are blessed in our own ways.

One of the things I have had to get over as I've grown in years and in my faith in Christ, is my disappointment in the ways in which God has blessed me. "Those blessings you've given me, Lord, are nice, but I want to be blessed in other ways. I want to be like So-and-So," I tell God. But as I read the Bible, God's Word, God seems to tell me, "But you aren't So-and-So. I've created a package of blessings custom-made for you. Not for So-and-So, but for you."

Isaiah 45:9 says "Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'The potter has no hands'?"

I'm learning to let the Potter form me as He chooses.

This isn't fatalism. It's faith.

I may be a plain clay pot. But to give glory to the One Who made me and then gave me new life in Jesus Christ, I am intent on being, through His grace and power, forgiveness and love, the best clay pot I can be.

Of course, I will only ever fulfill my intention by relying completely on the Potter, the God Who came into the world in Jesus, died on a cross, and rose from the dead for imperfect clay pots like me.

You may not measure up in your own eyes. But you were worth the suffering and death of God, all of which He went through so that when He rose again on the first Easter Sunday, you could have life with God.

And the new life Christ gives those who believe in Him, doesn't start after your earthly death, as though this life were just heaven's waiting room.

The new life Christ gives can begin "the hour you first believe."

And it can belong to you in all the everyday moments of this life: While you do your job, love your spouse, relate to your kids, strive for your dreams, pray, enjoy your friends, read God's Word, take out the trash, mow the lawn, do the laundry.

"If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation," 2 Corinthians 5:17 says.

If you have faith in Christ, you have eternity. You have God standing by you as you strive to be your best, to achieve, and to live. No reason to feel envious. None.

Whatever its source, if cynicism is your normal, get rid of it. Trust in Christ.

You'll be more able to forgive others as God has forgiven you.

You won't trust people or things to give you what only God has it to give.

You'll trust only God to be God.

That's when you'll stop being normal and your cynicism will start to evaporate.