Called Out

Have you ever longed for God to speak directly to you? Have you ever faced a tough decision and prayed for God to give you a clear sign about what you ought to do? Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t speak to us in the same way he spoke to his people in the Bible?

Look at the first verse in our passage! “The Lord had said to Abram.” In those days, God spoke directly, aloud to his chosen people. That sounds great doesn’t it? Can you imagine hearing the same voice that said, “Let there be light and there was light!” Can you imagine the power of God’s word spoken to Abram? Abram lived among people who worshipped many gods. But not one of them ever actually spoke aloud!

Abram must have first wondered if he was imagining things, or perhaps he wondered, as Samuel did, that someone else was calling him. Somehow, though so removed from the time of Adam and Seth, Abram knew something of the one true God, the creator of the universe. And when God called, Abram obeyed.

We see this pattern repeatedly in the Scriptures. God calls people. He called Noah, he chose Moses. He chose David, though Samuel was much more impressed by David’s older, wiser brothers. He chose his prophets. He chose Mary, he chose Saul. God chose Abram. When God chooses someone, they obey, no matter what! Consider Jonah—chosen by God to preach to Nineveh, he tried to resist, and look what happened to him. You cannot escape God’s choosing!

Chosen by God, Abram packed up all his people, his belongings, his herds and set out for the land of Canaan. Here’s the catch. He didn’t know where he was going, exactly. God promised to lead him to where he needed to go. No maps, no GPS, only trust in God’s guidance.

Not only that, consider how difficult it must have been to leave. He was a wealthy man. He was 75 years old! He had settled; made friends, acquaintances, probably was a pillar of the community. He might have been mayor for all we know! When God calls, His people obey. Regardless of the uncertainty, Abram followed God, turning his back on all that was familiar, all that he’d grown to love, and headed west.

Now, what does that mean to us? Do you hear God speaking aloud? If you do, will you dare tell anyone about it? Wouldn’t they more likely think you’re just a wee bit unbalanced? Does God still communicate in this way today? I haven’t heard his voice aloud, have you? Some people might wonder, does God speak to his people at all?

The answer, clearly, is, yes he does! He speaks to us in His Word. We read the Bible and we hear God speaking plainly to us. “Going, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Did you notice that I said going, not go? There’s a difference. The Greek word is best translated as going, not go. The translators love changing the mood of the verb, to give it more impact, to make it more compelling to read, which isn’t a bad thing, usually. But the problem, in this case, is that the word “go”, in English, conveys a sense of going out from where you are to be somewhere else, like Abram went to Canaan.

That’s not the sense in the Greek. In the Greek, the sense is this. As you are going along in your everyday living, make disciples. Teach people about God, teach them about Jesus, and tell them about the Holy Spirit, who is already involved in their lives anyway. This is something that every Christian is called to do. Abram was called out of Ur to go to the Promised Land, for a reason we’ll still get to. God is calling us to evangelise right where we are.

Yes, God still speaks to us, through his Word, through preaching, through prayer, and through his presence in us, the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts. The Holy Spirit is in constant communication with you. Sometimes though, the stuff of life, the constant barrage of information, completely drowns out the Holy Spirit, we need to train ourselves to spend time unplugged, quiet, and listen to God while we read his Word.

Even though God called Abram out of Ur, he didn’t call him out of all fellowship with other people. God called him out of Ur in order to bring him to the Promised Land. God wanted to show Abram that he had something great in store for him. God wanted Abram to know that there was a time coming when people would all know God. They would live with God and God with them. They would know God in a far deeper, more meaningful way, than he did.

It is interesting, God called Abram out of Ur into Canaan, but God didn’t give Abram the land. God promised Abram that the land was for his descendants. I wonder how Abram took that. “Okay, God, this land is for my descendants. That’s interesting, because even though I’m rich, I have a large family, even my nephew came along, I have large herds, I have a lovely wife, but there’s one thing missing, a significant thing missing.” Abram was missing descendants. He had none.

I’m thinking he was probably feeling somewhat uncertain about God. Not only did God call him away from his family, not only was it painful, sorrowful to leave all he’d ever known behind, now God was making a promise, an empty promise at that. It’d be like going up to a street person and saying, “I’ll give you 5 million dollars, all you need to do is buy a house, or put $100,000 in the bank. It was impossible. Abram and Sarai had tried having children, but she was barren. There was no way, and yet Abram trusted God to make it happen.

So here we are, thousands of years later. Does God speak to us? Does he call us? What is He calling us, Springdale, to do? He’s calling us to trust. He’s calling us out. Out of what? He’s calling us out of our past and into the future. It is not as though we forget all about the past; on the contrary, everything that has ever happened in this church, in this congregation happened according to God’s perfect plan. All of it, the good times, the bad times, the times of growth, the times of loss, all has happened because God wanted it to happen, because it was necessary for us to move forward into the glorious future he has planned for us.

In John’s gospel, we read Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. This is a fitting thing for us to think about as we look forward to communion next week. Just before the religious leaders forcibly took him from them, Jesus said, “I’m going to prepare a place for you. They aren’t really taking me; I’m willingly going. I will prepare the way for you. Unless I go, I can’t send the Holy Spirit. Unless I go, you will not be able to come later. I am going so that you may be confident in the future, for I am preparing it for you.

God is always calling his people. He is calling those whom he knows are needed for this congregation. We can trust God with the same trust Abram trusted. God already knows everything about this church family—from the pennies in the offering to the shingles on the roof, from the numbers of hairs on our heads, to the foundation in the ground, God knows it all.

God is preparing a place for us, right here in Bradford West Gwillumbury. He’s preparing the true Promised Land for us. The strip of real estate on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean is the foretaste, the foreshadowing of the true Promised Land, heaven. Were we will be with God; he will be our light, our life.

We have that light, that life with us already. It is Christ in us, the hope of glory. We have the Holy Spirit living inside us! Don’t you know that? The Holy Spirit, God himself is in us. If Abram knew then, what we have now, he’d be in awe. God spoke to him, audibly, yes, but from outside. God speaks to us, sometimes audibly, but from inside, from within.

God spoke to you and through you, through the APA exercises you did with Pastor Ed. Council is working through them. Trust God to work through this process. Try to be patient. God promised offspring to Abram. It took another 25 years to get his son. God promised the land to Abram’s descendants it was nearly half a century before they really possessed it! I’m sure council has a shorter timeline in mind! I know God does!

Trust, believe, and know that God is at work in you, in all of us. God is at work, building us, by his Holy Spirit to be his body. Yes, this smaller microcosm of his body, the Springdale CRC, but the body of Christ is far larger. Yes, we do miss those who, for whatever reason, no longer are fellowshipping with us. But we trust that they are following God. We have to. Yes, we can visit with them we can pray God’s blessing on them. But we can also trust God to bring people to us, and I hope it isn’t from other churches. I hope that it is from new believers, or from those who haven’t attended church for a long time, but whom God is calling to us, not because they need the church, but because the church, the body, needs them!

One last point to make here. In these nine verses of chapter 12, there’s a clear contrast. Whom would you identify as the main subject, Abram or God? What is emphasised, God’s actions or Abrams? The emphasis is on God and his actions. Even though this was a momentous occasion for Abram, much more is written about God’s plans, God’s intentions, God’s promises, God’s actions in Abram’s life.

I’m hesitant to use this example, but God called us out of Edson to come to Bradford. I kid you not, based on weather alone, we felt like we’d left the wilderness, -10 degrees, a foot and a half of snow, to +17 and glorious sunshine. It felt like coming to the Promised Land. You know something though, God promised to work out the timing. God promised to provide for all our needs. God promised to care for us on our journey. God promised to bring us here so that we can minister together. And God has blessed us tremendously already through you.

God proved his faithfulness to Abram. God has proved his faithfulness through 60 years of Springdale’s history. We can trust God to continue to lead us, as he calls us out to do his work here in Bradford and in the surrounding areas! Let us hear and obey God’s call on our lives, Amen!