Who Do You Trust?
Notes
Transcript
There is a product out there that most people don’t want, but are glad they have it when they use it. This product has increased in cost tremendously since COVID, and this product is insurance. I hate insurance premiums, but I’m also really glad I have insurance when someone hits my car at an intersection. I don’t like paying health insurance premiums, but I’m glad I don’t get stuck with six figure medical bills. On some level, insurance is a scam, but you don’t want to risk going without it. In fact, that’s the key word: risk. Insurance exists to mitigate risk. It exists to cover you for things you can’t cover yourself. Most of you don’t have the money to rebuild your house if it burns down, so you have an insurance policy to cover that kind of loss.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
We are convinced God is real despite never seeing him, but it is also true that faith is trusting God for the things he has promised. We trust God for our daily needs. We trust God with out eternal destinies. But have you ever taken an insurance policy against God not showing up? We say we trust God, but do we?
Today, we will look at the story of Abraham, a man who was called by God to move from his homeland to become a new nation God would form. Abraham was a man of faith, but he also took out insurance policies against God not showing up. We are called by God to live by faith, to trust him to provide everything we need to do what he has called us to do, but it also involves taking risks. If we’re going to live by faith and not by fear, we need to understand three essentials for engaging in God’s mission.
Get clarity on your life’s mission.
Get clarity on your life’s mission.
We don’t know if Abram knew God prior to the opening of Genesis 12. We only know God showed up and spoke to him. The first three verses are the basic outlining of God’s covenant promises to Abram. Much like the covenant with Noah, there was nothing that made Abram worthy of this covenant relationship. He was chosen by God according to his own sovereign will. Let’s look at the beginning of chapter 12 together.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Abram is promised that he will become a great nation. He is going to inherit land, he will have offspring, and he will be a blessing to others as others will be a blessing to him. All the families of the earth will be blessed through Abram. God is giving Abram clarity on the calling of his life. He’s saying, “This is where I want you to go, and this is who I want you to become.” He doesn’t get all the details yet. He gets just enough to pursue and the rest comes later.
I was speaking with the guy from Brown Hearing who was here this week helping clients make hearing aid adjustments. We got to talking about work and why he likes doing what he does. He said he often would ask new hires why they came to work for the company. Their replies were often things like, “Well, the benefits are good.” And that’s it. You took a job solely because the benefits were good? I told him people who answer like that don’t last long. He said I was right.
You see, I think people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to know that their contribution matters. Work for the sake of work is misery. You were made for more than what you wake up and do every day. You must understand the why behind the what. I didn’t get into ministry because I wanted to (at first). I didn’t wake up thinking pastors make fantastic salaries, so that’s the job I want to do. I wake up because I get joy out of serving other people and God called me to do so in a particular fashion. The why behind the what is clear: I exist to help people win in building healthy relationships with God and others. Whether I do that as pastor or something else is fine, but the why behind the what is crystal clear.
When God’s mission is your life’s mission, there will be joy in what you do. You must get clarity on your life’s mission. This clarity has to come from God. He may use other people to get the message across, but you must be spending time with God to discover your why.
Know God’s promises.
Know God’s promises.
I love verse four because it simply says, “So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him.” This dude is 75 years old, and God taps him and says, “Hey bud, I got the journey of a lifetime for you. You want to come?” But God is a God of promises. God has promised Abram that he would become a great nation, that he would inherit land, and that he would be a blessing to the whole earth. As Abram journeys into the land of Canaan, God confirms the promise of a land inheritance. Abram’s descendants are going to inherit the land Abram is laying his eyes on. This is a covenant promise in which God will fulfill.
You and I are in relationship with God not through the covenant God made with Abram, but under a new covenant made through Jesus Christ. What are the promises of God in the new covenant? If we are going to live by faith and not fear, we need to know what God has promised under this covenant and what he has not. The central promise is salvation through Christ.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
This establishes an eternal relationship between God and believers (us). God promises to adopt us as children into his family.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
The second you and I placed our faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, the Holy Spirit of God took up residence in us, sealing us for the day of redemption, and signed our adoption papers. You are not waiting to be adopted if you are a believer in Jesus. You already are adopted! Because the Holy Spirit resides in every believer, God promises to sanctify you, that is work out the process of transforming you into the likeness of his son. The end goal of Christianity is for us to look like Jesus. It’s just not a passive process. It requires movement on our part. God promises also to preserve us.
and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.
“My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Once we come to faith, we belong to God. Once a child, always a child. Then we are also promised that God will raise us from the dead. Just as Christ has been raised, so will we. These are the promises God has made. Our job is to learn them, know them, and trust them. He’s going to call us to do big and bold things. Knowing the promises he has made us leads to the third essential, which is...
Trust God enough to act on it!
Trust God enough to act on it!
From verse ten onward, we get an interesting example of the opposite of the point i just stated. So this essential comes from looking at an example of what not to do! Remember that faith is not passive. Faith is confidence to take action. If you say that you want to trust God, buckle up, because he will give you the opportunity to do just that. Let’s look at verses 10-20 together.
Now there was a famine in the land; so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
It came about when he came near to Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman;
and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live.
“Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you.”
It came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
Therefore he treated Abram well for her sake; and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels.
But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
“Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her and go.”
Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they escorted him away, with his wife and all that belonged to him.
So Abram gets to the land, there is a famine, so he doesn’t stay. He heads to the bustling nation of Egypt to ride out the famine, and he gets a little nervous. The Egyptians are going to think Sarai is beautiful and they might kill him and take her as a wife. This was apparently common in those days. If you were traveling into a foreign country, and a man there wanted your wife, he could kill you and take her. Barbaric, but true. So Abram concocts a scheme to save his own skin, but I want you to see that he is also putting God’s promise in jeopardy. How can God fulfill his promise if Sarai is no longer in the picture? How can God fulfill his promise if Abram is dead? Abram fears for his own life, so what did he do? he took out an insurance policy in case God didn’t show up. There was no guarantee that the Egyptians would kill him and take his wife. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t either...except God promised that Abram would become a great nation and his descendants would inherit the land known as Canaan.
How will God fulfill his promise if Abram is dead? Does Abram have children yet? No. Has he become a great nation yet? No. Has he become a blessing to the families of the earth yet? No. Abram wasn’t going anywhere. But the potential threat was real, which triggered a response: fear. Abram concocted a plan in case God didn’t show up. Ironically, God showed up but not to rescue Abram, but to return his wife.
Sometimes we live in such a way that we don’t think God is going to show up for us, so we take out insurance policies against him in case he doesn’t Ironically, he does show up, but not the way we intended. How would God show up if you decided not to take out an insurance policy against him?
I think most of us would answer, “I don’t know.” But remember what God has promised you. He has promised you eternal life. He has promised to be your Father. He has promised you adoption. He has promised you resurrection from the dead. Everything God wants you to do is something he has either already equipped you to do, or is ready to equip you to do. But in the interest of self preservation, we can’t take out insurance policies against God. We have to learn to trust him.
Get clear on your life’s mission. Know what he has promised you. Trust him enough to act on it. When you learn these three things, you become limitless.
