Called to Obedience

Our sermon series “Called” has allowed us to discover the various ways that God has called for us to listen and serve him. We have used the first book of the Bible the book of Genesis to show us God has called his people from the beginning.

We have looked at what it means for us to be called to go and the steps that we need to take in order for us to fulfill that calling. You can find each of these sermons on our You Tube Channel.

Our scripture today leads us into the understanding that we are “Called to Obedience.” Our scripture comes from Genesis 22:1-14. The words will be on the screen.

22 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” 6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. 7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lordwill provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Please pray with me…

Scriptures such as this one can lead us into asking ourselves and God the question “Why?” Why does God believe he needs to take things to this extreme in order to show us the faith of Abraham. The belief by Abraham that God will provide.

I wish that I could tell you that I would be like Abraham and be willing to haul my son in a car, take him out to an isolated place, and sacrifice his life all because God told me too. I believe that would not be the case and I hope that would not be the case also for all of you concerning your loved ones.

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God hopefully will not ask for us to do something as extreme as this, but that does not mean he won’t ask for us to be obedient to him and take action on things that are out of our comfort zone. God seems to like to make us uncomfortable. He seems to desire to force us to rely on him in the circumstances that he puts us in.

We have two aspects of our faith that that we need to make sure is not a part of us choosing to be obedient to God. We should not believe we need to do so out of obligation, and we should not feel guilt and shame if we fail.

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We are called to respond to what God desires from us and to do what he asks for us to do. But we have to remember why we are being obedient to God. We shouldn’t be obedient out of obligation.

We should choose to be obedient to God because of the love that he first showed to us. We should choose to be obedient to God because he was willing to come to earth, and be our example, and eventually die on a cross so that our sins could be forgiven.

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We also should not allow guilt and shame to overcome us if, or I should say when, we fail. We are going to sin. We are going to fail God. We will at times get our obligations out of whack. When we do this and begin becoming right with God again, we should not feel guilt and shame.

Guilt and shame are Satan’s way of leading us into a wrong type of relationship with God. Our God knows we will fail. It is why Jesus died on the cross for us. We are saved by grace and should let the forgiveness we receive by grace overcome us, instead of guilt and shame.

This story involving Abraham shows us clearly that we should believe in God’s plan and be willing to follow through with what he has called us to do. Abraham was obedient to God because of the love that God had already showed to him.

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That may be the purpose of this story. God wanted Abraham to provide for us the ultimate example of what it means to be willing to follow God’s will to the culmination of an event. We are to believe that God will not have us cause harm to ourselves or to those around us.

The first point that we receive is that God will call us to follow him. Last week our focus was on listening and through listening to God we can receive the calling that God has for us. We find Abraham receiving the message from God and immediately attempting to follow the will of God.

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We find this in the New Testament regarding the disciples. Each time that Jesus called one of his disciples to follow him they would “immediately” drop what they were doing and let him lead them into what he was doing.

They didn’t hesitate. They would have had no idea what they were getting themselves into. In fact, they may have been more hesitant if they would have known that they were going to be sleeping out in the park and that their Rabbi would eventually be killed, and they would end up being beaten and imprisoned themselves. They may have said “no thanks” if they had known the whole plan.

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We also see the opposite reaction within scripture. We find at the end of Luke chapter 9 Jesus inviting a man to come follow him. The man has an excuse. He states that he wants to first go and bury his father. We receive what we would consider a weird reaction from Jesus who tells the man to follow him and let the dead bury their own dead.

What we miss from this text is that during that time if the father was dead the man would not have been there. This would tell us that most likely the father was not dead but that the son wanted to wait before following Jesus.

Even if that was not the case, Jesus is attempting to make the point to us that he is to be the priority. Following God is to go before anything and everything else that we would choose to do. This seems harsh but should lead us to the importance that God places on obedience.

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This is followed by the story of another man who says he will follow but first wants to say goodbye to his family. This man is told “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

We again see the focus not on the family but on God. Jesus lived this out when his mother and brothers came to see him. He pointed out that the disciples were his family. They were a part of the family of God.

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I believe it is also no coincidence that Jesus’ interaction with these two that don’t want to leave with him immediately is followed by him sending out 72 followers to spread the word about him, to heal and to remove demons.

We are called to be like the 72. We are called to listen and to respond to Jesus no matter our life circumstances and what is taking place in the world. Obedience to God is often not easy because we often are given a task that we don’t want to do or don’t feel we are good enough to do, or possibly don’t want to do at that time. We want things done in our timing, not God’s timing.

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We also can find times in scripture when hesitation puts us into good company. The next book of the Bible Exodus is all about a man who was hesitant in accepting the calling that God gave him. Moses came up with excuse after excuse before finally giving up and going and doing what God called him to do.

God provided for Moses and God will provide for you. God will give to you the means and the people around you in order to allow for you to be successful in the endeavor that he has called for you to do.

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We have Abraham in our text getting the message and being obedient. He has already seen God at work and now he is prepared to do what God has called him to do next. This brings up the point that the first time will often be the hardest.

The first time we listen to God and eventually go will often be the hardest time. We have doubts. You could say we have trust issues. We may hesitate and it may take us a few false starts before we are willing to be like Abraham.

But that does not mean we shouldn’t be obedient to God immediately. We need to remember that God has a plan. We spoke earlier in this series about how God is all knowing. He knows things we don’t. He wants to get everything to be knitted together in the best way for us and for those around us.

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Abraham is following through with God’s plan to have him sacrifice his son Isaac despite the fact that he loves Isaac. God may also have us have to impact those around us that we love in order to have his plan be completed.

It is not that those close to us want to stop us because they want to work against God. They may be thinking of our well-being. They may be fearful that we will get hurt. They have our welfare in mind while we our focusing on God’s will.

It is in these circumstances that we have a decision to make. Are we going to be obedient to what God is asking from us or are we going to allow outside forces to impact what God has called us to do?

The scripture says that God was testing the faith of Abraham. God may also at times test our faith. He may at times allow us to wonder or wander in order for us to show him our faith or lack of faith.

Our God is good. We should believe that he would not cause harm to others or to us. Abraham obviously had the faith to expect that no harm would come to Isaac. He knew that God had a plan in place to provide a sacrifice, and that sacrifice would not be his son.

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It may at times not seem fair. We may doubt if we are capable of doing what God has called us to do. We are afraid that we will end up hurting the possibility of someone believing in God because we believe that we are going to fail.

We are able to be more aware of God and how God is working in our lives when we are obedient to God in the way that we are living our lives. Our first reading speaks of the importance of doing all that we can to follow God’s will in our lives.

We should live our lives with the belief and the understanding that as Romans 6:13 tells us we have been brought from death to life. We had previously been dead in our sins but through the sacrifice offered to us on the cross by Jesus we now have life.

We have been saved from the power of sin and death. We have been transformed from someone under the power of sin to someone who is free from the weight of our transgressions. We have been redeemed. Our debt to God has been paid.

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That is why obedience is important to our relationship with God. We are not charged with the sins we commit. We are not enslaved by the power of sin. We have been set free and therefore can act and react however we desire.

It is true that we will fail. But it is also true that we will be forgiven. Therefore, we get to decide if we are going to live our lives in sin because we know that because God loves us, he is going to forgive us. Or are we going to live our lives in obedience to God because he showed his love to us.

We have a choice; we can be people of sin, or we can be people of righteousness. We can choose to move away from God or towards God. It is when we are obedient that we become closely connected to God that we are able to experience the full blessing from God on our lives.

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We can choose to be obedient to God through our words and our actions, or we can choose to ignore the one who was willing to create us and die for us despite all the things that we have done against him.

Abraham was obedient to God all the way to the end. He was willing to perform the task that God had given him to do. He showed God and us that God will provide if we are willing to follow him.

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The last point that we can receive from our main text is that we should always leave ourselves open to hearing from God. Part of being obedient to God is being open to listen to what he may say to us at all times.

If Abraham would have been so focused on the task given to him by God that he wasn’t listening to him the results would have been different. Abraham would not have done what God had called for him to do.

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We might not receive the full expectations at the time we begin our journey. We may be told later of some additional hopes and expectations that God has for us. Let us decide that we are going to remain open to the will of God through our words and in our actions.

Our text gives us a glimpse of what it means to be obedient to God. It means that we are open to listening to what God asks from us. It means that we are willing to go and do even if what God asks from us doesn’t make sense.

It means that we are going to live our lives in such a way that pleases God and allows God to remain connected to us. It means that we are not going to let others stop us from following the will of God even if they seem to have our best interest in mind. It means that we will continue to listen to God during the task to make sure we receive all the information that we need.

Let us choose to be obedient to God. Let us decide that we are going to allow God to be our guide in all that we say and do. We follow an awesome God, A God that loves you as you are and wants to journey with you through all that you are going through in life.

Please pray with me…