Sermon Tone Analysis

Orienteering

At Easter, I took one week where we spent time with some of our extended family.

Now my father-in-law is part of the Newcastle Orienteers club, and it just so happened that while we were away there was an orienteering meet only a relatively short drive from where we were staying.

One thing that I enjoy doing on holidays is a bit of exercise and so when my father-in-law invited our family to go along and the others agreed, I thought I’d give it a shot too.

In case you’re not familiar with orienteering, you go out into the bush, where there is nothing but trees and bushes.

You’re given a map that has numbers on it.

Each number on the map represents what’s called a control.

At each control you’ll find an electronic device that will record that you’ve been there.

So the orienteers job is to follow the sequence on the map and find each control.

The person with the quickest time wins.

Now, before this meet, I had never done any orienteering before.

I think that was probably evident when I turned up in my regular running clothes which includes relatively short shorts, while everybody else had long pants.

After countless scratches up and down my legs, I latter realised why they wore long pants.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was not listening to my father-in-laws advice regarding which course I should run.

You see, they have different courses depending on your ability.

The easiest course (which Josie did), was what they call a string course.

Essentially you just follow some string around until you get to the end.

They also have other easy courses which Sienna and Elise did.

You then get up to the moderate course.

This is the course that was recommended to me.

My father-in-law thought it would be a good entry level for someone who has never done this before.

But did I want to listen to my father-in-law?

Well, you see, as it happens, I tend to fancy myself as someone who is pretty good with directions.

I thought - why do the Moderate course when I can do the hard course.

I’m mean how hard can it be?

They give you a map and all you have to do is follow it.

Can’t be that hard… can it?

Well, as I found - it can be!

I did the hard-short course, which was meant to only take me 3.2km, but according to my watch, I ran over 7km!

It turns out those little controls are really hard to find.

Each time you find a control - you stop, get your bearings with your little hand held compass, and then run in the direction of the next control.

Now I know it’s not a perfect illustration, but I want to use this to help think about my main point today.

You see, sometimes God sends us in certain directions.

Unfortunately, though we’re given the direction, we’re not given very clear instruction, but God wants us to head out in faith.

This morning we’re going to start a series in Abraham, and that’s exactly what we see happen with Abraham.

Essentially God tells him to go - gives him the direction, but little else.

Abraham then has a choice.

He can decide - no, I don’t have enough information.

Or he can take up the call, going in faith that he will be provided for.

Thankfully for us, it is the latter of these two - because in doing so, he provided a way for all of us.

And we’ll explore just how true that is throughout this series.

Context

So first, let’s get some bearings within this account...

Now there are two levels on which we can look at this story.

On what I might call a top level view, we can see how this account becomes a very significant part in the overall flow of the Bible.

This is actually really important and I want to be careful not to lose sight of this.

But the other level, is the individual level of looking at how Abram (or Abraham), responded to God’s call.

It is more on this level that I will draw our application from.

Abram or Abraham

Before I continue, it’s worth making a clarification about his name.

You’ll notice that I’ve been mostly referring to him as Abraham, but in fact in the reading we had earlier it refers to him as Abram.

That’s because in a few chapters we’ll see God change his name from Abram to Abraham, but we’ll explore the significance of that when we get there.

But until we get there (and it won’t be for a few weeks), I’ll now mostly refer to him as Abram.

Top level

So first, let’s briefly consider how this account fits into the bigger picture.

The Bible starts with creation, and it is good and it is beautiful.

But sin is allowed to enter.

When that first sin entered, everything changed.

And things just got worse after that.

Move along some generations and the sin is so ingrained in humanity that God wipes the world clean with a flood, only sparing Noah and his family.

But even then, that seed of sin remains, and fast forward some more generations, God looks at their sinful desire and scatters them and confuses their language.

I’m referring to the Tower of Babel in .

Things seem hopeless.

But then, in verse 1 of chapter 12, we hear God’s voice, and for what is essentially the first time since the creation account, we get a glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

And it is this glimmer of hope that sparks the rest of the Bible and God’s great plan to deal with the problem of sin.

Now, I’m not going to go over all the details of how it the plan transpires.

Partly because I did that a few weeks ago.

But in the briefest of overviews, essentially through this promise, eventually comes Jesus who breaks the hold of sin, and sets up the final hold of sin when he comes again and brings a new heaven and a new earth.

There’s a lot in all of that which we could spend a long time exploring, but it all started way back in our account today when God gives a promise to Abram.

So while I’ll now be focussing more on Abrams response, I want us to keep sight of that much bigger picture.

The boy from Ur

So at that, let’s look at who Abram is.

Well, the first mention of his name comes in when we find out a bit of his family tree.

His father’s name is Terah and he had two brothers, Nahor and Haran.

They were all born in a place called Ur of the Chaldeans.

(I always love that place because if you can’t remember it, in your hesitation… urrr.. you get it!)

It’s been shown that Chaldean is sometimes used as a synonym for the Babylonians, and so it is usually thought that his birth place was in what was later to become Babylon, which incidentally was the place that the Israelites were to be sent into exile.

We are told a few significant things while they still lived in Ur of the Chaldeans.

All these facts we can get from the last few verses of Genesis 11.

His brother, Haran, had at least three children, namely Milcah, Iscah and Lot.

We read that Milcah marries her uncle Nahor, and given that Iscah doesn’t come back into the story, presumably she marries into another family.

But tragedy strikes and Haran dies, and so it would appear that Abram takes on some of the fathering role of Lot.

Maybe that’s because when Abram marries his wife Sarai, they are not able to conceive - something that will become important to our story later.

In verse 31, we’re told that Terah then took his son Abram, along with his wife Sarai and grandson Lot, and moved from Ur of the Chaldeans and towards the land of Canaan.

We’re not told why.

Maybe it was the grief of losing his son Haran.

Or was it God prompting him at this time.

Whatever it was, they settled in a town called Harran, and that is where Terah eventually died.

This takes us to the end of Chapter 11, and at this point, while we know some fact about Abram, we don’t know much about his character.

His brother Haran died, leaving his son Lot.

That makes Lot Abrams nephew and based on later evidence, it would appear that Abram took on a lot of the fathering duties for Lot.

We also find out that Abram and his brother Nahor also marry, but Abrams wife, Sarai was unable to conceive.

But apart from this, we don’t know much about the boy who was born in Ur.

This is actually an interesting point, and throughout history, some people have tried to speculate on various positive attributes.

Some even suggesting that he tried to disrupt various idol worshipping during this time.

So we know some of these facts about Abram, but not much about the content of his character.

Actually, what they are trying to do is show why God called Abram.

They presupposed that for God to call Abram to the role he is about to take on, surely he must have been especially good.

That is interesting because at various times throughout history some people have tr