Waiting With Abram

Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

0 ratings

· 5 views

Notes

Transcript

12 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

Seventy-five years is a long time. By any standard, ancient or modern, Abram the son of Terah had been around for a while. At the same time, compared to his father, Abram had lived just over 1/3 of Terah’s lifespan by that point, so compared to today’s average lifespan of 78.54 years, according to the World Bank (https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?topic=Health), it would be about the equivalent of someone having lived 26.18 years today. OK, maybe it wasn’t so bad, but still, that is a lot of years. Besides, if you look at Genesis 11, where we read about Shem’s descendants after the flood, the average age when someone starts having children seems to be between 30 and 35 years. Terah did what a while, 70 years to be exact, but he seems to be an outlier at this point.

Abram’s age was significant then, when it comes to the one thing by which one could get a picture of their relationship with God: Do you have children or are you barren? This is important, and we are told in the text, quite plainly, that Abram’s wife, Sarai was “barren.”

All this information is part of the set-up for God’s call to Abram in Genesis 15. He is leaving his family, he has no heir, and he is going somewhere, the location of which he has nothing but God’s promise that “I will show you.”

Would that work for you? Does that work for you?

Abram had a visitation from a Being, but according to Joshua 24:2, his people “served other gods” when YHWH appeared to him. So a previously unknown God calls Abram and bids him to leave everything that it familiar for a vague promise (“I will make you a great nation”).

Maybe the first part is outside of your personal experience, you know, God showing up and having a conversation with you, but you don’t know anyone who went to either heaven or hell and came back so, so the second part is something you can relate to, since we are told to think of Heaven the way Abram thought of this land to which he and his family were headed.

How do you handle the combination of waiting for things you want and promises concerning a place with which you have no experience when it comes to the promises of God? As the Bible says in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We know that, as it says later in that same chapter (verse 6) that “without faith it is impossible to please God,” so we desire to trust God concerning His promises, both those that are clear and those which we need to search out our study aids and confer with our pastors and teachers for an understanding. Ultimately, we have no control over the things for which we have to wait, but I think that God can be trusted, based upon His track record, so I fall in line with Abram and those other “heroes of faith.” When I read of how things turned out for them, I see that there is no record of God failing to keep His promises, the most important of which is His promise to forgive our sins and keep us from falling.

As far as this life goes, I’m not trying to bust heaven wide open just yet; as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “longevity has its place,” especially when you have kids that are under 10 years of age to raise. I tell the Lord every day, “Since you blessed me with them, please bless them with me until they are grown and on their own, Amen.” Enlarged borders, while that might have made Jabez and Bruce Wilkerson’s day, sounds to me like extra grass to cut and more weeds to kill. More children than the sands of the sea? I am quite happy with my three. How about the wealth of the wicked? As the late Notorious B.I.G. said, “Mo Money - Mo Problems.” As long as my paycheck and my expenses are at a happy medium, and my wife is able to get her occasional goodies, I’m content.

It’s eternity that has my focus, because whatever happens with regard to that realm is forever. I don’t want to spend forever in torment. I don’t want to spend forever without my loved ones. Most importantly, I don’t want to spend forever without God. I already miss Him so much down here in this life. To spend the life to come without Him too would be too much to bear, and there would be no way to escape it. Thanks be to God that is not a burden that you or I have to carry, instead, Jesus carried it in His everlasting arms, His bruised and battered arms, His wounded arms. I hear His promise to keep me, to forgive me, to love me, and I feel comforted, because I know that He knows how to do this, even as He knows all things.