Journeys of Grace: The Call of Abram

Introduction

How would you describe the situation that we are in today? This process of starting in a new place? Getting familiar with something new? Do we call it an…interruption? Or a season of life? A disruption, or another chapter in a story? A milestone moment? A turning point? The beginning of a journey?

What word would you use to describe what we’re going through? Is it exciting? Scary?Uncertain? Joyful? Hopeful?

Here’s a weird question: would you describe this journey as, well, ours?

If we think about it, whatever we call these next 18 months, this process of relocation and rebuilding and eventually returning—it’s not exactly our journey. By that, I mean to say that this is not about us. Certainly, our members and leaders have been working tirelessly to get this massive project moving, and we thank them for their work.

I suggest that what they have done so well and effectively is because of God’s grace and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. And not just this project we are in, but every human work you can imagine.

Words

The grace of God begins, sustains, and concludes every human work. Or as the apostle Paul says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” There is no human work or deed or endeavour that does not has its uttermost source in God Himself.

There’s a funny story I once heard about a group of scientists who came to God saying, “Hey God, we’ve found a way to create life on our own, and we don’t need your help!” And God says, “Okay, prove it.” The scientists say, “Okay, so we start with this mud...” And then God says, “Wait wait wait—get your own mud.”

The grace of God begins, sustains, and concludes every human work. And that’s good news. Imagine that - everything we do isn’t dependent on our ability. Everything is the graced work of God. His goodness is present in every step we take, every breath we breathe, every thought we think. It is His work from the journey’s beginning to its end, and God’s work is always good.

So for the next 3 weeks, Irvin and elder Peter and I will be exploring stories in Scripture where we see God being present in the journeys of His people. And our hope is that as we see how the journeys they took are journeys of grace, we will come to see our journey of rebuilding and relocation as a journey of grace as well.

And we begin with the story of Abraham, or as he was formerly known, Abram.

Context

The story of Abram begins in Genesis 12, but we really need to begin from the very beginning in Genesis 1. That’s because everything before chapter 12 is setting up for the story of Abram.

Most of us are familiar with the events of Genesis 1-11. As a whole, these chapters tell the story of creation, fall from grace, and the hope of rescue.

God creates the world to be good and beautiful.

He created human beings as the greatest of all created beings, and God intends that humanity would be his ambassadors, carrying His glory and goodness throughout the world.

But then Adam and Eve disobey God and disqualify themselves from being God’s ambassadors. Their descendants get worse and worse, they grow more and more violent, until God needs to do a complete reset of creation.

So he floods the whole earth and restarts creation starting with Noah and his family, and he blesses Noah to become the new Adam and intends for them to succeed where Adam failed.

But almost immediately Noah fails and so do all the people who come after him.

The last straw comes when humanity try to build the tower of Babel (Genesis 11). This is where humanity intentionally declares their independence from God.

Verse

Genesis 11:4: they say that they will “make a name for themselves” - keep this in mind because we’ll come back to the idea of names later. This basically means “We are going to be who we want to be, we will do whatever we want to do; we we don’t care about God and we don’t need his approval!” Some of you are parents with teenagers are thinking “Wah, that sounds too familiar!”

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So at this point, humanity has a terrible track record with God. God has given them everything they could ever want or need to thrive, and still they rebel and try to find greatness on their own terms. Even a total reset of creation wasn’t enough to wake them up.

And so God adjusts His game plan. Instead of destroying every sinful human being, He’s going to choose one man and his family to be the origin point of a new blessing, and through this family God will bless every other nation on earth. If all humanity is not ready to receive the blessing of God directly, then God will bless them through a mediator, a kind of middle-man who can represent God before humanity and humanity before God.

And so we come to Abram.

Abram’s Journey was the product of divine grace (and so is ours).

Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV): 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. 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. 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.”

Notice this: what exactly does God want Abram to do? Where in this passage is Abram the one taking action. Only one thing: to “go from his country” (v1). Every other action is God’s action. It is God who will show Abram the land. It is God who will make Abram a great nation. It is God who will bless Abram and make his name great, who will turn Abram into a blessing for others. It is God who will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who dishonour him. Abram’s journey is almost completely dependent upon the initiative of God. So in a strange way, the story of Abram is not about Abram, but of God-in-Abram.

Later we will see that Abram is quite a problematic character as the story goes on. And the point is that God doesn’t choose Abram because of how good Abram is, but out of sheer divine grace. It is not Abram’s journey; it is not about his strength and courage and ability. This is God’s story of leading Abram on a journey and sustaining him throughout.

The Name

Let me call your attention to this phrase: “I will make your name great.” This is significant, because just one chapter ago, in Genesis 11, the people who build the Tower of Babel say that they want to build it “to make a name for themselves.” In ancient times, if you give something or someone a name, it shows that you have power over them. When Adam named all the animals in Genesis 2, it showed that he was the ruler of all earthly creatures. Even today, we don’t name ourselves; our parents give us our names, and we are under their authority. If one day I have a child and he says to me, “Dad, I don‘t like the name you gave me; I’m going to name myself.” That’s a child who needs to obedience, right?

So when humanity wants to make a name for themselves at Babel, it is an act of rebellion. They were created to be the rulers of the world under God’s leadership, but it wasn’t enough for them. Now they want to be their own masters, but they failed miserably and lost control of their own language. And so God confuses their language so that they never get to actually get their independence from Him.

Now God tells Abram, “The people tried to give themselves a name at Babel, and it didn’t work. But I want you to succeed, so here’s the plan: I will give you your name. You don’t get to name yourself, but I make your name great. I will make you a great nation; you don’t have to work for it. All you have to do is get up and go.”

Slide

It is God’s journey before it is Abram’s journey. It is always God’s journey before it is ours.

Abram‘s Journey wasn’t perfect.

Title slide

So we see that it is because of God’s grace that Abram’s journey began. I want to show that it was also because of God’s grace that Abram’s journey continued. We often think of Abram as a righteous man, “the father of faith.” We have heard it said that “Abram believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness.”

Not so righteous

But if we pay closer attention, Genesis does not portray Abram as great man obeyed God perfectly and earned his way into being God’s chosen man. If you read the rest of Genesis 12-25, Abram fails quite spectacularly! Yes there are high points where Abram shows an incredible level of obedience, but his failures can also be catastrophic. While you won’t find a verse that says “Abraham sinned”, we see it in the way the story is told.

Consider these examples: in Genesis 16, Abram and Sarai try to accelerate God’s promise about him having a son by getting Abram to sleep with Sarai’s maid. Because they didn’t trust that God would deliver. In Genesis 12 and 20, Abram lies to the king of Egypt and Abimelech that Sarai is his sister and not his wife because he is afraid for himself. These are not little sins either; they are huge stains on Abram’s character that I don’t have time to discuss today. In a sense, Abram is a cheat and liar, and it’s a miracle that God would still choose him!

And that’s exactly the point. It is a miracle; God continues to bless Abram - why?

Title Slide

out of pure, perfect grace. Abram should have lost his privilege to be the chosen family of God. But God doesn’t rain fire and brimstone on Abram’s tents and find someone more trustworthy. Instead, this is what He says to Abram. Genesis 17:3-8:

English Standard Version (Chapter 17)

And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Name

Notice that God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, from “exalted father” to “father of a multitude” - God literally makes his name great. Remember, this is after Abraham has already proved his lack of faith. This is not a story of Abraham’s ability, but of God and His great grace. Without God’s grace, Abram’s journey would never have begun. Without God’s grace, Abram’s journey would never have continued.

Conclusion: The Death of Abraham and the Birth of Hope

I want to conclude by jumping ahead to the end of Abram’s life in Genesis 25:

English Standard Version (Chapter 25)

These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life, 175 years. Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with Sarah his wife.

Highlight location

Notice the amount of detail about the location of Abraham and Sarah’s burial place. To us modern readers, this doesn’t really mean anything because we don’t know who these people are or where it is.

Promised Land

But this place is in fact the first piece of the Promised Land that God gives to the family of Abraham. This is the downpayment of God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants would inherit this land.

Remember that originally, God promised Abraham that He would take him on a journey and make him a great nation and make his name great. 100 years after the promise, Abraham has not seen that promised fulfilled. All he gets is this tiny little field and a a few kids, and only one of them actually matters. From Abraham’s perspective, surely God failed to keep His promise. But even Abraham is just one character in the grand story of God. His role in the story may have ended, but the journey of God and His people continues.

Our Journey

Abram’s Journey and Ours

This sermon has been about the call of Abram, and I wonder if we might see ourselves in this story. Just as Abram’s journey began, continued, and concluded through God’s grace, we also begin, continue, and will conclude this journey by God’s grace. We already see this grace working in the Rebuilding committee and the leaders of the church. This grace works in the external parties who helped us find alternative locations and move logistics. Our journey, just like Abraham, is a journey of grace from start to finish.

And so I invite us to journey as Abraham did: with humility. Let us recognise that this is about the glory of God before it’s about getting whatever we want. Maybe this hotel arrangement is inconvenient. Maybe we find something that makes us go “Haiyah, why they never do properly” or “Aiyoh so simple also cannot do.” Maybe the guy preaching doesn’t preach the sermons you want to hear. We will all find something that we don’t quite like, and at those points I ask that we remember who this is really about. And when we truly offer up this journey of rebuilding and relocation into God’s good hands, and we get up and go from our comfort zones, and we stop demanding that everything serve our needs first, who can say what amazing blessings God has in store for us?

Let us also journey with hope. Abram was not a perfect man, and actually he was a deeply flawed man. And so are we. As a church, we will make probably make a couple of mistakes along the way. There will be times when we feel like all is lost, that we have failed God and we don’t deserve His help. But as God did not give up on Abram, so also He will not give up on us. I believe that He has a purpose and a plan for PPCOC, and He is going to use this season of wandering and exile to reveal Himself to us.

As brother Irvin puts it so well: “May this time in the wilderness not be a mere waiting room until our building is rebuilt. May these 2 years not be about the familiarity we have lost, or whether we grow or shrink in numbers. But may these 2 years be about the God who is going to bring us through the wilderness, and may this experience help us desire to know and worship Him more and more.”

And all we need to do is to say yes to God’s purpose, get up and go.

Let us pray.

Footprints

O God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, before the world was made or the waters teemed with life, before the stars burst into life or the