A Certain Future


A Sermon On:

Genesis 15 & 17


PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO



CHANGE
There is one word that is bound to get the pulse beating a little faster and the adrenaline moving in just about every human being at one point in time or another: CHANGE.
CHANGE, perhaps for good, like a promotion at work.CHANGE, perhaps disastrous, like when you discover that the teenage years, along with bringing you more maturity and some freedom, also brings zits. CHANGE, perhaps uncertain, like that which Ontarians are feeling as they wonder how the common-sense revolution will reshape life in Ontario.
Change - it can be fun, but too much, even for the best of us is hard on the heart.

THE UPSET LIFE OF ABRAM
Let me introduce you to someone on whom the tornado of change had touched down; rearranging the landscape of life to look something like Jean Charet's hair...... Whooomph! Let me introduce you to Abram.

We read about him in early chapters of Genesis, where, under divine injunction, he pulls up roots and moves away from relatives, customs, cultures and security. This social bigwig becomes someone with no fixed address.
Right in the middle of his wanderings to who-knows-where, strained to the limit already, he gets a final kick. Know how that goes? The widow invests her meagre savings, and the investment firm collapses. The one struggling to break free from alcoholism begins to make real progress, and then loses his job in some corporate restructuring, and then finds one of his children struggling with a crippling disease.
Abram's final kick is an attack by a raiding party -- a biker gang of sorts, racing around the Palestinian countryside on jacked up camels with racing stripes. His nephew and possessions are ripped off. With great effort Abram manages to pull together a posse and recapture everything.

But imagine how he must feel. Alone. Breathless. Vulnerable. Who knows when this gang will return..... this time with their buddies? Like a fly in a sugar bowl in this strange land. Trying desperately to keep things together. But in the back of his mind wondering why he's even bothering with that -- because he's got no kids would could inherit any of this. Some stranger would get it all in the end, anyway.

In that kind of setting, God comes to this disheartened pilgrim with a message of security. He tosses Abram a lifeline. Join me in reading the account:

GENESIS 15.1-21; 17.1-27


GENESIS 15 - THE LAND PROMISE
I said that this passage shows God offering security to Abraham. Genesis 15 records the first part of that offer. To a lonely, homeless, childless man is given the promise of a place to hang his hat. And, oh yes, the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky to live in that land.

And the one who makes these promises seals his commitment with, as it were, his divine signature.
In those days, rather than call in a lawyer to witness the signing of a legal contract, the two parties would cut up animals, as Abram did, and walk between them. Their stroll between the entrails would say, in effect, "May this be my fate if I do not live up to my part of the deal into which we have entered."
The God of all eternity says, "I will die before reneging. I, the royal King who owns all creation, decree that this place will belong to you, Abraham. To you and to children of yours that you don't know about, yet."

GENESIS 17 - THE RELATIONSHIP PROMISE
After the interlude of chapter 16 God builds on the security of chapter 15, by adding a second part to the promise. "Not only will I give all these things to you, but I am going to enter into a personal relationship with you, Abraham." V.7: `I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.'
God, the King of Creation pledges his constant care, and Abraham his subject responds with a pledge of alliegance. God and Abraham are joined irrevocably by a symbolic shedding of blood.
God and Abraham: Blood-brothers. Circumcision, the ceremonial cutting away of the male foreskin, which said "So may my future and my descendants be cut off, and my blood shed completely, if I forsake my part of the covenant."


THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROMISE-MAKING EVENTS
"I'll be your God and the God of your descendants" promises the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
"Yeah, right" responds a beleaguered and almost cynical Abram. Not that he doesn't want to believe this. Oh, how he does. It's just, well, when you've been knocked around and down a few times;
when the tornadoes of life have left you bruised and batteredthere comes a point where you don't feel you've got the strength to get up any more. You can't see any way out. Time to quit.
Look carefully at 15.2: O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me?
Old Ab, tired, childless, looks around and all he sees are dead-ends. He strains with his 85 year old eyes looks to the horizons of his experience. This way. That way. But no way out. Common sense told him so.Till God begins to speak in the next few verses, reminding this old man, who had already seen too much of life, that there was still more... far more stuff of life that lay beyond Abram's horizon - stuff only God could reach........ and would reach.
Go to chapter 17 and the same thing happens again.
God begins to speak - "I'm going to be with you. I will shepherd your children and grandchildren through the pastures of life, Abram.
Your God, Abram.
And the God of your children.
This is personal, Abram. You and me -- in this together, tight.

And do you notice Abram, now called Abraham -- notice his response?
V.17 -- falls facefirst into the dirt............. laughing.
Face down -- the proper posture before someone of great power, who holds your very life in His hand, who could with a snap of His holy fingers end your existence.
But laughing.

Why do people laugh? Why do you laugh?
Sometimes because the pain is great. Just trying to keep sane.
Sometimes because things seem so crazy, so outlandish, it's almost funny.
Sometimes out of spite -- ridicule.
Sometimes because it's all one big joke. Who cares? No matter. Just laugh.
We can guess, but are never really told, which of these are mixed into Abraham's laugh. We can just hear the snickering in the dust.
And the few timid words: "Ishmael -- what about this son of mine born to the slave? Will that do, God?"

See, that's the stuff of chapter 16, that we didn't read. Abram figured God needed a little help with this project of getting descendants, and so had a baby with one of his slave women. Now in chapter 17 he waves, as it were, to God and says, "S ee, I've figured it out. Here's the solution to the problem."

And I love God's response. "Yes, but......."
Like a loving father gently watching his child try to blunder its way out of a problem situation, he doesn't grind this child into the dust. Ishamel will be blessed. But don't just look to your horizons, Abraham. There are far more options than you can possibly imagine. Don't try to box me in!

COVENANT PROMISES AND US
Can you see this promise-making event replayed in the text?
Can you feel Abram's tiredness, his uncertainty, his bewilderment?

I hope so, and I hope that you won't close the cover on this event and walk away. Because, you see, it's you event. And my event.
This story is for us. And about us.

FOR us who are entering the uncertainty of a new year, because we are among those referred to in these words. We are among the descendants of Abram. That's what the Bible says, in Romans 4:11, where Abraham is called "The father of all who believe."

Belief. Faith. Genesis 15.6 says "Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness."
Though he couldn't quite get a handle on it -- couldn't handle it at all, as a matter of fact -- Abram realized that if God said so, it must be so, and it would be worth living by.
Counting on.
Trusting.

Abram says, "Ok Lord. Whatever comes of my life is up to you, Lord."
And the Lord flings him a lifeline. "Credited it to him as righteousness."
God looks at this stumbling child and says, "He's all right. And he's mine."And the Lord of all Creation draws this fallible, short-sighted fellow to His Holy Self and holds him tight.
Abram's faith, limited, fuzzy, weak though it was, was his link to the limitless, clear, omnipotent presence of God. Abram reached up with a weak, timid hand, and God's vast Hand, the hand that formed the first man from the dust, the hand in whose palm is engraved the name of everyone who believes, encircled his and held it tight -- secure, not letting go.

Faith. Belief.
We gather here today in faith, belief. Reaching weak hands up to the God of the Ages and the promises. Looking forward into 1998 and unable to see any further than our own limited horizons. But trusting that He can see far beyond them; can reach over them; will reach over them to guide us along.

We reach our hands up in faith to the God who used the descendants of Abraham and Sarah to be the birth community of His Divine Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. We reach our hearts up in faith to this Jesus.
And through Him, through this Jesus, we also receive the credit memo which says, "His righteousness is now yours."
Though Him we, too, becomes heirs of a new land, a new home.
Through Him we, too, children of Abraham, can count each day on God's promise -- "I will be your God....". His presence. Each day. With us.

Through faith -- a tradition of faith, a legacy of faith.
There's an amazing couple of chapters that talk about faith, and how that faith lived out in some of these descendants of Abraham. You can read them some time in Hebrews 11 & 12.

These chapters talk about moving through time, uncertain, unpredictable, sometimes fun, sometimes very painful, but always changing -- timemoving through time with our eyes on that land which is waiting for us, a heavenly country, a place with a rock-solid foundation. Abraham looked forward to it. He didn't get it.
Those who followed after him - Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, Paul, Peter, John - they didn't get it.
They're still waiting.
That city is still coming.
That city which is the New Creation, when Christ will come back and restore this Cosmos to what God originally intended it to be. It IS coming.

And while they wait, these saints --who lived by faith, and by the gracious power of God that was a constant in an otherwise always shifting world -these saints live in heaven, God's presence, resting, waiting.

Hebrews 12.1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."Can you imagine it? Abraham, knowing the sort of knocks that life can throw at a person, watching us run the race of life and cheering us on? Can you hear him call? "Don't run alone! Run in the draft of Him who runs with you. Hang on to his hand as you head up those steep hills. Let Him steady you along those dangerous cliffs, and down those slippery slopes."
In February, a sole runner is going to enter a stadium in Nagano, Japan, carrying a torch. That runner will light the Olympic flame and the Winter Games will begin to a huge roar and celebration. That runner is only one in a long line of runners who carried that torch for thousands of miles from its source, through all kinds of weather and situations.

We're runners. Torch bearers for the Kingdom of Christ. Runners in a long line of runners, each one carrying the torch a little further. Never sure if we'll be the last runners, the ones there at the time and place of God's sovereign choosing when the trumpet will sound and the celebrations will begin, the celebrations of eternal new year in a new creation.

We're runners. Those who have finished their leg of the journey, Abraham and Sarah included, are cheering us on. Calling us not to quit. Keep going.


And so we will in 1998.
Oh, it won't always be easy. Like Abraham there may be times when we can't see beyond our limited horizons. And we forget that God's scheme is far bigger. And we won't see our way clear. And we'll grow discouraged. Or laugh in cynicism.
There may be times when our faith almost runs dry and we're left to mumble, as Abram did, "Lord, what could you possibly offer me?"
And just when we think we've regained our footing and gotten used to the situation, we'll round a curve, the landscape will be different and everything will change again.

But through it all -- hear those voices of the runners from the past. And reach up for the hand that steadied them. The one constant in time. Security plus.
A hand with a nail scar in it.
A hand reaching for you.