Our Journey of Faith
Notes
Transcript
We are beginning our journey for 14 weeks through the Bible. I know we’ve looked at the Bible before in our Casket Empty series, and the difference this time is that we’re challenging everyone to join us on this journey reading every word of the Bible in 90 days. You can meet with us in small groups that are on Monday and Wednesday groups (though this week Monday is meeting Tuesday). This is a journey, and we’re going to pass milestones of faith along the way: the faith of Abraham, Moses, David and Gideon; Nehemiah, Esther, Solomon and Jeremiah; Daniel, Haggai, Paul, and John. In our journey through the Bible, we’ll learn about the object of our faith, God; and the more we learn about God and how He has intersected with the course of human history, the more our faith will grow.
What is it about faith that’s so important to our journey? If your journey is like mine, you don’t always know where it’s heading. You get stuck, there are accidents, rest stops, scenery and wrong turns. If your journey is like that, you need faith to keep you going.
Faith is knowing the unknowable, being certain in uncertainty, seeing what can’t be seen, sure about what you hope for. The Bible has a definition of faith that sounds something like that:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Are there elements of your life’s journey you just have to take by faith? Has God ever thrown you a curve? Sprung a pop-quiz on you? Sent you into scary territory? Taken away your map? Asked you to do something audacious or foolish?
You may remember the movie Evan Almighty, where Evan, a recently elected Senator is asked to change the world, and then to build an ark in the midst of a Washington, D.C. Suburb.
God may not have asked you to do something that audacious, but we’re going to discover through Abraham’s life that the Journey of Faith often involves acts of obedience that take us out of our comfort zone. Is God taking you out of your comfort zone right now? Maybe you need a faith-lift!
Question: On the journey of faith, are you due for a faith-lift?
Sermon Question: Are you due for a faith-lift?
Sermon Question: Are you due for a faith-lift?
Here’s some realities that we learn from Abraham that we can take away this morning.
1. Fear needs security. Faith takes risks.
1. Fear needs security. Faith takes risks.
The example we have from Abrahams life is from Genesis 12:1-3
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.”
God to Abram: “Leave your country, your people, your family. And go to a place I will show you. Where, you ask? Oh, you don’t need to know that yet. Just start walking, and I’ll tell you when to stop.”
How many of us would sign up for that plan? That plan would feed into many of the fears most people have:
Walk away from my home I have worked so hard to establish.
Abandon my career and the trappings that give me my identity.
Leave my family and my support structure where I feel secure.
Let go of what I built up to fall back on someday if I needed it.
Start off on a cross-country trip with no map, and no destination.
And, it’s okay, I can leave everything behind because this mystery place I’m going to will be a place of great blessing, and I can believe that because God says so. Riiiiiight.
That plan would not be a plan for the faint-hearted! You’d have to overcome a lot of fear in order to step out and start walking.
If fear is your issue, if you tend to be crippled by the unknown, if you need security, hate taking risks, if you miss opportunities because you’re afraid of what might go wrong, then you need a faith-lift!
Abraham was so sure about his hope in God that he obeyed, even though he didn’t know where he was going.
Abraham was so certain of what he could not see, that even while he lived in tents, he knew there would come a day when God would build a city with foundations.
Here’s some of what we learn from Abraham:
The strongest faith develops when faith is placed in something strong. Place your faith in God’s promises.
The journey of faith often doesn’t have a map, and may not even have a clear destination
It takes faith to take risks
It takes faith to not be the one in control
It takes faith to keep going when you’ve lost what makes you feel secure
It takes faith to stake your life on something you can’t see or prove
Are you held back by your fears?
Do you resist obeying God when it involves a risk of losing your security?
Has God asked you to do something that seems crazy, unwise, foolish, or downright scary?
Here is a faith-lift verse for stepping out of your comfort zone and taking a risk:
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Notice the reason you can be courageous instead of afraid? Because when God asks you to obey, he gives you his presence, wherever that obedience takes you. What risk is God asking you to take? Conquer your fear over losing your security by placing your faith in the God who will stay with you, no matter where your journey of faith takes you.
2. Worry wants predictability. Faith loves hope.
2. Worry wants predictability. Faith loves hope.
We see this clearly in Abraham’s journey in Genesis 15. reading verse one:
Genesis 15:1
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
And Abraham challenges him and laments that he remains childless. His fear is that his servants child will become heir to all that he has. God responds: Genesis 15:4-6
Genesis 15:4–6 (ESV)
“This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Abraham and Sarah have been waiting for 25 years for the promise God had made. Now Abraham is getting anxious. He’s tired of waiting and worried that God might need some help with this one.
If you’re a worrier, you can probably relate to how Abraham was feeling right about then. He had all the classic factors in place for a great worry session:
God had been silent for years
The plans he had weren’t working out the way he thought they would
The plans he had weren’t happening on his timetable
He didn’t think his health would hold up long enough to see his dream come true
If you were used to communicating with God to the point that he gave you these promises and you didn’t hear anything for years, wouldn’t you be worried? The less predictable life is, the more worriers worry.
But God very clearly restates his promise, and gives Abraham a dramatic picture of what his future hope looked like. And there you see Abraham doing it again: Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).
In an act of faith, he lets go of his worry, and places his hope in what the Lord is promising him, even though he can’t see how God is going to pull it off – even though it’s not predictable! As an act of faith, Abraham replaces his worry with hope.
The author of Hebrews selects this second example from Abraham’s life. Look carefully at the reason he gives for why Abraham was eventually given a son:
By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Abraham’s faith was placed in the promise-giver. In his worry, he was trying to predict what was going to happen to the promise now that it looked like he was about to die and Eliezer of Damascus was going to inherit his estate. But, “he considered the ‘one who had made the promise’ faithful,” and God proved him right.
During World War II there was an inscription on the wall:
“I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining. And I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it. I believe in God, even when he’s silent.” ~ Inscription on the wall in Nazi Germany
Has God been silent for a while? It is in God’s silences that worry tends to breed.
Has God been silent about a vision he gave you? David waited 13 years to become king (2 Samuel 3:1; 5:4).
Has God been silent about your vindication? Noah had to endure ridicule for 100 years while he built a boat in a waterless land (Genesis 7).
Has God been silent while you’re waiting to be rescued? Joseph waited in a pit, then a prison (Genesis 37:24-28).
Has God been silent about giving you children? Abraham and Sarah waited 25 years for their promised son (Genesis 21:5).
So, if your world has lost all predictability, if God is silent right now and you don’t know how to hope, or how to behave or how to have faith, then here are some verses for you – these are faith- lifts for worriers!
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV)
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Has God gone silent? Has your world lost all predictability? Instead of worrying about your future, turn your worry into hope. Placing your faith in the God who promises to make everything happen at the right time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
3. Self Reliance holds on tight. Faith lets go
3. Self Reliance holds on tight. Faith lets go
Our illustration here is perhaps one of the most gut wrenching moments in the Old Testament. Genesis 22:1-3
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 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.” 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.
If you’ve know the story, you were probably reading that the first time and went, “What!?” Isaac means laughter because it was a joke that an old man would have a child. Abraham sees him and thinks, “That’s’ the future. All the promises have to be fulfilled through this child.”
Now we read the chilling words “Take your son, your only son, Isaac whom you love...and offer him as a sacrifice at the place I will show you.”
We are told that “God tested Abraham”. Note that the reader is told this. Abraham is not, however informed that this is a test. Twenty-five years ago, Abraham was asked to move, to part with his past. Now, is God asking him to part with his future?
If you were asked to let go of the very thing on which you had staked your future, would you let your fingers be pried open? Or, would your self-reliance kick in and say, “Not that! I need that! That’s what I’m counting on!”
The author of Hebrews tells the story this way: Heb 11:17-19
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Here are some more truths about faith that Abraham’s story teaches us:
Faith gets tested, and the tests don’t get announced!
Faith in God cancels out faith in oneself
Faith in oneself cancels out faith in God
It takes faith to let go of what you normally rely on
It takes faith to give up what it took you a long time to obtain
It takes faith to believe in miracles
But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
And without faith it is impossible to please God…
Has God called a pop-quiz on your faith?
Is your self-reliance kicking in, and you’ve got your vice grip holding onto the thing you think you have to have to make it?
Are you placing more faith in yourself than in God?
Slowly open your hand, and back away from that thing you’re depending on...your bank account, your job title, your achievement, your award, your image. Release it to God, and replace your faith in yourself with faith in God.
Like Abraham, we are embarking on a Journey of Faith. As we continue our reading from now until Easter week, we’ll be reading faith stories, and getting faith-lifts along the way. Unlike Abraham, we know our Biblical destination. But, we don’t know what kind of life change God has in mind for us while we’re on the journey. If God is speaking to your heart about making a change in your life, you can rest assured that the change is going to take faith.
It takes faith to take a risk leave behind your security. Is God asking you to GO?
It takes faith to hope when your plans don’t go as predicted and God is silent. Is God asking you to WAIT?
It takes faith to release the things you usually depend on. Is God asking you to LET GO?
No matter what kind of faith test God has sprung on you lately, you can pass it by remembering our faith-lift verse:
Joshua 1:9 (ESV)
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”