Calling Those Things That Are Not As Though They Were

Calling Those Things That Are Not

July 10, 2016

Valley Grove Assembly of God

Genesis 12:1-7

Genesis 13:14-18

The promises

Genesis 15:1-6 he believed

Genesis 17:1-5 change of name

24 years went by

Introduction: God had many things planned for Abram a long time before it ever happened. He laid out the plan and Abram took some steps to do what God wanted him to do—he started out, he built altars at various places, he believed God up to a point because in Chapter 15 he asked, “How shall I KNOW? What will you give me seeing I go childless? The things God had promised still hadn’t materialized and 24 years had gone by nd he and Sarah were getting older and older. Abram was already 99, and it didn’t look like all of this was going to work out, but as God continued to talk things over with him, it says that he believed God. Romans 4:3 says “and Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.” What seemed to make the biggest difference was when God changed his name from Abram to Abraham meaning the father of many nations have I made thee. Abraham knew the importance of names back at that time. And what they signified but in the middle of his believing he had a mixture of being overwhelmed with this news because both he and Sarah LAUGHED AT THE THINGS WHICH GOD SAID. –THE UTTER IMPOSSIBILITY. How in the world could this be? Then they said, “No we didn’t laugh.” Sometimes we think these Bible characters believed immediately when God told them something, but they struggled just like we do. Abraham had the PROMISES in the spiritual realm 24 years earlier but it had not happened yet in the physical realm. How does he get it from the promise into the here and now? It says in Genesis 21:5 Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born. Another verse says in Genesis 18:14, Is anything too hard for the Lord? We know that as time went by Abraham and Sarah learned how to walk in God’s promises and see them unfold in the

here and now.

Abraham received the promises in the spiritual realm before he saw them in the natural realm. They were good promises but he didn’t have the sheep in the pen or the cattle in the fields. He didn’t see the promised son. He couldn’t pick him up.

Most of you have heard Abraham mentioned in the New Testament in Romans 4:17 where it says, “he called those things that ‘BE NOT’ as though they WERE.” He had the promise but it was way out there somewhere. He hadn’t received it yet in the natural. The verse in Romans tells us that he CALLED it so. He CALLED it already done. I am CALLING it AS IF it were already done.

There is another verse that goes right along with this one. I Corinthians 1:28 says, ‘and things which are not, to bring to nought (to nothing) things that are. What does that mean?

To Abraham there were some things in place that he didn’t want to be there. What does he do about that? It says “to bring to nought”—What he is saying is “to REPLACE those things he didn’t want. Where there is an empty field, he will now see sheep and cattle. Where Sarah was childless there would be baby Isaac.

“To bring to nought”—to change the current situation—to replace it with the promise.

STORY: One time Walter and I went to Texas to a Kenneth Copeland motorcycle rally. I stepped out of the motor home and twisted my ankle. I thought I had sprained my ankle but it hurt for weeks and I finally went to have it x-rayed to see if I had chipped a bone. Nothing wrong with it, but it still hurt. I was working at the Christian school and every Thursday they prayed for one of the teachers and that day was my turn. I sat on a chair in the middle of the room and they laid hands on my ankle. When they got done praying it still hurt. Usually around 10:00 my ankle would really be hurting. I finished the day and didn’t think any more about it and then that night it dawned on me that there was no pain and to this day the pain has been completely gone. The pain was “brought to nought,” replaced with healing.

There are a lot of promises in the Bible that God intends for us but we don’t grab ahold of them either because we think they are not for us, we doubt, think it is impossible, think it might not be God’s will or some other reason. There are all kinds of healing scriptures that we don’t take ahold of. People say, Whatever will be will be.” That is about as good as nothing to say that.