God Builds A Nation

God Builds a Nation

Genesis 11-24 & Genesis 17

Today our message is for anyone over the age of sixty five. This does not mean that if you’re under that age that you can leave or ignore the message - quite the contrary.

In fact if you are over sixty five years of age this message will be a special blessing as you come to realize that our God sees greatness in you that is yet to be realized.

I’m not sure how God is going to work that out in your life. It may be that God will use you to influence a child or grand-child or great-grandchild. It may be that you are going to write a poem or letter that will touch the heart of a Prime minister or King or Queen. It may be that by faith God is going to call you to experience his miracle working power in your life.

The one thing I do know is that God is not finished with you yet and he has something important and significant that he wants to accomplish in and with your life before he calls you home.

This world may have put you out to pasture, this world may see you as someone who needs to retire but God does not see you the same way that the world does and how wonderful that is.

Isaiah 55:9

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”

So this morning I say to the younger people listen up and learn, understand that God is not a respecter of persons – our God has done great and marvelous things in and through senior citizens all through the Bible and God does not change he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So respect and honor our seniors amongst us and seek out their wisdom and counsel because God is still using them for his great purposes.

Acts 10:34 KJV Then Peter opened his mouth, and said; Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

This year we are going through the story of the Bible as one continuous chronological story. We have looked at Creation and Adam and Eve and we looked a Noah and the flood and we come to the next big part of the story where God builds a nation.

After the flood of the earth the nations of the world once again began to develop and grow but people did not know or honor their creator instead they had made for themselves all manner of gods from wood and stone. Nations worshiped the sun and moon and the stars but the living God they did not acknowledge until God called out to Abram. Abram as we know is Abraham. (Genesis 10 & 11)

Now ten generations have come and gone since Noah to Abram and twenty generations since Adam to Abram.

Once again our Heavenly Father reaches out to us as his creation to give us yet another chance. It’s another chance to have a relationship with him and another chance to know God intimately.

This time God is going to build a nation, a nation that is different from all others on the face of the earth. God is going to cause a people to be born who are set apart as his own.

He calls Abraham and Sarah to leave behind the country they were born in and to wander into the desert to a place that He will show them. They travel with their entire family some 1,400 miles to a new land called Canaan present day Jerusalem.

Is God calling you to leave behind your old ways, your old familiar places and to follow Him to a new and wonderful place a new and wonderful life?

If you were in God’s shoes how would you have started this new nation? You might have chosen two young people who were strong and virile who had the capacity to have a lot of children.

But here we must remember that God’s ways are not mans ways. Isaiah 55:9

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”

God does something that makes no sense to us God uses a man who is seventy five years old and a woman who is sixty five years old to start this process. To make it even more remarkable Sarah is barren and has been all her life yet God will use her to birth a nation.

This is an important point that we should spend some time meditating on. We see here that God wants to remove all human influence from the creation of his new nation. This promised child will arrive not by human resolve but by divine interaction. It reminds us of the Nativity story of Jesus.