GOD’S PASSION
WELCOME:
Martin Luther once spent three days in a black depression over something that had gone wrong. On the third day his wife came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes.
"Who’s dead?" he asked her.
"God," she replied.
Luther rebuked her, saying, "What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die."
"Well," she replied, "the way you’ve been acting I was sure He had!"
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INTRODUCTION:
There was once a young boy who went to spend the week with his grandfather on the farm. While walking around he noticed the chickens: they were scratching and playing around. The little lad said, “They ain’t got it”. Next he saw a colt in the field playing and kicking up its heels to which he replied, “He ain’t got it”. After examining all of the animals on his grandfather’s farm and seeing that none of them had “it”, this boy finally found the old donkey in the barn. When he saw the donkey’s long, frowning face and the way that the donkey just stood there he screamed for his grandfather to come quick. “I found it, I found it” the boy kept yelling. When his grandfather asked what he had found he said, “Pawpaw, I found an animal that has the same kind of religion that you have.” Ouch!!!
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Too many of us can relate to this story. In fact, too many of us resemble this story.
PASSION. It can evoke a wide variety of images and thoughts. Definitions given in the American Heritage Dictionary include: “A powerful emotion . . . Ardent love . . . Boundless enthusiasm . . . An abandoned display of emotion.” It can be applied to so many different things and areas of life, to positive or negative result. We are all passionate about something. Unfortunately, some of us are passionate about being indifferent – or living without any notable passion.
Why is it that passion so often seems to be lacking in God’s people? Perhaps it is a fear borne out of so much passion directed the wrong way. Passions for lust, material wealth, power, or information. But is that an excuse for apathy or indifference? Larry Crabb, Christian counselor, author and speaker has written, “The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things.”
We all need passion if we are to accomplish anything in life, if we are to live with a purpose.
Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881)
A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.
Journal.
Do you know that even God has great passion? After all, it is in His image that He created us to be passionate. Not for emotion’s sake, but for a fantastic purpose!
God’s great passion is to see the lost redeemed. God blesses us, not because we deserve it or are so wonderful, but in order that we may be a blessing to others through submitting to God’s call to redeem the lost in His power. Soul-winning and missions are His passion!
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
How about you? What is your passion? Are you aware that it is God’s will and plan that His passion is exercised through the cooperation of his people? The passion of God, if it is to be fulfilled, requires that we – believers in the Lord Jesus Christ – become His obedient instruments! This is the central theme of the entire Bible.
Eric Liddell - the late Olympic Gold-medalist, career missionary, and subject of an Oscar winning film (“Chariots of Fire”) – had this to say: “We are all missionaries. Wherever we go, we either bring people nearer to Christ, or we repel them from Christ.”
Now, I don’t believe that any of us has the power, ability (or disability) to prevent someone from getting saved. But our words and actions do significantly influence people’s attitudes and receptivity toward Christ.
PRAYER
SCRIPTURE: Genesis 12:1-4
Who is Abram and why him? Abram was what we today would call “an average Joe.” There was nothing special about Abram. He was a seventy-five year old man, still living with his family and whose father just died. He was the son of a maker and worshipper of idols. Up until this point he had lived a very unremarkable life. So why did God start all of this with Abram?
You see, that’s just it! It wasn’t about who Abram was, but about who God is and who God was going to make Abram into! And the same is true of us today. People don’t become Christians, serve God or become missionaries because of who they are, BUT because of who He is and who God has called them to become and do.
It doesn’t matter if anyone else (including you yourself) think of you as “a somebody.” It doesn’t matter what abilities you do or don’t have today. It doesn’t matter what color your skin or you hair is, or what shape your body is, where you live, how much you do or don’t have, whether or not you are an athlete or a scholar, or how many years you’ve lived. The only thing that really matters is God’s calling on your life! That is, who He in all His power will make you to be and to do – and the only thing that can stop it is your refusal to follow and have faith! Not if Jesus can do it, but if you believe He can.
Make no mistake, God IS calling YOU!
Henry Blackaby, in his book Created To Be God’s Friend, wrote: “There is no more crucial moment in a person’ life than when he is encountered by God! That moment sets in motion the rest of his life.”
Q: How about you? Is your life in motion for God? Or are you simply “saved and static”?
GOD’S CALL:
1.Get Out! (v. 1)
The first thing God told Abram was what some of you on occasion might like to tell your children: “Get Out!” “Go, leave, move on. Leave your country and your home, leave your family, give up your inheritance and the future you thought you had and just go!
Look ahead and don’t worry about what you are leaving behind. If God were speaking this to you today it would be like Him telling you to go and leave the comfort of . . .
Your house,
your family – parents, cousins, uncles and aunts, grandma and grandpa
your friends
your X-box
your “toys” and gadgets
your cable or satellite television
cell phones,
air conditioning and heat
indoor plumbing
the mall
all your favorite foods and clothes
your retirement
just go! Leave it all behind and go! Be willing to sacrifice everything!
Are you willing to give up those things that will not move you toward fulfilling God’s call in your life?
ILLUSTRATION: I remember my first experience with this choice. I was only a few months out of College and working as an independent public relations salesman. It was for a Christian company with the potential to build up enough residual income to eventually finance myself as a foreign missionary. At the time, it sounded like a great idea, but I was miserable. It was in the midst of this period in my life and much time spent on my knees and in tears that I first perceived God calling me into full-time ministry as a pastor. Not only that, but I sensed him specifically calling me to move to Minnesota and become a youth pastor. Now, you have to understand, for as long as I can remember I have always imagined myself living in tropical places. Give me the sun, the heat, the ocean forever! Instead, God was calling me to a land-locked place of unimaginable cold, snow and the wonderful odor of swine and turkey. And for all of that, I had to leave all my family, friends, security, and comforts. Depart for this journey to the promise of no more than an 8-week intensive training and possible job placement. Go out with no more than what I could fit in my little two-seat Honda CRX. God might as well have been calling me to go to the tundra of Siberia. But you know what? I went. Not because I was thrilled about it, not because I was confident or had any clue what the future would entail, but simply because God came calling.
So it was so many years before with Abram. Only, he didn’t even know where God was calling him to go!
What about you?
Perhaps, God isn’t calling you to a new geography so much as a new commitment or lifestyle of service right here?
2.Have faith
Notice that God does not tell Abram where to go, how long it will take, or what will happen along the way once he gets there.
ILLUSTRATION: ROAD TRIP It’s like the old college trick of one day surprising certain people, perhaps even waking them up at an unexpected hour and telling them to pack their bags and get in the car pronto! “But where are we going?” they ask.” Your reply, of course, is simply “you’ll see.” And, most of the time, they go along with it, because they know there must be a purpose or even reward for your madness.
In the same way, God was expecting Abram to believe and obey Him purely in faith. The Bible tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
3.To Receive and Be A Blessing (vv. 2-3)
A.To Receive a Blessing
God tells Abram that if he’ll just go and obey, then God will bless Him beyond
anyone’s wildest dreams! And God is saying the same to you today. Do you know that?
To obey God, to serve God, to be sent by God is to be blessed. Why? Why does God choose to so greatly bless Abram – or us for that matter – especially when we haven’t done anything ourselves to earn it?
B.We are Blessed So That We Will Be a Blessing (v. 3c)
THIS is THE POINT of the entire call! God calls us and blesses SO THAT we may in
turn be a blessing to others through fulfilling God’s great passion for them to be saved from sin and death!
And this God has been doing through “Abraham’s descendents.” And who are Abrahams descendents? The Bible says: Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law . . . that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Gal. 3:13-14).
What are YOU doing with YOUR blessing? Are you simply glowing inside and keeping them to yourself? Are you wasting it? Are you so caught up with the rat race and things of the world that you don’t even recognize them?
Or, out of your blessings, are you extending and being a blessing to others? If so, are you doing it to the glory of God? Using them to lead others to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ?!
Put another way, is God’s passion your passion? Does God’s heart and your heart beat as One? Are His blessings to you also your blessings given unto others?
4.Go and Obey (v. 4)
So how did Abram respond to God’s call? Verse 4 tells us that he went and he obeyed – in faith! And he did so immediately! He didn’t tell God to give him more time to think about it, to ask his friends what they thought, to finish whatever he was currently doing, or to be able to save up some more money first. Nor did he ask God to prove Himself. Abram simply went and obeyed.
MY CALL AND YOUR CALL TODAY:
Friends, I have news for you. This is, in a nutshell, also God’s call to me and to you today. After Jesus arose from the grave and just before He ascended back to heaven His call to all who would follow Him was this: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:19-20).
In order to seek and to save you and in order to make the salvation of all possible, Jesus left the glory and the comforts of Heaven itself, the presence of the Father and His ministering angels, and the security of his uninhibited power. What’s more is that He left all of this knowing that He would begin as a helpless infant and knowing that He would ultimately be a wanderer without a home, rejected, teased, ridiculed, spit upon, betrayed, beaten, falsely accused, & ultimately nailed upon that old rugged cross to die for OUR sins. Jesus was sent and Jesus went no matter the cost. Jesus was a missionary!
2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.
1 John 3:16-17: By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
What about you? Will you go? Wherever and whenever? Whether your call is to Minnesota or Hawaii, the plains of North Dakota or the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, your own neighborhood or the unreachable jungles of Malaysia, will you obey? And what are you doing to carry this out to all people groups in all the world?
ILLUSTRATION: Dr. Paul Brand is a medical missionary who has worked with lepers in India. He has a very interesting view on “fat.” He says, “Fat is absolutely gorgeous. When I perform surgery, I marvel at the shimmering, lush layers of fat that spread apart as I open up the body. Those cells insulate against cold, provide protection for the valuable organs underneath, and give a firm, healthy appearance to the whole body. But those are just the side benefits. The real value of fat is as a storehouse. Locked in those fat cells are the treasures of the human body. When I run or work or expend any energy, fat cells make that possible. They act as banker cells. It’s absolutely beautiful to observe the cooperation among those cells!”
Dr. Brand then applies an analogy of the fat of the human body to the fat of the Body of Christ – you and I. You and I who believe and follow Jesus as our Lord are the “fat” of His body. In us He has chosen to store up the power of His resources. And nowhere is that more true than here in the United States where we have 80% of the entire world’s wealth, education and technological resources. But will we be true to our function? Will we share this with others?
Tell your friends, your family, and your relatives about Jesus every chance you get. Invite people to church, take them to dinner and for dessert pour out your heart for Jesus, support and get involved in Sunday School, Oasis, Bread of Life and any number of outreach ministries. Give of your own time, talents and treasures that God’s blessings may reach all peoples all over the world.
Now, before I pray, let me talk to all those here today who are still thinking about what you are going to do with your life. Maybe you are a high school or college student. Maybe you’re in the middle of a career change or mid-life crisis. Or maybe you’ve retired and are looking for something else. Remember, Abram was 75 when He was called! What are you going to do?
Why not invest yourselves where you can save lives for eternity?!!!
