Sermon on Genesis 15
"Don't settle for Plan B: Go for Plan A--Braham"
A representative of the gas company phoned the owner of an expensive new home to make an appointment for the service man to come in and light the pilot lights and adjust the furnace.
The owner said that was OK, but he wanted to make sure he was there, because if he wasn’t the service man would never get the furnace going.
The caller insisted that his people were well trained and would have no trouble.
"You don’t understand," the owner said, "When your man tries to adjust the furnace he’ll go out of his mind. The thermostat in the entry hall is a dummy. It’s there for my wife to play with. Only I know where the real one is hidden.”
There have been times in my life when I felt that somebody had hidden the thermostat from me.
Times when I was faced with some type of crisis in my life
Times when ALL the plans I’d made turned to dust in my hands
And no matter what I did to try to resolve the problem – nothing worked.
Everywhere I turned… I was faced with a brick wall, and I found myself powerless – and I hate being powerless.
Have you ever felt like that? (get people to raise hands) Good… I don’t feel so bad now.
[illustration from a sermon by Jeff Strite on this site]
That was how Abraham felt at the beginning of our reading. You'll have had times in your lives when you started with big dreams - when you started your first job perhaps and you had all sorts ambitions about what you might achieve and where you might end up.
Well back in Genesis Chapter 12, Abraham started with big dreams. He followed God's call to leave Ur of the Chaldees and head for the promised land - and it was going to be wonderful.
And it hasn't been all bad. In the intervening chapters Abraham has military success. He has had financial success. He has had what you might call career success.
BUT it hasn't been all good either. He visits Egypt, end up lying to save his skin, gets caught out, and looks VERY stupid. He comes home - and rows with his nephew Lot - and they end up having to go their own ways because they can't live together. And worst of all - he has no child.
Abraham is not young (shake head). And everything he has worked for, everything he has struggled for - what will happen to it? You can't take it with you....
Perhaps you started with great hopes - whether it's in the ministry you do in church - or in the voluntary work you do in the local community - or in your family life - or in the work you are paid to do - You started with great hopes.
And a few years down the line, a voice in your head says "maybe now I should start to be a bit more realistic". It is not that necessarily everything has gone dreadfully wrong - though it may have done. But it hasn't lived up to it's expectations. so you start to think you need a plan B. You start to think you need to settle for second best.
As we start today's reading Abraham is thinking "I need to be realistic - I need a plan B". So he begins writing his will to leave everything to to Eliezar, one of his servants. He is cross with God for leading him up the garden path. But, now is the time to start being realistic. An old man like Abraham isn't going to have a child - so now is the time to think of plan B.
Well God does not want us to settle for plan B.
I think it was G K Chesterton who said
"The reasonable man seeks to adjust his expectations to the way the world is. The unreasonable man seeks to adjust the world to the way he thinks it should be. All change comes as a result of unreasonable people"
It is so easy for us to think we have to limit our expectations. Not to hope to high. Not to dream dreams. To live as people would say "in the real world". But that was not God's plan for Abraham, and that is not God's plan for us.
Let me illustrate this
Back in the 1930's there was once a student called George Danzig. Being a typical student, he was late for his lecture. The maths professor had written two problems on the blackboard. Danzig thought they were the homework assignment. It was the most difficult homework assignment he’d ever encountered. Night after night he tried solving the two problems. It took him nearly a week to finally figure them out. He finally turned in his assignment and thought he’d get a bad grade because it took so long.
A few weeks later, George heard a pounding on his door early in the morning. He was surprised to see his mathematics professor standing there. His professor said, “George, you solved the problems.” George said, “Well yeh - that was our homework.” The professor said, “That wasn’t your homework. Those were two of the most famous insolvable problems in mathematics. The world’s leading mathematicians have been trying for years to solve the two problems you solved in a few days.”
George Danzig, who later became a professor at Stanford University, said, “If someone had told me that they were two famous unsolved problems, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to solve them.”
[sermon by Mark Batterson on this site]
If we think something's impossible, if we think being realistic means not even trying, then we won't try. As on basket ball player put it "you miss all the shots you don't take."
God has plans for each one of us - "plans to prosper". And if we dare to go with those plans, God will bless us, just as he was to bless Abraham with descendants who would first become a great nation, and then become the means by which God's Son would be born into the world.
Now it is important to understand that God promises to bless us in his plans, not in our plans.
It may be that God's plan for you is in the paid work that you do - in which case don't settle for second best in that career. Do your best. Apply for the promotions. Move jobs when you have to. Dare to be the best that God has made you. If God's plan is for you to be head teacher who can turn a troubled school around and make a difference in young children's lives, then first you've got to climb up the promotional scale to get to be a head teacher. If you never apply to be head of department, never apply to be a deputy head. If you set your expectations too low. Then you will never make the difference you are meant to make. Like Abraham with his servant Eliezar, you will have settled for second best.
But it may be that God's plan isn't in the paid work that you do. St Paul's paid work was making tents. Now we don't read in the bible of him setting up tent-making franchises across the middle east. We don't read of him amassing untold wealth through his business. We don't read of him winning "Tent-maker of the year AD40". Tent making wasn't where his heart was, it wasn't where his calling was. It was to pay the bills so that he get on with what he was really meant to do - planting churches across Europe and the middle east.
If your paid work isn't your calling, then don't get distracted by it. When you are doing it, do it the best you can. But don't let it take over your life so much, that you don't have time to do the thing God really wants you do.
We have people in this church who's paid work is part time. if they worked full time they would work a lot more money. if they worked full time they would be more likely to get promoted. But if they worked full time they would not be able to do the work that really matters, the work they do in the church or in the local community in their unpaid time.
In the parable of the tallents - Jesus tells us how God has given us all unique gifts and abilities - and he wants us to use them to the full to produce results. I've heard people say "I've always wondered if God was calling me to be a priest or a Reader [lay preacher] - but everything's so busy at work that I haven't got time to think about it at the moment."
or "I'd love to get involved in work with children, but not at the moment - I'm too busy at work to do that"
Now - it may be that your work is your calling. Maybe you are meant to be the next Bill Gates, earning so much money that you can set up a charitable foundation that can save the lives of billions. Or maybe you are meant to be successful business man - creating jobs to give dignity and money to many in the local community. Or maybe you are meant to be a nurse saving lives through the way you care for your patients.
If your work is your calling - go for it with all your heart, with all your passion to achieve what God wants you to achieve there.
BUT if your work is not your calling - if it is just a way of paying the bills, then don't let it distract you from doing what God would really have you do. Don't be like Abraham settling for plan B
It's not just in today's reading that Abraham will settle for plan B. He'll do it again in the next chapter, chapter 16. He'll say "if Eliezar isn't going to be my heir, it's unrealistic to think my elderly wife will have a baby, so perhaps I ought to have a surrogate baby through one of the serving girls." But the baby born there - with all the mess and jealousy that creates - isn't God's plan either. It is Isaac, not Ishmael who is the promised heir.
William Carrey, considered by many to be the human catalyst behind the modern missions movement, used to say, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."
Abraham is challenged to trust God and take risks God's way. In the parable of the talents, we read of two servants taking risks to get the best return on the money given to them, and of the third servant taking the "safe option" of burying his his share in the ground. God praises the servants who take the risks. Faith is spelt R-I-S-K. "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."
Things won't always happen at the speed we want them to happen. From what we hear in Genesis 17, it is at least 13 years after todays passage that the promised child is born. That's a long time to wait for a child.
Mikhail Gorbachev brought freedom to millions when he ended communist rule in eastern Europe - but he had to wait many years, climbing the ladder until he was in the position to do so.
Bill Gates may have made many people's lives easier through the software he developed - but his greatest achievements through his charitable trust seeking to cure malaria and change the world, have only become possible after first many years of slog at Microsoft.
I was ordained at the age of 28 - which is a reasonable age to get ordained. But I felt God's call when I was 16, and if you had told me it was going to take 12 years until I would be ordained, I would have been saying "Lord - what are you doing"
God's timing is not our timing. Yet God is in charge, and he will bless us in whatever he is calling us to do. So we should never settle for second best.
Now you will all know the old joke
Sherlock Holmes and Watson are out camping. In the middle of the night, Holmes wakes Watson up and says "What do you see", “I see millions of stars.” “What does that tell you?” asked Holmes. Watson ponders for a minute. “Astronomically speaking, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Timewise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it’s evident the Lord is all powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What do the stars tell you Holmes?” "Elementary my dear Watson - As we look up at those stars it tells me ... Someone has stolen our tent.”
Sometimes we can be so stuck in one way of thinking, we need be given a new perspective. Abraham is inside his tent, thinking about wills, God has to take him outside to give him a new perspective. God has to take him outside. "you see these stars - count them" "errr one, two three...." "Look towards the heavens and count the stars if you are able - so shall your descendants be."
Is there something in your life, where you are thinking "I need to be realistic, not get my hopes up, settle for second best." If so - God wants to take you outside. God wants to give you a new perspective.
This is God who can make the stars. If he can do that, think what he can do in your life.
Nothing is impossible for God.
