Opening Illustration: Narrate the story of our call to the USA as missionaries.
Introduction: The Lord's call for Abram to journey to the Promised Land is often equated with a call to missionary service. For the missionary, there is a sense where God has called them from the ease and security of their suburban life-style into the harsh reality of the third world. As Abram left the security of Ur, so the missionary must leave the security of their world. Even Abram's sideway move to Haran can be used to a positive end. It can show us what not to do. How easily family ties can divert us from the Lord's mission.
Yet, Abram's call is not a call to missionary service. In fact, it is not so much a call as a promise of blessing. Abram is told to journey to Canaan, for there God will give him a land for his inheritance. He will have descendants as the stars in the sky and through his seed, the world will be blessed. Abram simply takes God at his word; he believes in the promised blessing. Abram is clearly a man of faith.
For most of his life, he has no descendants, and even at its end, he has no land. So much for the promise. Yet Abram believes God, he takes God at his word, and we are told that this faith-act of his is accounted to him as righteousness. Not that Abram was a righteous man, for he lived a very compromising life. Yet, by resting on God's promise, believing it when life's circumstances seemed to demand another conclusion, he was graciously regarded by God as if he were a righteous man and was therefore rewarded as such.
Like Abraham, we have before us the promise of life eternal in Jesus Christ. For us, it is a promise of another land with "many mansions." The circumstances of life often deny the reality of this promise, yet when we believe the promise our faith is accounted to us as righteousness and thus, the gift of eternity is freely ours.
What will it take to step into our calling?
1. LISTENING to God (v. 1)
It’s not clear how Abram received his call, whether God spoke clearly to him one day, or whether he had a growing sense that this was what God wanted him to do. But what is clear, is that Abram had cultivated the habit of listening for God’s voice and obeying it.
Listening to God, and discerning what God is calling us to do can be challenging. The reason many of us feel God doesn’t speak to us, is because we have not developed the habit of listening to him. When I am waiting to hear the voice of God, I want God to speak clearly and powerfully, so I am not left in any doubt that it is God that I am hearing. But God rarely shouts to us, instead he whispers softly.
This is the lesson Elijah learnt when he was on the mountaintop (1 Kings 19:11-18) waiting to hear God’s voice. As he waited he experienced a great wind, an earthquake and a mighty fire, but God wasn’t in any of those, instead God spoke to him in the stillness and silence.
If we want to hear God’s voice, rather than expecting God to shout to us from across our busy lives we should hunger for the Holy Spirit’s quiet whisper in our ear. You can only hear a whisper when you’re standing next to the person you’re talking to, so that your ears and their mouth are intimately close, and I think that is why God whispers to us today. He wants us to make time in our busy lives to draw close to Him, He wants us to approach Him daily so that we can hear and recognize that intimate whisper as God’s voice, and then respond in obedience.
As with so many other areas of life, the problem is within us. We’re too busy to hear God’s voice. We’re running so hard and so fast that God would have to shout to get our attention. Sometimes that’s what he does. He shouts through pain or opposition or sickness or disappointment and suddenly, we begin to hear his voice. It doesn’t have to be that way. God always speaks loud enough for a listening ear to hear.
2. STEPPING out in FAITH (vs. 1-9)
God’s first call is always the same to every person. He calls you to turn from your sin and trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Have you ever responded to God’s call? He’s calling you to leave your old life and come to Jesus just as you are. The new life you seek begins the moment you say yes to Jesus Christ.
Why does this promise seem impossible? Because Abram is already 75 years old, and his wife Sarai, we read in Genesis 11:30, is barren – she cannot have children. She’s about 65 years old. But God says He’s going to make this old man and barren woman into a great nation. And later on God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of many.”
D. L. Moody once wrote, “Some say faith is the gift of God. So is the air, but you have to breathe it; so is bread, but you have to eat it; so is water, but you have to drink it.” Faith means taking God at his Word and then leaving Ur for the Promised Land. The greatest adventure you’ll ever know begins the moment you say yes to God’s call on your life.
When Peter got out of the boat and started walking towards Jesus on the water, he was fine as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus. It was only when he took his eyes off Jesus that he began to sink. We need to look to Jesus, and place our faith in him. The theologian Karl Barth said “To hold to God is to rely on the fact that God is there for me, and to live in this certainty.”
Despite Abram’s age, and the fact that his wife Sarai could not have children, Abram trusted that God would fulfil his promise to make him into a great nation, to bless him with land and descendants, for he knew that what with man is impossible, with God is possible. That is why Paul in Romans writes that Abram “did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:20-22)
God asks of us nothing more than he asked of Abraham: That we believe His Word and act upon it. You may say, “But my faith is weak.” I’m sure it is, but God is strong. If you will put your tiny into God’s mighty hand, he will guide you step by step. If you say, “I can’t see where I’m going,” fear not. The All-seeing God has charted your course and he will lead you to the Promised Land. God is calling you. What will you say?
3. SEPARATION from Kindred (vs. 1-3)
This is all about what God will do. God wants to make sure it’s absolutely clear to us that HE is the one making this happen. It’s like God is saying – I’m going to choose the most impossible way to do this so you will never doubt that it’s ME doing it. So you will know that it’s me, and not you, that is making this happen! Right from the start, God wants us to know that it’s not about what WE do, it’s about trusting HIM and depending on what HE does.
Abraham and Sarai and their family must have experienced some of this. I am sure they were homesick. I am sure they questioned their reasons for leaving the comfort and culture and prosperity of Ur. I suspect that friends and family they left behind questioned their sanity and maybe even cursed them into hell. Imagine leaving your country, your people, and your father's household in obedience to the Lord. That's what Abraham did. He put his faith into action. His faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did (James 2:22). The fact of the matter is "If you don't live it, you don't believe it."
4. Unquestionable OBEDIENCE to God (vs. 4-6)
Abraham was as good as dead. His wife was unable to have children. YET, he believed. Why? Because he was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he promised! That is faith – believing, no matter what YOU think the possibilities are – that God is faithful, and will always keep his promises.
And did God fulfil his promises to Abram? Yes he did! He gave Abraham, at the age of 99, and Sarah, at the age of 90, a child. And through that child, Isaac, they became a great nation of hundreds and thousands of people, who eventually lived in the land of... Canaan.
God delivered every promise, even though it seemed impossible. BUT... even though God was faithful to his promises, Israel was not faithful to him. They disobeyed him again and again and again and again. Why? The same reason as in the Garden of Eden. They didn’t take God at his Word. They didn’t trust completely in what God said.
Abraham was being asked to forsake everything in order to follow God’s call. What would do? You’re in the prime of life, you’ve got a good job, a nice nest egg, a home you like, friends you admire, neighbors who respect you. You’re an upstanding, valuable part of the community. You’ve got a good future ahead of you. The last thing you want to do is move.
And now God—whom you’ve just met—wants you to leave everything. Your family … your friends … your country … your home … your business … your security.
Does God mind if we question His instructions? At times yes. Remember when Zachariah heard the news of him becoming a father from the angel and questioned him, God struck him with being dumb till the birth of John the Baptist.
Obedience led to a fresh vision from God. Abram acted on the light he had received, and so he received more light. At last God points out specifically the land he had previously promised generally. But that Land would be for Abram’s descendants, not for Abram himself. The Canaanites were in the land and for his lifetime Abram would have to live there as a foreigner, an alien and a stranger. Obedience had led him into the lion’s den, yet God’s promise was there, “I will give you this land”. Even where people do not acknowledge Him, in Canaan or in North Springfield, God is still Almighty and God Almighty still reigns. God is still Lord. And with the eye of faith, impossible as it is seems, Abram receives God’s promise. But his life still consists of Tents and Altars.
5. BUILDING ALTARS (vs. 7-9)
The Altar, from a word meaning "place of slaughter," in the period of the patriarchy was the center of personal and family worship, being the place of sacrifice and surrender to God.
Building an altar and sacrificing all of ourselves to God denotes total dependence and reliance on Him. It implies saying no to self and yes to God—in effect presenting one's self in submission to God as a sinner, trusting Him in grace, and discounting our value apart from His work - Romans 12:1, 2. Building altars became a habit with godly Abraham, the "Friend of God" (James 2:23) and so we may also in our faith journey with Christ in this world.
What it takes to build an altar are rocks, broken things. There is a place of “altering” and a price of altering. Altars have a price - God intends that something be “altered” in us when we come to altars. To receive the promise means we make way for the transformation.
Application: Are you ready for this? So, what is it going to take you to step into your callings?
Are you going to take the effort to listen to God? How has your faith panned out for God? Will you step out even when God tests your faith by making the most difficult sacrifices in your life? Do you obey God at every level? Have you started to build those altars in your life? This is just the preliminary phase of stepping into your call. The call has not yet begun. If this is just the introduction, what will THE CALL be really like? If we cannot man up to be at the starting line, how could we even carry out our call faithfully and effectively?
