Can you finish this well-known saying? “A journey of a thousand miles begins with…a single step.” That’s what the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu observed 2600 years ago and the point of the saying is to encourage action when facing a daunting task which threatens to paralyze us. For example if your mother has asked you to clean your room but that room looks like it’s been hit by a tornado and then by an earthquake, you could easily just sit there staring at the mess not knowing where to start. In a situation like that it’s good to remember that a journey of a thousand miles (or a thousand toys and dirty socks) begins with a single step. Just choose one item to pick up and that will get you going in your quest to clean up your room. Before you’ll know it, the task will be done.
But you know, not every journey begins with our effort of placing one foot in front of the other, or of picking up one toy after the next. Take the journey of faith for example. Our quest for heaven begins with God’s actions not ours. Over the next eleven Sundays we’re going to take a closer look at this journey of faith through the experiences of a man named Abraham. We’ll see today how Abraham’s journey of faith, like our journey, begins with God. It’s important to know this or we could get frustrated when the journey gets long and difficult, and we could be tempted to take off in different direction. But such a maneuver would bring our journey to a ruinous end.
Abraham, or Abram as he was first called, lived about 4100 years ago in 2100 B.C. Just to put his life into historical context, the worldwide flood of Noah’s day had already come and gone. So had the Tower of Babel, which Noah’s descendants had built in an effort to make a name for themselves and to keep from being scattered around the world. But scatter the people God did when he mixed up their languages. So by the time Abram came along, the Chinese were setting up ruling dynasties, the peoples of the First Nations were planting corn and maize here in North America, and somebody set up eighty big stones in England which we now know as Stonehenge. Abram himself was born and grew up in a city named Ur, which is in present-day Iraq. Ur was a sophisticated city, but it was also a stronghold for idol worship. Although everyone in the world had at one time known that there is only one God who created everything, over time people had begun to come up with their own gods, often making them look like mere mortals. The Bible tells us that Abram’s father Terah was a worshipper of such idols (Joshua 24:2).
We don’t know if Abram himself worshipped these idols, but the danger was there to be influenced by them. And if they had, Abram’s journey of faith would have ended tragically. Listen to the way the Bible describes idols. “… idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. 5 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. 6 They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. 7 They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. 8 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them” (Psalm 115:4-8).
Putting your trust in idols might seem like a silly superstition from the ancient world, but that superstition is still with us. There are still people today who bow down to metal and stone statues, but just as foolish are those who bow before the latest fashions and fads, or who stake their trust on getting a good education and job—as if those things will guarantee them a comfortable life and the smarts to save the world. What these people quickly find, however, is that they can’t even save themselves from life’s problems. PhDs and billionaires still get cancer and die in road accidents like the rest of us. Thankfully there is a higher power who is watching over us. It was this God who appeared to Abram. Had God not done so, Abram would have ended up like millions of others—lost and blinded by his own sin and destined for eternal punishment in hell.
This same God has also appeared to you. No, he hasn’t done so in such a way that you could draw a picture of him, but he is appearing to you right now through this sermon. And what we’re learning about him is that this God is not just some primal force “up there” who doesn’t really care about what goes on down here. He does care because he wants each one of us to embark on a journey of faith that will end in heaven where we will get to see this God with our own eyes.
Look at how this God interacted with Abram. He told Abram to leave Ur, which he did. But once Abram arrived in Haran well to the north in present-day Syria, he settled down for a while. Then after his father died, God appeared to Abram again and told him to continue his journey. God simply said: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
Boy, that wasn’t a whole lot for Abram to go on was it? God didn’t even tell Abram what his destination was or how long he would be on the road. But God did follow up his command with a series of promises. God said: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2, 3).
God would indeed bless Abram. He would do so with wealth—even when Abram wasn’t deserving of it. He would also bless Abram with protection. God did make Abram’s name great, for three world religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all recount Abram’s activities. But the most important promise of all was how God said that all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abram. God was talking about you when he made that promise. He said that you and I living 4100 years after Abram would be blessed because it was through Abram’s family line that the savior of the world, Jesus, would be born.
These promises propelled Abram forward. Sure, he didn’t know exactly where he was going, but he knew that God would lead the way, the God who promised to bless him. In time Abram arrived in Canaan. And it was there that God said he would give the land to Abram’s descendants. Have you noticed how God kept appearing to Abram to encourage him? That’s how he deals with us too, with patient love and constant encouragement.
Abram’s journey of faith is like our journey of faith. Before we were even aware of God, he came to us. For many of us he did so at our baptism. There God promised to bless us and urged us to follow him to a better land. We don’t know when we’ll get to that land or even what that place is really like, but we know that this land (heaven) is going to be awesome because our God lives there—a God who really loves us. We see that love proven in a strange journey that God’s own Son took. While God directed Abram to leave Ur so that he could be saved from idol worship, God sent his Son into this world to face death for our idol worship. God’s Son is of course Jesus, who told his disciples before his death on the cross: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:1-3).
Will God really keep his promises of bringing you to this heavenly mansion? It often seems doubtful doesn’t it? Just as it must have seemed doubtful when God told Abram that his descendants would live in Canaan considering that there were people already living in the land at the time. This wasn’t an empty lot to which God had brought Abram. Somehow God would have to remove those people from their cities if Abraham’s descendants were going to live there. And anyway Abram didn’t have any kids yet when God gave him that promise, and he was already 75 years old and his wife 65 years old—the age of many of your grandparents! How was God going to make Abram into a great nation if he didn’t even have a single child yet? Well, that was God’s business to figure out. It was Abram’s place to simply trust and Abram did. He demonstrated his faith when he made a little tour of the land, stopping to set up altars in various places to publically worship his God.
In time God did deliver on all of his promises to Abram, and he will deliver on all the promises that he’s given to you. Therefore his promises will move you to do great things as did Abram. They will give you strength when a loved one seems to be on his last leg here on earth. Those promises will help you shrug off meagre paychecks and mounting bills. Your God knows what you need. His promises will give you calm even when the news headlines are bad. Oh, I know that Christians are often accused of having blind faith—like Abram who just picked up and moved even though he had no idea where he was going. But Abram’s faith, like yours, is not blind; it firmly focuses on God’s Word the way a traveler fixes his attention on a reliable GPS system to get him through an unfamiliar neighborhood.
There’s so much more we can learn from Abram, but as they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So today is just our first step in accompanying Abram on his journey of faith. It’s a journey that began with God just as your journey of faith has. May this God keep you by his side throughout the journey so that you do arrive safely at the heavenly mansions God designed, and which his Son Jesus bought with his blood. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
List three facts about Abram (also known as Abraham).
Why does our journey of faith have to begin with God?
Abram’s father worshipped idols. What things are you tempted to make into an idol by trusting and loving them more than God?
God told Abram to leave Haran and go to a land he would show him. Even though Abram didn’t know where he was headed, how did God empower him to embark on his journey?
God told Abram that all nations would be blessed through him. How are we, who live 4100 years after Abram, blessed through him?
Christians are often accused of having “blind” faith. But why can we say that our faith is not blind?
