FATHER ABRAHAM HAD MANY SONS
Genesis 15: 1-6
1. At our Wednesday night gathering and with the group that met at Al and Birdie’s home on Thursday, to start getting a broad overview of our planned 40 Day’s of Purpose Campaign during Lent, we heard Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA tell us on video that for this campaign to accomplish God’s purpose among us, we would have to start thinking exponentially.
• What does that mean? What on earth is exponential thinking and how does one start thinking exponentially?
2. What Warren is attempting to do is move us out of the limited and restricted type of thinking that focuses more on what we can do, what we are capable of accomplishing with what we have at our disposal rather than on the power and unlimited resources of God.
• It is a way of thinking that challenges us to “think outside the box” and to trust God and believe God for results that go way beyond anything we could ever have visualized or imagined for ourselves.
• And so what he suggests as a way to move us into that dimension of thinking is to add a zero to the numbers of people we desire to reach with our 40 Day Campaign.
• Now we have 70 people on our membership list. That would not be too hard for us to reach all 70 of our members. I mean it would take some work, but it is not beyond the reach of our imagination or of our capability.
• Now think of adding a zero to that number and we have 700 people. And immediately we realize that that forces us either to say an immediate “NO WAY!” or to acknowledge that there is no way we can do that unless God shows up and works a miracle among us. I doubt there is even a facility in Morton that can accommodate 700 people at once.
• That is exponential thinking – it takes out of the realm of human capability and forces us to rely and trust on God’s divine ability.
3. Now the exponential approach to life was God’s idea from the very beginning in every living thing that He made.
• You have surely noticed that God never created any fruit or seed bearing tree or plant that only produces one fruit or vegetable bearing only one seed. There are always multiples of seeds in every fruit or vegetable so that from that one plant could come many, many more plants.
• You are also no doubt aware that in every human female at birth God placed 1-2 million eggs and an unlimited supply of sperm in the male, so that we truly could “be fruitful and multiply” as He commanded Adam and Eve.
4. Of course, sadly sometimes in this imperfect world, we have to deal with issues such as infertility and miscarriages.
• And we sure had our share of the latter losses to deal with in the process of producing 3 beautiful daughters.
• Infertility was the problem with which dear old Sarai, Abram’s wife, had to contend. It was cause for much sadness and anguish and meant not only that there would be no son to continue the family line, but that Abram’s entire inheritance would go to one of his slaves.
• Listen to Abram’s plea in Genesis 15:3 “Lord, you have given me no offspring; and a slave born in my house will be my heir.”
5. And God responds by taking 75 year old Abram out to examine the night sky and say to him, “Look up at the sky, and count the number of stars if you can” and then He added, “That’s how many descendents you’re going to have”. And Abram believed the Lord.
• God was encouraging Abram to exercise exponential thinking and in a leap of faith he said yes to the challenge.
• He believed God – which means he had to keep looking at God and not his own increasingly aged body or that of his wife. He had to keep reminding himself of God’s word and promise and not the doubts and fears and uncertainties that must certainly have flooded his mind.
6. It’s hard to start exercising faith as we become older if it has not been part and parcel of our life since we were young.
• It’s no wonder Jesus said that unless we become again as a little child we would be unable to enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Little children generally have such a natural inbuilt ability to trust and believe. Their imagination has not yet been poisoned or limited or darkened by the lies, deceit, disappointments and sinfulness of this world. They are not yet as prone to skepticism, cynicism, and doubt.
• That sincere faith of a little child is such an important gift of God that it’s also no wonder Jesus said that anyone who caused a little child who believes in Him to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great big millstone tied around his neck and he be drowned in the depths of the sea.
7. So picture what a mental, emotional, and spiritual leap believing such a promise was for this old man. He already had around 50 years of negative experience and failed attempts at getting Sarai to fall pregnant to contend with.
• “Hey God, I would have had a lot easier time believing this news when Sarai and I were back in our 30’s or even our 40’s – but I’m already 75!”
• “Hey God, I’ve lived here in Morton all my life. I’ve seen the heyday of this town back in the better timber days. They’ve already closed many of the mills and the younger people have moved away. It’s just us older folks, God. We’ve tried and we’ve tried and done our best. It’s pretty darn hard believing that much more or much significant growth can come from us. Another one here – another one there perhaps, but nothing like 700!!”
8. Peter, James and John had spent an exhausting night trying to catch fish on the Sea of Galilee and their hard efforts had produced zero results. They are on the bank washing their nets when Jesus comes to them and suggests that they go out again for a catch.
• Can you picture especially Peter thinking, “Listen Jesus, we’re experienced fishermen. You’re a carpenter. The night time is the best time to catch fish closer to the land where they come in to feed. You want us now in the daytime to go and waste our time out there in the deeper water? We just want to go home and sleep!”
• But either to humor Him and be able to say later “See, I told you it would do not good!” or perhaps with some uncertainty over the authoritative manner in which Jesus said “Push out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch” – they did so.
• And the results of that act of simple obedience to the word of the Lord was that they took in a haul that was so large that their nets were beginning to break that they had to call in another boat and both started to sink from the weight of the catch.
• God gives exponential results when we honestly place ourselves and our meager resources in His hand.
9. Sometimes the exponential results are immediate – as was the case with the fish. As was the case also when a little kid placed his Happy Meal in the hands of Jesus and He multiplied it to feed 5,000 men plus women and children.
• Sometimes the results take a little longer
• A planted seed doesn’t pop out of the ground as a full grown plant the very next day. Depending on whether you planted a squash or an oak there can be a significant time difference in the growth cycle.
• If we’re not going to trust the process and want to keep digging open the seed to see if it is really growing, we can jeopardize and perhaps even destroy the likelihood of success for that plant.
• And it would be our unbelief and our desire for concrete evidence first that would be our downfall.
10. Abram believed God for a son. And God not only told him that his descendants would be as many as the stars of heaven, but that He was giving them all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates – from Egypt to Iraq.
• I am sure that 75 year old Abram shared this awesome news with 65 year old Sarai and so perhaps with some amusement and excitement they did what couples do in order to fall pregnant.
• Months go by and there is no evidence or indication of pregnancy. The first year passes and still no sign. But Abram says, “God promised me and I believe Him”.
• So into year 2 and year 3 and year 4 and year 5 – still no sign of this so-called promise and all the time each of them is getting older and all the other issues of old age begin to surface.
• Can you imagine Sarai thinking and maybe even whispering enough for him to hear, “Silly old coot believing such nonsense. He must have let his goat’s milk sit outside in the sun too long. It affected his thinking.”
• Year 6, year 7, year 8, year 9 all go by and still no evidence of a pregnancy.
• By now Abram himself must be beginning to wonder if he had correctly heard God or if there was perhaps some other way in which God was going to provide the answer.
11. By year 10, Sarai is ready to call it quits and perhaps in a fit of exasperation and frustration she makes the suggestion that Abram go in and produce an heir with her Egyptian servant, Hagar.
• Abram follows her advice and 9 months later Ishmael is born
• Well, the jealousy factor between Sarai and Hagar now goes through the roof to the point where Hagar and Ishmael eventually have to flee from Sarai’s bitterness and harsh treatment.
• If Sarai can’t have a child herself, she is sure as nuts not going to let her maid weasel her way into the #1 wife position!
• Forget the inheritance! Forget exponential thinking! This is not what I bargained for!
12. And so God allows both Abram and Sarai to reflect on and ponder their own human attempt to bring about His promise for another 13 years.
• And that act on their part of trying to access the promise of God in their own way and by their own method and their own ingenuity has resulted in a generational conflict between the sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael that is still wreaking havoc in our world today!
• Be very careful of trying to manipulate and manufacture your own solutions to God’s promises. When we step outside of a relationship of faith, trust, and obedience, we place ourselves at risk of creating another "Ishmael".
• I wonder if any attempts at pregnancy were even made during those next 13 years. Somehow I have my doubts.
13. When Abram is 99 years old, the Lord appears to him and makes with him the covenant of circumcision that every devout male Jew has participated in ever since.
• And as part of this ceremony God gives him a new name. Instead of the name Abram, which means Exalted Father, his name is to be Abraham, which means “Father of a great Multitude”. And God provides also a new name for Sarai – which means “my princess” (as though for a single person or family) – to calling her Sarah which means “a princess” (for many or a multitude).
14. Well, we all are familiar with the rest of the story, how 9 months later, when Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90, she gives birth to Isaac, the son God had originally promised 25 years earlier.
• And Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. And from one of those tribes – the tribe of Judah – came our Lord Jesus Christ and from Him has come every believer in every nation on the face of the planet.
• And you are a son and a daughter of Abraham because of your faith in Christ. You are part of that exponential promise God made to Abraham roughly 4,000 years ago.
• God already saw you among those stars that He pointed out to Abraham!
15. I have absolutely no idea how many additional people – young and old – God will choose to bring in to a new and deepened relationship with Jesus Christ during our 40 Days of Purpose. That matter is in His hands.
• But God will accomplish His miracle by using what you and I are willing to place in His hands.
• For Abram and Sarai, it was their bodies. For Peter, James and John, it was their fishing nets and their boats. For a little kid, it was his Happy Meal.
• What’s it going to be for you? Your home? Your time? Your skills? Your talents? Your energy? Your finances? Your telephone? Your car? Your ears? Your lips? Your self?
• Whatever it is, I invite you to take a few moments in prayerful silence, and whether you choose to sit or stand - to symbolically lift up in your hands whatever it is you are offering to God to be used by Him in preparation for and during the 40 Days of Purpose.
• And then let us allow God to surprise us with His ability to always do in us and through us “exceeding abundantly above all that we could ever ask or think.”
AMEN
