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August 29, 2004
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Believing God with Abraham |
Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Come, Walk by Faith"
Genesis 18
"The Living God, the Lord has called me to go many places, but this is certainly an unusual one
I am an old man now, my Sarah is gone before me, and after all these years following the call of the Lord, I am like a lump of clay molded and shaped into the vessel God had planned long ago.
I remember first leaving Haran. Everyone thought I was crazy.
"Where are you going?" they would ask.
"I don't know," I would say, "to the land the Lord will show us."
They would just shake their heads.
But, God had commanded and I would follow - I was beginning to learn that nothing was too hard for God.
We left all that we had known and traveled into God's promised land. It was a walk by faith -- I had never seen anything beyond Haran. And each time we stopped, I built an altar and worshiped the Lord. This seemed to make the trust more visible. Worship brought me closer to the Lord, and allowed me to hear from Him.
Do you stop in your busy lives and worship?
I have seen how you live. Watching you is like watching my herd of sheep race over the pasture when spooked by something. You race through life as if in a panic.
But do you stop?. And when you stop, do you worship? Only thus will you comprehend the greatness of God.
When I stopped, worshiped and listened, faith became more and more tangible to me. God came closer and the call upon my life became more real.
It was when I did not stop, did not ask that I would stumble.
You remember how Sarah and I would pass ourselves off as brother and sister as a means of protecting me from these foreign peoples. We were half brother and sister, but were also married. This was a habit of ours. It, however, was not a picture of trust in God's protection. I should have trusted for nothing is too difficult for the Almighty.
- When God came to me and said:
"Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; I am your very great reward."
He was beginning to defeat my fears.
I had already been following him for many years at this point - he had promised me land, but I had none. He had promised me a progeny, but I had not one son to carry on my name. In my heart I had decided that my servant would be my heir.
But in this moment, I encountered God - the huge, able God for whom nothing is impossible. God took me outside, and had me look up at the heavens. There were stars there, like a thousand diamonds on a dark piece of fabric, and God said, "Count them, if you can."
Well, of course, I couldn't. God said, "So shall your offspring be."
I would have a son, a son of my own seed - and would have many, many grandchildren.
"As many as the stars in the heavens," God had said, and I believed Him. When the God of the universe promises, you can trust him. For with the Living God, nothing is too hard.
That was the night God cut covenant with me. A covenant is not "made" but "cut". Covenants always involve the cutting of something.
Usually in a covenant cutting both parties will walk between the halved animals, thus promising to both take part in the fulfillment of the agreement. But on this night, God confirmed his promise to be my shield and my reward as the only one who walked through. I was in a deep sleep and heard and saw all of it as in a great dream. God spoke: "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kennizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."
- My job was to believe, God's job was to bring forth the promise. That ought to have been enough. But not long after this, Sarai, my wife, decided a decade was too long to wait and wanted me marry her maid to produce children through Hagar. Well, God had said the child would come from my body, so perhaps this is what He meant. I did not ask God. We went ahead with our plan.
What strife that produced in my home. When you try to make God's promises come about by your own efforts, children, the results are disastrous. Have you discovered this in your own life?
For thirteen years, I did not hear from the Lord. Hagar received a message regarding Ishmael, but I received silence from heaven -- and then when I was 99 - with a body as good as dead, with a wife who had been barren all of her 90 years, God appeared to me and said, "I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
"Walk before me," God said. "Walk in my favor."
I fell on my face before him and God began to tell me what He would do.
This was not a one-sided covenant with God, it was a relationship -- there was shared responsibility. God's part was to make me the father of many nations, change my name, and give the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession.
My part was to keep the covenant. I was to keep it by acting in obedience, first by the cut of circumcision and then by living day by day in the presence of this God who had called me from my own country and would make of me one man, many nations.
In this moment, God clarified that my heir would not be Ishmael, but a child born out of my union with Sarah. We would yet be parents at age 100 and age 90!
Even the news of this renewed promise brought laughter to our lives. And Laughter would be our son's name: Isaac.
To Sarah's momentary doubt God spoke his question: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
By my actions over the years I have said "yes" to that question. I have doubted God's ability to protect me, even though God is my shield. I have doubted God's ability to provide, even though God is my great reward. I have sought to carve out my own destiny, as if God is not big enough.
But as I look back, I can tell you the truth is that NOTHING is too big for the Lord, unless in your heart you have created a God who is much too small. For the living God, the God who created all stars and galaxies, who called me from Haran, gave me a son when an old, old man, and a destiny lasting for many, many generations, nothing is too difficult. Nothing.
Are you resting your faith upon such a God?
No matter the difficulty before you, I tell you there is nothing too big for God to handle. Children, put your faith in Him.
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