(Jaimie Haith)

To find out more about what is happening at SGTM, check out our website and social media. Have a blessed week!!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to SGTM Talks. We hope you find this encouraging and inspiring.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

I love stories of um I love stories generally, but I love stories where the the dramatic arc goes success, failure, success again. You know, it's the classic dramatic arc. In a romance, it's boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. Um and we see it in in so many different ways. I uh happened to me just a couple of weeks ago, as you know, I went away for a couple of weeks, I loaded up my motorbike uh and went over to Europe and fantastic, had 2,000 miles of beautiful scenery riding through Holland and Belgium and Germany and Luxembourg, fantastic, all until got into France in the beginning of the second week and uh had an argument with a French fire hydrant. That um and and when a when a total idiot meets an immovable object, you know what happens. And I ripped my fell off the bike and ripped my hamstring, and uh so I had this massive bruise, so I was feeling very sorry for myself, but managed to get back on the bike and do some more riding. Everything went back to triumph again, and it was wonderful. And uh until I got back to England and then had a massive puncture on the M20 in the third lane, and the whole bike was wobbling at very high speed, and it was one of the most frightening things I think that's ever happened to me. But I managed to get to the hard shoulder, and the AA came, we fixed it, and we got back on the road, and we're back on, and it's failure to triumph to failure to triumph once again. And nursing my wounds and fixing my bike, I've had some time to reflect something of a metaphor for the journey of life itself. For all of us, life and faith can be lovely and inspiring and fabulous, but also sometimes ugly and difficult and a real mixture of the two and everything in between. And so it's encouraging to get to turn to the scriptures and remind ourselves over and over that we're in very good company because even the greats, the giants of the faith, they're exactly the same. Their faith journeys, like ours, are a glorious mixture of bold and bad, legend and loser. If you don't believe me, let's look together today at the faith journey of one of the greatest greats of all, Father Abraham. The lectionary takes us into Genesis today to look at him, but it's also completely apt that it does so, with it being our APCM, our annual parochial church meeting after the service today. What does faith and calling and vision look like for us in this precious parish church as we look back on the year that's past and look forward to all that lies ahead? So the lecturer reading is Genesis 12, but I want to read this first from Hebrews 11, where the writer to the Hebrews says, Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. And then we read this in verse eight. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And verse twelve, and so from this one man, and he, as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as countless as the sands on the seashore. It's a story of great faith and great triumph, isn't it? What happens though when we read back actually at that story in Genesis 12? Genesis 12, verse 1. The Lord has said to Abraham, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. So this is what the writer of the Hebrews is talking about. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abraham went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abraham travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Morah at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abraham and said, To your offspring I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hells hills east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, and with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, then he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abraham set out and continued toward the Negev. All good so far. Abraham has heard the word of the Lord, he's obeyed the command of God, he's shown great boldness and faith. He's stepping into the land, his triumph. God has set apart for him this destiny and he's taking hold of it. And even though it makes very little sense on the face of it, he responds with obedience. It's a beautiful story. God's even going to change his name from Abraham to Abraham, Sarai's to Sarah to indicate their great destiny as leaders, blessing multitudes. So far, so good. It's all going so well, so well indeed, that this is most definitely, firstly, a story of faith. When the Lord first spoke to Abraham, he placed the most extraordinary calling upon his life. The Lord gives him clear instructions, unconditional promises. I will show you the land I will give you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, I will make your name great, you will be a blessing to the whole world. Imagine that. Imagine hearing God's precious promises as clearly as Abraham was allowed to. Imagine receiving such promises of abundance, of blessing. Imagine knowing such clear guidance. We long for that, don't we? To know exactly what God is calling us into, stepping out with boldness into all that God has planned for you. Abraham does it, and he does it so well. In faith and obedience, he leaves his home, he travels to Canaan. Then once he gets there, he shows the greatest priority is to worship. So he builds altars to worship God. Again, he just gets it right. God says, Go to the land that I will show you. Those were the last orders received. Abraham obeys and he goes. By faith, he says, I'm willing to go anywhere for you. He pitches his tent in Canaan as he hammers stakes in the ground. By faith, he's saying, I am making this my home. He builds altars, he worships. By faith, he says, Honoring God is my first priority. He was doing so well. And if all you did was read Hebrews 11, you would think that's the whole story. By faith, by faith, by faith. Abraham does it all by faith. He couldn't know anything for sure. The future ahead, the right path to take, not by sight, but he trusted God all by faith. Amazing story. But it's only half the story. Because the whole truth is that it all started to fall apart and rather quickly. Verse 10. The very next verse from the lection rereading stops, tells us something very simple but very profound. It says, Now there was a famine in the land. Just a throwaway line, it comes across maybe even a little bit awkward, trying to excuse now what comes next. Now, okay, see, there was a famine in the land. You've got to understand this, right? It's the first time we see him confronting significant difficulty. And how does he react? What does he do? There was a famine in the land, and Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. You can read on, but what you will not find in any of the verses that follow is any mention of that move to Egypt being ordained by God. You will not find any mention of him being, of him heading to, of God telling Abraham to head to Egypt to escape the famine. Right at the pressure point. Right when he really needs to double back and inquire of God, ask why this is happening, why am I experiencing this? What action he should take. What do we see? He takes matters into his own hands. And to be fair, you have to have some sympathy for him because we all hit times of famine. It's a common story. Our lives are never a story, a simple story of uncluttered victory, endless prosperity, unchallenged advance, because faith is not about living forever in peace and harmony and abundance. So Abraham's story is most definitely one of faith, but also his story, your story, my story, is secondly a story of famine, fear, and failure. Very often what we see in the Old Testament in a physical way is prefiguring what we will see in the New Testament in a spiritual way. So, for example, when we see Moses in the Old Testament leading a physical exodus, we can read that as a prefiguring of Jesus leading us into spiritual freedom. Samson showing great physical strength to break free of his physical bonds. We can read that as a prefiguring of how the Holy Spirit wants to break us out of the spiritual bondage in our lives. And here we see Abraham encountering a physical famine. And whilst there is great physical hunger across the world today, you and I are not likely to go physically hungry, especially with 15 restaurants and three grocery stores just five minute walk away. Apart from waitros, waitros is closed. What's going on there? Physical famine is something we don't have to fear here, but we all know what spiritual famine feels like, looks like, generally in the culture, and also in our own lives. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you will know that there do come times that can only be described as spiritual famine, desert time, dark night of the soul. You encounter an experience, perhaps over an extended period, in which the great difficulties you're having to endure make you wonder what the heck is going on. Where is that abundance? Where is that blessing that I first knew? Where's my first joy of my salvation? Where is the ease? Where is the peace? Where is God? In the middle of all of that great calling and obedience and victory, this great difficulty, this famine situation caused Abraham to doubt the Lord. And the same temptation is right around the corner for each of us because, and the Bible is deeply honest about this, we will all go through difficult times. If somehow you've been sold a gospel of endless and simple abundance and prosperity forever, you have been sold a hopelessly thin and profoundly unscriptural gospel. The Bible is also clear about the fact that when we face great difficulty, we have a choice in the challenge. Will we react with trust or will we react with fear? When the rubber hits the road, what will I lean into more? God or the circumstances? The promises abound that God will look after those who seek him. We've heard even today from Psalm 33 the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. But Abraham selected and walked the other path. He took the path loaded with logic. The direction, if you like, that was navigated by the negative. So easy to do. Sometimes we believe that God has led us into a certain direction, but as we continue down that path, we become discouraged and uncertain, and it's not what we expected. Maybe it isn't easy, it's not leading where we want to go. And so we decide to make our own course correction, thinking that we we must have got lost. I must have taken a wrong path somehow. Trouble is when we start down that self-navigated new path, we soon discover we've made a terrible mistake. And those mistakes then mount up and they can take a momentum of their own. One of the reasons we change roots and disobey God is because our faith gives way to fear. And if we give into fear, then failure quickly follows. Just look at Abraham. It's a story of someone who's getting himself into more and more trouble. I mean, seriously, Abraham's wife Sarah is so stunningly beautiful that Abraham worries the Egyptians will kill him so they can have her. So what does he suggest? This is hair-raising. Abraham's genius suggestion is that they will tell everyone she is his sister. I beg your pardon. Verse 10. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, This is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. So say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake, and my life will be spared because of you. It's in the Bible, people, when Abraham came to when Abraham came to Egypt, the Philistines, the Egyptians, sorry, saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman, and when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. This is not cool. This is not in Hebrews 11. There's Sarah, there's Pharaoh. Sarah is there, Pharaoh is there. And Phara sees Sarah, and Phair wants Sarah. He turns to Abraham and he says, All right, isn't it, Abe? I mean, that's fine, isn't it? Mate, come on. I mean, it's not as if she's your wife. I mean, that would be weird. And Abraham just stares back at him. Um, Pharaoh says, I mean, she's your sister, right, Abe? So this is cool. And Abraham, this great giant of the faith, he just stands there and nods. And then, just as you were thinking this couldn't get any worse, he makes loads of cash off the arrangement. Genesis 12, 16. He, Pharaoh, treated Abraham well for her sake. And Abraham acquired sheep, cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. Again, not in Hebrews 11. Faith giving way to fear and then leading into failure. Abraham's story is a story of faith, yes, but it's also a story of famine, fear, and failure. But by the grace of God, it's not the whole story because this is also, thirdly, a story of faithfulness, forgiveness, and fruitfulness. Everything that happened in Egypt, none of it was a result of God's call on Abraham. God hasn't called him to do this stuff. But the Lord is overwhelming despite it in his faithfulness to Abraham. God is so deeply committed to him, so forgiving towards him, despite his disobedience. So much so that he hatches a divine rescue plan. So we read in Genesis 12, 17, that God struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abraham's wife. Or to put it another way, God is going to stick up for her, even if Abraham weren't. Abraham's disobedience caused harm to Sarah, to Pharaoh, and to all the household as well. But God turned it around to preserve Sarah. And eventually she gives birth to Isaac, from whom Jesus Christ himself is descended. And it's ultimately through Jesus that, quote, all the families of the earth will be blessed, just as the Lord promised Abraham. Talk about fruitfulness. It's wonderful. Surely at the end of his life, Abraham would have looked back at his fear-based failure, followed by that forgiveness and then fruitfulness, and realize the extraordinary lessons he'd learnt at God's hand. Especially that a follower of God can become successful in spite of failure. Because of God's phenomenal grace, phenomenal acceptance. We will always the reminder is we will always have to live with the results of our own failures. For example, I don't doubt for a minute that Sarah never really forgot the whole, we'll tell them you're my sister thing. I think that probably came up quite a few times in the years that followed. Yet amazingly, in all of our failures, God continues to love us, continues to use us for his purpose. And if handled right, that very failure can be used to help us build into the future. For starters, failures remind us what can happen when we get things wrong. That there are always consequences to our decisions, that we will always reap what we sow. And as a result, and by God's grace, failures can make us build more carefully into the future and not make the same mistakes again. Failures can become lessons if where we went wrong and why can help us to avoid the same mistake again and learn from history. But most importantly, our failures are the constant reminder that you and I are accepted by the Lord on the basis of grace, not performance. I don't think this will come as news to you. You are human. And as a result, you are not perfect. You might look it sitting there today, but you are not perfect. Nor will you ever be this side of heaven. But God still has a plan for your life. No matter how you failed in the past, He's not finished with you yet. There's a glorious truth embedded at the heart of Holy Communion that Peter's about to lead us in. That it doesn't matter where you're at right now, you may feel a long, very long way off from God sitting here today. Even as I was reflecting on this this week, I found myself listening to a lesser-known U2 song called Song for Someone. It starts with a, I was listening to it again this morning. It starts with a very funny line, you've got a face not not, what is it, you've got a face not blessed with beauty, or something like that. It's incredibly rude, Bono. But he says this I'm a long way from your hill of Calvary, and I'm a long way from where I was, where I need to be. I'm a long way from your hill of Calvary, and I'm a long way from where I was and where I need to be. Maybe that's a painfully accurate description of where you feel you're at right now, a long way from where I was and where I need to be. Perhaps if you were to put yourself into the story of the faith-filled father Abraham, you would put yourself somewhere in that part called fear and failure. If that's true, please hear this. Failure is not fatal. It wasn't fatal for Abraham, despite this extraordinary story. It doesn't need to be for you and me. Abraham's life was the same cycle we are all on. Faith is expressed, but then famine hits, hard times are experienced, fear rises up, fear leading to failure. But then if we just open up to God's grace, there is experience of this unfathomable faithfulness, forgiveness leading to fruitfulness beyond anything we could imagine. By God's grace, our failures can become the foundations to the fruitfulness in the future. Let me close with this one thought about a historic failure, if you like, leading to extraordinary fruitfulness. On Wednesday, April the 18th, 1906, the majority of half a million people living in San Francisco were fast asleep when their world began to shake apart. At 5:12 a.m., the city was struck by a massive earthquake, one which modern science estimates at around eight on the Richter scale. The series of shocks brought down buildings and split open streets. The earthquake also broke the water mains that served a city where most residences were made of wood. Dozens of fires erupted even as the shaking Subsided. And so San Francisco burned for the next four days. With little water available, the fire department resorted to dynamiting buildings in an attempt to slow the fires. The devastation was overwhelming. Over 28,000 buildings were burned. Over 500 city blocks destroyed. An estimated 3,000 people lost their lives, and more than 200,000 people were left homeless. However, the city flag of San Francisco featured a phoenix rising from the ashes for good reason. In the 50 years since becoming a part of America, the city had burned several times and been shaken by many earthquakes, large and small. And each time the city rebuilt. But the earthquake and fires of 1906 left a far larger task behind, with widespread destructions on a scale the people of San Francisco had never seen before. And yet they did rebuild, and they rebuilt quickly. In a show of resilience and civic pride, the Marina District and Marina Green were born. Prior to 1906, this area was largely a tidal marsh and shallow cove. Thousands of tons of earthquake debris were hauled there and dumped into the water. And this newly stabilized land initially served as the 636-acre site for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition. This World's Fair was a massive success. It achieved its primary goals by drawing over 18 million visitors from around the world and turned a profit of roughly $1.3 million, all while successfully rebranding the city globally after the devastating earthquake. The monumental Palace of Fine Arts still stands today, truly a story of beauty from ashes. Upon the rubble of devastation, a great city was built. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for the story of Abraham. And Lord, thank you for the encouragement when we open the scriptures and we see these lives of faith that are also peppered with failure, that you use by your acceptance, love, forgiveness to turn them around to your glory. And I pray for each of us, Lord, wherever each of us is at today, that you would encourage us in any element of our lives that feels broken, frail, lost, far from where I was, far from where I want to be. Lord, would you help each of us with just that powerful sense of your love and your acceptance for each of us right now, just as you did for Abraham. Pray for restoration here today. Pray for hope, Lord. Fresh hope to break in. In Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Thank you for listening to SGTM Talks. We hope you found this insightful and inspiring and can tune in again soon. In the meantime, try out our website, SGTM.org.