"What is Faith, And What Does it Do?" Genesis 11:10-12:9

Joel leads us through Genesis

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Genesis 11 10. These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arpakashad two years after the flood. And Shem lived 500 years after he became the father of Arpakashad, and he had other sons and daughters. Arpakashad lived 35 years and became the father of Sheila. And Arpakashad lived 403 years after he became the father of Sheila, and he had other sons and daughters. Sheila lived 30 years and became the father of Eber. And Sheila lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and became the father of Peleg. And Eber lived 430 years after he became the father of Peleg and he had other sons and daughters. Peleg lived 30 years and became the father of Ru. And Peleg lived 209 years after he became the father of Ru and he had other sons and daughters. Ru lived 32 years and became the father of Sarug. And Ru lived 207 years after he became the father of Sarug, and he had other sons and daughters. Sarug lived 30 years and became the father of Nahor. And Sarug lived 200 years after he became the father of Nahor, and he had other sons and daughters. Nahor lived 29 years and became the father of Terah. And Nahor lived 119 years after he became the father of Terah, and he had other sons and daughters. Terah lived 70 years and became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sari, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milka, the daughter of Haran, and the father of Milkah and Issachah. Sarah was barren, and she had no child. Taran took Abram as his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans, in order to enter the land of Canaan. And they went as far as Haran and settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and I will and the one who curses you I will curse. And in all and you and all the families of the earth will be blessed. So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sari, his wife, and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired for in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the oak of Mora. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west, and I on the right on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Abram journeyed on, continuing towards Negev. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Well, good morning. There you go. Good job. You pray with me. God Almighty, thank you so much for your word. It is, as already has been prayed, an absolute privilege that we have it. That we have it in our language and our heart language, that we can know who you are. We can know who you've called us to be. We can know how we can have a right relationship with you. We are so privileged. And thank you again for the freedom that we have to even enjoy your word. Please help us now to listen to your word, to grow in our knowledge, understanding, and obedience of you. In Jesus' name we ask for help. Amen. Back in 1988, in Cape Town, South Africa, there lived a man named David Willis. David lived in one of those steep A-frame houses with his wife and son, and one weekend afternoon he noticed some loose shingles on the back side of his roof. And so he went about preparing to fix them. He got a rope and he threw it over the top of his A-frame roof. And he asked his son to tie it to something secure while he gathered up his tools to replace the shingles. And soon his son came back around the corner and said he'd secured the rope and he took off to play. David pulled on that rope, found it to be apparently very secure, pulled himself up the roof, tied himself to that rope, and began to fix the shingles. While he was working to repair his A-frame roof, his wife came out into the backyard and said, Hey, I'm going into town to do some shopping. I'll be back in a little bit. And they said their goodbyes, and she took off and he went back to his roof repairs. I'll read what happened next in his own words, printed in the local newspaper after they interviewed him in the hospital. One second I was hammering the roof, and the next I was plowing up tomato plants in the garden. David had been pulled up and over his roof and drugged about 200 feet through his garden and into his front yard before the rope snapped, leaving him alone in a crumpled heap in his front yard with a broken leg, cracked ribs, a concussion, multiple bumps and bruises. A neighbor found him out there and called the ambulance. David's young son had tied his dad's safety rope to the back bumper of his wife's car. His wife had not noticed the rope and had driven off fully unaware of her husband in tow behind her. This true story is to us an illustration of the fact that your faith is only as good as what you anchor it to. Your faith is only as good as what you anchor it to. Furthermore, whatever you anchor your faith to causes motion or movement or direction of your life. David Willis believed, or put his faith in, or had security in a rope that he thought was tied to something that was immobile or unchangeable and safe? He had inadvertently placed his faith in something that he later found out could not be trusted to keep him safe. Today, as we begin to look at the life of Abram, I'm going to have to be careful with that one, Abram, we need to ask ourselves, what was Abram's faith tied to? Abram, who is known in the Bible as a man of faith, who later became Abraham, from whom came the nation of Israel and our Redeemer Jesus Christ, what was his faith anchored to? What or who was he trusting in? Was Abram tied off to the right thing? And here's the question: how could he be sure? And how can we be sure? The question before us in this sermon today, our takeaway from this text, Genesis 11 and 12, is what is your faith tied to? Can you trust it? And if you can trust it, if it is safe, then what work are you getting done with it? Now that you are tethered to it, what are you doing? What action is your faith accomplishing in your life? What does your faith cause you to do? And this is a monumental question. Because if you have put your faith in something, if you have anchored yourself to it, and by it you are doing something. What you believe in, what you have your faith in, what you have anchored yourself to proves itself in how you act, in how you live, and how you make your decisions. Whatever we put our faith in is what causes us to move in any direction. Another everyday example that I've heard about this, when people tried to describe what faith is, is the fact that none of you, when you came in here this morning, carefully inspected the chair that you were going to sit in. None of you got down on your hands and knees or flipped that chair over and made sure that all the welds and all the screws were exactly wherever they needed to be. None of you performed an engineering study on the chair's construction. None of you checked to see, you know, on the Google, to see if this manufacturer's specific chair had ever failed to do its job. No, you came in and you plopped down on that thing with full assurance and faith that it would hold you up. You had faith and you moved forward in action and sat down. Our faith, or should I say, what we have put our faith in causes or motivates our actions. So the question is: in what or in whom did Abram put his faith in, and what did that faith cause him to do? So let's look at the passage together. Open your Bibles, chapter 11, 10 through 27. In these opening verses, which we are not going to read back over again for the sake of time, we are going to follow the oldest son of Noah, whose name was. Come on, come on, wake up. Shem, thank you very much. This is one of the eight people and a select few animals that God saved from the global flood of judgment by means of Noah's faith to build a huge boat on dry land when God told him to. Eight generations down past Shem, we have Terah, who was the father of Abram, who became Abraham, the father of the nation Israel. We are told that Abram's dad, Terah, had three sons. Abram, Nahor, and Haran. It's also noted here in this text that Haran had a son whose name was Lot. And as opposed to this genealogy that we worked our way through before this, we slow down here. And these four fellows are brought to light because they all play a crucial role in the story that's about to unfold as God begins to bring into being the nation of Israel. So we're going to see some key points of what occurred early on in Abram's life. And what I want you to see here, thinking about this genealogy, I want you to take note that this man Abram was not out of the ordinary or amazing. We are not told of anything in his early years that would make us think, gee whiz, this guy is something special. Like he fell to Earth from the planet Krypton or something stupid like that. No, this history is not like unlike anyone else's during this time period. And in that way, it's not any different than yours or mine. Abram was just a normal, sinful human born the natural way in a world full of normal, sinful humans. What I want to show you through the life of Abram is the effect right faith has on a human being's life and legacy. I want to show you how faith can change the trajectory of a life. Look with me at verse 28. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. It doesn't say how or why, but Abram's younger brother Haran died in the presence of their dad. This is not something any parent ever wants to see happen. The children should outlive the parents. Do not read over stuff like this in the Bible. Absorb it. This really happened. This was devastating and affected the whole family, and probably speaks to why Abram worked to take care of his nephew Lot, as we see later on in the story. At the end of the verse, we're told where the family of Terah is from, Ur of the Chaldeans. So Abram is a Chaldean. Neat. What's a Chaldean? The Chaldeans were basically an intelligent, semi-nomadic, warlike tribe who lived in what is now southern Iraq and who helped form what came to be the Babylonian Empire. So there's a little bit of geographical and cultural context for the family of Terah. Now let's go to verse 29 through 32. It says that Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, the name of Nahor's wife was Milkah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milka and Isca. Sarai was barren, she had no child. Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan. And they went as far as Haran and settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years. And Terah died in Haran. So the two remaining sons of Terah, they get married. Nahor's wife was named Milkah, Abram's wife was named Sarai. And at this time, we're not told anything more about Nahor's wife. But we are told specifically that Abram's wife Sarai is barren, meaning she can't have kids. For Sarai, this is like the flashing neon sign over her head in that community. She can't bear children. During this time and in this culture, a barren wife was seen more as a burden and not a blessing. Because the family line stopped with her and her husband. No children to carry on the family name or to work the family business. But I want you to see that there is nothing in the coming text that even implies that Abram looked down on her because she couldn't have kids. In fact, we see the opposite. Abram and Sarai were happily married and actually became very wealthy in spite of the fact that she could not have any children to help out. Next, in verse 31, we're told for some undisclosed reason that Abram's dad decided to take Abram, his wife, and his grandson Lot, leave the land of Ur the Chaldeans, and Nahor and Milkah behind, and head for the land of Canaan. And they stop outside the land of Canaan in an area called Haran and settled there. And then we're told in verse 32 that Abram's dad Terah died at the age of 205. This is back when people lived a little longer, apparently. So now we have this Chaldean man named Abram, his barren wife Sarai, and their fatherless nephew Lot in the land of Haran with whatever they inherited from Terah to take care of. What's going on here? Why have we slowed down in this genealogy to follow this sad little nomadic family that is made up of two men who have both lost their fathers and a stigmatized barren wife? Because the creator God made a promise almost two thousand years ago that from the seed of the woman would come the serpent crusher. You remember that? God promised that he would provide a son that would crush the head of Satan the deceiver. And in God's perfect timing, using a family considered useless and weak by worldly standards, a covenant promise is about to be made that will forever change the course of human history. So let's continue on. Look with me at Genesis chapter twelve, verses one through three. Now the Lord. Said to Abram, Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house, to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. You guys, it's been over four hundred years since the Bible tells us that God last spoke to someone. And that someone was Noah. We, the reader, should be on the absolute edge of our seats here. Because as we have seen twelve chapters into this book, whenever God speaks, something definitive and world-changing happens. I want you to think about that. I'll give you a couple examples. In the beginning, God spoke, and all creation leapt into existence. Out of nothing, God made everything. God spoke one negative command to Adam and to Eve. He said, Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die. When they disobeyed his word, he spoke again and cursed them and the universe around them to death. God spoke to Noah and told him that he was about to flood the entire earth because of its rampant sin and commanded Noah to build a big boat to save a small portion of human and animal life. Noah obeyed, and God did what he said he was going to do. When God speaks, things change. So what does the three times holy God of all creation say to this man Abram, this exceedingly unremarkable man, and his sad little family who are now parked outside of the land of Canaan? He tells Abram to go out on his own, to leave behind the safety net of his relatives and his inheritance, and to go to an undisclosed location that God will show him as he travels. God says that he will show him where to go as he moves out in obedience to God's call. God also makes a promise to Abram that he will create from Abram a great nation. God promises that this childless man with a barren wife will become an entire nation of people. The promise makes me think of how God spoke all of creation into being out of nothing. We use a Latin word to describe this. It's called ex nihilo, which literally means out of nothing. Out of nothing, God spoke and created everything we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. And God speaks a promise to Abram that out of nothing, out of Abram and Sarai, he will create a new nation of people that will bless the earth. God says he will bless Abram and make his name great, and that through him all nations of the earth will be blessed. Take note that God does not say that because Abram is so awesome, that he will further bless him. No. God says he will make Abram great. The promise, the covenant, the liability of the agreement is on God. God says, go and I will make you great. Not you were great, and so go. This is so important for us to see because in God's economy, in his kingdom, it is the humble who are blessed. It is the meek who will inherit the earth. It is the poor in spirit who get the kingdom of heaven. The world says, make yourself great and bask in your greatness. God says that he makes the humble great so that God gets the glory. So what does this man do? The Bible says that God just told him to move further into the unknown. Is Abram going to do like Moses does later on in the story and dig in his heels and hesitate and say, I can't find somebody else. Verses 4 through 6. So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew and all their possessions which they had accumulated and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. And thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the oak of Morah. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. Did Abram act like Moses? No. Abram heard the word of the Lord and obeyed. This seventy-five-year-old man heard and trusted God at his word and got everything and everybody packed up and headed off, not into the unknown, but into the promise. Into the place where God would lead him and bless him. This is where we see for the first time what sets Abram apart from everybody else and why. Even up to our present day, Abram is studied, considered, spoken of, and respected by millions of people all over this planet. Without a question, without any record of hesitation, in full obedience to God's call on his life, Abram anchored his faith in the command and promise of God and moved out into life-changing obedience. Now I want you to picture this. Abram leading his wife, nephew, all their animals and servants slowly and deliberately to a place they had never been. Would there be water there? Would there be food? Would they be safe from thieves on the way? How far is it anyway? What are the people like there? Aren't we too old for an adventure? What Abram did was not easy believism. Abram's faith took hard, concerted effort and action. Definite and difficult steps were taken to make sure that he was moving in obedience to God's command. Because Abram believed God that the only way to get the blessing was to walk out in obedience to God's commands. He walked out in faith, anchored to the promises of God, and they came to Shechem, to the Oak of Morah. Abram's faith and his obedience is for us to learn from. Look with me at verses seven through nine. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your descendants I will give this land. And so he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, pitched his tent with Bethel on the west, Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev. After hearing from God and moving out in obedience and stopping in the land of Canaan at Shechem, God appears to Abram and tells him that this, where he's at right now, is the land of promise. This is the place God will give to his descendants and make them into a nation through whom blessing will come to the whole earth. So Abram responds by building an altar there. And then again, further on in Bethel. As we study Abram, Book of Genesis, we're going to see him building altars all over the place. You can almost always see him putting down an altar wherever he's at. All along the way. He built these little monuments as an act of worship through sacrifice and to remember something that had happened in that specific place. So here's the question. And this is a very important question. This is for everybody in this room and everybody that ever hears this. Who is this God that Abram has tied himself to? Has Abram made a better decision than David Willis? Remember the guy who got launched over his house and torn up on the other side of it. For those of you in this room who claim to be Christians, who is the God that you have put your faith in? This is the one true creator God that cannot be known or followed or enjoyed without faith. Because Hebrews 11, 6 says, without faith it is impossible to please him. For the one who approaches God must believe that he exists and is a rewarder of those who seek him. I think as we try to understand who this God is, it's helpful in our understanding to consider what he is called in the Bible. I got a bunch of this from a website called gotquestions.org. This is really good stuff. Track with me. In the Bible, God is called Elohim, the divine strong one. Adonai, Lord or Master. El Elyon, Most High, the strongest one. El Rabai, the strong one who sees. El Shaddai, Almighty God, El Olam, everlasting God, and Yahweh, Lord, or I am, meaning the eternal, self-existent God. God is eternal, meaning he had no beginning, and his existence will have no end. He is immortal and infinite. God is immutable, meaning he is unchanging. This in turn means that God is absolutely reliable and trustworthy. God is incomparable. There is no one like him in works or in being. He is unequaled and perfect. God is inscrutable, unfathomable, unsearchable, and past finding out as far as understanding him completely. God is just. God is omnipotent. He is all-powerful and can do anything that pleases him, but his actions will always be in accord with the rest of his character. God is omnipresent, meaning he is present everywhere. But this does not mean that God is everything. God is omniscient, meaning he knows the past, present, future, including what we are thinking at any given moment. Since he knows everything, his justice will always be administered fairly. God is one. Not only is there no other, but he is alone in being able to meet the deepest needs and longings of our hearts. God alone is worthy of our worship and our devotion. God is righteous, meaning that God cannot and will not pass over wrongdoing. It is because of God's righteousness and justice that in order for our sins to be forgiven, Jesus had to experience God's wrath when our sins were placed on him. God is sovereign, meaning he is supreme. All of his creation put together cannot thwart his purposes. God is spirit, meaning he is invisible. God is a Trinity, He is three and one, in the same substance, equal in power and glory. God is truth. He will remain incorruptible and cannot lie. God is holy, separated from all moral defilement and hostile toward it. God sees all evil and it angers him. God is referred to as a consuming fire. God is gracious, and his grace includes his goodness, kindness, mercy, and love. If it were not for God's grace, his holiness would exclude us from his presence. Thankfully, this is not the case, for he desires to know each of us personally. This is the God Abram has put his faith in. That would have been better. Is this the God you have put your faith in? If not, what you have put your faith in is untrustworthy and unstable. It is an idol that will seek to ruin you by pulling you up and over that roof through the dirt and into destruction. That is not the case for those of us who have put our faith in the one true God. The Christian believes that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is the only way to escape judgment for sin against a just and holy God. Hebrews 6.8 says that we who have taken refuge in or put our faith in God may have powerful encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us, which we have like an anchor for the soul, both firm and steadfast. If you have put your faith in the one true God, like Abram, then you will be eternally blessed by the one who rewards those who seek him. Church, this means that you must judge yourself. You need to judge yourself because the difference between what we know and what we do is what we love. Knowing about God, having faith in God are two different things. Jesus said that if you love him, you will keep his commandments. If you say you have faith in God, if you say you love God, if you say you're a Christian, then your faith is proved by your actions. What you love and what you have put your faith in is what makes you do the things you do. I can see a glimpse of what you worship if I watch what you do with your life. God sees perfectly what you have put your faith in, what you love, what you worship. When you choose to sin, you are living out what you love. When you choose to sin, you are saying that you do not believe that God's way is best, and you have decided to put your faith in something else for the time being. When you choose to say no to sin and yes to God, when you obey God by following him, you are saying with your life that you believe or have faith in, that narrow path of following Jesus is the best thing for you. The amazing daily grace of it all is that when we make bad choices and sin, he says that he will forgive the repentant sinner. 1 John 1 9 says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, so that he will forgive us our sins and will cleanse us of all unrighteousness. I'm going to close this message on what faith is and what it does by reading a passage from James chapter 2, 14 through 26. What benefit is it, my brothers? If someone says that he has faith but does not have works? That faith is not able to save him, is it? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking food for the day, and one of you should say to them, Go in peace, keep warm and eat well, but does not give them what is necessary for the body, what benefit is it? Thus also faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. But someone will say, You have faith, I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. But do you want to know, O foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was working together with his works, and by the works of faith was perfected. The scripture was fulfilled that says, and Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness. And he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by works and not faith alone. Likewise was not Rahab the prostitute even justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, listen. So also faith without works is dead. Church, what have you put your faith in? What are you anchored to and what is it making you do? Pray with me. God, thank you for the witness that we have of the life of Abram. Like Hebrews 11 talks about this great cloud of witnesses who through faith did so many things. And they're a witness, a reminder for us that our faith in you equals that we do something different. God, you have raised us up from death to life to do something. Dead people don't do anything. People who have been made alive in Christ do something. They obey your word. Please bless us to follow after you in Jesus' name so that the world might see you in us. Amen.