Before a new phone reaches stores, case makers stake a year’s work on a mold they cannot verify, hoping every opening lands in the right place. Genesis 15 places Abraham in a sharper uncertainty: God has promised descendants and worldwide blessing, but no son has appeared. What does faithful action look like when the promise is clear and its fulfillment remains invisible?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Okay, well, here we are. Ah, now that everyone’s awake. See, I know it’s the end of Sunday. I don’t want you to be drifting off on me here because we have important things to read in God’s Word. So we’ll take drastic measures if necessary.
Speaking of drastic measures, did anyone follow the big Apple event this week? Okay, so you know I am an Apple geek. I love Apple products, and so that means that while some people look forward to, say, the Super Bowl, I look forward to when Apple has one of their events. And there are two that you can count on every year. You know there’s two. There’s one in June, WWDC, and then there’s the iPhone event in September. You know there’s those two. There might be some others, but those are the two you can count on it. Oh, so exciting. And so, you know, it’s, what, 70, 80 minutes long this time. It was great. It was just so exciting.
But one of the interesting things, we know that every year, Apple’s going to release a new iPhone, and it’s, of course, going to be way better than anything Android has, of course. And when they do, it may be identical in shape to the previous year’s model. It may be a slight bit different, or it could be a whole new design. And because Apple likes to be secretive about that, one thing they don’t do is go to all the manufacturers and make all the different cases and say, hey, we’re going to do a whole new design this year. Why don’t you design a case? Because why? Well, because if they did that, it would leak even more than it does, right?
People, if you, see, if you take this seriously, you watch the Apple rumor sites and you know what the rumors are that are coming up, but so do the case manufacturers. One of the things we take for granted, right? We buy a new phone, and we expect that when we take that phone, you can go and you can buy a case and you snap your phone into that case, right? And maybe you’re like me, and you like a relatively thin case. This is back, Apple used to make leather cases, believe it or not. It was so good. I wish they did that still.
But you can take your case, your thin case, or maybe you like the OtterBox. You kind of like doing 80s style. It’s like having a boom box, right? That you’re carrying around. It’s big. But one thing, no matter how big or small the case is, it still has very precision fit molding to go around the actual phone to protect it, right? And so what these case companies do is they believe there’s going to be a phone. They know there’s going to be a phone. They just don’t know the exact details.
And so what they try to do is they try to pay off people in the factories making the phones to steal a mold, to steal a phone, to do whatever it takes so they can get it and guess what it is and be one of the first that actually has a case that fits. Yes, if you go on Amazon and you buy one of those cases from who knows where, that’s how they’ve done that because they don’t get the information ahead of time. Even the reputable ones like OtterBox, they do not get that ahead of time.
And so a few years ago, I bought a case for my iPhone, and they’d guessed how it was going to be arranged. And you know what? Apple announced, and there was a button that was located differently than it had been before. And so they had hundreds, if not thousands of cases ready to go, all pre-cut, all configured in a precision way, and there’s this hole on the side of it where a button used to be. It was no longer there. And so what did they have to do? They actually mailed out a physical patch. You registered your case, and they sent out this little bitty piece of leather that you could stick in there to fill in the hole so that you’d have a proper case.
I was thinking about that, though. Can you imagine having a business where you spend your time getting what might be a mock-up of a product that your business depends on and building your entire business for the year around the promise that this mock-up is somehow going to be the thing that’s going to keep your business afloat for another year? Yeah, that’s what they do.
Then I thought about us. And God’s given us something a lot better than a mock-up. He actually gives us the specifications. He says, here’s what I am building. This is the kingdom I’m building. This is what you’re supposed to do in it. And we say, but God, are you sure you’re not going to put a button in a different place? Maybe I should reconfigure. Maybe I shouldn’t configure at all, because why don’t I wait and see if your kingdom shows up in a particular area I want to be present in my life, because I don’t want to have to send out a little leather patch. I want it to be right. I’ll just wait.
Here’s the truth about being on mission for God. We are going to struggle to do God’s work any time we lose sight of God’s work around us and his promises about that work. Because the moment we have to just say, well, I can’t see it. I don’t see what he’s doing. I don’t see what he’s promised. What should I do? You know what? We’re going to start putting holes in the case in the wrong place.
So as we’re thinking about how we go fishing, we’re going to go out into this world and we’re going to go fishing for people. We’re going to do the commission that Jesus has given his followers for two millennia now. And before that, he gave his people Israel. If we’re going to go do that, we need to make sure we’re anchored in the actual specifications. That’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight. We’re going to return to Abraham, where we started last week, and then we’re going to fast forward a few hundred years. We’re going to see how those two pieces are crucially tied together and how we can miss it right in the middle of it.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for this evening. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth that we find in it. Lord, your word is always true, always faithful, and your promises are always fulfilled. And yet, so often we think, well, maybe we’d get a different mold and work around it because maybe it’d work better. Maybe it’d be a more secure feeling. Maybe it would somehow bring our lives together better. Lord, help us not to do that, but to listen to you, to hear you, and to respond to you, we pray. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Well, if you want to open with me in your Bibles, we’re in Genesis 15, 1 to start tonight. We’ll jump over there. It says:
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. If you’re not Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. Abram said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.
Behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. He brought him outside and said, Look towards heaven, and number the stars. If you are able to number them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Now, last week as we began, we looked at Matthew 10 and how Jesus is sending out the 12. And then later on, we find in Luke chapter 10 that Jesus sends out the 72. And he sends them out to do his work, his mission. And then we went back to Abraham to see, this is not something new that Jesus was doing. This is what the Lord has been doing time and again for as long as he’s gathered a people. He’s sending them out, sending them on mission.
We saw how Abraham was called to be a blessing to the world. That those who blessed him would be blessed all around the world. That this was not some little inward promise, but something that God was providing to the whole world. And one of the crucial things that we saw in that initial promise in Genesis 12 is that Abraham is promised blessing, but what’s the fundamental core of that blessing? The fundamental core is that he is going to be an agent of blessing.
It’s not Abraham, you’re going to be rich. That’s not the promise. Abraham actually does fairly well by earthly standards, but that’s not the focus of it. The focus is, you’re going to be someone who when people bless you, when people around you, you know what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to be blessed because they know you. And your descendants, what’s going to happen with them? They’re going to be those who are agents of blessing as well. That’s the promise. And part of that promise, which God makes even stronger right here, is that you’re going to have so many descendants, so many who point back and say, our grandfather, our great grandfather, our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was Abraham.
But when you look up at the stars and you can’t count them, that’s how many descendants you’re going to have Abraham.
And Abraham says, well, he’s talking to the Lord here. This has been a little while since he was first called. God, it’s really nice that you want to bless me, but there’s a little problem. I’ve actually come out pretty well materially in the world, but the thing that you actually were originally promising to me hasn’t happened. I don’t have a son, so you’re giving me all this blessing and you know what? I’m going to give it to my servant. Not so bad for the servant, but not so good for Abraham, right?
Abraham understands what the fundamental promise is here. Not that he can be really comfortable and really rich, but that he and his family have a mission that’s going to be carried on through the ages. And he says, Lord, you can bless me all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to die. When I die, my servant’s going to take all my stuff. That’s going to be the end.
God reiterates his mission here and his promise to Abraham. They’re tied together. Abraham is not being promised a son so that Abraham can say, now I have a son, right? He’s being promised a son because his son’s going to carry on that mission. And that son’s son is going to carry on the mission. And his sons are going to carry on that mission over and over and over down the ages.
It’s really a crazy promise in general, but especially at Abraham’s age. Abraham is older by this point. It just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s not going to happen. It seems just crazy. And yet, as God says this, as God sends him to look out at the stars and he sees all the stars in the sky, Abraham sees this crazy promise, this crazy mission that his family’s going to be sent on to be a blessing to the world. And what are we told? Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Here’s what the Lord says and he believes it. He says, I don’t need to go try to steal a mold from the factory over in China. God’s given me the specifications. I know what the shape of my life is. It’s to be an agent of blessing. He’s going to pass that down through my descendants, even though, even though right now I can’t see it.
God’s saying the new button that controls the camera is going to be there, but I can’t see it. There’s no indication of it. But Abraham believes.
Now, it doesn’t mean that Abraham’s just passive there, right? Abraham is on mission. He is already meant to be a man who brings blessing to other people. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t, right? When he’s really focused on his confidence in the Lord’s promise, he’s bringing blessing to those around him. When he isn’t, and he does things like hand off his wife to the local king just to try to save his own skin, he brings curse on the people instead. Not the way it’s supposed to be. But Abraham does have a mission of being an agent of blessing in his lifetime.
But he has to be content to be a part of it. Because Abraham himself will never see himself blessing the entire world. For one, he’s not going to travel the entire world. And he didn’t have time to travel the entire world. And even if he had, that wasn’t what God meant by that. But Abraham believed. And that’s our calling too, to believe that as God has called us to be agents of blessing, we don’t have to know, and this is, this is where my impact is going to be biggest.
That’s our ego wanting to hear that, right? Here’s where I am going to impact. What we need to know is God said, every one of my followers is going to be an agent of blessing in this world. Someone who’s going to bring blessing to other people. And my calling is simply to say, God, what is the faithful thing to do today because of that? Because I know you’re the one who’s actually forming it.
The thing today is to fill up the molds for the phone so that the case can be made, even though you can’t see it and it doesn’t seem like you’re making the right thing and you’re betting the whole company on it, your whole life on it. You should because you need the trustworthy specification.
It’s a challenge to balance being faithful every day while not trying to make God’s ultimate plan come true, right? Anyone else ever struggle with that? You want to help God out? Here God, I can work this out, right? I know how to do this. You’re busy with other things. Maybe you don’t realize that there’s still a problem here.
That’s what Abraham and Sarah run into.
Genesis 16, verse 3: So, after Abraham had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abraham’s wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. They look at the situation and say, well, we still don’t have any kids. God said that there’s supposed to be descendants as numerous as the stars. Well, maybe we have to think out of the box here. We’ll help God out. He didn’t foresee the problem here, right? Does that work out well?
Spoiler, no. It doesn’t. Abraham does have a son with Hagar, but that son, Ishmael, is going to ultimately be the father of tribes that oppose God’s people. It’s not going to lead to peace. It’s not going to lead to tumult. It’s not what God promised.
God didn’t say, Abraham, you need to think out of the box. You’re thinking too narrowly when I say I’m going to give you a descendant. God said you need to just believe.
I think that’s a striking contrast two chapters apart because we’re told here, on the one hand, Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham genuinely believed. It’s not that he did lip service to the Lord and said, yeah, yeah, I believe. I’ll say I believe so you quit talking to me about this, God. I don’t want to hear about it anymore because it’s not going to happen. Okay, I believe, I believe.
We’ve probably all done that. We’ve probably all had someone do that to us where they don’t really agree but they just agree to get the conversation over with. That is not what Abraham’s doing here. I think that’s all the more telling as we’re trying to figure out how we respond to God’s promises. And a lot of times the most dangerous places where we try to fix things ourselves are those places where we really do believe but somehow we talk ourselves into still thinking, yes, God can do anything, yes, his promises are true, but you know what, he really needs me to work it out here because it just isn’t working out for him. And as ridiculous as it is to say that, we do that.
Where are we trying to round off the rough edges for the Lord? We always need to ask as we’re doing things, am I doing the next thing that’s before me that’s faithful for the Lord? Because Abraham does a lot of that or am I going and trying to solve the problem that God’s taking care of already? And one of the fundamental things that we should ask is there any place where what I’m doing is compromising God’s plan?
Clearly, it’s not ideal for Abraham to take another wife. And that’s sort of an extreme case, right? It will get you in trouble here in the United States. It’s not legal to do that. But there are a lot of smaller things that still present genuine problems because we feel like I need to fill something in. I need to make it work.
And you know what we do when we do that? We make it messier. And our messiness can be overcome by the Lord, but how much better when we don’t make the mess to begin with?
It’s like the sign if you walk into a handyman shop sometimes. You’ve probably all seen this sign at some point. There’s a sign up that has the rates for the handyman, right? And so, I think this is current inflation adjusted rates. This particular sign I saw said, $100 an hour minimum. Oh, okay. That’s expensive. But it doesn’t, it’s minimum there. It goes up.
$180 an hour if you watch. $200 if you help. $300 if you worked on it first. And $499 if you tell me how to do my job.
And we laugh, right? But we know why a handyman wants to post that sign. Because it’s one thing to come in and fix the thing that needs to be fixing, needs fixing. And it’s an entirely different matter to come in and fix the thing that the person who didn’t know what they were doing tried to fix and fix before calling in the handyman because now there’s smoke coming out of the wall or something. We make things worse a lot of the time.
If we didn’t, we wouldn’t find that amusing because it’d be, well, what’s the problem? I already did part of the work for them.
And sometimes there are things that we can do. When I need my internet fixed, I tend to fix things first because, well, no offense to the person they send out, but a lot of times I actually understand the problem better than they do and I just need them to do the part that only an employee of the company can do. So I’ll get everything else ready so it’s all geared up. And there’s probably areas in your own lives where you have expertise in something and you actually can make a positive difference. Or is there some place that you actually have something to do?
But the question is, do we recognize when we cross the line from, this is something I know how to do and I actually am making a positive improvement here and even if I called in the handyman later, he would actually have less to do? Or is it one of those places where I’m actually creating job security for him?
Abraham had things to do. God had gifted him. He’d given him skills on, you know, here’s things that you can do, Abraham. The problem was he didn’t recognize when he was going to wander into, I think these two wires go together, right? Seems to. No, I guess not.
Can I resist fixing things for God that God has already said he’s handling? Can I simply believe those things instead?
Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And if we were to go on and read chapter 11, we actually arrive at Abraham. And a big part of why Abraham does such an incredible job in the story is that by and large he actually listens to the Lord. And the Lord is what? He’s faithful. Not because Abraham’s so great. It’s because most of the time actually Abraham got out of the way and the Lord did what he promised. It was God’s work.
That’s what we find in Hebrews 11. Abraham, by and large, God told him what to do and Abraham believed in what we saw in Genesis 15 and he did it. He just moved forward with it. But those places where Abraham tried to fix it for God are the unfortunate exception to that rule. And we’re all going to have some of those exceptions. We’re going to have those places. We just can’t resist trying to do it for God.
God says, I want you to hear me. I want you to believe me. It’s not about impressing me that you were able to do it on your own. Being independent of me is not a virtue. Listen to me.
Here’s the key. We do what God says to do. That’s the fundamental key. And yes, there are those cases where I run into where we say, I truly don’t know what God wants me to do in this spot. That’s when we should spend more time in prayer than probably most of us do. Whatever amount of time we’re spending in prayer probably isn’t enough. We should be spending a lot more time praying to God and seeking to discern His will and less time trying to apply our own limited abilities to it.
But why do we do what God says to do? Because God does what He says. And that’s what we see if we jump just a few chapters to Exodus 19. Because it seems like, oh, well, we’re changing stories. No, we’re actually not changing stories. We go 400 years in the future and we see what God had promised to Abraham.
Because here in Exodus 19, what’s God doing? God is giving a commission to the Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, as numerous as the stars in the sky. There they are. Look at them all. And God’s pulled them out of Egypt and He says, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.
Put those two chapters together, it’s sort of like when you watch a movie that has that ten years later little subtitle that pops up. Well, this is 400 years later, right? Abraham is not alive at this point. Abraham, excuse me, does not get to see this. But Abraham’s, the promise to Abraham is fulfilled.
And of course, because we’re given eternal life in our God, Abraham, I don’t know exactly how God allows, how much in real time we get to see and so on. But Abraham, ultimately, will see the full result. Abraham, of course, sees his distant descendant who saved the world, including Abraham himself.
But here, in this moment, just a few hundred years later, there’s already so much fulfillment. Because this man who had no descendants, who everything that God had promised him seemed unlikely, he’s now the father of a nation. Not a little town that has a bunch of related people in it. A nation. A nation that can pour out and the neighboring people say, don’t come through our land because there’s too many of you. You’ll eat everything. We don’t want you to come through. A nation that can go into the promised land and take this large swath of land way larger than the little campsite Abraham once had.
An actual nation-sized piece of land can take it and hold it down because there’s enough people to fill it. It’s not that they built big borders and then they’re all in one little town in the middle saying, someday we’ll fill this up. No, there’s a nation there. They needed to divide it up into tribes. And note those borders because there’s a whole nation there.
In the very fact that God gives that command there. There’s a command there. But the command is in some sense saying, take a look at the fulfillment of the promise because God has a nation to command. If there were a few people standing around, they could say, I know you promised our ancestor Abraham that someday he would be a great nation and I know you said that’s going to continue, Lord, and so someday maybe we’ll be a great nation. It would be really nice if we saw that happen. No, they just stop and look around. What do they see around them? They see a nation descendants of Abraham as numerous as the stars all around them. It’s a little crowded maybe in the camp.
God’s actually already fulfilled it. The fact that he can give this command is saying, yes, I’ve actually done what I promised. So God’s done his part and that’s where it comes down to that second part of we do what’s being called of us by our God in the midst of it. That’s the commissioning we see here in 19.
What we see further on as we go into Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandments and the giving of the law in general thereafter. God’s going to tune that mission. But the mission and the promise are coming together and the fact that there can be a mission means the promise has been fulfilled.
For everything they worried about, they worried about a lot of things over the time in the wilderness and the time then every single thing that they would’ve said, God, I’m really worried about this. That they would’ve just looked around at what existed around them. All these people around them. He’d already done something far less likely. Far bigger than the biggest thing they were asking for.
Form this nation. God wasn’t asking them to continue on blind faith but rather faith in what already could be seen of God’s faithfulness. The problem is they looked at themselves, their own lives like we all do and they said, well, but I’m so sick of the menu, God. Food’s awful around here. Same thing every day. Yeah, it falls from heaven but again? God, I never was a fan of leftovers. Come on. Can we have something different?
Look at the tribes around them that we’re all about and they say, you know, it’s kind of scary, God. These tribes look pretty strong. They might do something to us. Yeah, you made us into a nation of hundreds of thousands of people and from a man that didn’t even have a child it didn’t seem like this should happen but what if these guys can actually hurt us?
So go into the land and even before as they do have some battles it’s also a matter of, I know you said you’re going to provide for us. I know our clothes 40 years in the wilderness they’re not wearing out. It’s amazing but what if I had a little more stuff? Maybe I could take some of the stuff that you said I shouldn’t take because God, are you always going to make sure I have enough?
Book of 1st Benjamin, God helps those who help themselves, right? You can look that up in the table of contents. You won’t find it, right? God doesn’t ever say that. And for all the wise things Benjamin Franklin said he was wrong on that. God helps those who turn to the source of their help.
But we can beat up the Israelites on this. We do this. This is hard. I think the, I think sometimes when we have the proof all around us when we see God’s faithfulness all around us and we see all these different reasons to believe that God is working it’s almost harder because the big, big issues that we know have to be God-sized solutions are maybe feeling a little bit more dealt with and the smaller things that they feel so within reach that maybe we can be the one to fulfill them instead.
God can bring the Israelites out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, a pillar, a flame, a cloud to symbolize his presence with them. He can descend on a tabernacle and the God of the universe comes into their campsite in a way that he doesn’t just say come, I’ll be there he says I’m going to visually show you that I’m descending upon this and they say but God, are you really there?
I had a really hard day at work. I’m not sure you’re there today.
And so here right in the middle of fulfillment you end up with this. Because here they are people of Israel called out clear nation here they are people of Israel now in the promised land and I forget the mission that God has given them. That’s what happens when we start to think maybe I need to fix it for God.
When Abraham does act wrongly what happens so often he thinks well the real mission is I need to stay alive. God’s given me a promise I need to stay alive and if that means handing my wife over to somebody and just hoping for the best at least I’m alive. Gotta count the blessings you have. No, that’s not what God wants.
The Israelites God’s called them here in 19 notice where he says you’re going to be a nation of priests a holy nation what does that mean? What does a priest do? A priest represents something to somebody represents a God to somebody represents in this case since there’s only one true God the God of the universe to who? Well if the nation is a nation of priests to the world. That was their calling. That people would look to Israel and they’d see there is the God of the universe.
All these other gods, they’re pieces of wood, they’re pieces of metal, they can’t do anything. Maybe they’re sleeping as Elijah would suggest later on, they don’t seem to be able to do anything. Because they can’t do anything because they don’t do anything they don’t think anything.
The God of the universe was with them and he gives them this mission: I want you to represent me to the world. I will take care of you. I have shown you that I will take care of you. I have shown you that I will fulfill the most unlikely of promises. Just hold on to this. Your job is to be an agent, a blessing. Your job is to actually help people understand who I am.
They say well God mission we need to stay alive. We need to have things go pretty well. What if we intermarry with the natives of the land that don’t believe in you maybe that would work well for us. What if we maybe enslave some of them because we don’t know if we’ll have enough people to do the work that we need to do. That would probably be good for us maybe we should make some deals with the foreign powers because they’re kind of mighty looking and you know you can see you can try to hurt us or something.
And so they go on a mission but not God’s mission because they’re not anchored. They’re not staying on the specifications that God’s provided and it’s like someone who buys the wrong mock-up of that phone and you buy that mock-up that isn’t what Apple’s going to make or Samsung’s going to make and you create a thousand cases that don’t fit anything. Yeah you got to make cases that actually do any good. No they don’t do a single bit of good at all. You go bankrupt.
When we ignore the specifications and we decide well I need a mission I’ll figure it out for myself we make a bunch of cases that don’t fit anything. There’s one case that God wants us to have the one that fits around the Savior that’s calling for us.
We just had the 25th anniversary of 9-11 brings back a lot of memories for us doesn’t it for most of us at least. And I think back if you were alive and aware of the news when that happened, I think you can probably tell me with more detail than most events exactly what was happening at that moment.
Remember I was eating breakfast listening to KMOX Mighty Mox and in breaks the CBS News update that a tower of the World Trade Center had been hit and they were trying to figure out what happened, how did this plane malfunction and hit this tower. And then the horror is right in the middle of that report a second plane hit the second tower.
I think about that day and I remember at one point going outside and looking at the sky and the planes were all being landed and you just hope because anything that was in the sky might be a weapon going for its next target. And of course there were two more planes in the air as we were hearing those reports. So we all remember that but I find striking the story of Heather Penny anyone know then Lieutenant now Major Heather Penny? Heather Penny got up that morning like everyone did and she was in the Air Force and going about her morning when it soon became clear there was a terrorist attack happening and that these planes that had been relatively safe things were now actually weapons being turned on us.
And so they sent her to go arm her plane and be ready for takeoff when they realized that flight 93 was missing, was likely hijacked and there wasn’t time to actually equip the plane with arms and so they sent her and her partner on this mission Mark Sassaville up in the air with no weapons of any sort that could actually do anything. Their mission was to stop the plane.
And so they knew what they needed to do. They were going to fly their planes into the plane, the suicide mission. He was going to take the front and disable the pilot. She was going to take the back so that the plane would be safe.
Here’s a reflection. She thinks back on that. She said we knew what needed to be done and there were no tears, the prayers, to be honest, dear God don’t let me mess this up because of how important it was and potential consequences if we were not successful.
Well, the reason Heather Penny can tell us that story is that the brave men and women of flight 93 did the job themselves. And you probably heard that story in which the passengers on that plane ambushed the hijackers and crashed the plane themselves so that it couldn’t be used as a weapon against more innocent civilians.
And asked about that Penny said something really I think profound. She said her nickname is Lucky and people said that you were really lucky you didn’t have to take your own life that day to save people.
She said I don’t see it as luck. I see it as failure. She said I had a mission. I raised my right hand to protect the nation and to understand there was something bigger than me that I was on mission to do. Those people that did the job, they were coming back from vacation, they were going on business trips, they were coming home to their families. They hadn’t raised their right hand to protect the nation. They weren’t on that mission. It was a failure that happened before I could do it. It was supposed to be me.
And I think about that, that’s what happens when we actually understand what our mission is. She understood that the mission wasn’t stay alive. The mission wasn’t find some way to get through it. The mission was I protect the people of the United States whatever the cost to myself. And thankfully for everyone on the ground, those civilians who hadn’t thought they were on that mission understood also that we’re all on a mission to help our neighbors.
And so even if they couldn’t save themselves, that’s the challenge for each of us. Do we remember that we’re on a mission? That our goal isn’t to be lucky and somehow avoid having to do the hard things, even things that bring great harm to ourselves? Our goal, our blessing is to actually go and do the mission God’s called us to do, whatever it is, no matter the cost. Not so that we can get a bunch of blessing for ourselves but we can experience the blessing simply of being God’s hands and feet for our neighbors who are sent as agents of blessing.
Do we remember that we’re on mission or do we just look back for those ways we were lucky? Do we remember why we’re here? How do we stay focused? We may not all be able to point back to that day we were sworn in to military service. I can’t. But all of us have been called by God to do something even more amazing than a ceremony where we were sworn in.
We have the God of the universe who’s placed us here and when we look around and we see God’s people we can do the same thing the Israelites had the opportunity to do the day of the exodus. We can look around and say wow God has fulfilled that promise. He really is blessing the whole world. Every part of the world has the opportunity to experience the blessing of Jesus.
We need to know if God acts. We can see that God acts. There are more Christians than followers of any other faith in the world. Why? Because God acts.
We look at that. We look at the way that the church has persevered through the ages by God’s grace. He acts. Every time we forget that just like Israel, we go askew.
Where have I lost sight of that? Where have you lost sight of that? It’s really easy to do. Certainly, I’ll say being a pastor it’s really easy to do because you think, well, what do I need to do next here God? What do you want for your church here? And the fact that the church exists is God’s work.
Everything about us being here is unlikely and yet it’s so so amazing that he does and so amazing that I forget that over and over again. How has he worked in your life where you can see his faithfulness through the whole span of your life? And yet it’s so tempting to think maybe I just need to get lucky about this situation and not fall into a trap. Maybe I just need to somehow get out of this jam myself.
And you can be a hero of the faith like Abraham and you’re ready to think that you can be a member of the chosen people brought out of Egypt through a sea that’s been parted. And you can think that you can be you and you can be me and we can think that.
So we need to figure out where our confidence is that we can figure it out. We’re going to go off track. We’re going to find the confidence to do God’s kingdom work to do it because we look at his promises. We find here that are always true and the fulfillment has actions throughout history that we can see. We have to look to those because there and only there will we find the confidence to remember what our mission is and to stay on it even when it’s hard.
Would you pray with me please?
Lord it is so easy to get focused on a million things that we feel like need to be dealt with. But somehow need us to figure them out to make things work out. Father would you help us instead to hold on to your promises. Yes we act but we act doing the very things you’ve called us to do, the things you’ve told us to do, the things that you say very clearly in your word and not the things that we make up and invent and somehow stop gaps.
Lord you can fix this world far better than the greatest handyman. You will restore all things. Help us to trust in you in the process in this journey as we await that restoration. That we would see where you’re calling us. That we would respond as you call us. That when you call us onto that hard mission we say we want to do it. We don’t want to somehow get excused from it because we realize we are turning away from your mission. We want to succeed in doing your mission through your Holy Spirit. Would you give us the strength to do that? We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
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