May 27, 2025 • 24 mins
As we begin our Promises Made, Promises Kept series, Pastor Joe reminds us that God’s promises are not just ancient words, but living truths we can anchor our lives to today. Looking at the faithfulness of God through Scripture, we are encouraged to trust his timing even when it feels delayed. Pastor Joe highlights that what God promises, he always fulfills—often in ways more powerful than we can imagine. This message invites us to hold on with hope, knowing God's word never returns void.
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(00:00):
Genesischapter 11, verses one through nine.
Now the whole earth had one languageand the same words.
And as people migrated from the east,
they found a plain in the land of Shinar,and settled there.
And they said to one another,
come, let us make bricks,and burn them thoroughly.
(00:21):
And they have brick for stone, and bitumenfor mortar.
Then they said, come,let us build ourselves
a cityand a tower with its top in the heavens.
And let us make a name for ourselves,
lest we be dispersed overthe face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city
and the towerwhich the children of man had built.
(00:41):
And the Lord said, behold,there are one people.
And they have all one language.
And this is only the beginningof what they will do.
And nothing that they propose to dowill now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go downin their confuse their language,
so that they may not understandone another. Speech.
(01:02):
So the
Lord dispersed them from thereover the face of all the earth.
And they left off building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel.
Because they are the Lord confusedthe language of all the earth.
And from therethe Lord dispersed them over the face
of all the earth.
Genesis chapter
12, verses one through three.
(01:23):
Now the Lord said to Abraham,go from your country
and your kindred, and your father's house,to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation.
And I will bless youand make your name great.
So that you will be a blessing.
And I will bless those who bless you
and him who dishonors you I will curse.
And in you all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
(01:50):
Everybody, good
morning and welcome to Christ CommunityChapel.
We're really,really glad that you're here.
Thanks for coming and being a part.
Are we kick off our new sermon series.
This weekwe're going to spend the next ten weeks
in the Old Testamentlooking at the life of Abraham.
And we're calling this seriespromises Made
(02:11):
and Promises Kept.
In 2010, a movie
came out, called Night and Day.
It was a comedy,starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
It's a cute movie.
I in the movie, Tom cruise plays
a CIA agent, as usual.
(02:31):
And then, CameronDiaz is an unsuspecting kind
of civilianwho gets roped into the adventure.
And when she realizes the danger she's in,she wants out.
But Tom cruise is trying to explain to herthat she would actually
be in more danger if she tried to get outthan if she stayed in,
and what he was saying to her.
(02:52):
Annie, there's one scene wherehe's trying to explain attorney saying,
listen, you need to knowthat your chances of survival
are higher with me than without me.
With me, without me, with me, without me.
That's whatthese two passages of scripture are about,
that we just had read to us,
(03:12):
about being with God or without God.
It's actually the theme of the Bible.
It's the theme of your life and mine.
So if you have your Bibles, you can goahead and turn to Genesis chapter 11.
Genesis chapter 11.
If you're going to useone of our Bibles in the pews,
and I can tell you it's on pageseven, it's really early on.
(03:34):
And then, Genesis chapter12 will also be looking at that.
That's on page eight. Right.
And here are the three points that I wantto pull out of these two passages.
I want to talk about the rebellion
of the call and the promise.
The rebellion is really life without God.
(03:54):
The the call is an invitationto be with God.
And then the promise is what life is like
when we're with God,when we surrender to him.
At first the rebellion, this iswhat it says in Genesis chapter 11.
Let me read it again.
So it's fresh in your mind.
It says, now the whole earthhad one language and the same words.
(04:19):
And as people migrated from the east,they found a plane
in the land of Shinar and settled there.
And they said to one another, come, letus make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.
And they had breakfast,stone and vitamin for mortar.
And they said, come,let us build ourselves a city and a tower
with this top in the heavens,and let us make a name
(04:42):
for ourselves, lest we be dispersed overthe face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to
see the city and the towerwhich the children of man had built.
And the Lord said, behold,they are one people,
and they all have one language.
And this is only the beginningof what they will do, and nothing
that they propose to dowill now be impossible for them.
(05:03):
Come, let us go down.
And they're confused their language, sothat they may not understand one another.
Speech.
So the Lord dispersed them
from there over the face of the earth,and they left off building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel,
because there the Lord confusedthe language of all the earth,
and from there the Lord dispersed themover the face of all the earth.
(05:27):
The building of the Tower of Babel
is kind of the the last chapter
of a rebellion that started in chapterthree.
In Genesis chapter three, Adamand Eve come into contact with Satan,
and Satan tempts themto break relationship with God,
and he does that by kind of selling them
(05:49):
on the idea that true freedom,true flourishing, will only happen
if they take control of their own livesand of their world.
And so Adam and Eve, they
they buy into that lie,they break away from God,
and they take control of their own livesand of their world.
(06:11):
And then chapter three to chapter 11
is kind of chronicling the slow
spiral into darkness,
into greater and greater
oppression, greater and greatercorruption, greater
and greaterviolence, deeper and deeper brokenness.
(06:32):
There's a law in physics that is commonly
referred to as the law of entropy.
The law of entropy is basicallythat things
in the physical universego from order to disorder, that
everything disintegrates over time
unless there's an intervention.
I used to do, marriage seminars, andsometimes I would use, a cup of coffee.
(06:57):
I'd have a cup of coffee uphere, and I would tell the couples,
when I poured the coffee in there40 minutes ago, it was hot.
Now it's cold.
That's the law of entropy.
It's not just for the physical world.
It's for our relationshipsthat over time, relationships grow cold.
(07:18):
And that's why
married couples who have a good marriagetalk about working on their marriage.
What they're saying iswe we add energy back into the system,
otherwiseit will slowly deteriorate over time.
The law of entropy is a
law that cuts across physically,emotionally, spiritually,
(07:40):
and what we see in chapter 11
or chapters three through 11is the further people get away from God,
the more they descendthe civilization disintegrates.
So God decides to intervene,
and he does so by,confusing their language.
And that stops the project.
(08:02):
And the reason that stopsthe project is because
if the language is confused,you ask your buddy for a hammer
and he looks at you all of a suddenconfused and hands you a washcloth,
you're not going to get much done.
And that's what happens.
And then the people find other peoplethat understand them.
They understand they form little tribesand they disperse throughout the earth.
(08:23):
So it's a weird storyfor a number of reasons.
But one of the reasons is that itseems like God is kind of threatened
by the idea of human beings
forming a civilizationand leaving him out.
I don't think that's the case.
I don't think God was threatened.
(08:46):
There's an author named William Goldingwho wrote a book in 1954
that became a classic.
The title is Lord of the flies.
You might have read itwhen you were a student.
The story is about some school ageboys who get
on a on a deserted island,and they're shipwrecked
(09:07):
on a deserted island with no adults.
And the story is really how things just
devolve into greater and greater darkness,
greater and greaterviolence, greater and greater brokenness.
And at the end of the book,there is a rescue.
A ship comes and rescues the boys.
(09:28):
And you, you kind of realize that ifif there had not been a rescue,
then there was no.
And no bottom to the violenceand the darkness that was going to happen.
That's what God's doing.
God is initiating a rescue
(09:49):
because there is this slow
devolving into greater and greater
corruption, greater and greater violence.
And he begins this rescuewith a man named Abraham.
And that brings me to the second point,which is the call.
(10:09):
So into the darkness, into this spiral,
into confusion of a worldthat is moving away from him.
God speaks.
And this is what God says.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
go from your countryand your kindred in your father's house,
to the land that I will show you,
(10:30):
and I will make you a great nation,and I will bless you
and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and himwho dishonors you I will curse, and in you
all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
All right,
so God calls to Abraham.
(10:53):
Now I call him Abraham.
Later onhis name will be changed to Abraham.
In chapter 17. God changes it.
Abraham means father,Abraham means father of many.
And that's a promise made and a promise
kept that will cover in a few weeks.
But Abraham is actually introducedat the end of chapter 11.
(11:16):
His father's name is Terah,which means moon,
and they come from ahis family comes from a place called
ur of called Dia,which is a center of lunar worship.
So Abraham,
belongs to a family that worshipsthe moon.
They're idol worshipers,and God calls to Abraham.
(11:41):
Okay, there are three things that I wantto point out about the call of God.
First, God initiates the call.
God initiates the call.
The call of God always changes you
in responding to the call of Godwill always involve surrender.
(12:01):
I first God initiates the call,
right?
There is nothing about Abraham that isparticularly impressive or outstanding.
You know his family worshipsthe moon and his dad was named after that.
God, there is nothing in Abraham's life
that makes you think that he is special.
(12:25):
You know, there's a commercialthat's running right now.
It's, about financial planners,
and a woman is in a doctor's office,and she's becoming increasingly alarmed
at the doctor's cavalier attitudeand his obvious lack of medical knowledge.
And finally she says to him,are you even an orthopedist?
(12:45):
And he looks upand he says, no, I'm a Sagittarius.
Okay.
And the point of the commercial is,if you don't
trust your money to somebodywho's not qualified, right.
That was that'sthe exact opposite of the call of God.
God never
calls somebody because he needs them,
because they are so qualified that he
(13:06):
he wants themto be a part of what he's doing.
If you're here, that means that God
has called you
or is calling you, whether you realize it
or not, and God has initiated that call.
It's much more like when when I was a kidand we'd go out in the schoolyard
(13:27):
for recess and we we're going to playkickball or football, whatever.
The two best athletes would be captains,and then they would
begin to pick their team,and they would pick the next best person
each time until everybody was picked.
They were always be a couple of kidsthat were never picked.
It's much more like God being a captain
(13:48):
and looking at the kidsthat were never picked and said saying,
I choose you, I pick you,I will carry this team.
I don't need you on this team.
Listen,
you are here because God initiated
a call to you,not because you're particularly qualified,
(14:09):
but because he says, I want you,
I call you.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that the call of Godchanges you.
In chapter 11,we find out that that Abraham's family
was moving from earth called Dia.
They were on their way to Canaan.
They stop at a place called heron,and they just.
(14:32):
And the rest of the familysays this is good enough.
We're going to settle here.
And God says to Abraham, not you,
not you, you, you keep going, right?
The call of God is very personal.
He calls Abraham
my point is, it's not enough
to be a part of a family that believes inJesus is strong enough
(14:55):
to be a part of a churchthat believes in Jesus.
You have to hear the call yourself.
My. My kids grew up in this church.
My kids grew up in a Christian home.
They know Christian morals.They're good people.
That does not make them Christians.
They are not Christiansunless they have heard God's call to them
personally and responded in the calls.
(15:18):
God always changes you.
The very first wordthat God says to Abraham is go,
you go.
This is that.
If you say that you've become
a follower of Jesus,but there's no real change in you
from when you were not to when you are,you probably are not a Christian.
(15:39):
Christianity, always being a Christian,always changes you.
God comes to Abraham where he is,but he doesn't leave him where he is.
He says go.
The final thingis that the call of God response
to the call of Godalways, always involves surrender.
Trust.
But if you're going to trust someone,that means you surrender control to them.
(16:04):
Oh, for my 10th anniversary
with my wife many years ago,I decided to surprise her.
I took her to dinner down in canton.
That was not the surprise.
But during dinner at the end of dinner,I said, hey, I have a surprise for you.
I'm going to take you awayfor a long weekend.
I've arranged for the kidsto be taken care of.
(16:25):
I packed a bag for you.
Our flight leaves in an hour,
and she said, where are we going?
And what did you pack?
Right.
Now, I was like, don't worry about it.
It's going to be great,
trust me. Right?
But just say, no, I'm not an idiot.
(16:46):
I had her her sister pack the bag.
I had no idea.
But the fact.
My gift to her was this.
Hey, I have plans for you.
They're great plans.
Her gift to me was to say,
okay,
(17:07):
okay, I will trust you, I will surrender.
It's not an uncommon for somebodywho's thinking about becoming a Christian
to ask questions like, okay,if I become a Christian,
what will have to stop doing?
What will I have to start doing?
Do I have to quit livingwith my boyfriend?
(17:27):
Do I have to start going to church?
You have to start reading my Bible.
Do I start giving whatever it is?
And those are the wrong questions.
But because
God is saying, I'm calling you,
it's like he's reaching out his hand
and he's saying,I, I want you to trust me.
To really followJesus means to say to Jesus,
(17:52):
okay, okay,
whatever you want me to do,
I'm in whatever you want me to stop doing,
I'm in.
I surrender to you.
And Jesus.
Then, of course, says,
I have great plans for you.
And that brings me to my third point,which is the promise.
(18:16):
This is what God says to Abraham.
Now the Lord said to Abraham,go from your country and your kindred,
and your father's house to the landI will show you,
and I will make of you a great nation,and I will bless you
and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and himwho dishonors you I will curse, and in you
(18:40):
all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
God says,
Abraham, if you will hear my call,if you will respond,
if you will surrender to me,this is my promise to you.
I will make your name great.
It's interesting to methat you're in this story, that
(19:03):
the Tower of Babelis about a group of people
that get together and they say,let's make a name for ourselves.
What they're sayingis, let's make our name great.
We don't know a single one of their names.
No one does.
But everybody knows Abraham.
Every Jewish person knows Abraham.
(19:26):
Every Muslim knows Abraham.
Every Christian knows the name
Abraham.
Because God said to Abraham,
if you will trust me, surrender to me.
I will make your name great.
But in the Bible it's no way.
He's not only saying, I'm going to makeyour name famous or renowned in the Bible.
(19:48):
Whenever it talksabout name, it's talking about character.
Like when it saysthe name of the Lord shall be praise.
That's talking about the strengthof his character.
What what God was telling Abraham is this
if you trust me, surrender to me,
then I will make youthe very best version of yourself,
(20:11):
and the very best version of youwill be a blessing
to the people around youand to the whole world.
And then in Matthew
chapter one, verse one,this is where it begins.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,the Son of David,
the son of Abraham.
(20:32):
God uses Abraham to bring Jesus
to the whole world.
That's the blessing.
Do you see?
Do you see the same invitation
God makes to each one of us,
to you and to me?
God says, and that continue them of you
(20:53):
being in control of your life, inyou surrendering to me.
The closer you get to surrendering to me,the better version of yourself
I will make your name great,and the best version of you
will be a blessing to everyone around you,
but can also be a blessingto the whole world.
(21:15):
Henry David Thoreau has a famous quote.
The famous quote is the mass of men
live lives of quiet desperation.
What he's saying is that the the vastmajority of humanity
have no idea, no purpose.
And that is just not true.
If you are a follower of G, it's not true.
(21:36):
If you are part of this church.
If you want to know whywe are so passionate in this church about
what happens outside of these walls,why we are passionate about 10,000 people
within a ten mile radius coming to knowJesus in the next 30 years.
While we are passionateabout planting churches all over Northeast
(21:57):
Ohio, about participatingin global missions around the world,
this is why.
Because we are people
that want to be passionate
about moving on that continuum.
I want to trust God.
I want you to trust God more.
This week than you did last week.
To surrender more next weekthan you did this week.
(22:20):
And each time we take a stepto that side of the continuum,
we become a better version of ourselves.
And the very best version of you
will be a blessing to everyoneyou're sitting around
will be a blessing to your family,
but we'll also be a blessing
to the whole worldbecause God will use you.
(22:42):
Use us
to bring Jesus
to the world.
Do you see?
With God,
without God,
with him, without him.
That's the promise
God makes to you with me.
(23:05):
I will make your name great,
and I will make you a blessingto all the world.
Promises made, promises kept.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven.
Thank you that you did not,
just allow us on a free fall into darkness
(23:27):
and just
decay.
But instead,you decided to intervene to rescue us.
And you did itby bringing Jesus into the world.
But you also did itby calling us to yourself.
Initiating a call.
I pray for every person here.
I pray for those who are hearing the callfor the first time, that
(23:48):
this could be the daythat they surrender and say,
I want to be with you, not without you.
And for those of us that know you,I pray that this would be a day
we will take a step closerto you, surrender more to you
so you can fulfill your promise
to us, to make our name great,to make us a blessing
(24:11):
that the whole worldmay be blessed through us.
Thank you.
Thanks for your grace. Thanks for Jesus.
We pray this in his name. Amen.
Genesischapter 11, verses one through nine.
Now the whole earth had one languageand the same words.
And as people migrated from the east,
they found a plain in the land of Shinar,and settled there.
And they said to one another,
come, let us make bricks,and burn them thoroughly.
(00:21):
And they have brick for stone, and bitumenfor mortar.
Then they said, come,let us build ourselves
a cityand a tower with its top in the heavens.
And let us make a name for ourselves,
lest we be dispersed overthe face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city
and the towerwhich the children of man had built.
(00:41):
And the Lord said, behold,there are one people.
And they have all one language.
And this is only the beginningof what they will do.
And nothing that they propose to dowill now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go downin their confuse their language,
so that they may not understandone another. Speech.
(01:02):
So the
Lord dispersed them from thereover the face of all the earth.
And they left off building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel.
Because they are the Lord confusedthe language of all the earth.
And from therethe Lord dispersed them over the face
of all the earth.
Genesis chapter
12, verses one through three.
(01:23):
Now the Lord said to Abraham,go from your country
and your kindred, and your father's house,to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation.
And I will bless youand make your name great.
So that you will be a blessing.
And I will bless those who bless you
and him who dishonors you I will curse.
And in you all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
(01:50):
Everybody, good
morning and welcome to Christ CommunityChapel.
We're really,really glad that you're here.
Thanks for coming and being a part.
Are we kick off our new sermon series.
This weekwe're going to spend the next ten weeks
in the Old Testamentlooking at the life of Abraham.
And we're calling this seriespromises Made
(02:11):
and Promises Kept.
In 2010, a movie
came out, called Night and Day.
It was a comedy,starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
It's a cute movie.
I in the movie, Tom cruise plays
a CIA agent, as usual.
(02:31):
And then, CameronDiaz is an unsuspecting kind
of civilianwho gets roped into the adventure.
And when she realizes the danger she's in,she wants out.
But Tom cruise is trying to explain to herthat she would actually
be in more danger if she tried to get outthan if she stayed in,
and what he was saying to her.
(02:52):
Annie, there's one scene wherehe's trying to explain attorney saying,
listen, you need to knowthat your chances of survival
are higher with me than without me.
With me, without me, with me, without me.
That's whatthese two passages of scripture are about,
that we just had read to us,
(03:12):
about being with God or without God.
It's actually the theme of the Bible.
It's the theme of your life and mine.
So if you have your Bibles, you can goahead and turn to Genesis chapter 11.
Genesis chapter 11.
If you're going to useone of our Bibles in the pews,
and I can tell you it's on pageseven, it's really early on.
(03:34):
And then, Genesis chapter12 will also be looking at that.
That's on page eight. Right.
And here are the three points that I wantto pull out of these two passages.
I want to talk about the rebellion
of the call and the promise.
The rebellion is really life without God.
(03:54):
The the call is an invitationto be with God.
And then the promise is what life is like
when we're with God,when we surrender to him.
At first the rebellion, this iswhat it says in Genesis chapter 11.
Let me read it again.
So it's fresh in your mind.
It says, now the whole earthhad one language and the same words.
(04:19):
And as people migrated from the east,they found a plane
in the land of Shinar and settled there.
And they said to one another, come, letus make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.
And they had breakfast,stone and vitamin for mortar.
And they said, come,let us build ourselves a city and a tower
with this top in the heavens,and let us make a name
(04:42):
for ourselves, lest we be dispersed overthe face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to
see the city and the towerwhich the children of man had built.
And the Lord said, behold,they are one people,
and they all have one language.
And this is only the beginningof what they will do, and nothing
that they propose to dowill now be impossible for them.
(05:03):
Come, let us go down.
And they're confused their language, sothat they may not understand one another.
Speech.
So the Lord dispersed them
from there over the face of the earth,and they left off building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel,
because there the Lord confusedthe language of all the earth,
and from there the Lord dispersed themover the face of all the earth.
(05:27):
The building of the Tower of Babel
is kind of the the last chapter
of a rebellion that started in chapterthree.
In Genesis chapter three, Adamand Eve come into contact with Satan,
and Satan tempts themto break relationship with God,
and he does that by kind of selling them
(05:49):
on the idea that true freedom,true flourishing, will only happen
if they take control of their own livesand of their world.
And so Adam and Eve, they
they buy into that lie,they break away from God,
and they take control of their own livesand of their world.
(06:11):
And then chapter three to chapter 11
is kind of chronicling the slow
spiral into darkness,
into greater and greater
oppression, greater and greatercorruption, greater
and greaterviolence, deeper and deeper brokenness.
(06:32):
There's a law in physics that is commonly
referred to as the law of entropy.
The law of entropy is basicallythat things
in the physical universego from order to disorder, that
everything disintegrates over time
unless there's an intervention.
I used to do, marriage seminars, andsometimes I would use, a cup of coffee.
(06:57):
I'd have a cup of coffee uphere, and I would tell the couples,
when I poured the coffee in there40 minutes ago, it was hot.
Now it's cold.
That's the law of entropy.
It's not just for the physical world.
It's for our relationshipsthat over time, relationships grow cold.
(07:18):
And that's why
married couples who have a good marriagetalk about working on their marriage.
What they're saying iswe we add energy back into the system,
otherwiseit will slowly deteriorate over time.
The law of entropy is a
law that cuts across physically,emotionally, spiritually,
(07:40):
and what we see in chapter 11
or chapters three through 11is the further people get away from God,
the more they descendthe civilization disintegrates.
So God decides to intervene,
and he does so by,confusing their language.
And that stops the project.
(08:02):
And the reason that stopsthe project is because
if the language is confused,you ask your buddy for a hammer
and he looks at you all of a suddenconfused and hands you a washcloth,
you're not going to get much done.
And that's what happens.
And then the people find other peoplethat understand them.
They understand they form little tribesand they disperse throughout the earth.
(08:23):
So it's a weird storyfor a number of reasons.
But one of the reasons is that itseems like God is kind of threatened
by the idea of human beings
forming a civilizationand leaving him out.
I don't think that's the case.
I don't think God was threatened.
(08:46):
There's an author named William Goldingwho wrote a book in 1954
that became a classic.
The title is Lord of the flies.
You might have read itwhen you were a student.
The story is about some school ageboys who get
on a on a deserted island,and they're shipwrecked
(09:07):
on a deserted island with no adults.
And the story is really how things just
devolve into greater and greater darkness,
greater and greaterviolence, greater and greater brokenness.
And at the end of the book,there is a rescue.
A ship comes and rescues the boys.
(09:28):
And you, you kind of realize that ifif there had not been a rescue,
then there was no.
And no bottom to the violenceand the darkness that was going to happen.
That's what God's doing.
God is initiating a rescue
(09:49):
because there is this slow
devolving into greater and greater
corruption, greater and greater violence.
And he begins this rescuewith a man named Abraham.
And that brings me to the second point,which is the call.
(10:09):
So into the darkness, into this spiral,
into confusion of a worldthat is moving away from him.
God speaks.
And this is what God says.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
go from your countryand your kindred in your father's house,
to the land that I will show you,
(10:30):
and I will make you a great nation,and I will bless you
and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and himwho dishonors you I will curse, and in you
all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
All right,
so God calls to Abraham.
(10:53):
Now I call him Abraham.
Later onhis name will be changed to Abraham.
In chapter 17. God changes it.
Abraham means father,Abraham means father of many.
And that's a promise made and a promise
kept that will cover in a few weeks.
But Abraham is actually introducedat the end of chapter 11.
(11:16):
His father's name is Terah,which means moon,
and they come from ahis family comes from a place called
ur of called Dia,which is a center of lunar worship.
So Abraham,
belongs to a family that worshipsthe moon.
They're idol worshipers,and God calls to Abraham.
(11:41):
Okay, there are three things that I wantto point out about the call of God.
First, God initiates the call.
God initiates the call.
The call of God always changes you
in responding to the call of Godwill always involve surrender.
(12:01):
I first God initiates the call,
right?
There is nothing about Abraham that isparticularly impressive or outstanding.
You know his family worshipsthe moon and his dad was named after that.
God, there is nothing in Abraham's life
that makes you think that he is special.
(12:25):
You know, there's a commercialthat's running right now.
It's, about financial planners,
and a woman is in a doctor's office,and she's becoming increasingly alarmed
at the doctor's cavalier attitudeand his obvious lack of medical knowledge.
And finally she says to him,are you even an orthopedist?
(12:45):
And he looks upand he says, no, I'm a Sagittarius.
Okay.
And the point of the commercial is,if you don't
trust your money to somebodywho's not qualified, right.
That was that'sthe exact opposite of the call of God.
God never
calls somebody because he needs them,
because they are so qualified that he
(13:06):
he wants themto be a part of what he's doing.
If you're here, that means that God
has called you
or is calling you, whether you realize it
or not, and God has initiated that call.
It's much more like when when I was a kidand we'd go out in the schoolyard
(13:27):
for recess and we we're going to playkickball or football, whatever.
The two best athletes would be captains,and then they would
begin to pick their team,and they would pick the next best person
each time until everybody was picked.
They were always be a couple of kidsthat were never picked.
It's much more like God being a captain
(13:48):
and looking at the kidsthat were never picked and said saying,
I choose you, I pick you,I will carry this team.
I don't need you on this team.
Listen,
you are here because God initiated
a call to you,not because you're particularly qualified,
(14:09):
but because he says, I want you,
I call you.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that the call of Godchanges you.
In chapter 11,we find out that that Abraham's family
was moving from earth called Dia.
They were on their way to Canaan.
They stop at a place called heron,and they just.
(14:32):
And the rest of the familysays this is good enough.
We're going to settle here.
And God says to Abraham, not you,
not you, you, you keep going, right?
The call of God is very personal.
He calls Abraham
my point is, it's not enough
to be a part of a family that believes inJesus is strong enough
(14:55):
to be a part of a churchthat believes in Jesus.
You have to hear the call yourself.
My. My kids grew up in this church.
My kids grew up in a Christian home.
They know Christian morals.They're good people.
That does not make them Christians.
They are not Christiansunless they have heard God's call to them
personally and responded in the calls.
(15:18):
God always changes you.
The very first wordthat God says to Abraham is go,
you go.
This is that.
If you say that you've become
a follower of Jesus,but there's no real change in you
from when you were not to when you are,you probably are not a Christian.
(15:39):
Christianity, always being a Christian,always changes you.
God comes to Abraham where he is,but he doesn't leave him where he is.
He says go.
The final thingis that the call of God response
to the call of Godalways, always involves surrender.
Trust.
But if you're going to trust someone,that means you surrender control to them.
(16:04):
Oh, for my 10th anniversary
with my wife many years ago,I decided to surprise her.
I took her to dinner down in canton.
That was not the surprise.
But during dinner at the end of dinner,I said, hey, I have a surprise for you.
I'm going to take you awayfor a long weekend.
I've arranged for the kidsto be taken care of.
(16:25):
I packed a bag for you.
Our flight leaves in an hour,
and she said, where are we going?
And what did you pack?
Right.
Now, I was like, don't worry about it.
It's going to be great,
trust me. Right?
But just say, no, I'm not an idiot.
(16:46):
I had her her sister pack the bag.
I had no idea.
But the fact.
My gift to her was this.
Hey, I have plans for you.
They're great plans.
Her gift to me was to say,
okay,
(17:07):
okay, I will trust you, I will surrender.
It's not an uncommon for somebodywho's thinking about becoming a Christian
to ask questions like, okay,if I become a Christian,
what will have to stop doing?
What will I have to start doing?
Do I have to quit livingwith my boyfriend?
(17:27):
Do I have to start going to church?
You have to start reading my Bible.
Do I start giving whatever it is?
And those are the wrong questions.
But because
God is saying, I'm calling you,
it's like he's reaching out his hand
and he's saying,I, I want you to trust me.
To really followJesus means to say to Jesus,
(17:52):
okay, okay,
whatever you want me to do,
I'm in whatever you want me to stop doing,
I'm in.
I surrender to you.
And Jesus.
Then, of course, says,
I have great plans for you.
And that brings me to my third point,which is the promise.
(18:16):
This is what God says to Abraham.
Now the Lord said to Abraham,go from your country and your kindred,
and your father's house to the landI will show you,
and I will make of you a great nation,and I will bless you
and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and himwho dishonors you I will curse, and in you
(18:40):
all the families ofthe earth shall be blessed.
God says,
Abraham, if you will hear my call,if you will respond,
if you will surrender to me,this is my promise to you.
I will make your name great.
It's interesting to methat you're in this story, that
(19:03):
the Tower of Babelis about a group of people
that get together and they say,let's make a name for ourselves.
What they're sayingis, let's make our name great.
We don't know a single one of their names.
No one does.
But everybody knows Abraham.
Every Jewish person knows Abraham.
(19:26):
Every Muslim knows Abraham.
Every Christian knows the name
Abraham.
Because God said to Abraham,
if you will trust me, surrender to me.
I will make your name great.
But in the Bible it's no way.
He's not only saying, I'm going to makeyour name famous or renowned in the Bible.
(19:48):
Whenever it talksabout name, it's talking about character.
Like when it saysthe name of the Lord shall be praise.
That's talking about the strengthof his character.
What what God was telling Abraham is this
if you trust me, surrender to me,
then I will make youthe very best version of yourself,
(20:11):
and the very best version of youwill be a blessing
to the people around youand to the whole world.
And then in Matthew
chapter one, verse one,this is where it begins.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,the Son of David,
the son of Abraham.
(20:32):
God uses Abraham to bring Jesus
to the whole world.
That's the blessing.
Do you see?
Do you see the same invitation
God makes to each one of us,
to you and to me?
God says, and that continue them of you
(20:53):
being in control of your life, inyou surrendering to me.
The closer you get to surrendering to me,the better version of yourself
I will make your name great,and the best version of you
will be a blessing to everyone around you,
but can also be a blessingto the whole world.
(21:15):
Henry David Thoreau has a famous quote.
The famous quote is the mass of men
live lives of quiet desperation.
What he's saying is that the the vastmajority of humanity
have no idea, no purpose.
And that is just not true.
If you are a follower of G, it's not true.
(21:36):
If you are part of this church.
If you want to know whywe are so passionate in this church about
what happens outside of these walls,why we are passionate about 10,000 people
within a ten mile radius coming to knowJesus in the next 30 years.
While we are passionateabout planting churches all over Northeast
(21:57):
Ohio, about participatingin global missions around the world,
this is why.
Because we are people
that want to be passionate
about moving on that continuum.
I want to trust God.
I want you to trust God more.
This week than you did last week.
To surrender more next weekthan you did this week.
(22:20):
And each time we take a stepto that side of the continuum,
we become a better version of ourselves.
And the very best version of you
will be a blessing to everyoneyou're sitting around
will be a blessing to your family,
but we'll also be a blessing
to the whole worldbecause God will use you.
(22:42):
Use us
to bring Jesus
to the world.
Do you see?
With God,
without God,
with him, without him.
That's the promise
God makes to you with me.
(23:05):
I will make your name great,
and I will make you a blessingto all the world.
Promises made, promises kept.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven.
Thank you that you did not,
just allow us on a free fall into darkness
(23:27):
and just
decay.
But instead,you decided to intervene to rescue us.
And you did itby bringing Jesus into the world.
But you also did itby calling us to yourself.
Initiating a call.
I pray for every person here.
I pray for those who are hearing the callfor the first time, that
(23:48):
this could be the daythat they surrender and say,
I want to be with you, not without you.
And for those of us that know you,I pray that this would be a day
we will take a step closerto you, surrender more to you
so you can fulfill your promise
to us, to make our name great,to make us a blessing
(24:11):
that the whole worldmay be blessed through us.
Thank you.
Thanks for your grace. Thanks for Jesus.
We pray this in his name. Amen.
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