[0:00] This is God's word, and he gives it to you because he loves you and he wants you to know him. We're coming to the end of our series on Genesis today.
[0:10] We've been in Genesis all fall looking at these first few chapters and just the concrete way that God shows us what we have been made for.
[0:21] That's what we've been looking at. You can even see the cover on the front of your program. We've kind of put all the pieces together in that frame. And it may seem a little bit weird to read this story because this story that I just read doesn't feel a lot like the stories that we've been reading thus far.
[0:40] This story feels kind of like a transition, and it is. It's a critical moment in the story of the people of Israel. They go from this kind of primeval history in Genesis 1 to 11.
[0:53] There's lots of genealogies and all kinds of things that seem to happen in the far, far past. And then you get to Abram. And you begin to get the story of the patriarchs that's going to take you through the rest of Genesis.
[1:06] Why are we looking at this? Well, I wanted to end with this passage because it is such a crucial moment. And the reason why is because I think we are at a crucial moment in the history of grace and peace as we move forward as a people.
[1:24] See, like Abram, there is a danger that he won't go forward. We just read about the Tower of Babel and the people who all gathered together and stayed put where they were.
[1:36] That was the problem. God came in and he gave them a severe mercy. He cursed their language so that they would scatter out. And in a similar way, there is a danger at this particular point in our church life where we would gather together and forget to be scattered out.
[1:54] There is a certain inertia, a gospel inertia. You know, inertia is that physics term. My wife is a middle school science teacher, so I know these things. That inertia is that physical principle that things in motion will stay in motion unless there is an opposite force to slow them down.
[2:17] Like a satellite in orbit. It will stay in orbit forever just going around unless something slows it down. Because as soon as it slows down, what it will do is slowly, slowly, slowly fall because gravity will hold it together.
[2:32] It will slowly fall and then suddenly it will start going really fast and crash down in a heaping ball of fire. That's what a gospel inertia, the effect of a gospel inertia.
[2:45] You see, when grace and peace started, there was just a few of us. And the folks that God called to be together grabbed a hold of a vision of what grace and peace might become.
[2:58] That we could become a place where people might discover God's grace and his peace. We wanted to create a gospel culture where, well, as Diana said, where people are treated better than they deserve.
[3:10] And that was a beautiful thing. And every Sunday when we got together, there weren't very many people. And the lack of people reminded us that grace and peace did not exist for the people in the room.
[3:26] We existed for the people who weren't there. The people in our community, our friends, our neighbors. The people that God might someday bring to us. You see, we knew intuitively that if we didn't go, no one would.
[3:44] But you see, there's a gospel inertia that can set in. When you get a room that gets full, even though today's maybe a low Sunday for us, when a room gets full, a gospel inertia can set in.
[4:00] And it's natural, right? Every church plant struggles with this. There's a few dynamics that can happen that will undercut a gospel culture. Here's one of them. One of them is you can create an insider-outsider culture.
[4:13] You know, the people that feel like they're on the inside of things and then the people who are on the outside. It's the kind of thing that develops when you have people who have been around a long time and then new people.
[4:25] Because the people who've been around a long time say things like, gosh, I don't recognize a lot of people anymore. I used to know everybody. Gosh, there's all these new people. I'm really not good at names.
[4:36] You know, so it feels like a lot of work. And I don't know that I have enough space in my relational world to make new friends. It can also happen, not in an insider-outsider way, but in a way of internal concerns.
[4:53] You know, new folks show up to church because they go, wow, there's something about this place that is interesting to me. And then they show up and they're like, wow, there are programs, you know, for me, for my kids.
[5:05] There are good things that I want to be a part of. Or we become, as a church, dominated by our internal concerns. Getting programs up and started.
[5:15] Figuring out leadership. Dealing with, oh my goodness, property. And, you know, how would we deal with the people, you know, having too many people for the room that we're in.
[5:27] Or dealing with money and budgets and all those kinds of things. Now, those are good things. But when we only talk about our internal dynamics, do you know what begins to happen?
[5:38] There's the orbit. There starts to be things that push against. Inertia. And soon, soon, soon, that satellite begins to get pulled in by the gravitational pull of just doing church.
[5:53] And soon, before you know it, there's a fiery ball of, a fiery crash of the satellite. That's not what we want. The question that we should be wrestling with at this point in our church's life is simple.
[6:09] Will we succumb to a gospel inertia or not? Or will we press into creating a gospel culture? That's what I want to talk about for the next few weeks as we head towards the end of the year.
[6:23] We're actually going to have a brief congregational meeting on December the 3rd after worship. There's no big announcements or anything. But there's just a number of things I want to update you on about what's been happening in the life of our church.
[6:35] And where our elders see that we're headed. And so it is appropriate for us to end our look at Genesis by talking about this gospel inertia.
[6:46] See, if we want to avoid a gospel inertia, then we need to see how our calling to go is rooted in God's blessing to us. That's the fundamental thing.
[7:00] Our going is rooted in God's blessing. Now, let me explain what I mean. This passage that we just read seems really straightforward.
[7:13] You know, we meet Abram. He's later renamed Abraham. He's living with his family in a place called Ur of the Chaldees. That is actually near where the Tower of Babel was built.
[7:24] It's in the lower part of what we would now call Iraq. And God calls Abraham. And the calling is centered on these statements from God, right? They're pretty simple.
[7:35] Go. I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. The only problem is the order of how they're written for us conceals the true message of the passage.
[7:47] See, when we look at this through the gospel of grace, we can reorder that slightly. Instead of go, I will bless you, you will be a blessing.
[8:01] We actually should reorder it. I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. Now go. There's a reordering here that's really important.
[8:11] And that's what I want to look at. I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. Now go. That's the logic. That Abram's call to go is rooted in God's blessing.
[8:23] So I will bless you. Look at this in verse 2. There are three parts to this promise in verse 2. Did you notice this? I will make you a great nation. I will make your name great.
[8:37] I will bless those who bless you. Now, why were those words so important for God to give to Abram at this point?
[8:49] Well, because God was calling Abram to leave everything that he had. He was calling him to leave his country, his family, potentially his inheritance. All of his history.
[9:01] All of the things that made him successful and wealthy in the world's eyes. He was calling him to leave, to be uprooted. His entire identity, Abram was leaving behind.
[9:13] People didn't, you know, the way that we move around today was not what people did in ancient cultures. You lived your entire life in the same places where your family had lived for generations.
[9:25] That's how it worked. So God promises here to replace the identity that he is leaving by leaving Ur and giving him a new identity.
[9:37] Instead of his family identity, he's given a God identity. Instead of his family name, he's going to be given a new name. He's going to be called Abram, Abraham. He's going to be given, God is going to take his inheritance from his family and he's going to give him a spiritual inheritance.
[9:53] That's what God was promising here. There's actually something else that doesn't come up quite as clearly in the text. Remember last week how I said you always have to watch the geography in Genesis?
[10:06] There's some geography going on. I'm going to see if I can draw it for you. Ur of the Chaldees is down here in southern Iraq. And it says that they were going to go travel up through Haran and then down to Israel.
[10:19] They're going to Fertile Crescent. You remember that from middle school? They're going to travel over the Fertile Crescent instead of going across through the desert. And so they go and they travel from Ur and they stop in Haran for some reason.
[10:32] And they settle there. And Abram's father dies there. It's before they've gone. And then this is where we hear God's word come to Abraham.
[10:43] But here's the question. Why are they traveling at all? Why did they just go halfway? What's going on with that? Here's the thing. Acts 7 records Stephen preaching.
[10:56] And when Stephen's preaching, he gives us a detail about Abraham that we don't get in the story of Genesis. It must have been passed down through the people of Israel for generations. And here's what it says is that Stephen said that God appeared to Abram, not first in Haran, but all the way back in Ur of the Chaldees, and called Abram to leave his family and go.
[11:20] Something happened to Abram way back in his own past, before we even get to this story, that utterly changed him. In fact, not only did it change him, but it changed his whole family.
[11:33] Who's driving the movement here? Did you notice that? Look at verse 31. Terah took Abram his son and Lot. The call that came to Abram back when he was in Ur has affected not just Abram, but his entire family.
[11:52] As a family, they are picking up and moving, and they're on their way to Canaan. That's what's happening here. They all went.
[12:04] And so there's a paradigm here for how God works in us. What we see here is that there is a prior word of blessing to Abram before he went anywhere.
[12:18] Think about it. Here's Abram. He's sitting in a pagan land with pagan people, and in the midst of that pagan place, God spoke.
[12:30] God was the first one to speak in this story. He is the first one to act. God's word is first. See, this is what grace is, is that seeing grace is recognizing that God was present and active long before you even realized it.
[12:49] God was present and active before you started obeying him, before you started believing in him, before you started following him. God was present.
[13:00] God is the one who initiates. God is the one who calls. God is the one who blesses simply because he wants to. This is what we believe is grace.
[13:11] You see, bless goes before go. The blessing is before the going. You see, if you swap that order, though, it will destroy your spiritual life.
[13:25] If what you believe is that your going establishes God's blessing, that's actually a recipe for disaster. What happens to a person who believes that God is, you know, not happy with them unless they go first?
[13:49] What happens to a person like that? Well, we become angry. We become distrustful of God. In fact, people begin to hate God because what they realize is that everything is about their performing, their externals, their duty.
[14:07] If I can figure out how to do all the things that God is asking me to do, then I can establish his blessing. But that's not the logic of the gospel. The gospel is God has blessed you, has come to you, has called out to you, has redeemed you, has made you new.
[14:23] Now, therefore, go. This is the logic of grace. You see, that's part of the message that has drawn many of you to a place like grace and peace, to any church.
[14:40] It's this message of God's grace that he gives. It's a balm for your soul. See, we cannot, as a church, lose focus on this fundamental point that God is the one who blesses first and his blessing establishes our going.
[14:55] Grace creates a gospel culture. This is what we're about, is that grace creating and sustaining a gospel culture.
[15:07] Okay. I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. That's the second thing. God blessed Abraham or Abram so that he would be a blessing.
[15:20] To whom is he supposed to be a blessing? Look at verse 4 at the very end. All the families of the earth. Do you see that?
[15:30] Verse 4. That's not verse 4. Verse 3. Okay. Wait a minute.
[15:47] What he just said is, not just Jewish families. Not just people who are like you. Not just other believing families. But every family on the face of the earth will be blessed because of Abram.
[16:02] That's incredible. This is a cosmic view of blessing. What God means is that God intends his blessing to be known in the entire world.
[16:14] Every person of every kind who live in every single place. That every single human would know the grace and the goodness and the blessing of our God. And Abram wasn't even the first one to get this promise.
[16:30] Remember Adam and Eve? In the garden? God made everything right in the garden. And what he said was, I want you to be fruitful. I want you to multiply. Fill the earth. What God was essentially saying is, your job, Adam and Eve, is to go and to sustain this world in my name so that everything in creation would know that I am the one who has made them for good.
[16:58] Show off who I am. That was what Adam and Eve were meant to do. In fact, I think this passage, maybe as much as any passage we've looked at this fall, answers the fundamental question we've been wrestling with all fall.
[17:14] What are you made for? Are you made for yourself? Are you made to figure life out for yourself? Are you made to make your own identity?
[17:26] No. God has made you. He's made you to be a blessing. To the world. To be his image.
[17:37] To be a man. To be a woman. To listen to his word. To obey his direction. To follow him and trust him so that the entire cosmos would see the glory and the grace of our God.
[17:53] You are not your own. You do not get to decide what your life is going to be all about. God has already said you. I have made you so that you would be a blessing to the world.
[18:08] See, there's something so freeing when you grasp a hold of this idea that God's kindness to you is not primarily about you.
[18:23] God's grace to you. God's grace to you is not first and foremost because you're so awesome. And because he wants to, you know, oh my goodness, I love you.
[18:35] No, no, no. The first thing about God's grace is that it's for everybody else. And you benefit from it. Don't get me wrong. But God's grace to you as an individual is for the whole cosmos.
[18:53] Christianity is not a path of self-actualization. It is a means by which the world will be blessed. You see, when we don't think that way, when we reject the grace that God has given for the world, it creates this inertia.
[19:08] Because we all of a sudden become consumed by our own needs and our desires. You see, we're preaching something totally different as a church. We're trying to do this.
[19:20] Leslie Newbigin is a theologian I quote all the time. And he has this great phrase. He says that theology or worship is for the mending of the world.
[19:32] See, the point or the focus of our mission is nothing less than the blessing of God mending this broken world back together again.
[19:44] That's what we're doing. How does that happen? Well, here's how. By us proclaiming loudly and clearly that through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin and death have been fully and finally defeated in this world.
[20:04] That there is no power. Not the power of the world or the flesh or the devil that has dominion in this world. No country, no leader, no power, no movement, no nothing has any power in this world that has not been given to it temporarily by Jesus.
[20:24] Because he rules over every kingdom and every power and every ruler that would set themselves up. But Jesus is the one who is king of the world. But Jesus is the one who is king of this world and he will destroy all evil, all death, all sin.
[20:40] And he will mend this world back together again. Everything that is sad will one day come untrue. As we read in Lord of the Rings.
[20:51] See, if grace and peace does her job as a church, then we will proclaim the mending of this world through Jesus. That we will begin to see in our community, in families, in schools, in all kinds of places.
[21:10] We'll begin to see broken things being put back together again. Amen. I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.
[21:23] And now, because of that, now go. Now go. That's the third thing. See, when you see this passage through the lens of the gospel, it fits with the rest of scripture.
[21:35] I'll bless you. Be a blessing. Now go. Our going and our doing is empowered and shaped by the grace of God. That's the whole thing.
[21:46] Our going and our doing is empowered by the grace of God. See, this mirrors that other famous going passage. You remember this one? The Great Commission. Right? Jesus, he's been raised from the dead.
[21:58] He's about to be ascended to heaven. And he gathers his 11 disciples who are left around. And he says, now go, therefore. Make disciples. Baptize them.
[22:09] And I am going to be with you. And it sounds the same as this. Because Jesus says, go first. Right? So wait. Is our going primary?
[22:21] Or is God's blessing primary? Well, let me ask you a question. Do you know what chapter the Great Commission comes in? It's the 28th chapter of Matthew.
[22:32] It's the last four verses of the entire book of Matthew. What does that mean? What that means is Jesus has spent his entire life in ministry, including his death and resurrection, to show these disciples that they are blessed so that they would be a blessing.
[22:50] And now in the last four verses, Jesus says, now go. Now go. Your going didn't start God's movement.
[23:01] Our going didn't establish God's grace. Our going is simply a response to the grace that has come to us in Jesus. This is what grace looks like.
[23:14] Here's the cool part. Look at verse four. So, what does Abram do? He goes. I've lost my place now. Here we go. Verse four.
[23:24] So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. And Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old. Or Abram, when he departed from Haran, he took his wife, Lot, their brothers, sons.
[23:38] Listen to this. All their possessions that they had gathered in the people that they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan. Now, the people that they had acquired, when we hear acquired, that tips off in our head.
[23:50] Oh, that must be a slave context. That, you know, they're wealthy. They've acquired these, like, people and servants and things like that. But that's actually not what the Hebrew looks like. The Hebrew here is, it's a little strange.
[24:02] But it seems to be indicating something like the word acquired or the people are described as disciples. What it sounds like is, as Abram has gone from Ur of the Chaldees, he stopped in Haran for a little while, and he's headed on.
[24:21] All those places, God has done such an amazing job of transforming Abram that people begin to gather around him and start to follow him.
[24:34] And he begins to be the focal point of the people of God, even before he's had a baby.
[24:46] Even before the promise is realized in him, Abram is gathering people to himself who are followers of God. Abram's faith in God's blessing enabled his going.
[25:01] It's the same for us. You know, as much as we believe in the blessing of God in our life, we'll be enabled to follow him. Now, I just imagine Abram and Sarah, you know, the night before they're leaving, they're laying in their tent.
[25:19] It's quiet. And they're like, are we sure about this? See, when we look at the blessing of God and the calling for us to go be a blessing, it still takes that act of faith to go.
[25:34] And that is the place where we sit as a church right now. Because whenever there is a calling to go, there is the opportunity for the inertia of fear, of comfort, of being, you know, of all kinds of things that would distract us from the gospel, from going and proclaiming.
[26:02] It's a desire for Abram. It would be a desire to stay in known territory. It would be the desire to not be uncomfortable. For us, it's keeping a safe distance from difficult people.
[26:16] It's wanting to create clarity when there might not be a lot of clarity. It's wanting to control circumstances. It's wanting to be safe. For us, there can be all kinds of things that would prevent you from walking across the room.
[26:34] Or introducing yourself. Or inviting someone to a Christmas party. Or doing the things that would represent you taking a step of faith and going as a response to the blessing of God.
[26:48] You know, when we talk about passages like this, you know, the Great Commission going, we tend to have these grandiose visions, right?
[27:00] Going across the world to an unreached people group. Something like that. But the reality is, I would think very few of you are called to go across the world. But many of you are called to go across the street.
[27:14] Many of you are called to walk across this room. Many of you are called to pick up the phone or text. You don't even have to look somebody in the eye.
[27:25] And invite them into something. Many of you are called to walk across your bedroom, even. In reconciliation and humility and repentance to repair broken relationships.
[27:39] You are called to walk across the office. To walk across political barriers. To walk across socioeconomic and racial lines. To walk into places that you are not equipped for.
[27:52] To walk into places that you don't have a plan. To walk into places where you don't know what you're going to say. To walk into places where you think somebody might judge you.
[28:02] You are called to walk into places because God has blessed you. And he has said that you are going to be a blessing to all people.
[28:12] To the ends of the earth. Now, go. And be a blessing. See, there is an invitation for us. We can, as grace and peace, get so concerned with our internal challenges or internal opportunities.
[28:34] With doing things the right way. With just being a good old church. That we could just crumble in on the gravity of ourselves.
[28:46] To have an inertia that would destroy the gospel. Here's how. Here's how you will know in your own soul. If you are pushing against that inertia.
[28:57] Let me give you a couple of things. Number one is. You will become more gracious to people that are different from you. People that you don't even understand.
[29:07] Instead of becoming judgmental. You will have a personal heart that moves towards someone. Here's another thing. You will have the courage to cross barriers that you're not sure how to cross.
[29:21] You know, to go talk to, to cross that barrier that your mama told you you should never cross. You know, people who are different from you. People who vote different from you.
[29:34] Gasp. You know, people who look different from you. People who come from a different kind of class orientation or education level from you.
[29:46] Here's a third thing. Listen. You will be able to see in your own soul and be able to name the areas that you lack.
[30:00] You know, maybe it's loneliness. Maybe you've been coming and you don't feel like you know anybody here. Maybe you're one of those new people and you're like, well, that sounds great.
[30:12] But you know what? Nobody ever talked to me. See, if we are creating a gospel culture and if you're leaning into the blessing of God that is for the world, what that means is that even in your discomfort, you are going to be the means by which God would use to bring someone else in.
[30:30] There are no insiders in this room. There have been people who've been around a little while, but they're not insiders. Nobody in this room knows everybody else.
[30:40] There is a way for each one of us to step into the discomfort. Here's another thing. Here's a fourth thing. You'll take the opportunities that are given to you to bring people along with you.
[30:54] So like the Christmas party that Diana just talked about. Look, it's really hard to invite people to church stuff. But I'm going to tell you, when there's a fun Christmas party with good food, there's beer and wine, there's good music, Kyron's going to be playing with basically our whole band.
[31:10] It's going to be fun. It's good. It doesn't feel like church. People are going to be glad you asked. Here's one more thing. You're going to be able to resist believing that grace and peace exists for you and your comfort.
[31:32] You're going to be okay when things happen that you don't love. Gosh, that song, man, I don't like that song. Or, man, I wish they would do that event at a different time.
[31:46] Or, I really don't like it when this thing happens. You're going to be able to note that. That's fine to have an opinion. I'm not saying you can't have an opinion. But what I am saying is, is your opinions are secondary to the overall goal that God is doing something in our midst.
[32:02] See, this is a critical moment for grace and peace. Will we succumb to the inertia? Or will we more deeply cultivate a gospel culture?
[32:13] For those of you who've been around for a long time, will you confront the complacency that might have creeped into your heart? If you're new around here, are you willing to jump in with both feet and be a part of creating something that will be a blessing to our neighbors, to our friends, and to people that we can't even imagine yet God would bring in this room?
[32:40] Will we do that? We will. We will. We will. If we see that God has blessed us so that we might be a blessing. That's how it will happen.
[32:53] Let me pray for us and ask God to do that. Father, we pray that you might show us your blessing so that we might be a blessing to this community.
[33:04] Would you destroy the inertia that is so easily attaches to our souls? Show us, Lord, your grace more and more today.
[33:15] For we pray it in Christ's name. Amen.