When you think of the word: “Worship”, what comes to mind? What other words come to mind? [Church, singing, Sunday, peaceful, holy, love etc]. When you think of the word: “Obedience”, what other words come to mind? [Submission, doing what you’re told, ‘oppressive’, punishment]
We don’t necessarily think of those two words together most of the time, but there is a vital connection between them.
Let me ask you another question: If God asked you to leave everything familiar, what would you say? If God asked you to leave Toronto, leave your friends and leave what you know as home, and to go some place you didn’t know what might your response be?
What questions might cross your mind? Some questions that might cross your mind could be: “Uh…what now?”, or “How Can I know for sure it’s God?” Or “Who…me?”
Let’s read our first passage today from Genesis Chapter 12:1-4.
This is really our introduction to Abram, or Abraham as he comes to be known in the Bible. Abraham is one of the most important people in human history. We don’t know much about him at this point, so after a brief introduction to his family, and after learning that he starts out this story as an older man – 75 to be precise - we’re let in on a one-way conversation between God and Abram.
How would you express the tone of what God says to Abram? Did He give Abram a suggestion, a recommendation?...Or a command. It is, of course, a command. “Do this!” And attached to this command is a promise, one that is to touch Abram but also ALL peoples of the earth.
The end of this promise is that the Saviour, the Messiah, would come through Abraham’s line, and that…what is it…a few people would as a result be blessed? A few nations?
No…all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abraham. Early, early on, we discover that God is for all people, that God is not a national God or a tribal deity. He is the one true God for all nations.
That of course is hugely important. It’s ultimately why you and I are here today, having heard the gospel and responded in faith to the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.
But it all began back here in Genesis chapter 12. God spoke. God spoke not easy, comfortable words but He spoke nonetheless.
And Abram, as it says in verse 4, left his country as the Lord had told him to go toward the land that God would show him. One act of obedience on the part of one man led to world altering events.
You know, we don’t know what Abram had been doing the 75 years before God called. But somehow, someway, he was being prepared to say ‘yes’ to God. Something is being cultivated in Abram.
At this point, when God reveals Himself to Abram, Abram didn’t, as far as we know, recite the list of questions and rebuttals that we imagine he might have.
He simply did as God commanded. It’s easy to just say that, but what, really, is involved in doing what God commands. What, really, is involved in obeying God?
And if worshipping God involves more than singing, more than coming to church on Sundays; if worship is a verb and somehow includes but is more than what we do here on Sunday…if worship involves obedience. If obedience to God is a critical part of worship…what is involved in obeying God?
Hearing:
Well, Abram heard what God said. God spoke and Abram knew that God spoke and knew what it was that God said. It doesn’t begin with Abram though.
It begins with God. God starts, He initiates, He shows up and shows Abram something. God reveals His will for Abram. Abram’s response is a response to what God reveals, it’s a response to revelation.
It is much less Abram peeling back the layers until he gets to God’s will than it is God simply revealing what He wants Abram to understand.
And what God revealed, Abram heard. Have you ever had someone annoyed with you because they were talking to you and you just didn’t notice? You were distracted by something else.
Your mind was elsewhere, your attention not on what is in front of you but on something else, some worry, some plan, some conversation in the past or some conversation you had to have in the future. Barbara will tell you this is true of me more than she likes.
It takes presence to hear God. Regularly giving yourself time to listen and hear is the only way we will likely hear what God has to say. Hearing has to be cultivated.
As a young person listening to music, I was only aware of the whole sound coming at me. I would listen to the Beatles or whoever full blast under the headphones, enjoying the big sound, taking in everything at once.
I enjoyed it and figured that’s the extent of what listening to music was about.
When I began to be trained as a musician, I listened more intently to the different instruments – what the drums were doing, how the bass was working the groove with the drums, how the layers of voices were complimenting each other, what the strings or horns were doing.
I was amazed at what really goes on to make music. And then I had to transcribe or write out the distinct instruments from recordings of jazz big bands or classical symphonies.
I was learning how to hear, to really hear the music. That and a lot of experience has helped me to be a band leader, which for 22 years has been a big part of my ministry at the mission.
See the problem is, before you really learn how to hear, you think you can hear. Before you learn how to really see, you think you can see. When you actually learn how to listen intently, you realize what you were missing.
So hearing God’s voice is something you and I have to cultivate. We have to do enough careful listening, careful reading of the Word of God, careful attentiveness to the presence of God in order to actually hear what he is saying. [Mention WoG.]
Abram likely cultivated an ability to hear. It started with God’s revelation, but Abram needed to hear it.
Letting It In:
The second step toward obeying God is what I call listening or ‘letting it in”. This is the work we do that enables us to choose to obey. God has to speak first. We have to hear His voice speak. But then we have to let it in.
Let’s see what the book of Hebrews has to say about the challenges Abram, now called Abraham, had to face.
Heb 11:8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
When it came to ‘letting it in’ or really listening and choosing to obey God, Abraham had some real barriers. First off…let’s face it…This fella didn’t know where he was going. God didn’t let him in on that little detail.
When I’m heading out with my family on vacation or with Barb to some special night together, I like to know where I’m headed. Or at least to appear as though I know where I’m going. She likes to know that I know where I’m going. This too was a problem for Abraham.
Abraham was being asked to leave everything familiar, everything comfortable or at least known to him. This was hard to hear. Hard to welcome in.
Abraham was told by God that he would be made into a great nation. His descendants as countless as the sand on the seashore. But he was really, really old and his wife Sarah was barren and way past the age of child-bearing.
This is devastating. Abraham had to open his heart to the possibility of the miraculous. What was absurd in the natural was to be possible with God. Things that simply could not happen were promised to Abraham to happen. This was hard to let in. Hard to really listen to.
And the guts of what God revealed to Abraham when his name was once syllable shorter was incredibly positive. “Through me…people will be blessed? My life can matter that much? My choice to hear and listen is that important? The existence of future generations and the blessing of all those people…I have a part to play in all that? Sometimes the positive is harder to take than the negative because we’re used to things being so rough and life being so hard, so much effort for so little result, so much toil for little progress.
Letting it in. Considering the possibilities. Thinking about the changes that will need to go on inside me in order for God’s will to be accomplished through me. That’s tough work.
Hearing. Letting it in. Those are the first two parts of obeying God.
Any guesses what the third part is?
Doing it. Launching out. Taking those first scary steps. And then continuing every step after that. Launching out on the journey and then not looking back.
The problem here of course is that even once we’ve chosen to obey God, to live completely for him and to go where He tells us to go, we have a sinful nature to contend with. We have sins and brokenness and rough edges that keep reminding us how desperately we must cleave to God.
When I see people of any age choose to truly follow God with all their hearts, it is so encouraging. But the truth is that movement towards obedience is usually incremental.
We don’t decide one day we’re never going to sin again and we’re going to live 100% for God without soon discovering that the best we can do is take baby steps.
But those baby steps are the key, and anyone who has ever taken who ever committed themselves wholeheartedly to hearing and obeying God has journeyed by way of baby steps, small incremental forward movements.
Abram heard God’s voice, let it in, and then obeyed God. How about you? How are you doing cultivating a life in which God has room to speak, to reveal His will in your life? You know this really does require discipline.
I’ve heard lots of folks over the years say they don’t have any structure or give any real attention to making time to listen to God. That never ends well. Believe me. We make time for what matters to us. Does it matter to you to hear from God?
And then when you do hear or sense that He’s speaking to you, how do you process it? How do you listen, how do you ‘let it in’? When he calls you to something you’ve never done, do you find an excuse in the unlikelihood of what God is asking?
Abram could have done that. Thank God he didn’t.Or do you find a way to say, deep inside you, say to God: ‘Your will be done’?
And are you taking baby steps toward obeying God more and more? Not huge leaps and bounds. Not lurching into behaving like a person entirely different from who you are overnight. But are you saying ‘yes’ more than you are saying ‘no’ to God? Are you keeping short accounts with God? When you stumble, are you getting up again?
When your desire to obey God gets confused with the desires of your flesh are you coming to God in repentance, asking Him to give you strength to fight the good fight?
May you and I and the church universal grow in our hearing, in our letting God’s Word in, and in obedience to His perfect and loving will.
Let’s pray. God, we are yours. Thank you for the journey of Abraham, the journey of one person who said yes to you. May each of us here in this room find courage and strength in the Holy Spirit to do the same. In Jesus’ powerful name we ask. Amen.
