I have to be honest with you… when I was a kid I had a really wrong-headed idea of what the Christian faith was all about. I thought that being a Christian meant giving up a life of fun & excitement in order to come, sit on a pew and be a good boy.
• I’m not sure where that notion came from… maybe it was my Mother telling me to “sit still on the pew and be a good boy?”
• I know many of the men I saw in the church growing up (guys who should have been role models and mentors) didn’t look much like they enjoyed being there either. Even when we would sing upbeat songs of rejoicing… it was always with the sourest of looks! “Rejoice, Rejoice O Pilgrim… “ It just didn’t look like they were having much fun.
• Confession time: Sunday mornings to me meant getting up early (on a non-school day), squeezing into an uncomfortable coat & tie (which might as well have been a noose and straightjacket for the way it felt on me), and heading to church where the task became EITHER (1) trying to sit still on those hard wooden pews that put my backside to sleep … OR (2) persevering through a long-winded sermon that was way over my head without falling asleep myself! My Bible
• And I wondered… where’s the FUN in all of this?
• Its not that I didn’t love God… its just that, I had rather been outside… riding my bike with my friends around the neighborhood, or chasing each other through the woods with plastic pistols, or playing baseball in the empty lot next to our house… like all boys, I longed for fun, excitement, challenge and adventure!
• And so… church, which seemed to lack all of those things (or so I thought) was just uninteresting to me.
• There… I’ve come clean! Fortunately, I grew up and learned a few things about God that changed my mind…
I’m afraid I am not alone… there is a disturbing trend that many church observers are noticing and beginning to talk about. Men, in particular, are disappearing from our churches in greater numbers…
• Stats: from Murrow Why Men Hate Going to Church
o Women comprise more than 60% of adults in church on any given Sunday. (Murrow, 5)
o At least 20%of married women regularly worship without their husbands. Their husbands are at home, or on the golf course or mowing the yard…(Murrow, 5)
o Of the men who DO attend church, many do nothing more. One fellow said, “I go mainly for my kids and my wife. Church is okay, but it really doesn’t enthrall me like it does her.”
• His thesis is… its not that men don’t love God, its that they are bored by church. I’m not sure what I think, but its certainly worth talking about and exploring a little bit.
This morning for us… I want us to see that if church is boring… it isn’t God’s fault! It isn’t Jesus’ fault!
• We’ve spent the last 7 months looking at the life of Jesus and know that his life was anything but dull. Being a disciple may have been a lot of things… but it was certainly never boring!
• Just think… about all of the places you would have gone if you had been one of those 1st disciples.
o Jesus got himself kicked out of his hometown… almost killed!
o He tore up the Temple with all of the moneychangers..
o In the middle of a raging storm out on the Sea of Galilee in a little fishing boat… he fell asleep while everybody else was scared out of their minds!
o He went to the lepers (even touched them), the outcasts, talked to prostitutes, ate with tax collectors… spent time with the poor… what part of town would you have ended up in most days with Jesus?
NO! The call to follow Christ, the call of faith was a call to a life of adventure!
• I don’t think that we typically think of our faith in those terms… at least not often enough.
• But the Bible certainly does! Shame on us if we miss it!
• Way before Captain Jack Sparrow… way before Indiana Jones… way before Roy Rogers & John Wayne… way before Errol Flynn… (how far back do I need to go?) before Robin Hood… King Arthur… Ulysses? Way before the great adventurers that little boys dream of…the accounts of real life adventurers are found in the pages of this book!
Throughout the month, I want us to take a look at some of these real life adventurers (Abraham, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David)
• But not as some larger-than-life, extraordinary “super-heroes”… NO, rather as the Bible presents them… as ordinary, real people whom God called to a great adventure.
• Because (this is my point) I believe that God calls EACH of us to a grand adventure of faith.
• The call to follow Christ is an invitation to a radically new life full of challenge, excitement, surprise and opportunity!
• I believe that if we truly believed that and appreciated that… it would make a difference not only in our churches, but in our personal walks with the Lord.
Let’s look again at Hebrews 11 and remember the story of Abraham.
Hebrews 11:8-10
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. NIV
The Hebrew writer is summarizing this great story of Abraham… if you go back to Gen. 12 where he is first introduced to us, you’ll find out that he is already 75 years old when God first calls him.
• And he tells him to go… to go and leave all that he knew… and doesn’t even tell him where he is going!
• Now, what kind of challenge would that have been? How “ready” do you think Abraham probably was to move? Or how “set in his ways” do you think he might have been?
• (I’ve got to be careful here…) I’m not 75, but hope to be someday. I know some folks who are… and change is not something that usually comes very easily at that age. For some folks… at any age!
• But the kicker here is vs. 8… he “obeyed and went.” There doesn’t even seem to be any discussion about it… “uhhh, God. Thanks, but I’m too old. You pick one of those young folks. They’re the future. I”ve done my part… now it is their turn.”
• That would have been a natural response… but Abraham faithfully obeys and goes… even though he didn’t know where he was going.
• He didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. He wasn’t given a road map with all of the stops clearly marked. If he had, I wonder what he would have done? If he had known what was fully in store for him, I wonder what he would have said…
• But he just obeyed and went… because that’s what God said do!
And when he got there, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country…
• Have you ever ended up somewhere you NEVER in your wildest dreams thought you would be? (I don’t mean because you got lost… I mean because you were exactly where God wanted you to be?)
o Honduras team? Did you ever imagine yourself in a medical clinic in Tegucigalpa, Honduras pulling teeth or removing lice?
o Sis. Peden, growing up in West Virginia did you ever imagine yourself leaving family & friends and packing up your family for the mission field of Africa in the 1950’s?
o I have a good friend—a kid who grew up in my youth group in Chattanooga—who graduated from TN Tech with a degree in engineering and could’ve gone off and gotten an engineering job making tons of money… but instead he committed to a two-year apprenticeship under a missionary family in the inner city of Capetown, South Africa... and had to raise his own support just to get by. Why would anybody do that?
• When you answer God’s call… NO telling where you might end up!
• In the spring of 2001, I had been praying that God would show me where he could use me and I got a call from a friend, who told me about a church in Fayetteville that was looking for a preacher. I remember telling him two things: ONE “I don’t think I am a preacher” and TWO—“Where in the world is Fayetteville?”
• Of course that doesn’t compare to the challenge Abraham faced here!
Genesis also tells us that when Abraham left Haran, he took everything with him!
Genesis 12:5
5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. NIV
• Why? Why didn’t he just pack an overnight bag? Why did he have to take it all?
• Answer: BECAUSE he wasn’t planning on ever coming back!
• There was no “plan-B”… there was no backup plan… nowhere does he say, “Okay, God, I’ll give it six months and if it doesn’t work out, I can always come back.” No, when he left… he left! And he knew that there was no going back! That’s FAITH!
• How many 1-way tickets have you ever purchased? How many times have you completely put yourself in God’s hands and said, “God, I’m really committed to this and I know there’s no going back!”
o Marriage ought to be that way! That’s the problem I have with so many marriages these days and the whole idea of “prenuptial arrangements.” Too many couples go into a marriage with a backup plan in case things “don’t work out as expected.”
o If you’re planning on getting married soon… I got news for you—its NOT going to work out as expected! Nothing ever does. There are going to be twists & turns & surprises!
o But that’s what marriage is… it’s a commitment… it means regardless of what the expectations were… I’m in this “in sickness or in health, in rich times & in poor times… etc.!”
• Taking up the call of God requires commitment… there ought not be any idea of going back! Abraham didn’t.
And when he got to the promised land… what did he find? Nice, friendly neighbors like himself and his family? Folks who would invite he & Sarah over for a backyard BBQ?
• No! He found Canaanites! And guess what the Canaanites were like? They were heathens!
• These weren’t the kind of people that he was used to being around back home! They didn’t look the same! The didn’t eat the same type of foods! They didn’t wear the same type of clothes! They didn’t listen to the same type of music! Their skin was a different shade… their culture was so completely different! Even their values were different… they didn’t share the same respect for human life… they worshiped idols…
• But it was here that God instructed him to go, so Abraham went and “lived among them like a stranger in a foreign country…”
• Why do we go to Honduras and conduct medical clinics & build houses? Why do we go into Eastgate Courts and teach the children about Jesus? Because God tells us to go!
• He told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Nobody liked the Ninevites! You thought the Canaanites were bad… Abraham ought to just be glad he wasn’t sent to Nineveh!
And, this is my favorite part of the story… Heb 11
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. NIV
• Life is full of surprises, isn’t it? How do you think this one went over with ol’ Abraham & Sarah?
• OH… they wanted children! They HAD for YEARS! But don’t you think that they had probably given up by now? He was- the text is discreet here—“past age” and she was no spring chicken!
• Don’t you just know this had to be a shock to their systems! Don’t you know this had to have rocked their world?
• If you don’t think that having children changes your life… let me just tell you something!
o Celeste and I were watching some old home videos the other day and we got to wondering what we ever did before the kids came along. Honestly, its hard to remember sometimes.
o I remember going to the movies any time we wanted… staying out late… going to restaurants… people invited us over to their homes and I didn’t have to worry about anybody breaking anything or getting their muddy feet on the furniture.
o Having children is wonderful… but it changes things!
• And here Abraham & Sarah are… pushing 100 by this time and about to be parents! Talk about an adventure! Tell me that God doesn’t have a sense of humor!
When God called Abraham, he called him to a grand adventure of faith beyond anything he might could’ve imagined… and is that any different than us?
• Doesn’t he still call his people to ADVENTURE?
• Is Abraham really that different from us?
• Abraham would certainly go on and become the father of Israel… the great patriarch thru whom God would form his chosen people… But, the Bible is pretty honest about his failings. On more than one occasion he lies to Pharaoh. At one point he and Sarah try to circumvent God’s plan for their children by his bearing a son with her maidservant Hagar… which by the way creates all kinds of family dysfunction for them down the road!
• But God still used him! None of us are perfect either… but God can still use each of us as well!
• God calls us to his great adventure!
If church is boring (and I really hope that it isn’t to you) … it isn’t God’s fault!
• Maybe it is our own… maybe we have a wrong-headed, distorted view of what church ought to be?
• Maybe we don’t fully grasp what it is God has called us to?
• This morning, I want to suggest to you that God has called you into his glorious kingdom and it is to a life of challenge, of excitement… sometimes surprise… and adventure.
• Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and that they may have it to the full!” John 10:10.
• What is YOUR life like this morning?
I realize we aren’t all called to go to Africa… we’re not all called to give up 2 years and go live in Honduras or CapeTown… but NEITHER are we called to just come & sit on a pew.
• There is SO much more to the Christian life than these two hours on Sunday morning. TOO much God would have us be doing right here!
• I said last week a statement that I haven’t been able to get out of my head: We are HERE to be Jesus to those out THERE!
• That starts in our own communities… neighborhoods & households… and what an adventure!
Prayer—Lord, help us to be Jesus… to demonstrate this life of adventure before others.
Invitation: This morning, we’re adjusting our order just a bit because we believe that this invitation time is SO important.
• Added a song
God invites us into his glorious kingdom… and into a life of challenge, excitement and adventure.
• If you haven’t accepted that invitation by walking away from the sins of your past, calling upon the name of the Lord and committing yourself to him in baptism then you are missing out!
• Now is the time for you to make that commitment!
If you’ve been bored in your Christian walk… ask yourself WHY? It isn’t God’s fault!
• If you’ll just ask him to show you and to lead you… no telling where he might take you!
• Saddle up your horses and get ready… God has big plans for you!
• Is it time you asked him what adventure he’s got in store for you?
• Let’s ask him as we stand and sing…
