Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
Worship

      • Genesis 12:1–8NIV2011

  • The Master Plan

    There’s something great about a good master plan.
    I love it when someone takes something that is a bit run down, they develop a vision, and they then show you what it might look like.
    At St Philips last year, I believe it was one of the year 12 students developed a master plan for the street near the Kooindah centre. They showed it at one of the end of year assemblies last year where I got to see it.
    They had developed these great graphics which brought the thing to life. They presented an image of what it all could look like.
    Now, some master plans can end up being really about wishful thinking, particularly when there is no budget for it.
    But when you have a master plan, you know what you’re working towards. You can do little tasks to help move towards that finished product. And if progress feels so, well… you can point to that master plan and think - we’re making progress towards that master plan.
    We can love the master plan so much, that the reality is, if we don’t know where things are headed, we can actually start to become de-motivated.
    For example, something needs fixing - but why bother if it might just be ripped down and replaced with something else.
    Or perhaps more of an issue, without a master plan, everyone just comes up with their own ideas and people start competing against each other for what they want.
    But when there is a nice clear master plan, in theory, everyone can see how what they are doing fits into the bigger picture.
    Now with this intro, perhaps you might think I’m about to start talking about the need for a big vision to inspire us. Having a vision in a church is actually great and to be encouraged, but that is not this talk today.
    You see, there is a flip side to good aspect of having a master plan, and that is that it exposes our desire for us to control the situation.
    Now, we might be tempted to say here, well, no, this isn’t about my control, God’s going to reveal this big picture for me, and then I’m going to direct people so that they fall in line with the big picture that came from God.
    Now, I’m going to try and be careful here, because there are times when God may give someone a vision - let’s say, to build a school… or to start some big ministry to the poor.
    But we have to be careful, because even when God gives us this big vision, the temptation is to wrestle control off God so that we control how things go.
    This morning, I want to propose a much better path - and that is the path of walking by faith.
    The reality is, when we walk the path of faith, we generally don’t have all the details of how every step along the path is going to be acheived.
    Sometimes God might give us a glimpse of the bigger picture, but sometimes he doesn’t.
    So if you miss everything else I say this morning, just remember this one bit: walking the path of faith is about having the courage to take the single next step that lies before you.
    Let me say that again: walking the path of faith is about having the courage to take the single next step that lies before you.
    I’m going to unpack this idea by exploring the life of Abraham.

    Context

    So let’s get some context.
    Abraham is one of the very early characters we meet in the bible, in fact, the main part of his story starts in just the twelfth chapter of the Bible.
    You see, if you read through the first eleven chapters of the Bible, you might start to think humanity is without hope.
    It starts with Creation - which is absolutely amazing - God really does do a great job with it. But by the third chapter, the humans he has created turn their back on God. They think they can effectively take the place of God.
    And then it gets worse. Chapter 4 sees the first murder, and by the sixth chapter, everything is so bad that God decrees that he is going to destroy the world by a flood. The only person to be saved in Noah.
    You might hope that with a fresh start, things would go better, but it doesn’t. Humanity still goes the way of wickedness, and by the eleventh chapter, God scatters the world, dividing them with different languages.
    If you’re reading through these chapters, you very well may be asking - where is hope going to come from?
    Good news, God has a plan. In fact, God knows exactly how the whole thing is going to work out.
    God knows that this plan is going to culminate in the sending of his one and only Son into this world, and that he will die for our sins, then rise again, such that if anyone believes in the Son, they will have eternal life.
    He has planned it such that he is going to create a nation of Israel which will foreshadow a kingdom that will bring in all nations.
    And he has planned that itt will all start with one man - a man who is originally known as Abram.
    God might know this full plan… and we do too, but that’s only because we’ve read to the end of the book and read the ending… but when you start reading Genesis 12, you might get the impression something big is in store, but we’re given very little detail about how it is all to come about.

    Abram

    So let me introduce Abram to you.
    As a character, he is first mentioned towards the end of chapter 11.
    As I mentioned a moment ago, chapter 11 is the chapter in which God scatters the nations and divides them into languages. This is the story of the tower of Babel.
    After this account, we then get the family line that takes us from Noah’s son Shem, down to a man named Terah.
    Terah lives in Ur of the Chaldeans, which is in modern day Iraq, which is quite a few hundred kilometers east of where the nation of Israel will eventually find itself - of course, at this point, Israel doesn’t yet exist.
    Now, in this last bit of Genesis 11, Terah decides to pick up his family and move. We’re not really told why. But we are told that one of Abram’s brother dies, so could that be part of the reason.
    They’re on their way to Canaan, but half way there, they decide to settle, and that’s where Terah, the father dies.
    So, by the end of chapter 11, we’ve now got Abram and his wife Sarai who are childless… there’s also Abram’s surviving brother Nahor and his wife.. and finally Abram’s nephew Lot.
    They’re no longer in the land they grew up in - but they’re just now settling into a new life.

    Go

    And it is in this context that God speaks directly to Abram.
    God tells him to “go”. He is to go from his country, leave his people… leave his father’s household and just go to the land that God will show him.
    Now, I don’t know about you, but with this command, I’d have a lot of questions to ask.
    Why do you want me to go?
    How long is it for?
    What’s it going to be like there?
    Well, God adds a promise to his command, and it might give a vague kind of an answer, but in some ways, it’s just going to invite more questions.
    The promise starts by saying that Abram will be made into a great nation.
    In other words, he’ll have lots of descendants, which is a bit weird when Abram and his wife are already old and they are childless. In fact it tells us in verse 4 that Abram is 75 years old.
    The next part of the promise is that his name will be made great and that he will be a blessing.
    And finally, that all people on earth will be blessed through him.
    Now, Abram at this point could put his foot down. He could say - actually I’m not going to step anywhere until I have more answers. After all, what if this all goes terribly.
    But verse 4 tells us that Abram went. As simple as that.
    He doesn’t exactly know what’s going to happen, but he heard God, and he obeyed.
    Now all he knows is that he is to go to the land that the Lord will show him.
    He’s not even entirely sure where that’s going to be. But he knows he needs to be moving to figure it out.
    Now in verse 6, he arrives at the great tree of Moreh in Shechem. I’m imagining to get the title of a great tree, it’s probably got to be pretty big.
    Well, it’s while he is at this location that we see in verse 7 God effectively says - yep, this is it.… this is the land I’m going to give you.
    I just want this to be clear about how this worked - it wasn’t clear exactly what land was going to be given him until he started walking and arrived. He was only able to know once he walked by faith.

    Progression of promise of land

    But, while we’re on this promise of land, let’s look at how it becomes more specific over time.
    We’ve already seen how it starts with the rather vague promise in chapter 12 verse 1 that it will be to the land I will show you… but how it got a little more specific in verse 7 he said - ‘this one!’
    But it even gets a little more specific when we get to chapter 13.
    I won’t go into the full story, but we have this interesting moment between Lot and Abram where they realise they needed to go their own way.
    Their obviously at some high vantage point, and God tells him to look in all directions, from north to south and from east to west. And at this God tells him in Gen 13:15 “All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring for ever”.
    But it gets even more specific.
    In Gen 15:18, now the Lord starts spelling it out. From the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.
    The promise only starts to get more specific as Abram continues his walk in faith.

    Progression of promise to be a great nation

    Now, I want to have a look at another one of the promises that is given to Abram.
    I alluded to the seemingly unlikely promise that was made where God tells a 75 year old childless man that he will be a great nation.
    Now it’s actually with the promise that we’ll see in a moment is the catalyst for Abram getting a name change to what we are more familiar with - namely, Abraham - but I’ll get to that in a moment.
    Now there is actually quite a detailed story in this one, and I’m only going to be rather brief in my telling of it in the interest of time.
    Now, we’ll find out as the story is told to us, that his wife Sarai, is actually 10 years younger. But at 65 - well let’s just say I think I can confidently say that every women here who is in their mid-sixties or above are not currently considering whether they should have another child or not. It’s not going to happen whether you want it or not.
    So, just when you might have thought that this promise must have been incorrectly heard (or something to that effect), God then effectively doubles down on this promise in Gen 13:16 - saying that the offspring will be like the dust of the earth.
    By chapter 15, Abram’s obviously getting confused, given he has no child yet, and so figures he needs to make one of his most trusted servants his heir - but at this, God gets more specific - no, it’s going to be from your own flesh and blood. And this time telling him to look at the stars in the sky - such will be your offspring.
    Well, at the age of 86, Abram’s wife developes her own plan.
    You know, we’ve been talking about walking in faith - but I mentioned at the start, one of the big dangers with the master plan is when we think we can take control of the situation… but perhaps more than that, when we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re following the plan that God set for us, not realising that we’ve shifted from our walking in faith, to walking in our own strength.
    So, you likely know the story - Sarai gives Abram her slave named Hagar. Hagar does bear a child, namely Ishmael - and you’ll also likely know that it’s through the lineage of Hagar that we’ll get the Arab nations and ulimately, the religion of Islam is going to come throught this line. You can start to see when we veer from walking by faith and walk in our own strength, we can actually cause some rather large problems.
    Thankfully, Abram doesn’t give up on the walk of faith.
    But let’s look how long it takes. Remember, he was 75 when he first got that promise that he’ll become a great nation all the way back at the start of chapter 12. It was eleven years later when he had the child to the slave woman. Well, he’s now 99, meaning 24 years after the first promise.
    It’s at this point that the Lord changes his name from Abram to Abraham. The name Abraham means - ‘father of many nations’. Sarai also gets a name change. She is now Sarah.
    The Lord goes on to say - the promised child is not Ishmael, rather Sarah will bear you a son and you will call him Isaac.
    Yes, as unlikely as it might sound, a 90 year old woman is going to have a child.
    You might say - impossible, and from a strictly natural perspective, you’d be right. But when it’s the one who created the universe by just speaking it into existence, perhaps allowing a 90 year old to have a child is only a minor miracle.
    Isaac is of course born. Isaac, then becomes the father of Jacob, who also gets a name change to Israel. And from there we get the nation of Israel - a nation that despite all odds, somehow always seem to survive. But perhaps most significantly, the nation in which comes Jesus, the saviour of the world.
    The important aspect I want to draw from this, is that the plan took a long time for Abraham to see. It required he walk this path of faith for a very long time.

    Application

    So what does this mean for us?
    Well, it shows how the path of faith requires patience and endurance.
    In a world that craves instant gratification, the walk of faith can become a challenge.
    We can ask - why is it taking so long?
    But God’s timing is very different to ours.
    We can ask - why don’t I have any clarity on where things are heading?
    Maybe God’s saying, I want you to trust me on this one, not think you can do it on your own.
    As I mentioned earlier, God may give you some indication of where things are heading for you. If so, that’s great. But still move in faith. I can almost guarantee that there is more that God hasn’t revealed to you just yet.
    But if you’re feeling that actually, you’re still in the dark as to where this is heading, don’t worry.
    Here’s what you need to do...
    Just look what’s in front of you. Look at what the natural next step is.
    And then step in that direction.
    Quite likely, that will mean using the gifts that God has given you. It might mean caring for the person who God has placed in your sphere.
    Look for opportunities for where you can serve.
    Ask lots of questions about how you can be most useful.
    When an opportunity presents itself… move towards that door. You take a step.
    If it’s not where God wants you to be, God will close the door. If it is where he wants you to be, you’ll then see the next step open.
    We want to know the ending, but God’s saying, just trust me… I’ll show you the next step.
    At times, like when Abram got to the great tree at Moreh, he might say - this is where I want you to be. But you still take that journey in faith.
    The faith journey never ends.

    Conclusion

    Sometimes, it can be easy to switch into a journey of your own strength. Just know - God is very gracious with us. The truth is, we all make this mistake from time to time. But when you do, just repent, and say to God, show me the next step.
    This is not always easy. In fact, at times we can get frustrated with how slow things seem to go. But the journey of faith is going to be one of the greatest journey’s you’ll take.
    As you look back, you’ll see God’s leading all the way. At the time, it might not be so obvious, but God is always there.
    Our job, is just to take the next step.
    Let me pray...
Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
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