The Call of the LORD
Download MP3Lord, I pray that you would not allow us to rush through your word. That you would not allow our minds to wander. To think that there might be more important things than hearing from you. Lord, but the reality is our hearts are prone to wander and so are our thoughts. So right now through your spirit, I pray that you would captivate us.
Joel Brooks:Lord, I pray for me as I bring forth your word that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered by anyone. But lord, may your words remain, may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. When Caroline, who's 8 now, when she was 3, Lauren took her to the doctor for her 3 year old checkup, and the doctor asked your your 3 year old at a time just some very basic questions.
Joel Brooks:And I guess, you know, we went into that as most parents do. You think your child is the most brilliant, the brightest child around. You know, you have a child prodigy and it's it's always apparent when you when you look at everything from the way that they drool to the way that they, you know, hold a block. You're like, they're strong, you know. Or the way that they they point at things that other kids don't even notice.
Joel Brooks:And so you're always captivated by your child and you think, okay, brilliant. And Lauren and I were not any different than a typical parent and Lauren takes Caroline to the doctor and the doctor asks very basic questions like, what is your favorite color? To which Caroline just kind of opens her mouth and says nothing. So she asked her the question. What's your favorite color?
Joel Brooks:And Caroline says, banana. I'm like, oh no. And of course the doctor gets, you know, her little notebook and she kind of, you know, writes a few things down while while looking at Lauren. And the entire time, Caroline didn't answer one thing correctly, just completely embarrassed her mom. Who knows we have some permanent record someplace like bad parents need to spend more time with her kid.
Joel Brooks:But you start realizing very quickly when you have a child that you have to teach your child everything. There there is nothing that you don't have to teach a child. You have to teach them how to eat. You have to teach them how to walk. You have to teach them, you know, to learn their alphabet.
Joel Brooks:You have to teach them all these things and many of these things are fairly easy. Teaching your child songs, teaching your child the alphabet, even things like I know a number of you are struggling with potty training and it's a struggle, but kids pick up on it. You know, all of you have learned to use the restroom at some point in your life. You're you're going you're going to get these lessons at some point. But but other things are much harder to teach.
Joel Brooks:Like how do you teach about faith? You're you're to believe in this god that you cannot see. How do you teach that? Lauren and I, our hopes is that, you know, our kids will look at us and they'll see that we have faith. They'll see that we trust in God and that's a way that we can teach them.
Joel Brooks:But what if there's nobody else to point to? If there are no examples. That's what you have in the life of Abram. How do you teach a man like Abram faith? That's what's going on here in his call.
Joel Brooks:How do you how do you teach somebody like this? How do you take a man from a very pagan background and without any other examples around him, teach him what every human needs to know, to trust God. Well in order to do this, God has got to start from scratch with Abram. Do not think of Abram as being already some righteous man, some person who already knows all about God, who who's a man of great faith at this point, and that's why God chooses him. You know, God's up in heaven.
Joel Brooks:He looks down. He's like, wow, I am just blown away with Abram. He is such an amazing man. He he follows me hard. I'm going to choose him to bless all the nations.
Joel Brooks:That's that's not what happens here at all. Abram lived in Ur, which is one of the largest and most pagan cities of its day. The whole city was centered around moon worship. They all worship their idols. Abram's family was not any different.
Joel Brooks:We know from Joshua chapter 24, he tells us that Abraham came from a family of idol worshipers. He came from a pagan background. And so when Abram looked around, there were no examples of faith for him to follow. He did not have a Bible that he could open up and read. He's as lost as they come, And he's without any hope apart from god coming to him.
Joel Brooks:Romans 3, just as it's true of us, is true of Abram when it says there is none righteous, no not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks for God. Abram was not seeking for God. He had no understanding of God.
Joel Brooks:He had no righteousness on his own. God just looked at Abram and said, him. I will choose him. I will have sovereign mercy on him, and I will use him to change the world. Apart from any of his abilities, anything he's done, apart from his heart, apart from any faith, I will choose and I will change him.
Joel Brooks:And he does. And we're gonna see how this unfolds, how he begins to bless all the world through this chosen Abram. God then tells Abram to leave his country, to leave his kin, to leave his father's house. For Abram, as it would be for any of us if God asked those things, that's pretty huge. I mean, he's somewhat old.
Joel Brooks:He's in his seventies. He's settled. He's likely wealthy or prosperous. He he has lived in an urban setting, and yet, god now is calling him away from all of this. And I hope you notice this, you have no idea what he's calling him to.
Joel Brooks:He just says, leave this and go. And as you're going, I'm I'm gonna tell you, you know, where to go, but right now just leave this. Abram you need to uproot your family. You you you need to quit your job. You need you need to leave.
Joel Brooks:Okay? It's pretty hard to swallow if you do not know what awaits you, But we're gonna see this time and time again. This is exactly how God begins to put faith in us. And you're gonna see this model every or over and over throughout scripture. He's gonna ask people to leave things behind.
Joel Brooks:They're going to leave security, leave relationships, leave comfort. Because the question that we have to ask ourselves is, how can we learn to trust God when we have all these other things we can put our trust in? How can you learn to trust god when there's so many other things vying for your trust? So many other things that promise to make you secure. So many other things that promise to make you comfortable.
Joel Brooks:Why is it that Jesus said, I tell you it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven? Why did he say that? It's because the rich man has so many things he can trust. He can trust his wealth. He can trust his status.
Joel Brooks:Why would he trust god? So when God wants to begin building faith in someone, a lot of times, the first thing he does is he asks you to leave things behind. And you're gonna see this later in the life of Jacob, who never grew in his faith until he was finally ripped away from his family, and he was scared for his life. You're gonna see this in Joseph, who I believe was on his way to being an arrogant obnoxious man until God ripped him out of that environment, sold him into slavery, put him into prison in order to teach him faith independence. And so when God wants to build faith in your life, a lot of times it's going to come at the expense of your comfort and your security.
Joel Brooks:Which means we need to take a hard look at our life right now. What are some of the things in your life that are vying for your trust? Is it is it your job? You know, you're you're making a good living. You know, you're making good money.
Joel Brooks:You know, things are gonna be okay and that's what your job's telling me, and you're and you're like, okay I could trust in that. Or is it your family that's saying, hey, you don't need anything else. You've got us to make you happy. And you're like, okay, I can trust in my family. What is it that you're trusting in?
Joel Brooks:Lauren and I, realized that we are at a very dangerous position in our lives. I think pretty much just about any Christian in America is. It's because we are healthy, we've got a good home, we've got 3 wonderful kids, we've got a good dog, a good cat, we've, you know, I've I've got a job that I love. And and so you could say that we're in a really good place, say a stable comfortable place. But that's a place that's not very conducive to building faith.
Joel Brooks:Now I'm not saying that we can't build faith during this time, but we need to realize that it's a hard place for us to build faith, to grow faith, when we've got all these things that seemingly we can trust. And what we need to do is when we're in these times of stability to remind ourselves, god, you're a rock, not everything else. God, you're our refuge, not anything else. God, you are our hope, not anything else. We have to keep reminding ourselves of this during this time of stability and comfort.
Joel Brooks:God looks at Abram's state and sees the best way for me to teach him about faith is to get him away from everything he trusts. And Abram obeys. Look at verse 4. Verse 4 says, in a very matter of fact way, doesn't go into any details, it just says, so Abram went as the Lord had told him. And for those of you who are very set in your ways, those of you who feel almost locked in in this certain path in your life, maybe a path that you don't really like, maybe a path that's in rebellion against God, I hope this gives you some comfort that God can change that.
Joel Brooks:That you're not locked in this way. You you can change. God can change your heart. He can still use you. Something else I think is very important for us to see here in the life of Abram, is that this decision for him to go wasn't instant.
Joel Brooks:It was part of a longer process. Abraham did not leave everything behind at the start. I've debated, Lauren and I talked a lot about this this afternoon. I debated whether to to talk about this next point because it's somewhat difficult to explain. But I decided I'm gonna go and speak this because I think it's where a number of you are right now.
Joel Brooks:And so I hope you hear this, but I want you to know that you're gonna have to stay with me here. You're gonna have to focus in and you're gonna have to follow on this. We're we're gonna we're gonna go beneath the surface a little bit here. The call that we see here in Genesis 12, is likely not Abram's first call from the Lord, call by the Lord. Abram receives this call in a place called Haran.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 4. It says, when he departed from Haran. Yet we know from some other places, for instance, Acts 7 when Stephen is giving his great speech before he is killed. Stephen says this, the very start of his sermon, he says, Brothers and fathers hear me. The Lord God appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran, before he lived there, and said to him, go out from the land and your kindred and the land I will show you.
Joel Brooks:So before this call here in Haran, the Lord has already appeared to Abram at some point. We also will see this later in Genesis 15 when God tells Abram, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur. He doesn't say Haran. He says, I brought you out of the land of Ur, which is where Abram lived before Haran. So God has appeared to him before we get to this part in Genesis 12.
Joel Brooks:I think it's important for us to hear this because, I've read some bad stuff or heard bad preaching on this in which there's no room for sanctification. It's always instant. You know, here you go. Here it is. Follow God with everything.
Joel Brooks:Throw it all behind right here, right now. And there's no none of this room for God revealing himself and growth. And you hear this things like when when Jesus went to the disciples and said, hey I've come to make you fishers of men, and they cast away their their nets, and they followed him, and they're like, that was instant. Well yeah, it was instant, but if you read the gospels, they had a relationship with Jesus before that. It was building to that.
Joel Brooks:It was a process, and so God appeared to him before in Ur. Now with that in mind, I want us to read back chapter 11 verse 31. Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his grandson and Sarai his daughter-in-law his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years and Terah died in Haran.
Joel Brooks:So here we see Terah, which is Abram's father, taking Abram out of Ur. It says, he took Abram and he's going to Canaan. We we don't know why. It doesn't give us the reason why here they're migrating out of Ur and they're going to Canaan. We we can only assume from Genesis 15 and from Acts 7 that apparently the Lord has appeared to them.
Joel Brooks:The Lord has given them some sense of calling and they are leaving. I want you to notice who is the one leading them at this point. Terah. Terah took Abram. So so the Lord appears to Abram, gives him some vision.
Joel Brooks:Tara leads them out, which is exactly how it would work in this culture in which sons would always defer to their father. There was huge respect for the head of the family until that person died. So the Lord called Abram, but then Terah leads his people out of Ur. And he leads them to a place called Haran, which is a huge detour if you're going to Canaan. If Canaan is here and they're heading out of Ur, it's this it's this big detour.
Joel Brooks:You wouldn't normally go that way. And when they get there, Tara decides we should stay here. We need to settle. Haran was a good place. And so as the head of the family, he said we stay and Abram said, okay.
Joel Brooks:I defer. We will stay. I've got to think this time in Haran had to be a pretty frustrating time for Abram. I mean, you've got this call from the Lord and and now you seem somewhat on hold. Derek Kidner in his great commentary on Genesis says, to wait on without surrendering the vision can be an exacting task.
Joel Brooks:And Abram here is waiting without surrendering the vision that the Lord has given him. And my bet is that probably many of you have either experienced this or are at that place. You know, maybe God has called you, he saved you, and then he's called you to do something. You can feel it. He's he's pushing you in a direction.
Joel Brooks:He wants you to do this. Perhaps it's go to the mission field. God's called in your life. He's put a calling on you. You're supposed to go to the mission field.
Joel Brooks:You're like, great. So do I right now go get on a plane and fly to the Amazon and just start walking into the jungle? Is that what I'm supposed to do? Or or do I first go to seminary and get an education? Am I am I first supposed to stay here, maybe pay off my student loans?
Joel Brooks:Do do my parents are elderly? Do I need to take care of them first? You know, and after they die, do I then go? And so you've got this call and you're trying to figure it out, and life just happens. It's like, but when do you obey when when there's all these other questions, there's all these other things to consider.
Joel Brooks:Maybe it's something a lot smaller than going on the mission field. Maybe it's something as simple as sharing with your neighbor. You need to share your faith with your neighbor, and you have felt that call in your life. So are you supposed to get up right now, go immediately there, share with your neighbor? I don't know, maybe you are.
Joel Brooks:Or maybe you're supposed to wait for the right time. Maybe you're supposed to pray for the right opportunity. Maybe you're supposed to carefully prepare what you're supposed to say first. Life happens in all this. And the important thing is you don't lose faith.
Joel Brooks:You don't lose the vision God has given you. I'm certain that Abram was struggling with all of these issues. I mean, it had to be so difficult for him to hear from the lord. For him to get this vision of the lord, and then for him to be stuck in haran. Do do I obey my dad?
Joel Brooks:Do I stay here? Do do I go? What am I supposed to do? Derek Kidner also pointed out, he says, faith will keep the course, and in due course, the instructions will be fulfilled. If God has called you to something, realize there's gonna be obstacles in the way and also just life is going to happen.
Joel Brooks:And what you need to do is commit yourself to obedience. You need to seek God's Spirit daily. You need to seek him in his word often for direction. Because living in Haran is hard, and the reason it is hard is because it is comfortable and it is easy. In Genesis 12, the Lord again appears to Abram and gives him instructions.
Joel Brooks:And that's where we hear, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you. And so after this brief time of waiting, or we're actually not sure how long he waited there, God asked Abram to leave now his father's house. To leave your father's house in this day is unheard of. A matter of fact, it was so problematic that in in some some of the Old Testament Hebrew manuscripts, they actually changed the date that Terah died. You know, earlier it says he died at 205 years and they just kind of changed it to a 135 years to make it that Terah would die first.
Joel Brooks:And then Abram was free to go because you just couldn't leave your father. A good son obeys his father. A good son takes care of his father. It would be hard to even imagine life apart from your father's household. Because the reality for Abram was Terah's friends were his friends.
Joel Brooks:Terah's possessions were his possessions. Terah's house was his house. And to leave this behind is to leave part of himself behind. I mean he is Abram Ben Terah. Abram son of Terah.
Joel Brooks:That's his name. And God is saying, I am calling you to a new relationship now. A new family in which your identity is in me, in me alone. I'm calling you away from your father. And that had to be so hard because his dad would live for a long time after this.
Joel Brooks:His dad only died 2 years before Abram's wife, and yet they were removed from one another. Does this call remind you of anything in the New Testament? And does it remind you of anything Jesus said? Jesus told someone, follow me in Luke 9. And the man replied, lord, but first, let me go bury my father.
Joel Brooks:And the lord said, let the dead bury the dead. You come, follow me. Or in Luke 14, when Jesus says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and his mother and his wife and children and brothers, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Or when he tells a rich young ruler in Mark 10, he says, you lack one thing, go sell all that you have. Leave your old life behind, and then come follow me.
Joel Brooks:The call to follow the lord has always demanded absolute allegiance. Always. In which we have to say yes to the lord before we ever even know his command. And god now has saved Abram, and now god is calling him to leave everything behind and follow him. And I'm sure Abram had lots of questions like, well what kind of land are we going to, God?
Joel Brooks:God would just say, I'll show you. Well how long is it gonna take, God? I'll show you. Are the people gonna be kind to me there? I'll show you.
Joel Brooks:Trust me in this. And Abram did. Notice what happens in verse 5. It says, and Abram took. Abram took, Not Terah.
Joel Brooks:Abram's now the one doing the leading here. He leaves his father's household. He now takes the lead of his family and he says, we will obey the Lord even though we do not know where we are going. And God is making Abram into a solid man of faith, And faith is absolutely necessary for one to please the Lord. I I don't know about you, but it's likely, because it's certainly true for me, that I have heard lots of sermons on faith in my life.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask a fundamental question. Why is god so concerned about making us a people of faith? What is it about faith that so delights God? I remember the first time I took Caroline to the pool. She was terrified of water.
Joel Brooks:My other girls never were. They would just, you know, they would jump in and drown, you know, if we weren't there. They could care less. But Caroline was terrified. And and I would get into the pool and I'd go before her and I would say, okay, jump to me in the pool.
Joel Brooks:And when she would just look at the pool, and she'd look at me, and she'd go, uh-uh. And then there would be, you know, some other dad, you know, playing with their like 2 year old going jumping like, whee. You know, they're splashing on me. And and you know, you can almost just see the smirk in the other dad's face, and I'll be like, no, come on Caroline. Come on.
Joel Brooks:This is very important to daddy. Jump to me and she would just go, uh-uh. And so our first day of the pool, she never jumped to me. I mean I just, I'd left the pool in just, you know, shame. When I was talking to her, I said Lauren, I mean Lauren, Caroline, I know you can't swim.
Joel Brooks:So So I'm not, you know, I'm not appealing to the fact that you're a good swimmer. I'm not saying you're courageous. What I'm saying is, do you trust me that I'm strong enough and I'm good enough that I will not drop you? That's that's what I'm asking you to focus on right now. Do you trust your daddy?
Joel Brooks:She says, uh-uh. She wouldn't jump in. She she she jumped in later, days later, And I can tell you when she finally jumped in, when she finally, I guess, believed her daddy, it was just such a tremendous joy to me That she believed in me. It wasn't because she also learned to swim. No.
Joel Brooks:She actually just trusted that I wouldn't let her down, And so her trust honored me. That's what happened. In Hebrews chapter 11, what's known as the hall of faith, right before that talks about Abram, we hear these words. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to god must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Joel Brooks:Now God here does not say why faith pleases him, he just says that it does. He says there's something just so obvious about the very nature of faith and the very nature of God that that there's no need for argument here. Just without faith, it's impossible to please God. He does say that faith reflects 2 very important truths about God. Says that God is real or that we must believe that he exists and that God is rewarding, that he rewards those who seek him.
Joel Brooks:So God is real. Our faith needs to reveal that God is real. Faith shows that he is real, that he is the one solid thing in our life, That our family is not solid, our job is not solid, our wealth is not solid, our status, our power, our relationships, none of those are solid, but God exists. He is real and if we jump to him, he will not drop us. That honors him.
Joel Brooks:And then he's rewarding. He rewards those who seek him. And when we say that we believe God is rewarding, we are saying, God you are self sufficient. You are overflowing with joy. And when we are near you, that overflows to us.
Joel Brooks:And God, the biggest reward that you give us is you. You're our reward. And we delight in that. And when we come to God in faith, that's what we say. God, you are real and you are our reward.
Joel Brooks:The biggest gift that we receive is Jesus. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. God so loved us he gave his son Jesus, and Jesus is the one who gives us faith, and Jesus is the one who we receive by faith. He is the one to whom Abram points to. Jesus who left his comfortable home out of obedience to his father, in order to bring reconciliation to the world back to him.
Joel Brooks:Abram points to Jesus. We need to have faith to receive this Jesus. So that we can be personally reconciled to God, and that we can be part of the reconciliation of this world. Pray with me. Lord, I feel we should end here.
Joel Brooks:I don't want to add my words to your word. Lord, right now I pray that your spirit, he would come and he would descend and he would move in our midst. That he would make us uncomfortable where we need to be uncomfortable, and he would restore us where we need to be restored. For those here who are saved and have been called by you to do something, give them faith. Don't let them lose vision.
Joel Brooks:Give them discernment as life just happens to them. God, we don't see Abraham as our example. We see him as one who points to you, our savior. Jesus, it's in your name we pray. Amen.
