Keep on going. Don't give up.

The Promise

(Genesis 12:1-9, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 28, 2014)

[12:1] Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. [2] And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. [3] I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We worship a God who speaks. This God is the LORD, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He is also the Redeemer of His people. He is able to rightly judge mankind, a fact displayed prominently in the flood in the days of Noah. He has a plan to bring about a new world without any sin or death. That plan involves all the family groups of the earth. At the center of that plan is His own coming as the Messiah. As the Lord spoke to one man in the Middle East about four thousand years ago, he announced His plan with a promise.

God's promise to Abram began with a command. Abram was to complete the journey that he and his father had begun before his father's death. The Lord did not tell Abram where exactly he would go or what would precisely take place along the way. He expected Abram to trust Him. God would show him a new land for his descendants. God promised that these descendants would be a great nation.

Even more than that, the Lord promised to bless Abram and to make Abram a blessing, insisting that all the various people groups of the earth would be blessed “in you.” This was a very large promise to a man who had very little to recommend himself to God. But throughout the four thousand years that have followed this announcement by the Lord, the truth of the the Lord's promise has been confirmed through the coming of the Jews, and especially in the surprising arrival of the Messiah, and then in the worldwide mission of the church to bring the message of the kingdom of Jesus to all the nations of the earth.

[4] So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. [5] And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, [6] Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. [7] Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. [8] From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. [9] And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

Abram believed the promise, followed the instruction of the Lord, and built an altar to the Lord in a part of the land that would be Israel.

Put the Word to Work: We follow in the line of ancient men and women who have believed the promise of God and received the blessing. How can we not follow the Lord who saved us?

Memory Verse from the Songs of Ascents—Psalm 123:1 – To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!

Gospel Reading—Matthew 14:13-21 – Jesus feeds the five thousand

An Unlikely Chosen Man

Keeping Hope Alive

(Genesis 11:27-32, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 21, 2014)

[27] Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. [28] Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. [29] And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. [30] Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

If we were to summarize the Bible for a newcomer, we would do well to make the most obvious division between the Old and New Testaments. Though these ancient covenant documents form one whole book for followers of Christ today, both Old and New become more understandable if we think for a moment about each one. The Old Testament is the story of the Hebrew people as a unique group from whom God would provide a Savior for the entire world. The New Testament is the account of the coming of that Savior and the conflict that ensued between Jew and Jew concerning the earlier statement I just read about the Old Testament. In other words, in the first century AD one group of Jews was pitted against another. One believed that the Hebrew Bible prepared Jews for the arrival of the Savior of the world. The other group did not agree with that interpretation. We belong to the first group. We have come to believe that Jesus is Lord.

Much of the Book of Genesis is laying the groundwork for us to understand who it was that God would rescue out of Egypt and lead into the Promised Land. For the remainder of Genesis we follow the story of one troubled family chosen by God. We are interested in Abram because he was the grandfather of Jacob, from whom came the Jews. Terah was Abram's father, and Nahor and Haran were his brothers. Haran died young—before Terah his father. “Haran died in the presence of his father.” Now Haran's son, Lot, would be brought up as a part of his uncle Abram's family circle. In that family circle there was a very important woman, Sarai, the wife of Abram. Here we immediately learn this second sad fact beyond the untimely death of Haran— “Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.”

[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. [32] The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

After this very brief introduction to Abram, Sarai, and Lot, individuals that will be central to the next several chapters of Genesis, we learn that this family was on the move, first under the leadership of Terah, but later by the Lord's direction to Abram recorded in the next chapter. They came from a city in southern Iraq called Ur and they were headed toward Canaan, the area that would become the Promised Land. But under Terah's direction they did not reach their destination. Instead they stopped at an important crossroads city on an ancient trading root, Charan, that worshiped the same false God as the people of Ur. There Terah would die, and Abram would be alone with a wife who could not have a baby and with a nephew whose father had died. Not a very hopeful start to the people group that would be central to all of the Old Testament story. Without the Word of God giving birth to hope, the story of Abram and Sarai ends with death, barrenness, dislocation, and sadness.

Put the Word to Work: We begin the story of the Old Testament patriarchs with family pain. Even today a sad world stands in need of a good Word from heaven. God speaks and hope lives.

Memory Verse from the Songs of Ascents—Psalm 122:9 – For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.

Gospel Reading—Matthew 14:1-12 – The death of John the Baptist

How will the Lord build a kingdom that reaches to the heavens?

Declining Generations and the Man of Promise

(Genesis 11:10-26, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 14, 2014)

[10] These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. [11] And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

This passage and the next take us from the cataclysmic event of the flood to the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs of the Jewish people, the people group through whom the Lord gave a Messiah to the world. Genesis 11 includes a list of names beginning with Shem, the son of Noah, and ending with Abram and his brothers, the sons of Terah. We get the word “Semitic” from the name Shem. The word antisemitism means hatred of Jewish people, but while the Semites include the Jews, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there are many other people groups included in the group that is rightly called Semitic. Interestingly, Arabs also have Semitic roots. God is still doing something today that relates to Shem et al.

[12] When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. [13] And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
[14] When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. [15] And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
[16] When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. [17] And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
[18] When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. [19] And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters.
[20] When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. [21] And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters.
[22] When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. [23] And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters.
[24] When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. [25] And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters.
[26] When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Though the list we have here may seem like meaningless words to us, these names represent real people who lived lives and had many sons and daughters. A man might seek to make a name for himself through the building of a kingdom that he could see during his days on the earth. The Lord is building his kingdom through many generations that lead to just the right moment, just the right place, and just the right person in a story that He has known well from before the foundation of the earth.

Though we might look at the list recorded here and say that these people of old lived good long lives, the fact that we should note in this passage is that life expectancy was going down. The Lord had announced before the flood that the outer limit of a long life would be 120 years. He did not bring that about immediately, but it did eventually happen. At the end of Genesis, Joseph the son of Jacob died at the age of 110.

Put the Word to Work: Life expectancy was declining after the flood, but the promise of God was moving forward. The value of life is not measured by age, but by the purpose of God.

Memory Verse from the Songs of Ascents—Psalm 122:8 – For my brothers and companions' sake I will say, “Peace be within you!”

Gospel Reading—Matthew 13:53-58 – Jesus rejected at Nazareth

Thy Kingdom Come

A City, a Tower, and a Name

(Genesis 11:1-9, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 7, 2014)

[11:1] Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. [2] And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [3] And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. [4] Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

In 1806 several students at a remote New England college took shelter in a thunderstorm by a nearby haystack. Remembered today with this brief text from one of Jesus' parables, “The field is the world,” four of these five young men committed themselves to go to far-off lands to bring the message of Jesus Christ to people of strange customs and foreign tongues. This haystack prayer meeting was the beginning of the American Foreign Missionary movement.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is God's appointed means to bring the world together in a common purpose. That vision for unity is God-inspired, God-directed, and God-empowered. It is all for His glory and it cannot fail. It should be obvious that none of these things can be said for other plans for worldwide unity. God gives us the tower of Babel episode as a case in point. Here people were working together to build their own city. They wanted to solve the problem of the divide between heaven and earth with their own tower. They were inspired by a thirst for their own glory. They saw this endeavor as a way to stay together. Their desires had all the elements of a man-made utopian enterprise. What would be the Lord's assessment of their cooperation?

[5] And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. [6] And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [7] Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” [8] So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [9] Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

God came down. He saw. He spoke in the heavenly council. He noted the potential in their concerted efforts. Then He put it all to a stop. Confusion was His gift to the world on that occasion. The people groups of the earth were dispersed. They would not find it so easy to work together on their own plans to unite heaven and earth. They would have to wait for the beginning of a new unifying moment in the history of the world. That unifying moment came with the preaching of Christ, and it was accompanied by the reverse-Babel sign of Pentecost tongues.

Put the Word to Work: The good plans of the Lord are far better than the united efforts of a worldwide rebellion against the Almighty. We should not imagine that peace and prosperity will come from a human endeavor that we all agree to. Our idea of the perfect community must come from the Word of the Lord. It must be centered in the living Christ who died for our sins. This is what we pray for and work toward. This is what we build with treasures old and new. In the strong Name of Jesus, the Lord is building a new Jerusalem that will endure forever.

Memory Verse from the Songs of Ascents—Psalm 122:6-7 – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!”

Gospel Reading—Matthew 13:51-52 – New and old treasures