A Scary Word From God

By: Stan Mast

Scripture Reading: Genesis 12

May 3rd, 2009

It is an understatement to say that there is a great deal of fear in the world today. People are afraid of the financial crisis, of political changes, of unemployment, disease, divorce and death. There is almost a world—wide sense of panic. That’s why it is so wonderful to know God as our refuge and our strength, an every present help in times of trouble as the Word of God says in Psalm 46. But sometimes even God seems frightening. Sometimes the Word of God to us is genuinely scary, like the word God spoke to Abram in Genesis 12. Many years after this event in ancient history, the book of Hebrews summarized Abram’s situation in this story with these words in chapter 11:8: "he did not know where he was going…." Isn’t that a telling line? "He did not know where he was going." We never do, do we? Oh, we think we do. We look ahead into the darkness of the future, and make our predictions and form plans and make provisions so that we can be safe in the future. We think we know where we are going, until we set out, only to discover that it is a lot scarier out there than we could ever have imagined. And I’m not just talking about the world wide terrors of the economy or the war in Iraq or the misery in Africa. I’m talking about the little fears you have in choosing a career when you’re still in school, or finding a life partner or deciding not to, or raising a family, or preparing for retirement, or facing your own death. Life is such a scary adventure that we do everything we can to make is safe. That’s why this story of Abram is so helpful and comforting. It shows us that the difference between safe and scary is not what you know about where you are going, but what God promises to you precisely when you don’t know where you are going. The safest place in the world is standing on the promises of God. Of course, Abram didn’t know that at the beginning. In fact, he didn’t even know God, not the true God, the God who calls himself the Lord, or Yahweh in the Hebrew language. You see, Abram was raised in a pagan family that worshipped a host of gods. All biblical indications are that he had never even heard of the Lord, Yahweh, until that day when he heard that voice. That must have been scary itself—to suddenly hear the voice of God, to be addressed by a god you’ve never heard of. We don’t know exactly how that happened, but we do know where he was when it happened—in Haran, a flourishing caravan city north of Israel on the border of Syria and Turkey, where worship of the moon god was prevalent. In that pagan place this pagan man heard the voice of the true God saying something that should have filled him with fear. "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you." What a scary word from God! "Leave your country," this land you know so well, this piece of real estate you call home. "Leave your people," your ethnic group, the folks who look like you because you share the same gene pool. "Leave your father’s household,"—your dad and mom, your extended family, that group of loving people by whom you’ve been raised and nurtured and protected all your life. Leave the safety of what you know and go to a land you don’t know. Where is it? "I will show you." How will I get there? "I will show you." What is it like? "I will show you." What will I do there? "I will show you." This previously unknown God says, "Go, and I will show…." Just that. "I will show you." Verse 4 reports in a matter of fact way, "So Abram left, as the Lord had told him…." You would think that Abram would hesitate just a bit—consider his options, calculate the risk, make some plans, gather provisions, take the first hesitant baby steps. He was, after all, 75 years old, with a wife about that old. They had no children; indeed, Gen. 11:30 is very specific about that. In fact, that was the distinguishing thing about his wife Sarai. She couldn’t have children; she was barren, sterile. They did have nephew, Lot, and a whole slew of servants and livestock. Though Abram didn’t have children, he had a great deal of responsibility in life. It would not be easy or comfortable to just pick up and leave. But the Bible says very simply, "Abram left, as the Lord had told him" with that whole caravan in tow to the land he did not know. In spite of all the reasons not to obey this scary word from God, Abram just picked up and went. How could he do that? The secret lies in those words, "as the Lord had told him." He had heard the voice of God. And the Lord had not just given him a command. More important, he had given Abram promises. Between the "go" and the "so," were these promises, the great promises on which the subsequent history of Israel and the salvation of the whole world depend. Some scholars count seven blessings here, but it seems to me that that there are just two, you can compress them all to these two. "I will bless you and I will make you a blessing." When you go to the land I will show you, I will bless you. The Lord is quite specific about the two—fold nature of that blessing. "I will make you a great nation." To a childless couple, a couple who couldn’t have children, the Lord says, you will not only have a child, but you will have so many children and grandchildren that the descendants of Abraham will become a great nation. In the chapter just before this, at the tower of Babel God has scattered the nations all over the earth, because they tried to make themselves great. Now God promises this one man and his wife that in the midst of the scattered nations, he will make of them a great nation. Closely connected to that is the second part of the blessing on Abram. "I will make your name great." Genesis 11 says that at Babel the peoples of the earth built a great tower so that they could make a name for themselves, and God destroyed their tower and humbled them. But now God says to this formerly insignificant and anonymous pagan, "I will do for you what mankind always tries to do independent of God. I will make your name great." Then God promises not only to bless Abram but also to make him a blessing. That meant two things. "I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse." God will be so much with Abram and his family that his blessing and his curse will attach to them in a sort of a boomerang effect. God promises to put a kind of protective shield around Abram and his descendants, so that whatever you throw at them will bounce back at you. Bless them and open your arms to receive the blessing that will rebound to you. Curse them and you’d better duck because a curse is winging toward you. And then God makes the promise that will finally save the world. "And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Undoubtedly Abram didn’t understand what that meant, not the way we do, living on the other side of the cross and empty tomb of Christ. In fact, it took some time for the followers of Jesus Christ to make the connection between their Lord and these words of the Lord to Abram. That’s why the apostle Paul took great pains to show his readers that Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise to save the world through the descendants of Abram. He is crystal clear in Galatians 3:16. "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ." Abram could not have understood that, but it was a huge, incredible, impossible promise that God made to this pagan who didn’t know where he was going. God promised great blessings. No wonder Abram obeyed God’s scary command. He left for the land God would show him because it was the land of promise. Go and be blessed and be a blessing. How could he lose? With those promises under his feet, his journey was the safest thing he had ever done—which is why the Bible makes nothing of the long journey. "He set out for the land of Canaan," says verse 5, "and they arrived there." Of course! He had many miles to travel through totally unfamiliar territory, but he set out and arrived. Just like that, because he was standing on the promises of God, and there is no safer place in the world. But when he got to the Promised Land, he found it already occupied by a cursed people, the children whom God had cursed way back in the days of Noah, the children of Canaan. The story of the curse is recorded in Genesis 9. After the flood, one of Noah’s sons did a shameful thing to Noah, and with all of his paternal authority, Noah cursed the descendants of that son. "Cursed be Canaan!" That’s who Abram met when he arrived in the Promised Land. The land of blessing was under the dominion of the cursed children of Canaan. But God said in effect, "Don’t be afraid. To your offspring I will give this land." And did you see what did Abram in response to that promise? At the site of one of the greatest shrines in the land, the great tree of Moreh at the center of Canaan, where the cursed ones worshipped the gods of Baal and Dagon and Asherah and Ashteroth, this former pagan built an altar to the Lord Yahweh. This is a very important detail. In fact, it is more than a detail. Think about it. In the land of the curse, Abram worshipped the God who had blessed him. In the land of idolatry, Abram dedicated the land to the true God. By worshipping God at the sight of this pagan shrine, Abram was saying, "This land does not belong to Baal or Dagon. It belongs to Yahweh." In other words, Abram staked a claim for the Kingdom of God in the place of the curse. This was not just a wonderful new opportunity for Abram; it was the next stage in God’s campaign to bring his kingdom back to earth. Think of it this way. In the beginning, God walked and talked on this earth with Adam and Eve in the garden. But when they sinned, he expelled them from that place and they wandered over the earth. When God cleansed the earth of its corruption and violence with that terrible flood, Noah offered sacrifices and dedicated the renewed earth to Yahweh. When the descendants of Noah rose up against God at Babel, the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth. And now here, God establishes a beachhead on earth for his coming kingdom. Do you see what is happening here because Abram obeyed a scary word from God? He was staking a claim on this piece of real estate where Abraham’s most famous child would die on a cross and rise from the dead and then send his disciples into all the world to make disciples of all nations and, thus, spread God’s kingdom. "And all peoples on earth will be blessed through him." Abram obeyed a scary word from God because God promised blessing, and as a result the world is being saved. The safest place on earth is standing on the promises of God. But we don’t believe that all the time. All too often we are like Abram in the next verses of Genesis 12, where he found himself in a very scary situation. A famine struck the Land of Promise and Abram decided to head south for the safety of Egypt, where the predictable Nile River always provided abundant food. But his careful plan didn’t work out so well. In that safe place he found great danger. Sarai was an exceptionally beautiful woman, and Abram was afraid that the Egyptians would kill him to get her. So he concocted a lie to save his own skin, even though it compromised Sarai’s integrity terribly. "Say you are my sister. Then they’ll just grab you and treat me well because of you." The ruse worked, and it didn’t. The great Pharaoh took Sarai as his wife and made Abram a rich man. But the greater Yahweh, the giver of incredible blessings, laid a terrible curse on Pharaoh’s house. Both Pharaoh and his household were afflicted by a serious disease. Pharaoh connected the dots between Sarai and that disease and in a terrified rage expelled Abram and Sarai from his land. And Abram high tailed it back to the Promised Land, having learned that even when you think you know where you are going, you cannot predict how it will turn out, especially when you sin in order to save your life. The difference between scary and safety is not your knowledge about where you are going or your ability to control your future, but the promises of God about the future that he controls. As your think about your career or your family or your health or your finances, don’t think scary or safety. Think about God’s word to you, what he commands and what he promises. Is God calling you to do a scary thing? Of course, he is. Perhaps he is calling you to leave a comfortable life to establish a beachhead for his kingdom in a new place, or in a new job, or with new friends. Perhaps he is calling you to leave a sinful life style centered on the gods of the country in which you live—the gods of prosperity and pleasure. Perhaps he is calling you to become a minister or a missionary who will stake a claim for God in a far off place or right next door. I don’t know the exact shape of his command to you, but I know he says to all of Abraham’s children, "Go!" Go into all the world and make disciples. Go and promote the Kingdom of God by laying claim to the land. By laying claim to the occupation, the relationships he will show you. Go and establish a beachhead for the Kingdom of God in whatever place he shows you. Of course, you can only do that if you believe the promises of God. You say, "I haven’t heard the voice of God making such great promises directly to me." Yes, you have. These very promises you’ve heard today in the word of God are for you, because says Galatians 3, all who have faith in Jesus are children of Abraham. No matter where you go in obedience to God’s scary word, God promises to make you part of a great people. He promises to make your name great in heaven. He promises to make you a blessing to many people. And more than that, God has shown you what Abram couldn’t even imagine—the fulfillment of these promises in the one called Yahweh Saves, Jesus of Nazareth. You never know where you are going next. But you do know the one who promised, "I am with you always to the end of the age." The safest place on earth is standing with Jesus on the promises of God. So the most important thing you can do to secure your future is not make a good plan or store up adequate provisions or get the proper training or find some powerful friends, but put your trust in Jesus. In him, says II Corinthians 1:20, all the promises of God are yes. The Word of God we most need to hear in scary times is Jesus. Stand with him; walk with him; follow him to the Promised Land. And you’ll be safe forever.

About the Author

Stan Mast

Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.

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