The passage that we're looking at this evening,
as with last week, is in Genesis and
chapter 12.
Abraham is a great man of God, to
which the Muslim community look forward in terms
of they honour Abraham, and he's mentioned in
the Koran, and Islam traces its roots to
Abraham.
That's another reason why we should be looking
at this character.
And of course the Jewish faith looks to
Abraham as its founder.
And when we go into the New Testament,
we find that Abraham is referred to as
a man who gives an illustration of the
sort of faith that pleases God, to the
extent that he, along with just two other
people in the Bible, is actually called the
friend of God.
And at one point in his life he
had to move from the area where he'd
grown up, a very thriving metropolis, and come
along the fertile crescent and go to the
land of promise, which we now know as
Israel.
A very momentous journey, a very brave journey.
He wasn't quite sure just where he would
go as he followed the will of the
Lord, though God of course knew and was
leading him.
But it was a great challenge for Abraham.
And as I tried to explain last week,
when you become a Christian, you get a
similar sort of challenge.
Maybe not geographically to shift location, but certainly
in terms of going through a change in
personality, a change of direction, a change in
outlook.
Well, with that in mind, let's look again
at chapter 12 from verse 1, spilling over
into the next chapter.
The Lord hath said to Abraham, Leave your
country, your people, and your father's household, and
go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you.
I will make your name great, and you
will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and
whoever curses you I will curse, and all
the peoples on earth will be blessed through
you.
So Abraham left as the Lord had told
him, and Lot went with him.
Abraham was seventy-five years old when he
set out from Haran.
He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot,
all the possessions they had accumulated, and the
people they had acquired at Haran, and they
set out for the land of Canaan, and
they arrived there.
Abraham travelled through the land as far as
the sight of the great tree of Morah
at Shechem.
At that time the Canaanites were in the
land.
The Lord appeared to Abraham and said, To
your offspring I will give this land.
So he built an altar there to the
Lord who had appeared to him.
From there he went on towards the hills
east of Bethel and pitched his tent with
Bethel on the west and Ai on the
east.
There he built an altar to the Lord
and called on the name of the Lord.
Then Abraham set out and continued towards the
Negev.
Now there was a shift in circumstances.
Now there was a famine in the land,
and Abraham went down to Egypt to live
there.
For a while, because the famine was severe,
as he was about to enter Egypt he
said to his wife Sarai, I know what
a beautiful woman you are.
When the Egyptians see you, they will say,
This is his wife.
Then they will kill me, but will let
you live.
Say, You are my sister, so that I
will be treated well for your sake, and
my life will be spared because of you.
When Abraham came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw
that she was a very beautiful woman, and
when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her
to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his
palace.
He treated Abraham well for her sake, and
Abraham acquired sheep and cattle, male and female
donkeys, men's servants and maid's servants, and camels.
But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh
and his household because of Abraham's wife Sarai.
So Pharaoh summoned Abraham, What have you done
to me?
he said.
Why didn't you tell me she was your
wife?
Why did you say she is my sister,
so that I took her to be my
wife?
Now then, here is your wife.
Take her and go.
Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abraham to his
men, and they sent him on his way
with his wife and everything he had.
So Abraham went up from Egypt to the
Negev with his wife and everything he had,
and Lot went with him.
Abraham had become very wealthy in livestock and
in silver and gold.
From the Negev he went from place to
place until he came to Bethel, to the
place between Bethel and Ai where his tent
had been earlier, and where he had first
built an altar.
There Abraham called on the name of the
Lord.
It's marvelous to concentrate upon our faith and
what God has done for us, but it
doesn't take much to realize as we look
at the television and the newspapers that there
is great problems in our world, and this
next prayerful song just brings some of the
situations before the Lord.
We'll treat it as a prayer.
If you would listen to it being played
through, and then we'll sing it to you,
and there'll be a number of prayers and
chances for us all to sing this.
Our heavenly Father, how wonderful it is that
you, the God of the universe, the creator
of the universe, listen to our prayers.
But it is true, and so we bring
them to you this evening, and we pray
for our loved ones in this fellowship.
Father, we pray for Hilary especially today and
this evening, this night that you'll be very
close to her.
We pray that she will know your presence,
so very real at this time.
And Lord, we bring also to you Eileen
and Rachel Smith, Mary Wilkins, and we thank
you for the healing begun in her, and
for little Georgina.
We pray for her and for Colin Anderson
this evening.
Lord, we thank you that you do hear
and answer our prayers.
We are so blessed to be your children.
Amen.
Answer me, O Lord, hear my prayer.
O Lord, hear my prayer.
Come and listen to me.
Father, we bring before you the trouble spots
in our world.
Lord, as we consider the horrors that we
have seen in Rwanda.
Lord, as we consider the children and the
adults butchered and mutilated.
Father, we bring before you that very, very
terrible situation, and ask, Lord, that your peace
might reign.
Lord, we bring before you Bosnia, Lord, and
Lord, we pray for that nation too, in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
O Lord, hear my prayer.
When I call, answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer.
Come and listen to me.
Father, we also bring before you the needs
of this church.
Lord, and your church in this nation.
Lord, on this weekend of on fire, Lord,
may your spirit burn brightly, Lord, in the
hearts of Christians.
Lord, may again, Lord, we see something of
that flame of Christianity burning, Lord, in this
country, where men bow the knee to you.
Lord, we pray for all those who have
responsibility in this area, and ask your blessing
upon them.
Amen.
O Lord, hear my prayer.
When I call, answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer.
Come and listen to me.
I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles
open at the passage to which I directed
your attention earlier.
That was the twelfth chapter of the book
of Genesis.
We've had some very sad events in this
last week.
One recalls the death of Jacqueline Onassis, or
otherwise known as Kennedy, perhaps one of the
more stunningly attractive and intelligent women of the
latter part of our century.
And even more particularly, as far as we
in the United Kingdom are concerned, we've witnessed
the burial of and the memorial service of
John Smith.
The press didn't really know what to make
of the memorial service of the former leader
of the opposition.
This is what the Independent led off with
in its front page on Friday or Saturday.
In the church there was little ritual.
God was praised, but mostly for helping a
good and brave man to fight for the
happiness of others.
The minister said that he did justice, he
loved mercy, he walked humbly with his God.
This is not what we are used to
hearing of politicians.
And equally unexpected, the minister of the church
and the other speakers seemed to rejoice in
John Smith's achievement, rather than mourn for a
life brutally cut off on what might have
been the threshold of triumph.
Now, his colleague, John Smith's colleague, Margaret Beckett,
she said of Mr. Smith, he was the
most self-possessed man, the man most at
peace with himself that I have ever met.
And I wonder what it is that makes
a man to be at peace with himself.
Let me give you a picture, two pictures.
One is of a room which is utterly
untidy.
It's just as though the IRA have been
in and let off a small bomb and
there's utter confusion and the place is, well,
it's lacking in any order whatsoever.
And then, and then let me show you
another room in your imagination and everything as
we would say in South Yorkshire is in
apple pie order.
To use another South Yorkshireism, it's not higgledy
-piggledy.
Go into those rooms and answer this question,
which one is the nearest as a representation
of your life?
Go back to Smith.
Now, let's go before John Smith, let's go
to Genesis.
Can't get much more before than Genesis, can
you?
In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth and the earth was without form
and void.
Darkness was on the face of the deep.
That's the authorised version.
Let's just update the language a little bit.
In the beginning was total disorder and then
God spoke and order came into the created
world.
Let's now imagine that we're back at school.
An illustration I often use.
On a piece of paper we've got some
iron filings and they're all over the place
and then suddenly you get a magnet and
you put the magnet underneath the piece of
paper.
You introduce what you call polarity onto the
scene and immediately the iron filings form a
pattern.
They are controlled by hidden, unobserved forces.
What makes a man so self-possessed that
one of his closest colleagues says, he was
a man more content and at peace with
himself than any other man I have known.
I want to suggest to you, because again
the leaders, writers in the paper, made this
sort of comment of Mr Smith.
I want to suggest to you that the
way in which order and purpose comes into
your life can only be through a religious
dimension.
Because it was said of the late leader
of the opposition, before politics he put his
family and his religion and he would not
forfeit those in the interests of the former.
The thing that puts a sense of order
into a man, into a woman's life, is
when they recognise, if you like, the polarity
which God introduces as they commit themselves to
him.
Now here's Abraham.
I study Abraham.
I tried to defend that last week and
P.
B.
Curiam being here this evening has added further
fuel to my argument.
You study Abraham because, well, he was one
of the most wonderful, remarkable historical personalities that
there has ever been.
As I say, he's central to Islam, he's
central to Judaism, he's central to Christianity and
when the New Testament says, here is a
man who exercises faith, copy him, it gives
you par excellence the example of Abraham.
What did Abraham do?
Well, New Testament language says that before you
can become a disciple of Jesus you have
to take up your cross and you have
to follow Him.
I told you Abraham was born in a
place called Ur of the Chaldees.
I described something of that and showed you
that they weren't primitive cavemen, that Ur of
the Chaldees was a thriving metropolis of at
least one quarter of a million people.
And that Abraham was worth a shekel or
two.
And the thing that might well have caused
Abraham to think twice about the word that
came to him from God to leave Ur
of the Chaldees and go to a place
that God would direct him to was his
family.
I mean his wife, his his father, his
parents.
I mean parents do have a pull on
you, I'm expecting to get a Sheffield by
the end of this evening, so you can
breathe a sigh of relief the address can't
be that long because I promised my mum
I'll be in by about 11.30 and
it takes about four hours and so you
do a bit of a mental arithmetic and
see that I've got a timetable to keep
to.
There is a pull.
Jesus said that unless you're prepared to make
those ties of family secondary and recognise his
primary call then you're not really equipped to
be his disciple.
You see the things that might hold on
to Abraham, he eventually had to cut them
off and though he went from Ur to
Haran and when you turn left at Haran
you then move into the desert, that's where
he lost his dad and that's when he
decided he would by God's grace go across
the trackless desert like a Bedouin sometimes called
the sailors of the sand and go to
a land that he believed that God would
give to him but he'd never been to
it before.
And into the life of Abraham increasingly became
or came purpose, polarity.
Do you remember last week we had a
wonderful illustration of somebody who lost it as
far as life's purpose was concerned and then
gained it.
Our friend Jean came down these stairs into
this pulpit and then down the lower stairs
onto the platform wearing something like the gear
that she used to wear when she was
basically a woman tramp on the streets and
then after she told us a little bit
about how she lived in a disorderly fashion
she went back into my vestry, she changed
and she told us about the Lord coming
into her life and how he brought polarity,
how he brought reason, how he brought order
into it.
I'm suggesting that she illustrated for us today
what the Christian faith can do for her
in a very dramatic fashion, for some of
you in a less dramatic but nonetheless obvious
and experienced fashion, and in the Old Testament
this dusty book of Genesis you get an
illustration of what it really means to bring
order to your life.
You remember I tried to teach you that
Abraham, his life in effect in the beginning
of it could be reduced to a discovery
of three things to put order to it
and those three things I put into the
one word tap, each letter T-A-P
reminding us that Abraham tapped into, exploited a
source that he didn't know when he was
in Ur of the Chaldees and it's well
illustrated by three terms, a tent, an altar
and a promise.
You say, what are you talking about?
Well, you try going across a desert moving
a semi-detached house around, you can only
live in a tent.
And not only did Abraham literally live in
a tent, but the tent became symbolic of
his attitude to life.
Tents collapse, life does not last forever and
the New Testament giving us a commentary on
Abraham gives us the impression that here was
a man who was very wise, he didn't
just live for wealth, he didn't just live
for influence, he didn't just live for politics,
he lived recognizing that his was a journey
through this world ultimately to a more wonderful
experience of the grace of God.
His was a tent life and what's more
you read in this chapter that from time
to time as Abraham moves into the Promised
Land he builds an altar.
What do you do in an altar?
Well, there you offer a sacrifice and there
having cleared the account of your sin by
the shedding of the blood of an animal
you can have contact with God.
Now you don't need an altar these days
because the Lamb has been slain for you,
the Son of God.
Jesus has taken upon Himself the consequences of
your sin, so it is possible for you
to have a sort of nomadic attitude to
life realizing that you're moving eventually out of
this world and during the time that you
spend here being in contact with God through
prayer.
T-A-P.
P standing for promise, for God has said
to Abraham, I will make you into a
great nation and I'll bless you, I'll make
your name great, you will be a blessing,
I'll bless those who bless you, whoever curses
you I will curse and all the peoples
on earth will be blessed through you and
Abraham believed God.
Don't you see those fundamental principles in the
Old Testament, not only are they illustrated to
some degree, though I didn't know his life
very much, on the part of John Smith,
they are to be latched onto by folk
like you and me.
If we claim that Jesus Christ is our
Saviour, we recognize that we're not here forever
as is a tent life.
You can't transfer your monies from Barclays Bank
or Halifax to heaven, they don't have any
branches there.
One day you'll die and leave it.
So you've got to have the tent attitude
if you're to be a disciple of Jesus.
You've got to keep coming to Him in
prayer.
You've got to believe in His promise that
if you confess your sin He is faithful
and just and will forgive you your sin
and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
Alright, that's what Abraham did.
He shows us the life of faith to
some degree, but he blew it.
I mean by that he failed.
I don't mean he failed entirely.
I mean that having made such a good
start he then failed in a very bad
way and I am so glad that the
Bible refers to the mistakes of the leaders
in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
You see how appalling it would be if
we were to teach you that once you
have become a Christian you'll be successful forever
after.
I would like at this moment, because I've
got nothing else to say to you, anyone
who is a Christian who has never blown
it, quote unquote, who has never fallen short
of what Jesus expected of him, of her,
I'd like you just to leave right now.
I do mean that quite sincerely.
It's either modesty that's preventing you from going
or it's conviction that's gluing you to the
seat.
I'm assuming it's the latter.
Abraham, we are told in the second part
of the chapter that we're looking at this
evening that here was a man who failed
and we are grateful for the integrity of
the record.
I mean he comes to, he comes to
the promised land and there's a famine.
Look at verse 10.
Now remember that when he moved into Canaan
he didn't really have any hold on the
land at all, not physically even though God
had promised it to him.
He's got a wife, he's got a large
retinue of servants, a massive household, and so
he goes down to Egypt and he does
something terrible.
Aren't you glad that the Bible record is
accurate, that it tells us the truth?
You know we live in a world of
image makers.
You ever read a biography of Ronald Reagan,
don't believe it, if it was authorised by
him.
The same could perhaps go for Margaret Thatcher
too.
The same could go, I don't want to
be cruel, to most public people.
We live in a cosmetic age, you know
you have to touch things up a little
bit.
I'm told it costs a penny or two
to keep one of the members of the
royal family looking beautiful.
Well we understand don't we?
I mean those of us who are over
30 they say that up to 30 life
is a question of development and after 30
it's a question of maintenance.
Oliver Cromwell says paint me warts and all.
Well this is what the Bible does about
Abraham, it paints the true story and it
paints the true story about Peter and it
paints the true story about Paul.
Peter who was petrified by a girl who
accused him of being a disciple of Jesus.
Paul who fell out with Barnabas and as
a result there was a split in the
early church.
It would have been so easy to have
applied a little painter's brush, taken a little
bit of a biographer's license and edited these
things out but the Bible doesn't do that
and that's an indication of its inspiration that
it is a trustworthy book.
Not only do we read here about the
integrity of the record but let me suggest
there is something else.
We find recorded something of the instability of
Abraham as well as the instability of my
overhead projector slide.
You know when he went down to Egypt
he had a problem.
This problem was twofold, one was bounty and
the other was beauty.
The bounty was well he hadn't got any
food as we've indicated.
So he goes down into Egypt because there's
going to be food there.
Joseph will go down to Egypt and eventually
Jacob will follow him because well they've got
exactly the same problem.
Egypt is a luscious land at least where
the Nile is and the food that Abraham
required is available in Egypt but he doesn't
ask God's permission to go.
And one of the things about discipleship, one
of the things that's going to keep you
on the right path as far as following
Jesus Christ is concerned, is asking His permission.
Especially if you go to the equivalent of
Egypt which here is a very tempting country
and if you go into a tempting situation
then you need to know that you have
been directed down there by God Himself.
It's the beauty of his wife really however
that becomes a problem for Abraham not so.
Now you might wonder how on earth can
a woman who is 64 years of age,
for that is what she was, how can
she present such a problem?
Well in those days, in Abraham's time, they
lived for almost twice as long as, at
least he did and his wife and some
of his contemporaries, almost twice as long as
you and I lived.
Which means to say that if you adjust
the years for a moment or two then
she's an equivalent of just over 30.
A very beautiful woman and she might be
attractive to Pharaoh.
I worked with a man in London, a
dear man of God by the name of
Macbeth Patterson and he would repeat his stories
time and time again and we'd always laugh
because they were always funny in the way
that he told them and he would sometimes
refer to a man who got a little
bit of difficulty with his wife and one
of his friends says, have you ever considered
divorce?
And the answer was divorce no, I don't
believe in divorce.
Murder yes but not divorce.
Now in one sense that illustrates Pharaoh's attitude.
He might see this beautiful woman, she is
married to a man, he wouldn't contemplate the
man divorcing her but he will murder the
man in order to release the woman.
Hey Sarah, if we get into that sort
of problem, my life's in danger.
Why don't you do me a favor, say
you're my sister.
Abraham never sunk more than that.
And sometimes in our discipleship, brothers and sisters,
we can sink very low in reneging on
the quality of life, the quality of discipleship
that the Lord wants us to demonstrate.
Let's move on because I know some of
our youngsters want to get to Little Hampton
in a while.
The instability of Abraham is nonetheless matched in
this chapter by the consistency of God.
You see, when you do blow it as
a Christian, when you have committed your life
to the Lord Jesus, if you don't always
live at the level that He wants you
to live at, the fact of the matter
is that He keeps His Word.
He is always faithful.
The Bible says of God that it is
impossible for Him to lie.
Abraham, I will make you into a great
nation.
I'll bless you, I'll make your name great.
And here is Abraham doing anything but reflecting
the faithfulness of God as he carelessly goes
down to Egypt and gets his wife to
contract such a disagreeable arrangement, Abraham leaning heavily
on her.
Now wouldn't you think that God has every
right to give Abraham up?
Wouldn't God have every right to give you
up for the things that you have done,
post-conversion, which are wrong?
And the answer is yes, He has every
right.
But He doesn't apply His rights, because you
see God's rights are also involved, as you
understand them, in God's promises.
God says to Abraham, I will make you
a great nation.
He's not going to go back on His
promise.
Our Lord Jesus, when you've placed your trust
in Him, He will keep you, even though
you fall.
He remains utterly consistent.
And so you find with Abraham that he
leaves Egypt.
Pharaoh has discovered that he has in effect
deceived him, and the children of darkness, our
Lord Jesus says, sometimes are more wise than
the children of light.
In other words, non-Christians can be more
sensible than Christians.
And Pharaoh says to Abraham, why didn't you
say she's your wife?
Why did you say she's my sister, so
I took her into my harem?
Think of the damage that I could have
done, and think of the way that God
is punishing me.
But the fault, Abraham, was yours, the Pharaoh
correcting the patriarch.
Sometimes, my friend, I think that God deserves
a greater quality of discipleship than we offer
Him.
Abraham, exposed by Pharaoh, is told, take your
wife and all the goods and chattels that
you've acquired in Egypt and go.
And Abraham goes, verse 1 chapter 13, back
from Egypt to the land of promise.
Verse 3, to the place that he came
to originally, to Bethel.
And between Bethel and Ai, he pitched his
tent, and then he called on the name
of the Lord, Abraham repenting over the very
disagreeable episode in his life when, without permission
from God, he went into a tempting situation
and fell badly.
But as God in His grace received Abraham
back and continued to work out His promises
and continued to bring through Abraham His will,
don't you see?
He can do exactly the same for you.
You've done wrong.
You've fallen short of the God.
The Lord turns you back to Himself.
You can have the tap turned on again
as you recognize that primarily He calls you
to the tent life, an impermanent view of
life in this world as He shows you
once again the importance of being in touch
with Him through prayer, and as He reaffirms
His promise that He will do dealings with
repentant people such as you might be.
What impressed Mrs. Beckett about John Smith?
A man at peace with himself, with an
order to his life.
You can have exactly the same or rediscover
it as you ask the Lord Jesus to
come into your life or refresh by the
power of His Spirit to straighten you out
again.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your goodness and
for your grace.
You deal magnificently with people who do not
deserve such reactions to their rebellion and sinfulness.
We ask you now to receive us as
we confess the blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ and ask that that may be applied
to our account.
We pray that you'll fill us with your
Holy Spirit and give us a sense of
order and purpose as we make our way
through life.
Each day may we pitch the tent.
Each day may we ensure the altar has
been erected.
Each day may we claim your promises and
all convinced people said, Amen.
Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer,
sing o'er His wonderful love proclaim.
We'll sing the first and the last verses.
Praise Him, praise Him, ever in joyful song.
Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer.
Fear failing you, we ask that this next
few days until we meet again in this
sanctuary, you will give us a special dispensation
of your Spirit, keep us from letting you
down.
If we go into what stands for Egypt
in our life, may we go clothed by
the Spirit, not forgetful to pray as Abraham
was.
We ask, O God, that you will give
us success as Christian people.
Those who are groping their way to faith,
we ask that you will enable them to
embrace the old rugged cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ and to find the forgiveness that
He offers.
And we pray of Him that we may
see Him more clearly and love Him more
dearly and follow Him more nearly all our
lives.
Now may the blessing of Almighty God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit rest and remain with
each one of us always.
Amen.
Good night.
God bless you.