9/24/23 Genesis 12-36 “Do You Know About God or Do You Know God?”

21 Sep 9/24/23 Genesis 12-36 “Do You Know About God or Do You Know God?”

9/24/23    Genesis 12-36        “Do You Know About God or Do You Know God?”

Sharon and I were watching television once several years ago when a program premiere started.  I think it was something called “Revolution” and it was some sort of sci-fi program.  It wasn’t that good.  It went off the air shortly.  But it did have an interesting premise.  It started with everyone having a normal day when all of a sudden, everything electrical or electronic stops.  There were all kinds of disasters with cars and planes crashing.  But the thing that really caught my attention was how much we rely on things like electricity and electronics.  It wasn’t that many years ago that there wasn’t any electricity.  My parents grew up without electricity.  Also, it wasn’t too many years ago when all phones were on the wall and you shared a line with your neighbors.  Then we invented portable phones and then cell phones.  Today, many people think that they cannot live without cell phones.  And just when you think it can’t get any worse or better, they invent cell phones that are computers that have the internet.  What’s next?  Sometimes I wonder about our so called progress.  Anyway, getting back to electricity, we rely on this as a source of power.  We have faith that when we turn on the switch, a light will come on.  We have faith that when we turn the key in the car, it will start.  We have faith in many things and this is a good thing.  Today, we are going to look at the faith of a couple of the patriarchs of the Bible.  Let’s see if anything they did applies to us.

Dennis Lawrence tells of the Armenian earthquake in 1988 killed 30,000 people in just 4 minutes.  Within minutes of the quake a father raced to a grade school to save his son.  When he got there all he found was a pile of rubble.  As he looked he remembered the promise he made to the child: “No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.”  Remembering this he found the area closest to where his son’s room had been and he began to dig.  Others arrived and began crying for their lost family members.  They told the man it was too late.  All were dead.  Even the police told him to give up the search.  But he refused to quit.  He dug for 8 hours, then 16 hours, then 32 and 36 hours.  His hands were absolutely raw and his energy gone but he kept digging.  Finally, after 38 hours, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice.  He called the boy’s name, “Arman! Arman!”  A voice answered, “Dad, it’s me!”  Then the boy added these priceless words, “I told the other kids not to worry.  I told them if you were alive, you’d save me, and when you saved me, they’d be saved, too.  Because you promised, ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.’”  Sisters and brothers in Christ, that is faith!  It is the faith of a child, the faith we need to have in Jesus Christ.

Now let’s look at the faith of Abraham.  I think that this is one of the most remarkable stories of faith in the Bible.  Abram started way over by the Persian Gulf which is a long way from the Promised Land.  It was there that God spoke to him telling him to pack up his stuff and follow God to a new land.  Abram is not a young man at this point.  He has many possessions.  He has large herds.  In the land of Ur, where Abram started, God was not very well known.  There weren’t many people who knew about God anywhere at this time.  But Abram listens to God, who no one really knows, packs up all his stuff and moves to a land that he knows nothing about: To a land where God has promised to make Abram into a great nation.

Think about this for a moment.  About the only thing I can think of that comes close to this is when missionaries leave for a country and culture where they have never been before.  Other examples of this might be when people first come to know Jesus Christ.  I was once talking with someone who was new to the faith and he was having trouble adjusting.  All of his old friends had left him.  He was by himself living with the promise that God had given him.  It was the promise of something better even if it doesn’t seem that way right now.  This is why it is so important to gather around new formed Christians with the love and understanding of what they are going through.  This is especially true of younger people who rely heavily on peers for support.  Suddenly they leave their old life and they haven’t developed a new life yet.  If you know of a new Christian then gather around them with support.  They need Jesus to work through you.

There are so many instances of Abram’s faith.  There is even the human side when he doubted God and had a child with Hagar.  But we have a forgiving God and soon Isaac is born when Abraham is about 100 years old and Sarah is about 90.  Can you imagine such a thing happening today?  God is truly a God of miracles.  We also have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham pleaded for mercy.  Lot and his family were saved because they were the only ones who had been faithful.  It almost sounds like the story of Noah.  I have told you before of the time, long ago, I was watching a feature on Sodom and Gomorrah on the Science Channel.  They couldn’t figure out why the area around Sodom and Gomorrah had such huge deposits of sulfur.  Go figure!  You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.  There is so much evidence of our God who loves us dearly.  Then He shows Himself throughout the Bible.  Unfortunately, most people ignore it and make up their own God, their own religions and their own Bibles.

The last incident with Abraham I wanted to talk about today is when he takes his son, Isaac, to the mountain to sacrifice him to the Lord.  God tested Abraham to help Abraham and us to know the faith he had in God.  God said to go and sacrifice Isaac.  Abraham didn’t wait and think about it.  He got up the next morning and left.  When he got to the mountain, he told his servants to wait for them because they would be back.  It is interesting to note the faith of Abraham already.  He told the servants that they would be back, not he would be back.  Abraham already knew that God would save Isaac from this sacrifice.  And of course, they go up on the mountain and God stops the sacrifice just before if happens.

Abraham had about the strongest faith of any of the patriarchs we read about in the Old Testament.  We read these stories in the hope that our faith in Jesus will be bolstered.  Abraham lived in a pagan world where God wasn’t accepted.  We live in a pagan world where Jesus isn’t accepted.  We need to read about faith like this and see how it is rewarded.  We see that Abraham wasn’t perfect but he tried the best he could to be faithful to God and our whole world today exists because of Abraham’s faith.  We owe everything we have to the love that Jesus Christ has for us, for you.  I don’t think it is asking too much that we put our faith in Him.

I want to leave Abraham now and move to someone who was a real rascal.  Jacob was a man who was a lot different than Abraham because he just wasn’t a very nice man.  But he ends up being a man of faith, after life had kicked him around a bit.  I think we all know the story but I would like to refresh you a little.

Jacob has a twin brother named Esau.  Esau was a hunter and Jacob was a quiet man possibly a farmer.  This part of the story really parallels the story of Cain and Abel.  I think we all know the story of how Jacob tricks Isaac into giving the inheritance to him along with the blessing.  In those days the oldest always inherited and Esau was older.  Anyway, Jacob does this and Esau is extremely upset.  As a matter of fact, he is so mad that he plots to kill Jacob after Isaac dies.  This causes Jacob to flee the country and set up shop with a relative far away.  Jacob then marries and has children.  If you read this story from the Scriptures, you will see that God isn’t mentioned too much.  I get the feeling that during his early life, Jacob didn’t know God.  He knew about God but he didn’t know God.

Years later we see that Jacob knows about God when God told him to pack up his stuff and move back to the land of his father and Esau.  This sounds a little like when Abraham left Ur.  Only this time Jacob thinks he knows that he is going back to a brother who is still mad at him and will try to kill him.  Jacob knows God is telling him to do this and he has the faith in God to go.  I think this is the beginning of faith for Jacob, especially after he wrestles with God and God changes his name to Israel.

I think that this story has a much bigger application to our lives than the one of Abraham.  You see, I think that deep down most of us consider ourselves to be unworthy of Jesus.  Most of us have done things that are not so good.  I led a life for many years that wasn’t so good.  I lead a life today that is not very good.  So I think that deep down, Jacob is a good representation of most of us to some degree or other.

Let’s walk with Jacob for a moment.  He packs up all his belongings, takes all of the herds that he has acquired over the years by one means or another, and takes his family on the journey home.  He has to be very nervous about all this.  Esau had threatened to kill him and now he was going back into the mouth of the lion, so to speak.  He thinks he is putting his life and others on the line.  He does all this because God told him to do it.  He has faith in God.

I knew of a man in our own neighborhood who is kind of like Jacob.  This man has had a checkered life as does everyone.  He knows about God.  He had been to another church before but he doesn’t believe.  There are many of you who know this man.  He feels that what he has done has been too bad for God to accept him.  He figures that God cannot forgive someone like him.  This almost sounds a bit like Jacob thinking that the things he has done are too bad for his brother Esau to forgive.  This isn’t just a man; it is many of your friends and neighbors who know of God but they don’t know God.

My story is also very similar.  I grew up and I knew about God but I didn’t know God.  I lived my life and I never gave it much thought.  I wasn’t that bad a guy so I figured I was all right.  I have known many people like this.  You know people like this.  We are the Jacobs of this day and age.  We are either too bad for God to accept or we just float along with the ‘I’m not that bad a person’ routine.  Maybe we have people like that listening today.  I would guess that some of us have been down this road.

Or maybe we have some Abrahams here today.  Or maybe you know one.  These are the people who are very faithful to God all the time.  These are the good people out there in this broken world.  They still do things that are wrong but they know where to go with their mistakes.  They take them to Jesus Christ and ask for forgiveness.  And you know what?  They get forgiveness.  You see, Jesus doesn’t refuse this request.  Therefore, if you don’t know Jesus, then repent of your sins and ask Him into your life.  You will never regret this decision and Jesus will not refuse you.  He will never refuse you.

The reason that I know that this is the reaction of God lies in today’s readings.  As I said, in our reading of Jacob, we don’t hear much about God.  Today you don’t hear much from God if you are too busy sinning.  Jacob committed some sins that were whoppers in my opinion.  God finally tells Jacob to go back and then they have the famous wrestling match.  One of the things about this story is that Jacob thought he had wrestled God to a draw.  Really?  God could have won that match at any time and you can count on that.  God wrestles Jacob to a draw because He wants to tire him out.  He wants him to realize that the sinful course of his life is wrong.  In the end, Jacob is so tired and beaten that he just hangs on for dear life.  He hangs on and he accepts God.  This changes his life.  He gets up a new man with a new name.

I’m sure that you have heard me and many others talk about this.  When I tell you that I was down and out when I accepted Jesus into my life, this is what I’m talking about.  I had to wrestle with God.  He had to put me in a position where there was no way out except through Jesus.  Anytime you hear a hard luck story that led someone to Jesus, they are talking about the wrestling they had to do.  They are talking about being like Jacob.

The main point here is that Jesus never gives up.  Even though we don’t hear much about God in this story until the wrestling match, doesn’t mean that He wasn’t with Jacob at all times.  It says in Genesis 29 the Lord took care of Leah for him.  He is always there watching and helping.  Just because I talk about how we fumble around for years struggling with life doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t there.  He is.  He always is.

And that is the beauty of these stories.  They not only tell what happens when we are faithful to God, they also tell us how much God is faithful to us.  He loves you beyond what you can understand.  God will never leave you.  It doesn’t matter if you are pretty good like Abraham or if you are a rascal, a liar or a cheat like Jacob.  God still loves you and he will help you and He will reward you in ways you cannot imagine.  And when He is done rewarding you, then He will reward you some more.

God tells us this long story so that maybe, just maybe some of you will get it and come to Him.  He tells us these long stories so that we might understand a little bit better that He means business.  He created this world so that you would come to know Jesus in your heart.  These things He did for Abraham and Jacob 3500 years ago, He did with you in mind.  He knew you would be sitting here today listening again to these great stories.  God loves you.  He is faithful to you.  He will never leave you.  Take this message to all people around you.  And then praise Jesus for the love He has for you.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.