Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 9th January 2022.
Call to worship
“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20
Our first hymn is an appreciation of Christ’s love. We were indifferent, actually enemies towards God, but He died for us, an atoning sacrifice for our salvation. We can put our faith in Him.
Opening Hymn
“And can It Be” MP 33 (Piano)
Charles Wesley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMCOyY0Rlus
Opening prayer
Lord God thank you for our Salvation. Such wonderful love.
Father you gave your only Son. You so loved the world that you gave Him for our sakes, that whoever believes on Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Lord Jesus, through bearing the punishment for our sins we are ‘justified’ before God, and given a lighter load to bear. Thank you for your invitation ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in hear and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11:28-30)
Holy Spirit, come and work within us, sanctifying our lives, that we live more in line with God’s Word, and please lead us this morning into your truth. Amen
Reading. Psalm 40:1-8
1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.
4 Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
Who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.
5 Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done,
The things you planned for us. None can compare with you;
Were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.
6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—
Burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.
7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll.
8 I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.”
That reading speaks of God’s care and compassion, but it is also a challenge to approach God in humility. Today we begin a new series about Abraham. Abraham showed such faith and humility. These verses challenge us to come before God in faith and humility.
Prayers
God of justice and mercy, God of truth and compassion. Make your ways known upon the earth, and by your grace make us your agents.
We pray for all whose humanity is distorted for reasons beyond their control. For those without food or drink, family or home, education and love. For all who must exist without the basic necessities we take for granted. We worship you as the God who became flesh, into the messy and broken lives of your children. May your presence be known even within these darkest of places.
We pray for all who have committed their lives to challenging the structures that crush countless people who have no power to resist. Bless the organisations and charities challenging our world’s sin and injustices, with a prayerful heart, a prophetic voice, and a courageous energy.
We pray for your church. Where we inhabit a position of wealth and power, free us from thinking that we have no responsibility to share with others in need. When we feel content with ourselves as we are, free us from thinking we have no need to rely on you and all you have purchased for us through the cross. When we believe we are free to behave as we wish, free us from thinking selfishly, without concern for your sanctifying work in our lives and disregarding the needs of others.
Fill us with a passion to be radical, prophetic and world changing. Awaken within us an ever deepening desire to glorify your name in word and deed, in our thoughts and actions.
In a world of injustice, through a church that proclaims the truth of your Word, sanctify your holy name. Amen
Hymn
“For this I have Jesus” MP 829 (Piano)
Graham Kendrick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxSXHgMFmg
Reading Genesis 11:26- 12:9
11 26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. 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.
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.
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 dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
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.
Hymn
“Great is the darkness that overs the earth.” MP 835 (Guitar)
Gerald Coates & Noel Richards
https://noelrichards.com/track/2455115/come-lord-jesus-great-is-the-darkness
Sermon. New Series. ‘Abraham a Life of Faith’
Introduction
Having created the earth and human beings, God witnessed the rebellion of the human race against His love and authority. Human society is saturated with corruption and violence which even the judgment of the flood does not eradicate from human life. The rebellion becomes so serious that God once again intervenes. We read in Genesis 11 how the Lord confuses human language and forces men and women to separate and scatter across the earth into different tribes and nations. But their rebellion continues. The effects of sin reach a global scale. There is a danger that the knowledge of God will vanish from the earth.
Is there any hope for the human race?
Can the nations be restored to the blessing and favour of God?
God’s answer is a 75 year old man- Abraham. Today we begin a new series on Abraham’s life- ‘A life of Faith.’ We will see God made some great promises to Abraham that will lead to the blessing of all nations.
Genesis 12:1-3 highlight 3 great promises God made Abraham:
There is the promise of land. 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.’ (12:1).
There is the promise of posterity. “I will make of you a great nation.”
There is also the promise of blessing within that special relationship with God; all nations will be blessed through Abraham.
First we see that Abraham believed the promises and acted accordingly.
The writer to the Hebrews describes Abraham’s faith here in this way: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8). This is great trust in God’s power, faithfulness and goodness. Abraham trusted God’s leading even though he did not understand anything about the circumstance of the route, or about the land he was called to or where it was. Indeed it was only when he got to Canaan that the Lord again appeared to him and told him that this was the land his descendants would inherit. Abraham shows great faith in God as his guide.
Jackie Pullinger, as a young woman, sensed God’s call on her life to be a missionary. Her applications to missionary societies had been rejected. She spoke to Richard Thompson, a vicar, who encouraged her to go if she believed God was telling her to do so. Thompson gave her these very words- that Abraham was willing to leave his country and follow the Lord to a promised land without knowing where he was going, because he trusted. In the same way, thousands of years after Abraham, Gladys Aylward journeyed in faith to China, also influence by these very words about Abraham’s example.
Thompson said to Pullinger ‘If I were you I would go out and buy a ticket for a boat going on the longest journey you can find and pray to know where to get off.’
That’s just what Jackie Pullinger did. The Lord led her to ‘The Walled City’ in Hong Kong. She had no idea that was where she would end up. The Lord led her to this lawless place, dominated by gangs, notorious for its drug smuggling and heroin addiction. A place of prostitution and pornography.
The Lord blessed her faith in Him powerfully. Triad gangsters were converted, prostitutes ceased their activity. Best known are the testimonies of drug addicts freed from their addiction by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Next we see that inheriting the promises meant sacrificial obedience on Abraham’s part:
(i) Abraham left his security. He left his country, his kindred and his father’s house (verse 1). He left behind a secure, prosperous and peaceful life. He left relatives, his people and native land for the sake of the call. Sarah and Lot went with him, and he took his possessions, but as Hebrews 11:9 states Abraham “stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents.” Abraham was prepared to live in tents and act as a stranger in a strange land. Even a difficult nomadic existence if it meant obeying God.
Various television programmes focus on the buildings in which we live. Changing a room to improve its decoration, or exploring a couple’s desire to build their dream house. The results can be stunning. But for many the building becomes their security. Their time, emotions, energy, finances, their reason for living it seems, are all invested in this one objective. But Abraham was willing to forgo these things if it meant a choice between these things and real living. Real living meant Abraham’s security be found in God and doing His will.
(ii) We see the sacrificial nature of Abraham’s obedience when we consider he was willing to live in a dangerous place. When Abraham got to Canaan and God told him this was the land we would have had some sympathy if he had returned to Haran at that point. Canaan was notorious as a place of wickedness. Verse 6 tells us the Canaanites were in the land; these were the descendants of Canaan who Genesis 9:25 tells us, were cursed.
(iii) Abraham’s obedience was also sacrificial because he worshipped the Lord (verses 7, 8). He was willing to stand out from the crowd. According to Joshua 24:2 even Terah, Abraham’s father had begun to worship other gods. Wherever Abraham travelled as a nomad, he was surrounded by people who worshipped many gods or a different god. But everywhere Abraham went he built an alter to the Lord and worshipped the one true invisible God.
When we consider Abraham’s sacrificial obedience we see general principles for all Christians, and with particular application to missionaries.
Joyce Huggett, when she was a missionary with Interserve writes of the struggle- some of the sacrifices involved in missionary work, ‘Although the people I most admire are those who have given up everything for the sake of the Kingdom, I find myself longing sometimes for a more spacious home, a fixed salary, rather than having to raise support, status (I don’t like being an alien), a sense of belonging (as a Christian and culturally), acceptance, rather than suspicion (Secret Police).
Huggett has written this prayer, entitled ‘The Struggle’
Jesus, Beloved, I feel as though a tug of war is going on inside of me
I feel drawn by you and your lifestyle
Yet pulled away by the lure of riches and status and honour and applause
Give me the grace to say ‘yes’
Father, you did not cling to your one and only son
You gave Him up for me
Enchant me over and over again
That my attachment to you
May loosen my grip on life’s seeming treasures
And set me free, to be the person you always intended me to be.
The book ‘Back to Jerusalem’ describes a powerful missionary move by the Chinese Church to take the gospel to the most dangerous places on earth. Places within the ‘10/40 window’; people groups in Asia, the Middle East and Islamic North Africa. These missionaries are truly sacrificial, again like Abraham, risking hostility by worshipping the Lord for these places are dominated by Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
But if the call requires sacrificial obedience, we may ask is it worth it? Here we are encouraged by…
Abraham’s hope in God
Abraham’s faith saw beyond the material inconvenience, beyond the danger, beyond the fact that others inhabited the land that his descendants had been promised. Why? Because of his hope in God; what God would ‘yet do’.
Abraham lived for 100 years in Canaan but the promise of the land was only partially fulfilled in his life time. He occupied a small plot of land at Machpelah and had rights near Beersheba. As the writer to the Hebrews states (11:13), Abraham still lived by faith up to his death. He did not in his life time receive the things promised. He did not yet see the land inherited or numerous descendants. But by faith he acted with these in mind, even though they were future and as yet ‘unseen.’
(i) Future hope encourages present perseverance. It is this quality of hope in God that inspires our present faith. We do not yet see any fruit for our labours with the Gospel message. Other parts of the world are experiencing revival, but not in the UK and not in Europe. It’s tough to witness in our society. Our hope in God is tested. The fruit of new converts and growing disciples takes time. But we persevere in the present because we believe the Lord will bring forth this fruit in due course.
Research shows it can take five years for a man to travel the journey of having no interest in the Christian Faith to actually making a commitment to Christ. Apparently men need to hear the Gospel some thirty times before they make a decision, and that 80% of those who come to faith do so through the influence of a friend.
Like Abraham our faith must see beyond the resistance because our hope is in God. We have asked people to attend evangelistic events and they have declined the invitation. When further opportunity arises, we invite them again. We persevere.
This month we have joint congregational meetings to prepare us for a national evangelistic mission called ‘A Passion for Life’ taking place in the Spring. These joint meetings are on the 16th January at All Souls, Wick, on the 23rd at Arundel Baptist and here on the 30th January. The meetings take place at 6.30pm, replacing our usual evening services. Written details are in this month’s news sheet. Come along and be inspired, get a vision for this year in reaching others with the good news of the Gospel.
I remember talking to one Christian couple about their testimony. Edward told me that for many years he had resisted God, but his wife Sarah prayed for him and took him to evangelistic events, it all seemed to no avail. But God was working with Edward. I asked him how he became a Christian and he said ‘God got me.’ So we persevere in our witness, however long it takes, like Abraham, expectant about what God will yet do.
(ii) Integral to hope in God is the understanding that our lives leave a legacy. Like Abraham we do not yet see what God will bring about in our lifetime, but we still obey now. We still faithfully ‘sow the seed’ that God will bring to fruition, perhaps many years later. Even after we ourselves have died and gone to be with the Lord.
Thinking again about the ‘Back to Jerusalem’ movement. Over a century ago China was emerging from the trauma of the Boxer Rebellion. There was then only a little over a million who claimed to be Christian. For the next fifty years China became a great mission field so by 1949 it was estimated there were now around 4 million Christians.(so in 50 years, a million to 4 million). After a further 70 years and more of Communism and terrible persecution, the total number of Christians in China is calculated as 97.2 million (See Open Doors website) That’s 4 million to just over 97 million under a ruthless communist regime! So despite this crushing resistance, God was at work in the Chinese Church to bring about this great harvest. Could those earlier Chinese believers over a century ago, have imagined that?
Similarly there were earlier Chinese pioneers of the ‘Back to Jerusalem’ movement who met fierce opposition and even lost their lives in taking the Gospel beyond China, but their legacy remains; now the Chinese (underground) Church sends out 100,000 missionaries into the 10/40 window, in obedience to The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)
When we are faithful with what God gives us now, we give something to God that He can use powerfully in the future. We too are leaving a legacy. This also applies to the spiritual training of our children and grandchildren. We may or may not see the fruit of that in our own lifetime. During their lives Christian parents may see some of their children follow the Lord but others not, yet the same training is given to all their children. Our brother Edwin has an encouraging written sermon entitled ‘Your children will come back!’ He makes the point that Christian parents faithful to God will be rewarded with the return of their prodigals. He draws on a number of Scriptures that give us hope in this respect. Edwin finishes his reflections with this thought “There is something about getting older that does cause us to turn our thoughts to death and eternity. Perhaps in our twenties and thirties life stretches out ahead of us and we are taken up with the things of life. But as we get older, particularly as health starts to fail we then realise that life at its best is brief and we start to think of what the future may hold. Perhaps this is what is meant in Proverbs 22:6 “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”
Don’t give up with Christian input into your children and grandchildren’s lives, you are leaving a legacy that God can honour and reward.
How else do we leave a legacy?
In His Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-8) Jesus encourages us to use money while we are on earth, so we will be ‘welcomed into eternal dwellings.’ By faithfully giving towards persecuted or impoverished Christians, by giving towards evangelistic and missionary work now, then later, in eternity, you will have people you never knew here, thanking you for the way you used your money. That your gift gave them a Bible so they could read of the Gospel and become a Christian, or your gift got them the legal help they needed to free them from the injustice of an atheistic oppressive regime.
Last Sunday evening we sang carols together for the last time until next Christmas! We used the Carol sheet provided by Open Doors. Open Doors supports and intercedes for persecuted Christians around the world. The Carol sheet is interspersed with the stories of children from various countries whose families have suffered persecution, and yet their stories are full of faith and hope in God. The sheet is entitled ‘Do not be afraid.’ If you were not able to attend, please take one of these sheets with you, I have quite a few that are only good for 2021. The sheets also give details of Christians in need, and how you can support them financially through Open Doors.
When you do such things you leave a legacy God can powerfully use.
The great promises made to Abraham seemed most unlikely. But the quality of Abraham’s faith was such that he obeyed and acted accordingly. He played his part in the sure expectation of what God would yet do. With hindsight we see the promises have been fulfilled.
Think of the promises of land and posterity. Verse 9 tells us Abraham journeyed on towards the Negev, in due course he travelled the entire length of Canaan. His journey was a symbolic appropriation of the land that God did give His descendants in due course. The Lord said ‘I will make of you a great nation.’ We know that nation was Israel. Israel in due course inherited the Promised Land.
Then there is the promise of posterity. God chose Israel and blessed her not because of numerical greatness or moral superiority, but only because God loved and had chosen Abraham for His own redemptive purposes. And it was through Abraham’s line that God gave His Son. Now, through the Lord Jesus Christ and the redemption He has brought us- even salvation from our sins- numerous nations of the earth have already been blessed through the Gospel, according to this original promise God gave Abraham. It is staggering to consider Christianity is the only truly worldwide Faith. The promise is well on its way to complete fulfilment. As the Great Commission- to take the Gospel to all Nations- continues, it has been calculated that within our generation all the Nations of the earth will be reached with the Gospel, and so the promises made to Abraham so many years ago will fully come to pass. Indeed when the Gospel goes out to all Nations the Lord Jesus tells us this is a sign of His return, the Second Coming (Matthew 24:14)
Conclusion
Abraham’s faith is a model for us all. He believed the promises of God, however unlikely they seemed in his day. His obedience was sacrificial. Consider the prevalent evil of his day, the worship of many gods, but Abraham continued to worship the Lord and find his security in Him. He persevered in the present because he was conscious of what God would yet do. Even when he died he had not received what was promised but he still believed God. Through Abraham’s faith, God brings His blessing to all Nations.
Such faith inspires us to complete what God first promised to Abraham, to witness and to take the Gospel to all nations. To persevere even if we do not see much fruit ourselves. To hope in God and so leave a legacy.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that in stark contrast to his nomadic tent experience, Abraham was “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God’ (Hebrews 11:10). Along with Abraham and all who share his faith in the Lord- people of every tribe and nation- people from Angmering Baptist Church like Doris and Maureen- we too, who have trusted in Christ, will take our place in the heavenly city and so experience the promised blessing in full measure- the promise God first made to Abraham so long ago.
……………………………….
Hymn
To God be the glory! MP 708 Piano
Fanny J Crosby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nIw4qI2sJ4
Blessing
May the Lord bless us and take care of us. May the Lord be kind and gracious to us. May the Lord look on us with favour and give us His peace.
David Barnes 5/1/22