Sermon Video: Abram and Lot go their own ways - Genesis 13

After his failure to trust God while sojourning in Egypt, how will Abram react the next time he needs to live by faith in God's promises?  Genesis 13 offers the answer, in it Abram passes the test with flying colors.  When a conflict arises between his shepherds and those of Lot over the available grazing land, Abram offers Lot the first choice of the land so they can part in peace.  This incredibly generous offer from Abram highlights his faith in God, as the chapter unfolds God speaks to Abram reiterating his promises and once more proclaiming that the future of this land belongs to his offspring.

* Apologies that I stepped out of the frame a bit this time, I was trying to tighten up the zoom a bit, but I guess I don't stand still enough for that to work.

Sermon Video: Abram fails to live by faith - Genesis 12:10-20

Abraham and Sarah are heroes of the faith, but their lives had challenges just like our own, and they failed to meet some of them with faith.  When famine caused them to seek refuge in Egypt, Abram was willing to put his wife at risk in order to avoid danger that he feared.  This form of, "Let us do evil that good may result," is wholly unacceptable for God's people.  Our call is to do what is morally upright, circumstances don't change that.

Sermon Video: The Promised Land, Genesis 12:4-9

 

God's promise to Abram about the land of Canaan is the foundation for a conversation about the challenging history and complicated present of this land and its people that leads to two resolutions: (1) The Jewish people have a right to live in this land, (2) everyone else who lives in this land deserves basic human rights and freedoms.

Sermon Video: God's Grace in Action: The Call of Abram, Genesis 11:10-12:3

Following the Tower of Babel incident, when God dispersed a human effort to establish his presence among humanity, the narrative of Genesis turns toward the family line that leads to Abram, the man whom God will choose to begin his relationship with one particular people, and through them bless the world.

God asks a lot of Abram, to leave his homeland and trust that God will make him into a great nation despite the lack of children in his marriage with Sarai.  But God also promises amazing things to Abram, going far beyond what any connection to a God in the Ancient Near East would expect to be by proposing to Abram an enduring relationship.  With God it wouldn't be a mutually beneficially bargain, instead it would be an outpouring of grace.

Sermon Video: The Tower and Israel's 70 neighboring nations -Genesis 10:1-11:9

Sometimes it is difficult for us to connect with the purpose behind why a particular portion of scripture was included in the sacred text.  Lists of names are probably high on that list, and so too is the story of the Tower of Babel given how often it is misunderstood.

These two episodes in chapters 10-11 of Genesis are there to set the stage for God's work in calling Abram in chapter 12.  The 70 nations show the diversity that God had to choose from, emphasizing as always that salvation is God's grace not human effort, and the Tower of Babel illustrates this principle in action.  The builders of the tower, a ziggurat, had hoped to invite God (or a god) to come down from heaven to dwell with them, a stairway from heaven (not a prideful stairway to heaven).  This is a noble thought, but a misguided one.  Humanity cannot solve its own sin problem.  We need a savior, and it needs to be on God's terms and according to God's timetable.