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Tales from the Trail – Sermon Manuscript

-THANK YOU!

-First of all to the staff & elders for picking up many things in my absence, particularly Micah for doing the bulk of the preaching while I was gone. Anyone become converted to his side of having your favorite book be Lev.?

-So appreciate this time, time with my family, time to reassess and reevaluate. And even when we were gone, we missed you all. So thankful for this church family that loves and cares about me and my family, it wasn’t easy to be gone!

-It’s going to take me a while to catch up, so if I look dazed and confused for a few weeks, I probably am! I realize it’s going to take me a while to catch up with all of you, too, so I’m going to get our side of it out of the way now so when we sit down to talk you can just fill us in on what you did this summer.

-This is going to be VERY different from a normal sermon here! I just have some things to share with you about to catch you all up on our summer, as well as some things I’ve been thinking and praying through over the summer. Normally, we’re walking through a passage of the Bible, this week will be random wanderings and disconnected Bible verses, so bear with me today, we’ll get back into our normal rhythms next week.

-I have a couple sticky notes on my church computer monitor with verses that have been meaningful to me at various points during my time here that serve as a good starting point for sharing some of what I learned, and one that I’ve had on there since the beginning of this year is Psalm 16:6.

-Friends, don’t ever forget that God is good and desires good for us as His children. This doesn’t mean that everyday will be the best day ever, or that it always feels like things are “pleasant” but it means that God is in control and the outcome for anyone who is a child of God is “a beautiful inheritance.” This has been something I’ve been trying to remind myself of over this year, because I have so many things to be grateful for, one of which is you all.

-I haven’t shared much of this publicly before, but Cara and I came here in 2020 at a pretty low spot. The church we were coming from was pretty dysfunctional, and I’d had 3 failed interviews the year leading up to coming out here (nothing like you guys getting sloppy thirds) – interviewed at a large church in Chicago to be a worship pastor in 2019, and was told I wasn’t a good enough singer, thus ending my dreams to be on American Idol. But God used this to confirm that it was time for me to move out of music ministry and into preaching ministry.

-Then I had 1 phone interview with a church in La Crosse, and was told they loved my preaching and leadership, but wished I was 3 years older. Strike 2!

-Then in March of 2020, Cara, Calvin, Ellie and I flew to DC to interview about doing a church plant (which everyone called to be a pastor within 10 years of my age has wanted to do). When we landed, one of the pastors picked me up and said “not sure what this is going to look like now, the whole city just shut down” and I, foolishly said, “over a little virus? Are you guys crazy!?” So we went through the interview weekend, watched these 2 churches process shutting down in-person meetings, and then flew back to CO. A week later, they called me and said “I tried pushing as hard as I could, but my elders don’t feel like we can ask you to move across the country when we don’t know what this city is going to look like tomorrow, much less in 3 months.” So we went back to square 1. A month later, I got an email from South Suburban who asked me if I was interested in having a conversation about a position, and this has been just the right fit for us.

-We got to go back and visit with people from that church, and were reminded of how God has continually provided for us again and again and again. So when I say we’re thankful for this church, that’s not hyperbole or an exaggeration. I have a friend who pastors the EFCA church in Hastings (since 2018), who tried planting a church in San Francisco – 3x, each time failed. He said what his family needed was a hug from a church, and that’s how Cara and I came here, and you guys have welcomed us and our growing family, God has been at work in and through us together, and we’re just getting started! When I candidate, I shared that if you hired me, I was committing to AT LEAST 10 years, then the elders extended the contract to 15 years (to finish Psalms) which is actually going to take us 18 years (because of sabbaticals), so we’ve got 13 more years before we can talk about a sign and trade with another church!

-I told a friend about the Psalms in the summer, and he said it was brilliant on my part to make sure you couldn’t fire me before we finish!

Our Travels

-Now onto what we did and where we went this summer!

-A highlight for me personally was getting to visit a number of other churches where I had no responsibility! If you were here last summer, you got to hear all about my big grand European escapade where I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc with 8 other EFCA pastors from MN (and some others), well it’s time to hear about it again, because those are the guys I visited!

-John Stromberg at Elmwood in St. Anthony Village (shoutout to Tom & Kris)

-Clay Edens at Hope in Oakwood

-Bryan Lair at Trinity City in St. Paul

-RCC at the resort (don’t worry, we didn’t take the eucharist, and the priest made sure the emphasize that his homily would be “short” don’t expect the same from me!)

-South Sub online (a poor substitute for in person!)

-(no picture) a Baptist church in Bismark, ND with my sister who played piano

-Siloam Springs Bible, EFCA in Siloam Springs, AR (Cara’s family)

-Aaron at Resurrection in Burnsville

-Mike Richards at CrossPoint in Bloomington

-Friends, there’s some great churches in our area that are faithfully preaching the gospel, that are loving their communities, and following hard after the Lord! I’m so thankful for the ways God has been working in all these churches to bring the pastors together as friends, and as encouragement in gospel ministry. If you haven’t realized this yet: life is hard, and no one should be going through life alone! I just listened to a podcast this past week on the need for pastors to have good friends, and I sent it to many of these guys.

-As far as our TRAVEL: we stuck around here while the kids finished up school, and I got in the way around the house a LOT (I’ll get to that with my next point)

-After school wrapped up, Cara and I spent a week in Mexico to celebrate our 10-year anniversary while my parents watched our kids. Everyone survived, but I’m not sure that my parents will sign up for that again. When we got home they told me “your house is busy!”

-This was what Cara looked like most of the week, and this is what I looked like

-I made the mistake of reading the 2 Jurassic Park novels while I was there (if you haven’t read them, they’re really fun science fiction books that the movies didn’t necessarily recreate very well) The reason it was a mistake was because this resort was in the jungle, and the dinosaurs kept trying to take my food! These things are TERRIFYING!

-As a special treat, my youngest sister and her husband joined us after a few days, and we enjoyed catching up with them and introducing them to the resort!

-Flew back for a week (I got sick), then we spent 2 weeks on the road!

-Bismarck (stayed with the same sister who was in MX), Medora, Bismarck, Mt. Rushmore, Colorado, Arkansas, Nebraska, home. If you can’t see the tiny font, that’s 48 hours of driving and 3,222 miles.

-As fresh as we got, in Medora we did the pitchfork fondue (which Charlie loved), Mt. Rushmore was a hit for the bigger kids, my highlight from CO was getting In-N-Out. Ellie decided it was the best cheeseburger she’s had, but Lucy prefers Wendys. It was so good, I got it twice!

-Were hoping to make it back to Cheyenne to see our old church there, but Thomas had other plans. Unfortunately, he had a respiratory infection where he wasn’t breathing well, and nurse Cara was very worried. We came home a few days early and took him to the ER, his blood oxygen was 90%, and they diagnosed him with cold induced asthma. But wait, we weren’t done! That was Saturday night, on Monday, Cara took Calvin in, and it turned out he had gotten walking pneumonia! Didn’t know you could get that in summer. AND THEN we had to talk Thomas BACK in on Wednesday, and it turned out he ALSO had walking pneumonia! Then that Thursday it was Charlie’s turn for tubes, and to round out the summer, Lucy’s getting her tonsils removed in a couple weeks!

-We had a great summer together despite all the sickness! And got to show the kids all sorts of fun things!

Human Being vs. Human Doing

-It was hard to mentally shift from doing to being. The first week and a half I read at least a book a day to try to keep out of Cara’s way (she had her schedule with me at work, from taking the younger kids to the library, to grocery shopping, to naptime), meanwhile I was just trying to keep busy and keep feeling productive, which I realized wasn’t the best use of my time. I texted a friend and asked him how much of sabbatical is supposed to be realizing you’ve put too much of your identity in what you do and what you produce, and his reply was “that was my entire first sabbatical.” Which is NOT what I wanted to hear!

-I don’t know about you, but I often judge myself on what I’m able to accomplish or produce. Like one of the biggest struggles I have in ministry is that I can’t see my accomplishments. No one gives me an award for praying, I can’t measure my growth in holiness, and I would argue that one of the markers of God’s people throughout history is complaining and grumbling that God’s timetable doesn’t align with ours. I don’t know about you, but I felt like I would be FAR more sanctified by now than I am! What’s been amazing to me, is as I’ve talked to many older saints, the older they get they just realize how much more of a sinner they are than they were when they were younger. It’s like the sin goes far deeper than any of us would care to admit. Additionally, what happens when you put sinners in close proximity to each other? Your sin is going to come out, and potentially hurt someone nearby.

-An old joke: ministry would be great, if it wasn’t for all the people. But the reality is if it wasn’t for all the people, there wouldn’t be a need for ministry! And I really like this you all!

-I think part of the issue is that many times we end up judging other people based on our own doing-ness (don’t think that’s a word), but we compare the ways we’re strong to the ways others are weak, particularly when we think of the ways we’re gifted. We tend to view gifts through a scale: we give certain gifts higher priorities, but that’s not the way God views it. It takes all of us working together because we also have to deal with sin, and sin is the reason work is hard. A few things I processed about work:

-Work is good (Gen. 2:15)

-I think we have a tendency to view work as a result of the curse, not something God designed. Friends, when we get to heaven, all of us will be working! I am convinced that when I get to heaven, I’ll get to be a chef! I love cooking and using food as a way to spend time with people. Another pastor friend of mine thinks he’s going to be a driver! He loves chauffeuring people around and hearing their stories. Many of you will get to continue doing what God has called you to here, but without the problems, which is the second thing we see about work:

-Work is hard (Gen. 3:17-19)

-Where Adam used to be able to get fruit easily, now all his work will produce thorns and thistles. And that is life between Eden and eternity. We work hard and it doesn’t always seem to work out well, which leads to the last point:

-Work isn’t God.

-Honestly, the rest of the Bible is humans attempts to work their way up to God, either through a literal building to the realm of the gods with the tower of Babel, to creating entire civilizations where the emperor can feel like he’s in complete control of everything. But it never works! Think of the Roman empire, we have nothing that compares to it today. I spent $25 to walk on the path the emperor would take to look down on his subjects and claim to be god. Little old me walked that path!

-I shared a verse from Psalm 16 earlier, but that Psalm ends by saying:

-What is the path of life? It’s not looking to work as your source of worth and identity, it’s God’s presence that fulfills all the deepest longings and existential questions you’ll have. Blaise Pascal said we have a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts that can only be filled by God, which gets us to the need to:

Guard Your Heart

-The second thing I really spent time praying over and processing was what it looks like to become more like Jesus, I shared before I left that I was praying over what a “Rule of Life” looks like for a church body. One of the books I read over the summer was titled ‘Mere Christian Hermeneutics’ by Kevin VanHoozer, who teaches at TEDS, our denomination’s school in Chicago.

-He has made it his life’s mission to determine what it means to be “biblical,” which is a phrase that often bothers me because people tend to use it as a sledgehammer to stop any discussion. If you just say someone is “unbiblical” you can dismiss them outright. I’ve been called unbiblical before because I don’t agree with someone’s interpretation of Scripture! Does that make me unbiblical? And if not, how do we determine what it means to be “biblical”?

-One of the things I’ve really wrestled with over the last 18 months has been the sufficiency of the Bible (fancy word that means it’s enough for Christians to grow in godliness). I’ve been a pastor long enough to see that just reading or even preaching the Bible isn’t enough to lead to true transformation, which has at times made me slightly disenchanted with my job! (remember what I said about work being hard!) This book reaffirmed for me that the way we are made more like Jesus is by knowing, studying, and meditating regularly on God’s Word. This is God’s chosen way of both speaking to us and changing us to become more and more like Jesus.

-To that end, one of the things I’ve added for us is a weekly verse for us to memorize together, it’s on the bottom of the sermon notes.

-The title of this point comes from Prov. 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart,” which it may be better to think about guard yourself, Hebrew the word “heart” is trying to refer to your deepest desire, where we tend to view the beating muscle in our chest!

-But how do we do that? The foundation or starting point is God’s Word. But then it goes on from there to impact and influence 2 things: meditation/reflection on God’s Word, and prayer which is responding to God who speaks to us through his Word. A couple passages make this point really well:

–Psalm 1

-“Happy” I like that translation! I’ve actually had people at church tell me I shouldn’t use that word, Christians aren’t promised to be happy, and I completely and absolutely reject that idea. But it’s not happiness to do or be whatever we want. It’s happiness that can only come from living a life fully surrendered to God.

–Psalm 119

-Second, see the happiness again? How does it come? Following God’s instruction, and decrees, and seeking Him with their whole heart. That’s how you guard your heart! Following after God.

-Keller “If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side.”

-Friends: soak yourself in God’s Word! But then after you’ve done that, move on to respond to God in prayer!

-I practiced this quite a bit this summer (I unsubscribed from all my podcasts) and would often drive and pray (usually driving time is when I knock out all my podcasts). There’s a guy I’ve been reading as much as I can of over the last year named Kyle Strobel (if you’ve been in church for a long time, you’ve probably heard of his dad Lee Strobel who wrote a book called ‘The Case for Christ’) Kyle Strobel is the director of Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot who has done a lot of writing in what Protestant spiritual formation is as distinct from other streams of Christianity (Roman Catholic, eastern orthodox)

-2 BIG takeaways for me from my reading and praying this summer:

1- You don’t begin and end in prayer, you enter into something that is already taking place.

-Friends, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are praying for us 24/7, and praying in the ways we wish we knew how to pray! What that means is prayer doesn’t depend on us. You should be praying, you should be talking to God, but He doesn’t passively sit back and wait for you to begin praying – Jesus and the Spirit are praying for us all the time!

-Do you believe that God answers prayer? Now sometimes the answer is “no,” but God does hear us and He does answer us. What should comfort us in the midst of that is that God knows WAY more than we do. Keller quote

-Think of this just in human terms: my kids ask for dessert EVERY night, and we often tell them no, which makes NO sense to them. I shared with them recently that when I was their age, I told my parents I was going to eat hot dogs for every meal when I grew up. Guess what I don’t eat for every meal now! God sees and knows things perfectly, do we trust Him?

2 – prayer is a place to be honest.

-This is just as important as the first point, because what do you do when the answer is “no”? Do you continue praying? Do you give up? God invites us to keep asking, and then come to Him with our complaints and issues!

-I don’t know about you, but I think praying can be one of the hardest things to do, usually because every time I go to pray, my mind starts to wander, and I feel like a failure. But what if that wandering is God’s way revealing to us what we should be praying for? Like when you pray and start thinking about work, is it God’s way of showing that your work is too important to you, or there’s an issue at work that you should be bringing to Him?

-Kyle Strobel quote

-I heard a pastor onetime say “Pray what you’ve got” and I love that! Don’t put on a show, don’t try to impress God with your prayers, but I also think we should add to that: pray what you’ve got, when you’ve got it, wherever you’re at!

-You can pray when you’re driving, at the grocery store, talking to a friend, mowing the lawn, but one of my hopes and prayers for us as a church is to become more fluent in prayer, to let prayer become more normal in our daily lives.

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by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Tagged Bible, faith, God, Jesus, prayer

Posted by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/10/tales-from-the-trail-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 24 – Sermon Manuscript

-Do you know how all your friends met and got married? One podcast I listen to asks people “what’s your ‘meet cute’”?

-Cara and I met when she was looking for a small group and walked away with a husband! Cara moved to Cheyenne to work in the ER and it took her a while to find a church. When she finally did, she reached out to one of the other pastors and asked to join a small group. That pastor came into my study and asked if we had any room in ours, so I said yes but we’re all in our 20s so how old is she? He said I can’t tell, but I figure she’s either in her 60s, or your future wife. And here we are!

-Today’s text is a the “meet cute” of Isaac and his wife Rebekah.

READ/PRAY

Promise (1-14)

-We’re getting to the end of the account of Abraham, we’ve followed his life through the ups and downs, but just the highlights that God wanted Moses to record to help us understand the bigger story of what He’s been doing through Abraham.

-Notice that he’s been blessed by the lord “in everything” – last week he finally has a plot of land, he’s got his chosen descendant, and he’s already started being a blessing to the world.

-But Abraham wants to ensure that his son is provided for (that will come up again next week), so he calls his main servant (who may have been mentioned by name in Gen. 15:2 Eliezer of Damascus), and tasks him with finding a wife for his son, but let’s look at the stipulations Abraham makes for this wife:

-First – her past with her family.

-The first place Abraham goes is to swear that he won’t let Isaac marry a Canaanite, a native of the land that will someday be theirs. What’s the significance of this?

-First, it’s the opposite of what Ishmael has done. Remember? His mom found an Egyptian woman for him to marry, going a long way off from Abraham to find a wife!

-Secondly, the Canaanites are those who have been cursed from God (Gen. 9:24 “Canaan is cursed, he will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers”), and those who will be driven out of the land for Abraham’s descendants.

-This is preserving the lineage that God has promised, and will actually set up a pattern for the rest of Genesis – Genesis is the story of how God became known as the God of: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Isaac’s brother Ishmael married an Egyptian, Jacob’s brother Esau will marry Hethite women while Jacob marries 2 women who are a part of the family (Laban will show up again after today’s text)

-Finally, this is continuing the theme from last week that Abraham is a resident alien. Remember, he’s looking forward to a future hope, a future home not built by human hands.

-The next thing Abraham focuses on is her present. What kind of character does this woman need to have?

-We’ve started with a sweeping statement: not a Canaanite. But what if he finds someone and she doesn’t want to move halfway across the known world? Is it worth taking Isaac to ensure the bloodline continues?

-I think we’ve seen Abraham finally become convinced that God is actually planning out all these events. The Lord had promised to give this land to Abraham and his family, not his homeland. We’re back to this tension of not having a true home. Abraham is FINALLY trusting that God will follow through on everything He’s promised,

-Which means the woman’s future is in play. If the woman isn’t willing to come back to the promised land, the servant is off the hook for any penalties from this oath.

-The servant agrees, taking 10 camels, all kinds of goods (required to travel and to pay the bride price) and travels across the Middle East to get to Abraham’s homeland. One scholar stated this trip would have taken over a month to travel, ending up in a place called “Aram of the Two Rivers”, near Haran (giving some credence to the northern Ur argument)

-Skips ahead to his arrival, which was apparently during the evening, he stops the caravan just outside town to rest. Once he’s gotten settled, he then prays to the God of his master.

-Friends, don’t miss that the God of all of creation has always connected Himself to a people or person. He’s the God OF ______, connecting Himself to history and bringing all things to their fulfilment in just the right time.

-And he asks a specific request of God: if he happens to find a girl and he asks her for water, the right one will be the one who goes even further to even water the camels. Is this a test of her character? Is it a test of God? The text doesn’t say.

-Have you ever been in one of these situations where you’ve been asking God for clear direction, and you ask Him to do 1 of 2 things for you? You might have heard this as “laying out a fleece for God,” which is referring to Gideon who has a call on his life from God, but he’s just trying to make sure that God is actually on his side. Or maybe you’ve heard stories of people who are in a difficult situation, and they promise God they’ll devote their lives to Him if He gets them through. This is a fairly common human experience! And it even follows some of the ways God worked in the past:

-One of the components of the priestly garments was Urim and Thummim, almost like a magic 8 ball where the priest would ask a question, stick his hand in this pouch, and whatever was pulled out was the will of God.

-Even the 12 disciples in Acts 1 cast lots to determine who else would be added to their number to bring them back from 11 to 12, the number of completion.

-So if we see these examples in Scripture, should we be doing these same things? Like, should we try to copy what the priests did, and go buy a Magic 8 ball that I’ll keep in my study to consult when any questions come up? And if not, then why? I always seemed to get the “ask again later” option.

-We need to have an understanding of the way God’s will works, and what He wants and expects from us in our daily lives. God has 2 wills (from our perspective, in Himself it’s just 1): His revealed will and His hidden will (theologians call this His preceptive and decretive wills)

-You get this idea from Deut. 29:29. And notice the purpose of God’s revealed will: so that we may follow God’s law. God doesn’t keep things hidden from us to try to trick us.

-We also know from Jesus’ time being tempted in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry that one thing we’re not supposed to do is test God. So how in the world do we figure out God’s will apart from putting out a fleece, or testing Him?

-There’s 1 key difference between us and Abraham, Gideon, and even the 12 disciples when they cast lots. Do you know what it is? It’s come up the last 2 weeks: we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. We don’t need a magic 8 ball anymore, we have God living in us!

-Think of what James, the brother of Jesus, says in the beginning of his letter.

-3 things: God’s Word, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the church.

-God’s Word is the foundation and source of truth. Apart from knowing how God has chosen to reveal Himself you’ll have no hope of knowing what He wants from you. He even says in 1 Thess. 4:3 that his revealed will is for us to be holy. Then we should ask what is holiness? What does that look like? It looks like God! God is holy, so being in His will is taking on His character traits and becoming daily more like Him.

-Because we need to know and understand God’s Word (the Bible), in order to correctly understand it we need the Holy Spirit within us to bring it to life. Unbelievers can read Scripture, understand it, put together the syntax and grammar of it, and completely miss the point of it. It’s not like any other ancient work of literature, and it requires the same Holy Spirit who inspired it to faithfully interpret (or illuminate it).

-Which gets us to this last part: this interpreting needs to be done in the context of the church (both past and present!). The Bible isn’t meant to be read alone. Did you know that? One of the things that has led to a number of heresies has been reading the Bible alone, without any other council or help. See the Bible is supposed to be read and interpreted with the local church, AND the church of the past (provides guardrails and gets us out of the blinders of our cultural context).

-Friends, if you’re struggling to determine God’s will, don’t buy a magic 8 ball, don’t cast lots, spend time in God’s Word, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, and invest in the church. Thankfully, it’s not rocket science, and it’s not hidden! That doesn’t mean all your decisions will be easy, but it does mean that you can trust God’s hand as you go through life!

Providence (15-25)

-In this situation, God does answer the servant’s prayer exactly how he requested. And notice how quickly it happens: before he had finished speaking, the answer walks up: Rebekah.

-Now if the wording here confuses you, you’re not alone! I had to write it down so I could keep track of where these family relationships were! So I drew up the way this family lineage was working. Rebekah is Isaac’s “first cousin once-removed.” Relationships worked a little different at this time period! But the key is that she’s in Abraham’s family, so she’s exactly what he had requested.

-Then we learn some more about her:

-Very beautiful (like her future mother-in-law), and a virgin.

-And then there’s some speed in the rest of this section:

-The servant runs

-She quickly gets the water for him, then quickly fills up the trough for the camels, and repeats this process again and again until all 10 camels have had their fill. The servant waited to see if she would follow through and be the person he had prayed for, and once they’re all done, then he gives her a drink, costly gifts.

-And then invites himself into her house, perhaps to see if she is hospitable like she needs to be to follow after Yahweh.

-And what’s the proper response when God answers our prayers?

Praise (26-61)

-Not only did she fill up the water for the camels (again and again) she also offered him a place to stay. This woman is perfect for Isaac! So he gives thanks to God.

-Which we need to pause and contemplate for just a minute. Because God answers prayers ALL the time! My kids and I pray for a good day at school every day, and God always answers that prayer. We regularly pray that God would bless our food, and he always answers that. Which means we should always respond with praise and thanksgiving to God.

-And once again, speed becomes of the essence, Rebekah RUNS home to tell everyone what’s going on, and surely shows them the gifts he had brought (and the 10 camels, representing the great wealth of his benefactor).

-And then we’re introduced to her brother, Laban. And what does the text say he notices about his sister? The ring and the bracelets. See, Laban is an opportunist. We learn later on that he is a polytheist and is always looking to get ahead, and I think we see that begin to take shape in this text, but I’ll wait to point out where. And notice that just as Rebekah ran home, Laban ran to go meet this servant, not wanting to miss out on this opportunity!

-Laban seems to have gotten things at the house ready, the camels are taken care of, and then the food is brought out, but the servant refuses to eat until he accomplishes his mission. And then we get a repeat of the exact story we just read, almost verbatim.

-He begins with a description of Abraham, who is rich in every way. These riches have been handed down to his son, and he’s here to find a wife for that son, and Rebekah is the one who responded exactly how he’d prayed. So: what’s their answer?

-It’s interesting that it lists Laban first, because generally they start with the older and then go to the younger. And their response seems odd to us: well, this is obviously from the Lord, so go for it. We don’t see the psychology behind this, and this is a completely different culture from ours, so this is a fascinating look at how marriages were conducted 3,000 years ago!

-Abraham’s servant responds just as he did last time! God had provided the woman, this time her family’s on board. God has provided exactly what he’d requested, giving Isaac a wife. And in response, he gives more gifts to Rebekah, and Laban and her mother, and after finally getting his answer, then he sits down to eat with everyone.

-The next morning, he’s ready to go. His prayer had been answered, the wife has been found, now they just need to get back.

-But Laban and her mother aren’t quite ready to go along with it. Could it be that they’re wanting a few more of those gifts the servant had given to them? See this is where I think we’re starting to see Laban’s character coming through. Rebekah’s just a means to an end for him!

-This delaying becomes a bit of a pattern in Laban’s life later on, but that will come up in a future sermon series someday! Or you can just keep reading in Genesis and learn more about Laban!

-And the servant is ready to go! His job is done, there’s only 1 step left: get home. And remember, this is probably a long journey!

-And finally Rebekah gets to make her thoughts known: they decide to ask her, and she’s ready to go.

-So they do, and with her is her nursemaid, and on her way out they bless her. And does this blessing sound like any other blessings we’ve heard in this book? Think back to Gen. 22, after Abraham had offered up Isaac as a sacrifice, in response God reiterates his promise to Abraham and says:

-What’s taking place here is Rebekah is demonstrated as being like Abraham. She has been a blessing to others, she is following the ways of the Lord, and now she’s received the same blessing as Abraham. Abraham’s family line will continue through a woman who is emulating him.

Provision (62-67)

-This location has come up once before, this is where the Lord provided for Hagar and Ishmael when Hagar fled from Sarah’s abuse.

-One day, he’s out for a walk and he sees Rebekah and Abraham’s servant approaching. We never heard Isaac and Rebekah interacting in this story, but she asks the servant who’s coming to greet them.

-When she finds out, she puts her veil on, which is the customary way of signifying that a woman is unmarried. And then this love story comes to a happy conclusion: they’re married happily ever after! At least mostly, it does say that Isaac loved her, that this marriage brought comfort to him after his mother’s death, but they’re going to end up having twins that adds some level of animosity into their marriage, but that’s a story for a different day!

-What do WE do with this story? Well, if you’re unmarried it may be time to go find the local well. JK. 2 things, both related to God’s will. If you want to dig into what I said about God’s will further, read this book:

-Do you trust God’s providential hand in your life? Friends, even when things are difficult, God is still working to accomplish his plans and purposes: make you more holy.

-Do you ask God to lead and guide you in your life? It can be very easy for us to only call out to God when things are difficult, but as we saw in this text, even when things are going well we should be praising God and asking for His continual guidance.

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by mikethestrand on May 4, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon

Tagged Bible, faith, genesis, God, isaac

Posted by mikethestrand on May 4, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/05/04/genesis-24-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 23 – Sermon Manuscript

-If we get coffee, I will most likely order a 16 oz Americano with an extra shot and a little heavy cream. It’s been a big debacle trying to figure out the best way to order this drink at various coffee shops, but what I learned while I was in Europe last summer is my drink has a name over there! It’s called “The White Americano,” which when I learned change my life and made ordering WAY easier.

-But then my friend, who was traveling with me started muttering under his breath each time I’d order: yeah you are, and I suddenly was reminded that I was an outsider! I really enjoyed my time overseas (and even started looking for McDonalds just to feel like I was home), but I knew it wasn’t home. They drove on the wrong side of the road, in many places they spoke a different language, used different money, and even ordering coffee was a reminder that I was a foreigner.

-Today’s text is Abraham’s reminder that he is a foreigner.

READ/PRAY

-Brief overview of where we’ve been the last few months following Abrahams’s life:

-God called him as a pagan to leave his homeland and go to a new land that the Lord would show him so that he would be a blessing to the ends of the earth. This blessing will come about through 3 things: land, seed, and blessing. However, Sarah, his wife, was barren.

-We’ve seen Abraham’s various responses to trusting in God – sometimes he does really well, and other times he utterly fails. But God remains true to his promises to Abraham, despite him acting faithless. We saw this in Gen. 15 when God enacts the covenant with Abraham. Cut some animals in half, then Abraham falls asleep and God walks right through the middle of it, saying that if the covenant is broken, the penalty for that will fall on Him instead of Abraham:

–2 Tim. 2:13

-Keep this idea in mind as we continue over the next 3 weeks to finish up the life of Abraham: it’s a good thing that God’s promises are dependent on him and not us, because if it were up to us, we would completely ruin it.

-We then saw a seed finally born to Sarah & Abraham when he was 100, after waiting 26 years for God’s promise to be fulfilled, so God did prove to be faithful. Then we saw the way God blessed Abimelech through Abraham, so we’ve seen 2 of the 3 promises from God be fulfilled, but there’s 1 missing: land. Today will be the downpayment of that promise.

-We’re going to go through this text fairly quickly today to get to the final point, because the NT has a lot to say about this idea of Abraham being an alien and sojourner that we need to be reminded of in our lives today.

Sarah’s Sojourn Ends (1-6)

-Interestingly, Sarah is the only woman who is given an age in this book. She had Isaac when she was 89, meaning he would now by 38.

-Died in Kiriath-arba (Hebron) parenthetical note to signify which place Moses is referring to here, places can change names! Think of the lake formerly known as Lake Calhoun (now known as “be-DAY me-KAH skah”) or the Gulf of America, or Mexico?

-This is in Canaan, where Abraham had been promised he would be given an entire nation

-Normal mourning period, then the body would be taken out for burial, has to ask the local people for the provision of a place to bury his wife

-But notice the way Abraham describes himself: alien residing among you. This isn’t his home, even though God has promised that this land would someday be his, it’s not his yet.

-Abraham is humbly approaching and asking this people to be kind and gracious to him, he’s also following the customs of this land.

-Where Abraham labeled himself a resident alien, look how they label him in vs. 6. “prince of God among us.”

-They’ve seen something different and unique about Abraham that sets him apart from the rest of them. Where Abraham comes almost groveling to them, approaching like a beggar, they have a much higher opinion of him! Abraham’s blessing from God is visible even to the watching pagans in Canaan.

-Which is a really good picture of what God wants for all of us, too. Do you think your neighbors would label you as a “prince (or princess) of God”? We’ll look at that more explicitly in a little bit, but keep that in the back of your mind.

-The Hethites go on: you can bury your wife anywhere you want! Because of his exalted status and their high opinion of him, no one would stand in the way of what Abraham wants.

Secure Foundations (7-16)

-Abraham proceeds to humbly respond to them and bows in front of them, he knows exactly where he wishes to bury Sarah: a cave that becomes the burial cave of all the patriarchs.

-Sarah first, then Abraham joins her in a couple chapters, then Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and finally Jacob requests that he be buried in the same cave, the same place where he also buried his wife Leah.

-Ephron, the current owner of the cave offers not just the cave, but the field attached to it as well, and to ensure its legally right, it’s done in the sight of everyone. AND Abraham won’t just take it for free, he wants to make sure there’s no question of who owns this land in the future.

-This is a fairly steep price for a field! But Abraham doesn’t want any discounts or credits, and we’ve established that he’s a wealthy man, so this wouldn’t be outside the bounds of what he can afford.

-Additionally, let’s think back to an account where he was given a bride price for his wife. Back in Gen. 20, Abraham pulled his classic trick of telling people Sarah was his sister (a half-truth). The Lord reveals to Abimelech that Sarah is married, and if he were to follow through on what he wanted to do he would face severe consequences, so in order to ensure nothing bad comes upon them, he gives Abraham 1,000 pieces of silver. I don’t know that’s it too much of a stretch to think that’s what Abraham uses to pay for this field cave.

Starting the Promise (17-20)

-This seems to have become somewhat of a homebase for Abraham, we’ve seen him in Mamre numerous times!

-Payment is finalized, whatever it looked like to write up a deed of contract to buy a plot of land is stamped. And remember something I mentioned from S&G destruction: the gate of the city is the place where the business of the city takes place.

-After all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted, Abraham buries his wife in the exact place that he was hoping to buy at the beginning of his interactions, and because he is now the rightful owner, it’s supposed to be his in perpetuity.

-Let’s think back to what I said at the beginning of this sermon, what God had promised to provide to Abraham: land, seed, and blessing. We’ve seen the seed (Isaac) and the blessing, but what about land? Here it is! A whole field and cave! Not too much, is it? Most scholars I was reading said that this serves as a foretaste or the downpayment on the greater land promise that God had given him.

-And this is where we now see some of the ways our lives today are similar to what Abraham experienced in his life, with 1 key difference.

–Eph. 1:14 tells us that we have something similar to what Abraham had here, a down payment of the promised land that would eventually belong to his descendants, but our downpayment is God Himself dwelling in us, bringing us spiritually from death to life, making us as new people. Look at what Paul says:

-The moment you believe you are: transformed, made new, radically changed, given the privilege and opportunity to actually pursue Jesus day by day.

-The Holy Spirit is literally the way we know we’re saved. I was always so terrified growing up that my salvation didn’t “take” so I must have “asked Jesus into my heart” 20 times! (which is nowhere in the Bible! Peter says to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, and that’s it)

-That’s not how Jesus invites us to live. Just like Abraham was promised an entire country of land, but as he approaches the end of his life all he has is a field, we are promised a life of abundance and flourishing, but it won’t be completed until Jesus returns or takes us home. All we’ll ever have on this side of eternity is the down payment.

-If you’ve ever bought a home you know this process is like! You save up for years for that downpayment, you finally find a house you like so you put the offer in and write the biggest check you’ve ever written in your life – but it’s not yet yours, is it? At least not fully, you’re still sleeping in your old house, spending WAY too many hours comparing the hundred shades of grey you could paint your walls, trying to find as many boxes as you can, but you start to worry less about your current place of living too. It starts to feel less and less like home because all your attention is on where you’ll eventually be living.

-And friends: that’s how Abraham viewed his time on earth, and that’s how Jesus calls us to view our time on earth.

-And that’s what we’re going to spend the rest of our time talking about! I mentioned this in last week’s sermon, but I don’t know if you caught it: Jesus said it’s better that he goes away, but for a really long time I struggled with that fact, and some of what we read about Abraham today points to this fact: Jesus is saying if he doesn’t go away, we don’t have our down payment. The reality is that this world isn’t our home, but our temptation is to act like it is. We put WAY too much work and effort into acting like this is our home, acting like nothing else maters but getting the most out of this life that we can. But here we see the reason Abraham is such a big deal is he didn’t try to make this world his home, he describes himself as an alien, which the NT writers pick up as a theme as well for us to contemplate today! We’ll look at a few different texts before getting to some things I’d like to encourage you to contemplate over the summer, some things I’ve been contemplating over the past year, and things I want us as a church to start thinking about how we can engage the world God has created in potentially some new ways.

-First, lets look at how the author to the Hebrews helps us to interpret this very event:

-Abraham was called to live by faith and not by sight. It took 25 years for him to get his son, there’s been some blessing, but nothing like a blessing to the whole world, and he just now got land (he’s 10 years older than Sarah, so he’d be 137 here). His whole life he is a foreigner, sojourning among other people. And why could he do that? Because he knew this world was not his home, he was living for a different city, a city that is build and sustained by God, an eternal city that will bring lasting peace and prosperity to the rest of the world.

-Faith is what led Sarah to become the mother of a multitude, who only saw 1 child born to her while she was alive, but today there are over 2.4 billion people who are spiritually descended from her. Do you think she would have imagined the implications her life would have on the rest of history, and the world?

-Then the author ends this thought by saying that even in death all these saints died, but NONE of them got the things promised to them.

-They were looking forward to a new day, a better day where they would finally have a home, but instead they were foreigners, and only temporary residents of earth. This world isn’t our home either, the home that’s coming will make the greatest places on this earth look like trash dumps.

-And the reality of this is we’re just called to live like our Savior, look how Jesus described his life:

-Obviously, he had places to sleep, he’s picking up this same idea that we’ve seen with Abraham: this world was not His home, He was looking toward a better home. And what’s ironic is the entire world only existed because of and through Him, but He still didn’t have a place to call home while He sojourned on earth.

-Which gets us to the last passage which tells us this is also true of us today. Look how Peter describes the church: strangers and exiles, other places refer to us as “ambassadors.” These are here to describe how we’re supposed to engage this world: as outsiders who are pointing to a different reality. If we’re strangers here, that should be noticeable. If we’re ambassadors, our job is to faithfully represent our homeland (which is heaven). And I’ve been thinking about this particularly in relation to the idea of generosity over the last couple months, and generosity in 3 ways: time, talents, and treasures.

-In the church, when we talk about generosity, we often jump to finances, but generosity is far more than that. Here’s something Paul says about generosity, notice: where does it come from? God himself! God gives us literally everything, and He rightfully expects us to respond with generosity toward others with the gifts He’s given us.

-Which is what Peter gets to in the rest of the section I just mentioned: abstain from sinful desires (sin is putting yourself at the center, only worrying about yourself without caring about anyone else). Sin is literally the opposite of generosity.

-I’m just going to go through time talents and treasures briefly, because I’m planning to talk about them in MUCH greater detail this Fall, but let’s start with time:

-In a book about Geneva during the Reformation (mid 1500s), the author shared how the church bells marked time for the entire city:

-What marks time for us today? Apple, Google, Amazon? What SHOULD mark time for us today? How can we steward the time God has given us, and not just steward it, but look to be generous with our time? To do that I think it’s going to take some changing of patterns in our lives so we don’t just adopt worldly patterns in our lives.

-Have you ever heard of Blue Laws? Certain activities used to be banned on Sundays because it was marked as a sacred day, unique from the other 6. But when most of shopping goes online, does it even matter?

-What about talents? Have you ever considered that God has uniquely wired and gifted you in a way to be generous to others with your skills?

-I’m so glad that not everyone is wired exactly like me! Just yesterday, Micah and I were moving a fridge and getting it set up at his house, and we broke the water line going into the fridge. Thankfully, we both have HoJo’s number, so we amateur movers sheepishly called him, and he fixed it much quicker than we could have! And I know many of you have stories just like this.

-And treasures: I would argue this is more than just money, we also have possessions (house, car, other “stuff”).

-Did you know that those who give away 10% of what they make are happier, healthier, have less problems with depression, and live more satisfied lives? A professor I had described social science as scientists discovering the ways God made us.

-Not only that, but did you know that when you give generously to others, it releases dopamine, which makes you cheerful? So not only does God love a cheerful giver, God literally makes you cheerful when you give. Isn’t it amazing how God has created us to operate?

-This is what Abraham was pointing to: living a generous life that demonstrates that this world isn’t our home, that we were made for a different country, a better country, where the God who made everything out of nothing provides everything we need in abundance.

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by mikethestrand on April 27, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Sermon

Tagged abraham, Bible, faith, genesis, God

Posted by mikethestrand on April 27, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/04/27/genesis-23-sermon-manuscript/

John 11 – Sermon Manuscript

-Break from Abraham to follow the church calendar (ordering the year around significant events in the church, most of the year is called “Ordinary Time”)

-John’s Gospel is probably my favorite of the 4. Emphasis on the Jesus being God. Gospels are all about the same story, centered on the same person. One author has described them as “extended passion narratives.” Have you ever noticed the way they’re structured: only 2 of them talk about his birth, only 1 of them adds any information between his birth and the beginning of His ministry (Luke at the temple). And then it feels like it rushes through the 3 years of his ministry and then spends a TON of time on the last week of His life (Matt. 21-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24; John 12-21)

-John’s Gospel is a beautiful work of literature, centers on 7 signs, contains Jesus’s 7 “I Am” statements (1 of which we’ll get to today)

-But John’s Gospel also has 2 significant resurrection stories. John brackets his passion narrative with Jesus raising someone from the dead, and then Jesus being raised from the dead. This week, we’re going to look at the first one:

-A couple things to look for throughout this passage:

-Jesus is jealous for His glory. This event is in here to model/demonstrate that He is worthy of worship.

-Jesus interacts with people based on what they need, not what they think they need. Every interaction is different, every response is different

-The end goal is for people to believe in Jesus.

READ/PRAY (pg. 953)

Jesus and His Disciples (1-16)

-This section serves as a bit of a background to this unique relationship.

-One of the things that should stand out to us as we walk through this passage is the humanity of Jesus. Yes, as I said at the beginning, I love this Gospel because it emphasizes the divinity of Jesus, but Jesus is also fully human, living a fully human life with all of the implications that come with being human.

-John gives us a little more info on Mary, apparently when he was writing this Mary anointing Jesus’ feet was well known! Doesn’t happen until the next chapter so if you want to read that account keep going beyond where we’ll be today!

-John also assumes you know the account from Luke 10, Martha the worker bee, and Mary the lazy one who just listens to Jesus and doesn’t help prepare the meal

-Then find out Lazarus is Mary & Martha’s brother – I’m going to guess Lazarus was the middle child. The neglected and overlooked one.

-Because Lazarus is sick, they decide to reach out to Jesus to ask for help

-Jesus, who knows everything (including what will happen in the future) says what seems like a weird phrase “will not end in death” Most likely Lazarus was already dead at this point, it took a bit for the messengers to get to him. The ultimate outcome isn’t death, but it sure goes through death before the end!

-Jesus says something similar to the situation back in John 9, blind man, disciples ask whose sin is responsible for the man’s handicap, Jesus says in vs. 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.”

-Jesus will stop at nothing to ensure He is receiving glory

-With that said, look how Jesus responds. Vs. 5 tells us that Jesus loved this family. This is one of those instances I wish John had more info. What kind of a friend was Jesus? How close of a friendship was this? Back in vs. 3 Lazarus is described as “he whom you love.” Jesus had close friends – people he enjoyed spending time with and who enjoyed spending time with Jesus.

-Now, what would a normal response be when you find out your best friend is sick and you could help them? Drop everything and go! Look at vs. 6.

-Jesus waits TWO EXTRA DAYS! So much for loving them and wanting what’s best for them! The Greek is actually even more explicit than the English, it says “Jesus loved them, THEREFORE he stayed longer” explicitly connecting the love for them with His actions of staying longer.

-Remember what I said earlier, about Jesus stopping at nothing to be glorified? Here’s why Jesus did this:

-There was a Jewish superstition connected to death. How do we know someone’s dead? We have machines that tell us their heart stopped, Dr. tells us they’re dead. They didn’t have that in the 1^stcentury. Sometimes people would be declared dead, funeral would be held, and then on the way to bury them they would wake up. How would you feel carrying a coffin, and then you heard someone knocking from the inside? This led to this Jewish superstition that after someone dies, their soul kind of lingers or hovers around the body for 3 days to see if they resuscitate, and only after 3 days is someone actually dead. If he hadn’t waited, people wouldn’t have believed it was a miracle. Jesus waited to demonstrate that even death is defeated by Him!

-So Jesus brings his disciples into his plans, and they remind him of what he appears to have forgotten! (referring back to John 10:31 after his Good Shepherd speech, “Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone him.”)

-Jesus uses a seemingly weird illustration here. Look at vs. 9-10

-He’s saying that it’s not his time to die. As long as it’s “during the day” (walking according to His Father’s will) he doesn’t need to be afraid, he’s untouchable!

-“The disciples (and all Christians) could not be more secure as they enter life-threatening situations (e.g. Judaea), than when they are right where they are supposed to be: “In him.”” (Zondervan, Klink, 499)

-Isn’t that incredibly comforting? We have nothing to fear when we’re “In Him”

-The confusion worsens, because Jesus tells them Lazarus has fallen asleep, which they think is good news! A little rest is always good for a sick person! So he has to explain again, Lazarus is dead.

– Thomas, on behalf of the whole group, sarcastically responds “might as well go die with him!” (Him is referring to Jesus here) Little does he know exactly how prophetic this is! Lazarus is dead, Jesus is going to die, why not all join in the fun?

Jesus and Martha (17-27)

-This section begins with more back story. Bethany was near Jerusalem, and apparently this family was pretty well known, so many Jews had come to console Mary and Martha.

-Customary to hire professional mourners. Group to come grieve with you. Jewish customs demanded that even a poor family was to hire AT LEAST 2 flute players and a professional wailing woman. Since it appears that this family was well off, they would most likely have had a much larger wailing group.

-Martha’s response in vs. 20 is abnormal, as typically those coming to mourn with the family would go to the house. Perhaps it’s for privacy, perhaps Jesus is avoiding the crowds, but either way Martha hears Jesus has come and goes to find him while Mary stays home.

-Notice what Martha says here “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” She’s accusing Jesus of not caring enough, yet just a breath later she realizes what she said and admits God will answer whatever Jesus asks.

-So Jesus assures her that Lazarus will rise again. Common to Jewish thought, at some point, he will rise again! Jesus corrects her – that future resurrection is already here, because I’m here! Jesus is both the resurrection and the life, just as you don’t need to fear as long as you’re “in Christ” so we don’t need to fear death as long as we’re “in Christ.”

-“What to the Jews is a future hope is to Christians a present reality.” (Zondervan, Klink, 504)

-And all you need to do to live forever is believe in the one who is the resurrection and the life. Just as Jesus asks Martha here “Do you believe this?” Is a question every person in the world needs to be asked. Because if you believe (like Martha) that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you don’t every need to be afraid!

-Jesus is jealous for his glory, so even in the midst of Lazarus dying, he points Martha to himself

Jesus and Mary (28-35)

-Martha then leaves to go tell Mary that Jesus is here (in private!), so now it’s Mary’s turn to go talk to Jesus. There’s a lot of background info here (Jews follow, assuming she’s going to the tomb to mourn some more, Jesus doesn’t go into the village but stays at the same place Martha and he met)

-Notice what Mary says in vs. 32. It appears that Mary and Martha had decided the best way to approach Jesus. But Mary stops there. Where Martha continued on acknowledging that he was God, for some reason Mary doesn’t. She does however, fall down at his feet, it’s almost as if her body can’t help but worship Jesus, but her mind can’t keep up

-Sometimes it seems like the hardest thing in the world is to get up to go to church, or read your Bible, or spend time praying. We need to remember we’re complex creatures, we can’t segment our lives into various components. Sometimes we just need to go through the motions and wait for our mind to catch up!

-Sometimes it is a white-knuckled, grimace, and get through it. In the midst of those difficulties, look back to how God has provided for you in the past, because that’s the same precedent that will carry you into the future. Quote I heard “I speak the truth in the light so I can whisper it in the dark.”

-Jesus then responds a little differently than he did to Martha earlier

-“Deeply moved in his spirit” is better translated as angry, so Jesus was angry in his spirit and greatly troubled. Jesus was worked up over what was going on. Then the question is: why was he angry? Was he angry at the group of mourners? Was he angry with Mary for her response?

-2 options: angry with the sin brokenness and fallen world, or angry toward the unbelief of the people in front of them, who are grieving like pagans who have no hope.

-Jesus reconciles both anger and love at the same time. Jesus can be angry toward the broken, fallen world, AND angry at the unbelief currently demonstrated in front of him, while at the same time being completely loving toward them. Just as the world can be at enmity with God (James 4:4) yet God still loving the world (John 3:16). God can say that with no contradiction.

-We need to remember how Jesus acted in the midst of grief taking place around us! There is something so unnatural about death. Something screams within us that this isn’t right, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be! And it’s not. We don’t grieve without hope, instead we grieve with hope.

-I was listening to a sermon from Tim Keller on anger recently, and he pointed out some things that Jesus’s anger in this passage can teach us, too.

-We’re actually commanded to be angry. I’m guessing you’ve never heard that at church before! But the direction to our anger matters GREATLY! In fact, Keller actually says that no human emotions are sinful. God created us as emotional, God Himself gets angry, but the way we direct our anger can either be holy or sinful.

-When my children sin, I can get angry with them and direct my anger AT them, or I can direct my anger at their sin. One makes my kids the problem, the other gives us a common enemy to attack. Jesus here is angry at sin and its’ consequences, but he still responds with love towards people, serving as as model for the way we should respond to sin.

-And look at how Jesus responds to his close friend in the tomb, the shortest verse in the Bible! Jesus wept, which the Jews take as a sign his close friendship.

-Jesus isn’t weeping for Lazarus, he’s gonna be alive again in just a couple minutes! No sense weeping for that, Jesus said all the way back in vs. 11 he was going to wake him up, Jesus is weeping because of the state of the world. Death isn’t normal! Sickness, sadness, cancer isn’t the way things are supposed to be! We’re made to have life to the full, life in perfect union with God and each other, anger directed at our sin not at other humans.

-Jesus is the 1 true perfect human to ever live. He’s more human than any of us! Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to know what this world could be like, but all you see if death, despair, and grief?

Jesus and Lazarus (36-44)

-Jews (as is typical) have 2 responses: some saw Jesus’ weeping as how much he loved Lazarus, others said he should’ve saved him.

-We begin this section with the same word from vs. 33, Jesus is angry once again when he comes to the tomb. More background description (cave)

-Jesus orders the stone be removed. He also will order the people on unbind Lazarus after he’s raised. Why doesn’t he move it supernaturally to have it automatically done?

-It’s not “let go and let go” it’s trust God and get to work!

-Carson, For the Love of God

-Dallas Willard

-Martha jumps out again at Jesus and tells him not to have the stone removed because (as the KJV says) he stinketh!

-Don’t forget, Jesus will stop at NOTHING to receive glory – so that’s what he tells Martha. Then he prays. But his prayer is a little different, don’t you think?

41-42

-Apparently he’s already prayed for the Father to raise Lazarus, so he just jumps straight to the point, he’s praying for other people.

-Sometimes, prayers are done to serve as a model to those around you. Yes, prayer is primarily you talking to the Lord, but sometimes prayer is done to strengthen and encourage those around you.

-Then, finally, Jesus calls out to Lazarus “with a loud voice.” Many scholars quip that it’s a good thing Jesus specifies a person, because otherwise every dead person would have obeyed!

-The text doesn’t even make mention that it was Lazarus, instead “The man who had died.” Lazarus isn’t the point of the story! And then the story ends. Jesus’s fame continues to spread, the Jews continue to plot against Jesus to eventually kill Him, and someday afterwards Lazarus will die again.

-But did you notice the other resurrection? Look back up at vs. 25

-Jesus says whoever believes in Him will never die, and then he asks Martha a question: do you believe? And does she? Yes!

-Friends, this is the bigger deal, and the bigger miracle than someone raising physically from the dead. The physical resurrection is actually meant to point to what’s taking place spiritually here with Martha. This is the moment where she’s spiritually brought from death to life, and we went by it pretty quickly earlier because we almost take it for granted that this is possible.

-If you have been saved, if you confess with your mouth what Martha did here, and believe in your heart (your innermost being) that God raised Jesus from the dead, you are saved. You are made alive in Christ, and best of all, you never have to be afraid of death ever again. Lazarus is just the picture, what Martha experiences is the substance. And we can have that exact same experience today!

-We get to celebrate this reality today through baptism: the reminder that those are saved are laid in the water like Jesus was laid in the tomb, and then brought up into new life to never die again. Have you believed in Jesus, and taken this step of obedience? Have you been raised from death to life? Because if you have, you are now “In Christ,” you have nothing to fear, not even death!

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by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Sermon, Worship

Tagged Bible, faith, Jesus, lazarus, resurrection

Posted by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/04/13/john-11-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 21 – Sermon Manuscript

-A common proverb today is: “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” I apologize to anyone who’s not a Millennial, but I immediately thought of a movie that came out in 2003 (remake of a 1976 film), called ‘Freaky Friday’

-If you haven’t seen it, it’s a story about a mom and teenage daughter who aren’t getting along, they fight all the time, have a lot of resent between them, and one day they wake up having switched bodies. One of the best moments is the day they wake up, and Jamie Lee Curtis runs to the mirror and screams “I’m old!” And I’ll be honest, that gets less funny each year! Part of the reason this has been on my mind, is if you hadn’t heard, Freakier Friday is coming out this summer. I know fashion is cyclical, but this is one I didn’t expect a sequel to!

-We’re continuing to follow the life of Abraham, and what this story does is somewhat allow us to walk a mile in his shoes. We’ve seen the ups and downs, Abraham as the hero and Abraham as the villain. People are complex, aren’t they? That’s one of the reasons I love the Bible – it doesn’t sanitize the stories!

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The Child of Promise (1-7)

-The first thing I want us to notice is who’s doing the acting here? After last week where Abraham doesn’t even acknowledge the one true God, suddenly the first word in this chapter is Yahweh. We’re once again struck with the way God continually upholds His end of the covenant, despite Abraham’s unfaithfulness. This first verse is just between Sarah and the Lord, and remember how Sarah responded to the Lord’s promises to provide a child? Laughter! And how does God respond? Faithfulness, steadfastness.

-The first word in this communicates something to us: who’s in charge of this process? Not Abraham, not Sarah, the Lord. God is orchestrating all these events at just the right time.

-This is one of the main things I hope you take away from this whole series: your life begins and ends the same way this chapter begins: the Lord comes. In fact, I would argue that this is one of the predominant themes throughout the entire Bible: God living and dwelling with His people.

-Micah just did a brief teaching on this idea at a school this week, but Scripture traces the idea of a temple from cover to cover, the temple is the place where God can live with His people. Eden is created as a temple where Adam & Eve live together with God in perfect harmony, then when that union is broken through sin, there’s only division unless God intervenes, which He does again and again. The ark is built as a temple where God’s creation is saved from the wrath to come, Abraham repeatedly builds altars to the Lord, which serve as a temple. He’s promised a land where God’s people will live in prosperity, where God will dwell with them, and in that land a literal temple will be built where God will live with His people, and then the best part of this story is that God Himself comes into time and space and becomes the means by which a physical building is no longer required to be right with God. We’ll be celebrating that reality in just a few weeks with Easter – the temple who became flesh died and rose again, allowing outposts of God’s temple to be spread across the entire world! We as Christians are now called temples of God. What a glorious picture, beginning all the way back here with Abraham. Our stories can now look like this, where we’ve refused to acknowledge God, God meets us, fulfills all His promises, and makes us His temples forever.

-This time, Abraham is obedient to the Lord’s command. God had told Abraham what the child would be named and what the timing of circumcision was supposed to be for all his descendants.

-And what’s most amazing is Abraham’s age: 100. Think back to the first sermon in this series from Gen. 12, when did God first come to Abraham? 75. Abraham had been waiting this entire time for this promised son. Do you think you could wait that long?

-Once again, the theme of laughter appears. Remember I told you a few weeks ago to keep the idea of laughter in mind, because it was going to serve as a minor theme moving forward, all that laughter has built up to today. Isaac’s name will be a reminder of the laugher and joy of the Lord’s provision for His people! But as we know, there’s more people involved in this story.

The Child of Flesh (8-21)

-Another theme we’re supposed to trace through the story of Scripture is 2 lines who are opposed to each other: the line of a women and the line of a serpent. After the fall in Gen. 3 God promises that there will be continual fighting between the family of the women and the family of the serpent, and this continues all the way to the end where a giant serpent (actually a dragon) is still trying to fight against the woman. Kids, ask your parents about that story, it’s in the last book in the Bible, Revelation! This story also has a comparison between 2 lines, but it begins as Isaac grows.

-Abraham throws a great feast on the day Isaac is weaned (other ancient documents state this takes place at 3 years old). Why throw a party?

-It was a miracle to make it to 3 years! Many children died very young, remember they didn’t have the same medical advancements we take for granted today! Things that we have medicine for could have been a death sentence here.

-One of the fascinating things about this account is Ishmael is never mentioned by name in this story, first referred to here as “the son,”

-We’re supposed to begin contrasting these 2 boys: one son of the promise and one son of the flesh. What does this son of the flesh do? Our translation says mocking, the word is the same as has been used repeatedly in this story for laughing, but a different kind of laughing, you can laugh WITH someone or you can laugh AT someone, these have 2 different implications.

-“Drive out” used in Gen. 3:24, 4:14 (Cain) Sarah is pushing here for the disinheritance of Ishmael, forcing him away from Abraham

-Last time, Sarah drove her away by mistreating her, this time she’s making Abraham do it, which is difficult for him because it’s his son.

-God reconfirms His commitment to Abraham, even to his illegitimate son. God’s promises are far beyond what we could ever imagine! Even though Abraham took matters into his own hands, God will still bless Abraham’s line.

-It seems that Abraham is a morning guy, we saw him up early after S&G, he’ll be getting up early again in next week’s chapter, but I also think that this is demonstrating the similarities between the 2 sons of Abraham (come back next week for more!)

-Hagar and Ishmael are sent off, and I want you to notice how Hagar responds through the rest of this story, because I think it’s a warning for us to not become immune to the way the Lord is working.

-First, she wanders away from Abraham. Who has been blessed by the Lord and promised to bless everyone else?

-Then she leaves her son, doesn’t look to take care of him, she’s more worried about herself. Don’t want to be too hard on her because I can’t imagine losing a child, but we’re going to see Abraham do the opposite next week when he offers up Issac to the Lord.

-She weeps, but not to anyone in particular, because look at vs. 17, who does God hear? Ishmael, but God talks to Hagar. How many times does God need to appear to Hagar for her to begin trusting in Him?

-And how many times do we need to hear God’s promises before we start to believe them? Friends, this is why it’s so important to come to church every week! The point of us gathering isn’t just to see your friends, it’s to help us remember God’s promises. I heard a description I really liked of the way many people view church: we come to church to get our weekly steroid shot to get me through the week, but the point of church is to be reminded who God is and then see His Spirit transform us to become more like Him. All week, our gaze is continually pointed back to ourselves, we need this weekly reminder to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus.

-After promising to bless Ishmael, God opens Hagar’s eyes so she sees that she was right near a well so Ishmael is saved, and then blessed. And where does she go to find a wife for him? Back to her homeland. Once again, she’s not trying to stick close to the blessed man, not trying to follow the God who continually provides for her.

-The place that had been his banishment becomes the place where Ishmael creates his life. He settles in the wilderness, creating his home and life there, but still apart from the blessed one – his Father Abraham. Now the Ishmaelites (descendants of Ishmael) come up again throughout this story, particularly in relation to Joseph, who is pulled up from a well and sold to Ishmaelites on the way to Egypt (which becomes the means by which God saves the people of Israel). Then the conclusion of this book (I would argue) is found on the lips of Joseph who says: Gen. 50:20.

-I want all of you today to realize that nothing can change God’s love for you, His commitment to you, and His desire for you to live right! You’re never too far gone, you’re never too sinful, and the Bible promises us that nothing can ever separate us from His love. God demonstrates this reality over and over and over throughout the pages of the Bible, through all of history, and all the way down to today! If you want to hear how God continues working today, just find someone who’s been a believer for more than a year and ask them to tell you how God has provided for them, in most cases THROUGH being a part of a church

-I had 2 opportunities this week to reflect on this reality in my own life (sorry, but I’m up here which means you get my stories).

-First was I was asked to record a brief video of someone who mentored me in some significant way. When I started preaching every week (2019) a preaching professor agreed to mentor me for a few months and completely changed everything about my preaching. I’d preached a handful of times before that, I’d done a preaching cohort in college and then a preaching class in seminary, but none of that affected me the same way someone intentionally pouring into me over a 3-month period.

-Second reminder was from a class I’m taking this next week where the pre-class assignment is to write a paper on your philanthropic memories throughout your life. One of the most significant came after my freshman year of college. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but college is EXPENSIVE! In order to pay for college, I did manual labor: painting and remodeling, and made decent money doing it! But this summer I also had the opportunity to do an internship at my home church (Northfield EFC) but the church didn’t pay as well as my other job, so I hoped God would provide some way for me to go back to college. At the end of the summer, the church took a love offering and it more than made up the difference, allowing me to continue in college!

-Friends, God always follows through, always keeps His promises, and always brings about good for His children, even when or as the world falls apart around us. I can guarantee that God will be faithful even when you’re not. Which is where this story goes next:

The Child of God (22-34)

-Back to Abimelech, the guy who had taken Sarah into his harem. But last time it looked like Abraham was the one needing something from Abimelech, this time their relationship is reversed: Abimelech is needing something from Abraham.

-Abimelech is looking for a commitment from Abraham to him and his children to ensure they’ll endure even as Abraham endures. Since Abraham is living nearby he’s essentially looking for a peace treaty.

-Yet apparently there’s been an issue: a well Abraham had dug was overtaken by Abimelech’s servants. A small spat between friends, but not something to interfere with their commitment to each other.

-Where Abimelech had previously blessed Abraham, now Abraham returns by blessing him. Think of what God said he’d do: bless Abraham, so that those who bless him would be blessed. What are we seeing with Abimelech is that very promise coming true. Covenant being enacted (similar to what we saw with the covenant between God and Abraham, this time it’s between these 2 men), but 7 ewes are pulled out.

-7 ewes as a special gift to solidify the ownership of the well. It doesn’t say why 7 ewes, doesn’t tell us the significance of this act, just that part of their pact between each other comes from these sheep! Which leads to:

-Called Beer-sheba: literal translation is “well of 7” referring to the ewes, but the Hebrew word for seven and oath is the same, so intentional play on words, by calling it Beer-sheba they’re emphasizing their oath to each other, demonstrated through the gift of these 7 sheep. Every time someone refers to this place, they’d be reminded of their oath to each other!

-Abimelech leaves, and Abraham plants a tree, potentially pointing back to the place where the Lord had previously met with Abraham: under the oaks of Mamre. We’ve seen Abraham near trees at multiple significant moments in his life, connected to where Abraham meets the Lord (Gen 12:6 Abram goes to the oak of Moreh, Gen. 13:18 moves to the oaks of Mamre of Hebron, Gen. 18 Abraham is at the same oaks when the 3 visitors come, here he’s building a tree). And I would argue this is continuing the temple theme from the garden (or if you remember our series on Gen. 1-11, better to call it an orchard) of Eden. Perhaps pointing back to the original garden when Adam and Eve lived in perfect union with God.

-He’s once again calling on the name of the 1 true God, the everlasting God. Abraham’s life in Beer-sheba becomes marked by worship, by walking with God, but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, has it? Very high highs, very low lows, does that ever sound like your life as you look back over it?

-How do you think Abraham would feel if he knew we were talking about his life 4,000 years later? And not just talking about his life, talking about every aspect of his life! The times where he was faithful, AND the times where he was faithless.

-I think the primary thing we should take away from this story is summarized well by Paul in 1 Cor. 6. He begins this little section by talking about who won’t be a part of God’s kingdom, and it’s terrible stuff! Stuff that every Christian knows to avoid. But he doesn’t stop there, in vs. 11 he says: some of you did this!

-We tend to only see and share the sanitized parts to our story and gloss over or dismiss the negative parts, but friends just as we’ve seen in Abraham’s story, God takes the broken pieces of your life and redeems them.

-Share your story!

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by mikethestrand on March 30, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship

Tagged abraham, Bible, faith, genesis, God

Posted by mikethestrand on March 30, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/30/genesis-21-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 20 – Sermon Manuscript

-About 10 years ago a guy went viral at a Gophers hockey game. If you’ve never been to a sporting event, they do all sorts of random activities to keep the crowd engaged. Took the kids to a Timberwolves game this weekend, and Ellie LOVED the halftime show: it was dancing. What we see as commercial breaks at home are times they do activities to distract you from becoming bored. One of the activities they used to do (I haven’t seen it in a while) is a “kiss cam” where they’ll pick couples out from the crowd, show them on the big screen with the expectation that they’ll kiss. This guy got on the screen, and pulled out this sign:

-Yes, he was there on valentine’s day with his sister. And he made the sign just in case this happened! This is a picture of what Abraham does in today’s text.

READ/PRAY

Sister-Wife (1-2)

-Parallels between previous account(s) – both Lot and Abraham failing to protect the women in their lives

-Last time was Gen. 12, where Abraham fled the land because of a famine, this time there’s no famine, Abraham just continues his nomadic ways

-Last time, he at least admitting how beautiful his wife was, this time he just says she’s his sister, doing exactly what the guy at the hockey game did!

-But things didn’t go as well for Pharoah. Severe plagues strike the house, Pharoah confronts Abraham about this and sends him on his way. Yet as we’re going to see in today’s passage, apparently this was a routine in Abraham’s life in this season.

-Location of Abraham’s travels: Negev (south), scholars think Gerar west of Beersheba, Sodom and Gomorrah on the east side of Dead Sea, Mamre on the west side

-And he’s back to his old lying ways! Apparently Sarah still has some looks to her (that either Abraham has grown used to or assumes) because the king takes her into his harem, and he assumes everything is going to be just fine!

-Remember something I said toward the beginning of this series: this was a BRUTAL time period to live! It was completely a dog-eat-dog world where whoever was the strongest always won. There wasn’t such a thing as “human rights.” I read a fascinating article this week from Tom Holland, a British historian and one of the hosts of The Rest is History podcast, who grew up attending church, but didn’t really find Christianity stimulating enough (at least compared to dinosaurs, Greeks, and Romans), so he became at atheist. This article is almost 10 years old now, and Tom, who is an expert on Roman history, finally realized that the entire world we take for granted today is built on the foundation of Christianity, so without Christianity the entire Western world doesn’t make any sense. He wrote an entire book about this topic called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. He says that Christianity has so embedded itself in the Western world that it is thoroughly Christian, even though it doesn’t admit or realize that. Another author, Glen Scrivener (Aussie who now lives in England), has picked up on this idea and says the world today is trying to build castles in the air. The foundation for our entire civilization is built on the understandings and ethics of Christianity, without admitting or understanding that. And many people in our world are starting to wake up to that reality!

-And part of the reason I bring this up is because it’s something we need to keep in mind as we engage our friends, neighbors, and coworkers who don’t know the Lord (or you if you think this stuff makes no sense). The world apart from Jesus is a brutal place, it literally is survival of the fittest. But Jesus’ arrival changed all of that so that now we actually view humans as worthy of dignity, care for the poor and marginalized is a virtue, not a vice, men and women are equal in value. Those don’t come from secularism, those come from the pages of the Bible. And they’ve become such the norm in the world today that we take them for granted. But friends, use this reality as an evangelistic opportunity!

-I said all of that to make the point that Abraham’s concern is legit. If you have a beautiful wife, others may be tempted to kill him to take his wife as their own, and there would be no stopping them. So Abraham (and apparently Sarah is ok with it) offers an alternative story to cover himself: Sarah’s his sister, and we’ll get to the rest of that at the end of this story because it’s not a complete lie, it’s just not the whole truth.

-And just like last time, there are consequences to this decision:

God Confronts Abimelech (3-7)

-Remember that the primary person throughout this story is Abraham, but this story then shifts to focus on what happens to Abimelech after he takes Sarah into his harem. This is the first time God appears in this story, and it’s not to Abraham.

-Remember what happened in last week’s story? In the midst of the destruction of S&G, who talked to the Lord face to face? Abraham. Yet even Abraham isn’t always the one to whom God appears. God acts on behalf of Abraham and even will appear to an idolatrous king to ensure Abraham is protected and being obedient.

-And notice how God appears to this king: in a dream. Does God meet people in dreams? Apparently so! He does throughout the OT, and there are even stories of God meeting people in dreams in the Middle East today! Muslims in closed countries being confronted by the living God who continually accommodates Himself to our levels and reaches people in ways they need to be reached. I’ve never had a dream where God met with me, but I do know that if God ever did come to you in a dream, He wouldn’t contradict what He’s already revealed in Scripture!

-God’s condemnation of Abimelech is because he’s taken a married women into his harem.

-At this time, adultery was seen as the “great sin.” Many ancient documents have been uncovered that refer to this as the unforgiveable sin that no one should commit. It was a different story after wars and conquests, but willingly committing adultery was the worst sin imaginable! Which makes sense of Abimelech’s response here and shows the consequences for sin against God’s people. Abimelech is threatened with death!

-But Abimelech questions God why he would be destroyed if he hadn’t yet committed this horrendous act. And the wording Abimelech uses would be familiar to us, because it came up repeatedly last week (made less clear by the English translation), but vs. 4, the word he uses at the end is the same word Abraham used last week in his asking if God would not destroy the city for 50, down to 10 innocent people, but last week it was translated as righteous. So once again we’re struck with this realization that righteousness isn’t inherent to these people, it has to come from somewhere else.

-It’s also important for us to realize who is being described as righteous in this passage, because up until this point Abraham has been the righteous one, but this story shifts things significantly. And we see that even righteous Abraham didn’t always live up to his end of the bargain in his covenant with the Lord. The pagan king and Abraham in this story have switched places from what we’ve typically seen of Abraham, particularly of Abraham from last week’s story! Abimelech is the one who actually lives according to God’s plans for humanity, while Abraham is following in the ways of the world and living like he’s descended from the serpent!

-So God responds that He knows exactly what has happened and He has prevented Abimelech from committing this sin.

–Prov. 16:9 God’s in control, even of the acts and affairs of godless, idol worshipping kings. And God tells Abimelech what the next steps need to be in order to preserve his life: return Sarah and ask Abraham to pray for him because “he is a prophet.”

-What is a prophet? A prophet is at the core someone who speaks on behalf of God. That’s it! Unfortunately it doesn’t always mean someone who liveslike God. Now that shifts under the new covenant (that is after Jesus) because the Spirit now indwells everyone who follows Him. The Bible has a wide assortment of people who speak on behalf of God who aren’t following after Him at all! One of my favorites was in my Bible reading this week: Balaam in Num. 22. It was one of my favorite stories growing up in the church, Balaam is a prophet who is hired by a king to curse Israel, and as we’ve been learning in our series with Abraham, you shouldn’t try to curse God’s people (this came up in Rev. too!). This prophet is visited by God and told to only say what God wants him to say, and he continues on his way to curse Israel for money, but along the way an angel is positioned to kill Balaam. Fortunately for Balaam his donkey sees the angel and keeps running away from the angel, to which Balaam gets angry and beats the donkey. Then the Lord opens the mouth of the donkey and the donkey talks back to Balaam, and the funniest part is Balaam doesn’t change his mind then, he argues with the donkey. Anyone here ever get into an argument with a donkey? After this argument, the Lord opens Balaam’s eyes so he sees the angel, and then has a conversation with the angel. Friends, God can even speak prophetically through a donkey!

-Generally, God’s people are supposed to follow and obey His voice. Think of all the times Israel is punished for disobeying God. But that’s not the case here. What’s fascinating is God doesn’t threaten to publish Abraham, despite his lying and manipulating ways. God is continuing to uphold His end of the covenant, even as His covenant partner continues to disobey and live in deplorable ways. But you know who is living stand up and obeying the voice of the Lord in this story? This king, let’s see what happens next:

Abimelech confronts Abraham (8-18)

-How long did Abimelech wait? Nothing! “Early in the morning.” Contrast this response with how Abraham has been behaving in this story. Who has Abraham been obeying? His own selfish desires for ease and protection at the expense of his wife? Abimelech immediately calls together all his people to tell them what’s been going on.

-And what’s the response of all these men? Terrified! Friends, this shows us what our response should be when confronted by sins regardless of our intent. According to the information given to him, Abimelech wasn’t sinning, but as soon as he’s confronted he immediately responds without making excuses, without blaming Abraham (even though he has every right to). It seems that this people are an embodiment of Prov. 9:10, if you want to pursue wisdom, fear the Lord, not other humans, or even the devil! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it’s only by following after Him that we can live a truly wise life.

-And one of the ways that we demonstrate that wisdom is by how we deal with our sin. Friends, you’re not going to catch God off guard, you can’t out-sin Him, so bring your sins to the only person who can deal with them!

-After sharing with all his servants, he moves out to Abraham, and the first question he asks Abraham is significant because that exact same question had been asked before, but previously God was asking the question.

-In Gen. 3:13, after Adam and Eve had sinned, God is going through each creature and questioning them, and God’s question to Eve is the same thing God asks Eve, signifying to us that just as Eve sinned, here Abraham is demonstrating that he’s listening to the voice of the serpent instead of the voice of the Lord, and this pagan king is actually obedient to the 1 true God and speaking on behalf of God to Abraham. Yet God doesn’t acknowledge this king as a prophet, that’s Abraham. Another reminder that God’s ways aren’t ours!

-And Abimelech continues on with the questions: Abraham brought guilt on the kingdom, betrayed confidence, tried to get him to commit the “great sin” that no one should ever do, you get the sense that Abimelech is rightfully outraged!

-And look at just how lame Abraham’s reply is: No fear of God in this place. Look up at vs. 8 again. What’s the response of Abimelech and all his servants? Fear of God. But in this story Abraham is revealing himself as the one who doesn’t fear God!

-And to make matters worse, Abraham continues that she is his sister: his half-sister. But that’s only half true, because she’s also his wife. A partial truth isn’t true! He’s intentionally keeping things hidden.

-But there’s more that make this even worse. First, think back to last week, and one of the things I pointed out that you can see in your Bible is when God is referred to by His divine name “Yahweh” it’s in small capitol letters LORD, it’s throughout last week’s text. Abraham doesn’t use that word in either case this time. One commentator on this passage said that if Abraham is accommodating himself that far to this king, it’s the lowest point of faith in Abraham’s life.

-Additionally, the word Abraham uses for “wander” is used to refer to pointless wanderings, sometimes it’s used to refer to deceiving or leading astray. And some people argue that Abraham is going so far as to say that “when the gods had me wander.” Even more deception and refusal to identify himself with the 1 true and living God, despite Abimelech’s accusations.

-And what’s the outcome? Despite Abraham lying, refusing to identify with Yahweh, he still comes out wealthy AND with additional land.

-I think this recounts Abraham and Lot, where Abraham allows Lot the choicest land, here Abraham is promised the same thing from this king, but this time Abraham is the recipient of the blessing.

-Then he turns to Sarah, and I think we should read this dripping with sarcasm I’m giving “your brother” all this silver. This was an extraordinary sum! The same total as 200 bride prices at the time! The king is bending over backwards to ensure he’s not punished by the Lord, but no punishment is given to Abraham.

-The text doesn’t say how long these events took place, but it was over a period of time that was long enough for them to know that infertility had fallen upon this house. And this was shortly after the Lord had promised that Isaac would be coming within the year, if the Lord hadn’t intervened Isaac’s lineage would have been in doubt! If there was ever a time to work to protect your wife, it would be in this season! Sarah could very well have been pregnant during this whole story! Yet once again we’re given a picture that righteousness can only come about through an act of God, nor through the obedience (or disobedience) or humans. However, we as humans still have a responsibility:

-There are 3 things I think we see in today’s text for us, the first is a caution and the other 2 are a reminder for us.

-Pursue God’s will – 1 Thess. 4:3 (perseverance in holiness)

-The bad news about this is your sanctification won’t be complete until the Lord returns or calls you home! But the good news is that God’s Spirit is guiding you in this so you don’t need to try to do it by yourself!

-Abraham offers us a caution here: don’t continue in your sin! Don’t keep playing with it, cut it off and the root so that you can continue pursuing God’s will! It’s not hidden, it’s not a secret: it’s holiness, it’s becoming more like God. We saw that with the angels last week: those that spend time with God end up reflecting Him, so are you pursuing God’s will?

-Be a prophet –

-Lots of debate on what’s often referred to as “sign-gifts,” the ones that we don’t see as often today: healing, prophesying, speaking in tongues. I think we have too narrowly defined some of these things, particularly prophesy. In Joel, we read from the Lord that someday he will pour out His Spirit on all humanity, and the sign will be men and women prophesying. And we see this is fulfilled in Acts 2, where Peter stands up and tells everyone that they’re not drunk (everyone heard someone speaking in their own tongue the truths of the gospel)

-As I said earlier, a prophet broadly defined is someone who speaks on behalf of God. And guess what, every single one of you can do that today by reading God’s Word. Allow God’s word to soak and saturate your heart and mind so that what comes out when people talk to you is what God has done and is doing in you. Look to be a prophet!

-Remember to pray –

-I still can’t believe that Abraham is called a prophet, he’s called righteous, and God continues upholding His end of the covenant, despite Abraham’s continual sin. And what’s incredible to me in this story is God still listens to Abraham despite his sin. This reminds us that there’s nothing you can do to separate yourself from God’s love. God invites you to pray! James 5:16tells us:

-And who’s counted righteous? Anyone who’s been saved and covered by the blood of Jesus! Friends, our prayers are powerful! They don’t just end at the ceiling, they don’t just stop when the sound waves die, God listens and responds to our prayers. I love the way one pastor said it: pray what you’ve got.

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by mikethestrand on March 23, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Sermon

Tagged abimelech, abraham, Bible, faith, genesis

Posted by mikethestrand on March 23, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/23/genesis-20-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 18-19 – Sermon Manuscript

-I grew up as a pastor’s kid, which meant we were dragged along to church people’s home ALL the time! What was hard was that not every one of these people had kids my age, and all the parents wanted to do was talk. Those afternoons where my parents spent talking to each other dragged on FOREVER. On top of that, we lived in Minot, ND, and people didn’t necessarily live close, so after sitting in a chair listening to the adults talk all afternoon, then we had at least a 30-minute drive BACK home!

-But here’s the thing: every single one of those people who had us over cared. They loved my parents, me, and my sisters, and still care about us to this day. In fact, I went back to this church shortly after Calvin was born with no warning, and one of the people whose house wasn’t so fun when I was younger took my family out for lunch again that day, and this time we were the ones talking while Calvin sat around waiting.

-It’s a long text today, so we’re going to jump right in, but as we read keep the idea of hospitality in the back of your mind.

READ/PRAY

Abraham’s Intercession (18:1-33)

-We’re back to Abraham, the focal point of this whole story, and through whom the entire world will eventually be blessed. Lots to cover today, but since it’s 1 long story I thought it was important for us to keep it all connected, but this could easily be 3 sermons, so if I don’t adequately cover something that you have a question about, send me an email!

-Not sure how long this is after the events of last chapter, seems to be pretty close to the same timeframe, since the promise of Isaac’s arrival is the same time as last week, meaning Abraham is 99.

-Cultural norms didn’t allow a patriarch, much less one who leads a tribe to run, much less bow to anyone. Yet here is Abraham bucking all conventional norms and running, and he begs them to stay with him for a bit.

-Some debate/confusion about who these men are because if you look at vs. 1 it says “The Lord” but then in vs. 2 it says “three men,” and it’s easy for us who have the NT to look at this and jump to the Trinity, but that’s jumping ahead a little bit too far. And to make it even more confusing, sometimes they’re all described as talking (vs. 5b, 9), and sometimes it’s just the Lord talking (10), then to compound it even more when you get to 19:1 then there’s 2 men described as 2 angels.

-My proposal (as of now and subject to change): God has come to earth in human form with 2 angels. The 3 together serve as a reflection of the triune God. My reasoning for that is based on a couple texts: Gen. 3:8 says that the Lord would come down and walk in the garden with Adam & Eve in the cool of the night. The second is Ex. 34:29 where it describes Moses’ face as glowing because he spent time with the Lord, similar to Jesus when His glory is revealed during the transfiguration. What that shows us is those that spend time with God will end up reflecting Him, so angels who are in God’s presence all the time will similarly reflect the triune God. This would make sense that the 3 come to spend time with Abraham, then 2 of them go on to Sodom (the angels), while the Lord stays back to continue talking to Abraham. Another piece for us to realize is the divide between spiritual and physical is much less significant to Abraham. We tend to create this sharp distinction in our minds between “sacred” and “secular” (material vs. immaterial), but I would argue that’s not the way the Bible talks about spiritual matters. If you watched The Bible Project’s videos through the sermon on mount you’ve seen a glimpse of this, it shows people doing acts, but then creatively transitions to a different color scheme to show the spiritual reality of the physical event. All that to say, for Abraham it wouldn’t have been weird to have God visiting him.

-One textual note for you: if you look carefully at your Bible you’ll see that in some places the word “Lord” is in all caps but smaller font. There are a few different ways in Hebrew of referring to Lord, so when it’s all caps it’s the divine name “Yahweh,” if you look at vs. 3 Abraham uses the word “Adonai,” and those 2 terms will be used pretty often in this section!

-Abraham sees these men and immediately throws open his doors to them, inviting them to not just eat with him, but he throws a feast!

-Has Sarah make the best bread they can, he gets a choice calf, the pick of the lot for these men. Then he adds to it with curds and milk, and notice who the waiter is: Abraham. “He served them.”

-The conversation goes back to the same topic the Lord has been having with Abraham throughout the story: the children of the covenant. And remember what I said last week about laughing? Now Sarah hears the Lord’s promise (doesn’t note if she didn’t know, or if she didn’t believe Abraham), but now she laughs, note “to herself”.

-And since she’s in the presence of the Lord, he asks why. And Sarah lies! To the Lord, the one who knows everything! And then she doubles down on it, and He calls her out again!

-After this exchange between Sarah and the Lord, the men go look over to Sodom with Abraham.

-And here the Lord asks (almost to Himself) if He should hide His plans from Abraham. Remember what we just saw in Sarah? Lying. Remember what we’ve seen in Abraham’s life before? Lying! The Lord is modeling for Abraham what it means to be in covenant with God: no lying. Be open and honest with each other in a way that allows for a close relationship.

-So God tells Abraham that the outcry is terrible, their sin is very great, so He’s going to go observe for Himself, which means He’s going to send His angels as His emissaries to scope it out, leaving Abraham and the Lord alone.

-Since Abraham has just seen the Lord demonstrate the need for honesty in His covenant, Abraham decides to be honest with the Lord. Look at vs. 25: God is the judge of the whole earth, but He’s also just. These 2 things together bring comfort because God doesn’t grade on curve, but every single one of His actions is completely just. God doesn’t just destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because He’s heard they’re terribly sinful, He goes to see for Himself if it’s true. Think of what David says in Psalm 103. God isn’t fickle, He’s not sitting back waiting for us to mess up, He’s slow to anger and overflowing with faithful love.

-But at the same time, sin MUST be dealt with! It’s committing cosmic treason against the Holy God, and what’s amazing is the scales of sin vs. righteousness are completely unfair, but not in the way we tend to think. Let’s follow the passage here:

-Abraham begins by asking about 50 people, which the Lord says He would spare the city for 50, then down to 45, 40, 30, 20, 10 and the Lord acquiesces each time.

-I don’t know about you, but as I read this growing up I was always amazed by the boldness of Abraham. Who does he think he is?! But the reality is Abraham knows God better than I do! And Abraham didn’t go low enough. See, in God’s plan for the salvation of the world, it only take 1 righteous person to cover the sins of the world. Abraham knew that better than I do, and I live as the recipient of that new covenant reality!

Lot’s Lot (19:1-38)

-The story now shifts to the story of the 2 angels who make it to Sodom, and Abraham’s nephew Lot. Remember the trajectory we’ve seen of Lot: he chose to live near Sodom because it looked beautiful like the garden of Eden, then in Gen. 14 we read that Lot was living IN Sodom, and now he’s in the gateway (entrance to the city), where the leaders of the city would conduct their business.

-Lot proceeds to coerce these men to stay in his house, and there’s some scholars that argue this description of a feast should be in scare quotes, because Lot doesn’t even take the time to bake real bread for them. Then after this “feast,” it says the mean of the city surround Lot’s house and demand Lot send out these 2 new men, and his response is fascinating:

-Instead of looking to protect and preserve his family, Lot throws out his 2 daughters to be abused by this crowd. Just as Abraham had offered up his wife, Lot is demonstrating where his heart is.

-But the crowd won’t take the offer: they call him an alien who’s sitting in judgment on them, and now suddenly Lot is in the crosshairs of this mob.

-So the angels intervene, pulling Lot back in and striking the crowd with blindness (again see the thin line between physical and spiritual here, the crowd had just been pushing against the door and the angels somehow prevent them from being able to find what was literally right in front of their eyes). Then warn Lot about what exactly is going to happen, and we learn something else about his daughters: they were engaged, and despite Lot’s warning these future sons-in-law think Lot is a big jokester (perhaps Lot has been influenced by Abraham’s lying previously, too?).

-And these events are taking place over the course of a night, because as soon as the next morning begins Lot is encouraged to flee the punishment that is about to come, and look at Lots’ response in 16

-This is a picture of the way we dabble with sin. We hesitate to completely obey God because we’ve become enticed by the sin, blinded (like the mob) to the ways it’s destroying us. And as we’ll see explicitly in just a few verses, by placing himself in Sodom, Sodom had begun to place itself in the heart of Lot making him desire the things of Sodom instead of desiring what God wants for him. So the angels shake Lot out of his stupor and take Lot and his family outside the city and command them to run away, to not look back and not stop or else they will be punished like the city.

-But just like Abraham questions God, Lot questions the angels and asks if he can flee to a nearby city, Zoar which means “little place”

-And as soon as Lot reaches the “little place” Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, along with the entire plain, all the people, and everything that grows on the ground, complete and utter destruction. And unfortunately, Lot’s wife looks back (1 translation: longingly), and just as the land of Sodom and Gomorrah becomes a salt plain, she becomes a pillar of salt.

-There have been some big questions today about why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, it’s literally where we get the term “sodomy” from after all!

-But the current cultural winds have attempted to throw doubt on these cities being destroyed because of sexual sin, in fact some have even attempted to argue that we’ve been translating vs. 5 wrong this whole time. The verb is “to know,” which doesn’t have to mean sex, but if you look at vs. 8 I think that argument loses some steam.

-There are other texts that say they were punished for their lack of hospitality, particularly Ezek. 16and Luke 10. Yet Jude 7 reminds us of this truth, so it was certainly for more than sexual perversion, but it wasn’t less than that. That was a marker of a whole host of other sins they were committing, of which homosexuality was just one.

-The story then shifts back to Abraham and sees the destruction of the cities that the Lord had warned him about, demonstrating that there weren’t even 10 righteous people found, God only found 4 (and then 3)

-This is a brief glimpse at the blessing that comes to others through Abraham. Lot is saved because of the intercession of his uncle, Lot is blessed because of Abraham.

-Unfortunately the story doesn’t end here, because this would have been a great ending. But Lot doesn’t stay in the city that he fled to, instead he goes up to the mountains alone with his daughters. Maybe he fears the destruction of this city as well, maybe he’s grieving, the text doesn’t say. What it does say is what the consequences are:

-The daughters (had been engaged), decide to take matters into their own hands, getting Lot so drunk that he is able to be taken advantage of by his oldest daughter.

-And then the same thing happens the next day! I don’t know how drunk you need to be to not know what happened, but Lot reached that point 2 nights in a row! The sin that was prevalent in Sodom had followed his family even to the mountains. And the sin that marked Noah as a failure (drunkenness) had been passed down to Lot, too. Failures all around! I do wonder if this was some sort of twisted revenge from them after he had offered up his daughter to the mob.

-And the consequences of these actions are that both of the daughters become pregnant by their father, so Lot becomes the father of his grandsons.

-Yet what is an absolutely disgusting story and evidence of the failure of Lot becomes the means by which salvation will come to the world, because this is where the Moabites originate from, and later on in the OT we have an account of a very specific Moabite woman named Ruth who was the great grandmother of King David. Then if you turn to Matt. 1 you’ll find the Ruth’s name appear again, but this time in the genealogy of Jesus. So if you didn’t have this incestuous relationship here in Genesis, you wouldn’t have David, and you wouldn’t have Jesus. Isn’t it amazing how God can take the broken and sinful things in the world and redeem them?

-So what in the world do we do with a story like this? Definitely not going to be made into a Disney film and has some incredibly depraved things that take place in here.

-I think first of all we need to remember how broken and depraved we are apart from God’s work in our lives. God’s redeeming love can bring beauty out of the most horrendous stories and situations. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or that the sin doesn’t have consequences, but these stories are in here to depict the realities of sin and the ways people willingly chase after and live in it. But praise God that there is a way to be righteous: to have Jesus’ righteousness given to us on our behalf. In 2 Peter 2:7Lot is described as righteous, but we’ve seen in this text that he was anything but! His righteousness had to come from someone else, someone who didn’t hesitate.

-Which gets us to the second piece to take away, don’t become complacent in your fight against sin. Lot looked at the world through a purely materialistic lens and chose the place of sin to plant himself, which then got worse and worse in his life to the point where he loses his wife and becomes his grandkids father. Friends, how often are we placing ourselves in situations where it’s easier for us to give in to sin and that slowly eats away at us? Really practically, I see this taking place with people’s relationship to the church. It takes time and effort to remain involved and invested in the family of God, yet how often do people not even consider the church when they think about where they’ll live or work? We had a family at the church I was at in CO decide to move to a small town in Idaho for a better job with better pay, and after they moved they couldn’t find a church and a year later started calling one of the other pastors on staff for help in their marriage and family because they had no support system around them. And they’re not that unique, unfortunately. A book came out 2 years ago titled ‘The Great Dechurching’ that did one of the biggest surveys of people who left church and the biggest reason was because people got busy and then never got plugged back in. The good news is most of the people who were asked said they would love to go back if someone invited them! So friends, invite your neighbors! Easter’s coming up, that’s a great time to invite others to join you!

-Third and finally, we’ve seen the example of the need for Christians to be hospitable. Many people believe the author of Hebrews is alluding to this passage in Heb. 13. But this command is also repeated by Peter and Paul, so when you add all these passages together, you’re left with an explicit command: be hospitable! Look for ways to be a blessing to others, even your home isn’t supposed to be just for you, it’s supposed to be a refuge for those battered by the storms of life. There’s a lot of needy people out there, and not just materially! People can be spiritually impoverished but materially wealthy, and God care about them too. So what are you doing to be hospitable? What is 1 step you can take today to be more hospitable and be a blessing to those nearby you? Arrive ministries needs financial help, youth group who made blessing bags to hand out to homeless people when they’re driving

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by mikethestrand on March 16, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Tagged abraham, Bible, genesis, God, lot

Posted by mikethestrand on March 16, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/16/genesis-18-19-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 17 – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you ever been a part of a club that had a secret sign? In my early 20s, I found out I accidentally had joined a club that had a specific sign, but no one told me what that sign was, so I kept getting dirty looks when I was participating in it and didn’t realize. Shortly after I graduated from college I bought a motorcycle, and no, my mom was NOT happy about it!

-But I soon discovered that there is this thing called a “motorcycle wave” but it’s not at all like a normal wave, there’s a very specific way of waving whilst driving the motorcycle (and keep in mind how many things you’re also trying to manage: throttle in the right hand, brake with the left hand, shifting with your foot, another brake with your other foot), the motorcycle was is 2 fingers angled down at 45 degrees, like this. Once I learned the “code” I was off to the races, and an official motorcycle driver! Since then, I’ve learned that Jeeps have wave, VW Bugs have little flowers in their cars, and Texas Tech Red Raiders like to shoot em up.

-Today’s text is like learning the code to enter a club, but this club is being a part of God’s chosen covenant people. Let’s read:

READ/PRAY

God’s Commitment (1-8)

-Left off last week with Abram being 86 when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, now we’re jumping ahead 13 years to another pivotal moment in Abram’s life. But once again, don’t forget that we’re reading a condensed account of his life. We moved 1 verse and jumped ahead 13 years!

-And based on what we read last week, I’m guessing they weren’t the easiest 13 years of Abram’s life: contention between Hagar and Sarai, trying to care for and raise his son, who’s not related to his wife. Yikes!

-So Abram’s closing in on his centennial birthday, and God once again appears to him. Some weird phrasing:

-Begins with who He is (God Almighty) proceeds to an ethical command for Abram, literally tells Abram to walk before Him and be blameless. This phrasing has been used before to describe someone else in the Genesis story:

-Noah was described the same way, so Abram is following in the line of God’s chosen people: being called by God, declared righteous, blameless in character, and walking with God.

-I want to take some time to think about that reality, because I think it’s a piece that has been glossed over or dismissed in our world today, and that is the imperatives of the gospel. I would argue that we’ve nailed the indicatives, but to the neglect of the imperatives. And if you didn’t realize you were coming to an English lesson today, just wait and it will make sense!

-An indicative is a fact, imperative is a command, and the Bible has both. An example of an imperative is: Jesus died for you, or Noah was a righteous man. The imperative is seen with Abram: walk in front of me and be blameless. And that’s also true of us today, because if we are saved, then we are declared righteous, we are made holy, but then we also are commanded to live differently, to live lives that are marked by that righteousness. I love the way Paul talks about this in Gal. 5: Do you see the indicatives and imperatives here? Just as there are some truths given to Abram, there are some truths given to us: those who have been saved belong to Christ Jesus, we have crucified the flesh, but the imperative is: walk by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit.

-I don’t know about you, but when I hear that, I think of my kids whose steps are significantly shorter than mine. When I take them shopping with me I regularly need to look back and encourage them to keep up! That’s not at all what is intended by Paul here, the imagery isn’t us running to keep up, a better picture would be when I go on walks with just Cara and don’t have to try to prod our kids to hurry up! We are able to keep in step with each other, enjoying the company, the time, the conversation. That’s what Paul means here: working together for the same goal, which in the case of the Spirit is becoming more like Jesus. I think you even see that with Abram here, God tells Abram to walk in front of God, which means God has his back, Abram can’t get away from Him, but there’s also the imperative to Abram: be blameless. Live a holy and set apart life. The indicative LEADS to the imperative, but the imperative will never get you to the indicative. Friends, we are all called to live a blameless life, but if you try doing it in your own power and strength apart from the Spirit you’ll constantly be falling short. Live a holy life, but do it by relying on God. This is why the outline to this sermon is so important: it begins with God’s commitment, but then moves to see what He commands His people to do. You can’t separate those 2 things, if we are saved it must lead to holy living.

-Why does God then go on to say He will set up His covenant, hasn’t He already done that? Yes, but He continues to reiterate and further explain the implications of the covenant. And Abram responds correctly: falling facedown in worship (this time), and God promises Abram that he will become the father of many nations, which requires a name change.

-Abram means exalted father, Abraham means father of a multitude. His first name looks back to his past, most likely the exalted father was Abram’s father Terah, but now God has picked him out from all the other peoples of the earth and is shifting the focus from his past to his future as now every time someone calls out his name it’s a reminder of God’s promise to him.

-Not only that, but God will fulfill His promises: Abraham will be fruitful, nations and kings will come, and this covenant will be passed down to the generations that come from Abraham, nothing can change that! Abraham’s blessing will happen: land, seed, and blessing. Just like what Adam & Eve were given back in the beginning: a perfect garden to care for, offspring to help them fill the earth, and the blessing of everything they could need in perfect relationship with God and each other. Abraham is supposed to be a new Adam, starting over with a new people in a new place to be God’s representatives on earth.

-But just as in Eden, there are stipulations, requirements that God has for Abraham:

God’s Commands (9-16)

-Here the stipulation isn’t to avoid eating from 1 tree, it’s to practice circumcision. If you don’t know what circumcision is, I’ll let you ask someone sitting nearby you!

-Circumcision is meant to be the marker of God’s people here. Every male is commanded to go through the process, and there’s even a time stipulated: 8 days. This is meant to point us back to creation because what happens on the 8^th day? Correct, nothing! It’s meant to signify a new creation (which is also why Jesus is raised on the 8^th day, reinterpreting even this act). And it’s supposed to be an act that everyone does who is brought into this people, slaves, family members, no one is left out.

-And the Lord goes on to say why this is significant. Yes, it’s a physical act, but that physical act signifies a spiritual reality. Just as God’s covenant with Abraham is permanent, so the sign of the covenant is permanent.

-And there’s also negative implications to anyone who doesn’t obey these markers: just as the foreskin is cut of in the act of circumcision, so anyone who does not obey this sign of the covenant will be cut off from his people. If someone refuses to identify themselves with God, God will refuse to identify Himself with them. The marker that you belong to God is circumcision.

-And just as Abram’s name was changed, now it’s time for his wife: Sarai to Sarah, not a major change and both words mean the same thing: princess or queen. What is unique is there is some evidence that Sarai would have been the spelling in Ur, Sarah would have been the spelling in Canaan, shifting their focus from the past to the future. God is changing their primary allegiances and planting them in a new land so that they can have their children and be blessed.

-And remember, the most important thing we’ve learned about Sarah so far is that she’s barren, but now God says specifically that she will give birth to a son.

-How does Abraham respond? This is where we go back to God’s commitment to Abraham:

God’s Commitment, Part 2 (17-22)

-Once again, Abraham falls facedown, but this time he laughs, and that laughing idea is going to be a minor theme to pay attention to for the next couple of chapters, so find some way to make a note in your mind about laughing for the next few weeks.

-This time, Abraham laughs and mutters under his breath instead of talking to God, because Abraham is looking at his life and realizing that what God’s promised here seems impossible. Abraham is almost 100, his wife is a young and spry 90.

-Let me tell you how absolutely miserable that sounds! After surviving the sleepless nights of babies, I have zero desire to go back to the infant days, and I can only imagine that will be even more true the older I get! Having babies is a young man’s game. And I can only imagine how Abraham felt about that idea! So then Abraham says to God: what about my son?

-And God answers that taking matters into his own hands isn’t the correct way to receive God’s blessing. Not only will Sarah have a son, but his name is also supposed to be Isaac, which means “he laughs,” so where Abraham laughs in disbelief, his son will be a constant reminder of God’s provision. And the laughing son is the one who will continue the covenant line, not Ishmael. Ishmael will still be blessed by God, but only materially.

-And that’s an alarming place to be, and something that God threatens throughout the rest of the OT: His people can have His blessing, but He won’t go with them. And friends, is that ever true of you too?

-How often do we only consider our Christianity in comparison to all the other things people could try? That’s some of where our evangelism is difficult today because we’re just 1 in a myriad of competing options. The way people often respond is “I’m glad that worked for you, but here’s what’s working for me.” And how often do we just fall into that same temptation? We’re following Jesus because it seems to just work for us. But what do you do then when things get difficult, or following Jesus no longer seems to be working? Don’t forget that Jesus is the King, we spent an entire year last year looking at that reality in Revelation, where we see the point of this story, what it’s ultimately pointing to is a child coming from Abraham who will be a blessing to the entire world because He provides a way for people to be reconciled to the one true and living God! But that doesn’t come about through our efforts or work, it’s only by being obedient to Him. Ishmael serves as an example of God’s blessing apart from His presence, which isn’t worth anything in eternity, and is a reminder that what the world chases after isn’t the same as the things God wants for His people. And then God leaves after this promise.

God’s Commands, Part 2 (23-27)

-And Abraham obeys, at least this time! And one thing to note about this process is that Abraham is completely entrusting himself to God for this to work out. The very means by which Abraham will be able to have descendants is at risk of being cut off with an errant stroke of a knife, but he’s slowly learning to trust God.

-Now I’m not sure how this conversation would go with the rest of his people, but Abraham convinces them all to be obedient, I can just picture every guy going “you want us to do WHAT?!” But they’re all obedient to Abraham, and ultimately to God’s commands which is a good example for us to follow too: we should look to obey what God commands us to do, even if it doesn’t make sense.

-But that gets us to 2 primary responses for us from this text: the first is that you can do all the things God commands without being a part of God’s covenant people, and the second is the command for all to be circumcised, just not a physical circumcision. We’ll look at both of those ideas in turn

-First, the need to obey God as a fruit and not as the root.

-The temptation for every human is to obey God to try to get something from him. We look at the rules as a burden instead of a gift, as the means by which we stay as God’s covenant people, but that’s not the intent. The rules are the way God has ordered the world so it’s His gift to us to help us understand how to function and flourish as God intended the world to operate, and the reality is until our hearts are transformed it’s going to feel like a heavy burden. But when Jesus comes, He tell us that His yolk is easy and His burden is light, and it is, but only when you’ve been brought spiritually from death to life. Then those rules that felt like an unfair burden suddenly become our desires, meaning they’re the fruit of a transformed life. And that’s what we see in Ishmael: his obedience doesn’t make him a part of God’s covenant people, nor does it lead to a transformed heart.

-The second is the command for all of us to be circumcised, but not in the way this passage talks about!

-The point of circumcision wasn’t just the physical act, because just a few books later, look at what God commands His people: Deut. 10

-Again, we see God’s commands to be holy and walk in the ways of the Lord, and the way to do that is by obeying God’s commands. But then notice what God says about circumcision: don’t circumcise your body, circumcise your hearts! This tells us the point of circumcision has always been to have a transformed heart (in the OT that’s referring to your inner most being). That is being sensitive to following and obeying God.

-And Paul picks up this idea in Rom. 4 when he talks about righteousness not coming through external observance of the law, but through faith! Notice that Paul makes an explicit connection to the timing of Abraham being declared righteous and circumcision, and the reason Paul states this is because of the division in the early church. The early church became fixated on circumcision as the sign of the covenant, to the point that unless a male was circumcised he was viewed as not truly being a part of God’s people.

-Which leads to Paul getting so frustrated in Galatians that he says this: Gal. 5. Friends, at this point in salvation history, circumcision has no bearing on anything. What matters now, and what Paul says is “faith working through love” other translations state this as “faith expressing itself through love.”

-When we’re tempted to look to our external obedience, or add markers to be “better” this is a reminder than nothing we do adds to our holiness, what we’re called to be is circumcised in the heart, and just as this was meant to be a permanent marker, so is our salvation meant to be a permanent marker where we now live differently because of the faith we now have.

-Because circumcision doesn’t matter anymore, we now have new markers of God’s people, which Paul summarized here as faith expressing itself through love. But God has also given us new habits that mark us out: baptism and communion.

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by mikethestrand on March 9, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Tagged abraham, Bible, faith, genesis, God

Posted by mikethestrand on March 9, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/09/genesis-17-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 15 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the amazing things about having kids is realizing that they are born sinners! It’s not something I teach them, apart from my own sinful struggles! And you start to see the way they each have their own unique temptations from a young age.

-For example, my twins are currently learning how to disobey at 16 months! It’s been slowly building up in them, but as of now, Thomas is GREAT at throwing fits when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, and what he wanted all weekend was to be downstairs where I’m still trying to finish it, so if the downstairs door closed with him on the other side of it he went ballistic! Throwing himself on the floor, screaming, crying.

-Charlie is our adventurous twin who loves climbing up on everything, the problem is he also often falls down from where he climbed, or gets stuck between two things (like the chair and the table) because he can’t think further ahead than right now. Where it gets hard is when we repeatedly tell him NO and he continues doing whatever he wants! All of this means that in addition to learning how to disobey, they’re also starting to learn Newton’s third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction! Climbing means you may get stuck, disobeying means there will be discipline.

-And the hard thing to communicate to children is that it continues even for adults! There are consequences to everything we do, some of the consequences are positive while others are negative. Each decision brings us either closer to the Lord or further away from Him. Today’s text demonstrates for us the means by which God saves His people: by taking all the negative consequences on Himself.

READ/PRAY

-If you haven’t been here for this series, here’s what we’ve learned of Abram so far:

-Grew up as an idol worshipper, yet was called out by God to begin a new people, which started with Abram leaving his friends, family, and lands, and going to a new place

-God promises to bless Abram with land, seed, and blessing, and that through Abram the entire world would be blessed. So far we’ve seen the land become barren, his wife is barren, and the blessing is supposed to come through seed.

-Last week was Abram’s Aragorn moment: let’s go hunt some giants! Rescued Lot and his family from destruction, is blessed by Melchizedek (Christ-like figure)

The Reward of the Lord (1-6)

-After these events: doesn’t say how long after, we know from Gen. 12 that Abram was 75 when the first call came, then in 17:4 he’s 99, so these events are occurring sometime over a 24-year period.

-Friends, have you ever wavered in your faith or confidence in God over the last 24 years? 24 years ago I was living in ND, unaware that I’d be moving to MN in a year and have my entire life upended! (I was 12, so it didn’t take much to upend my life) But I say that to keep in mind that we’re seeing decades of life over the course of just a couple chapters here, it’s good to see the ups and downs of his life, but don’t jump to judging him (at least too quickly, next week is a pretty dark moment in his life)

-The word of the Lord came: this becomes a theme in the rest of the OT, Abram is the first in the line of prophets who receive words from the Lord Himself! This is pointing to one of the ways we’re supposed to see themes emerging as we read Scripture where God gives His people glimpses or pictures of what’s to come. Jesus comes and fills the 3 roles necessary to approach God: prophet to speak on His behalf, priest mediate the way between God and humanity, and king to rule over God’s kingdom. Here we’re seeing Abram in the line of the priests, but we’ll also see God promise to have kings come from him, and Abram’s priestly role in just a couple chapters where the Lord tells a pagan king that Abram can interceded on behalf of this king.

-But what God says is emphasizing that God is giving Abram Himself, in light of the deliverance from the kings of last chapter (who may be tempted to come back again, which would be normal at this time!)

-That’s why God begins with shield. God will protect and preserve Abram from even future invading forces. Abram doesn’t need to be afraid if God is on his side

-But there’s still some doubt in Abram’s mind. How would he receive a reward if he has no children?

-One thing to note is that Abram isn’t chastised for these questions. In some cases when people question God it’s called out as a negative thing, a demonstration of a lack of faith. But that’s not this case. One of the best prayers recorded in the Bible is in Mark 9:24. A father brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus and says “If you can do anything, please help us!” Jesus replies, “If you can? Everything in possible for one who believes.” The father replies:

-Friends, what areas of your life are you struggling to believe that God is good and wants good for you in? Where do you need to cry out to the Lord and ask for Him to help your unbelief? There’s a reason God meets here with Abram to remind Him of His promises, and many times God will meet someone at whatever their deepest hurt or perceived need is.

-Abram here is worried about being childless, that’s a major issue in the 2^ndmillennia BC. No nursing homes, no social security to depend on, who’s going to take care of Abram and Sarai in their old age? It was the custom to choose an heir, in response to them caring for you, they would receive your inheritance after they died, which is what they had done! How does God respond?

-Nope! That’s not what I said! “One who comes from your own body.”

-Some debate about how many covenants are in the Bible, what events should be included, who did God make a covenant with? Adam, Noah, Abram, Moses, David. But as careful readers of the text, this language will come up again:

–2 Sam. 7:12 “come from your body,” aligning David’s covenant with Abram’s covenant, they all keep building on each other! What this tells us is God always keeps His promises. God is a covenant making, and a covenant keeping God. Whatever God says He will do! So trust Him!

-To demonstrate just how expansive his generosity to Abram will be, God invites Abram outside and tells him to count the stars.

-Last week was trying to count dust, has anyone ever tried to count stars? Quick Google search tells me that the most you can see on a dark night would be about 2,000 stars, but we so often can’t see the stars because of light pollution, but if you’ve even gone up north you’ll see some incredible views! Here’s one I took at Shamineau this Fall. If we took enough time we could count them, but that’s not what God is saying, He’s saying His plans are far greater than Abram could even imagine, and the promise to Abram even continues down to us today! We’re included in that numbering. See Abram’s only thinking about 1 generation, WAY too small! Instead he should be thinking of hundreds of generations that would come after him!

-But he believes, and I would assume asks God for help with his unbelief. And this verse becomes a key theme for the argument Paul makes in the book of Romans. Paul is working to answer the question: if we’re all sinners, how are we justified (made right) before a holy God? It can’t be through our works, because we could never do enough good works to achieve salvation. Instead it has to come from outside of us, an alien righteousness that is given to us, or as this text says “credited to him.” The means by which this righteousness is given is through belief. That’s the only way to be credited as righteous, it comes through faith, that is belief in God alone.

-And Paul uses this example in Abram to tell us that this promise is as true for us today as it was for Abram 5,000 years ago. Being in right standing before God hasn’t ever changed, the means by which you are able to approach Him has always been by faith. All the sacrifices and rules of the OT are meant to demonstrate that no one can perfectly obey God through their own works, it demands someone else obeying perfectly for us, then taking the penalty for our inability to obey on Himself so that His righteousness could be given to us. But there is a hinge point: faith.

-I never want to assume that everyone in here has taken that step and put their faith in Jesus, AND this gospel message is just as needed for those who believe as those who don’t yet believe. For those who don’t yet believe, what are you waiting for? This text is showing us the way to become righteous, the way to find comfort and peace in a broken and chaotic world, take that step! And for those who believe, Paul tells us this truth in Gal. 3:

-And this is something I’ve been praying for us: to realize that we can do nothing to save ourselves or keep ourselves saved. We begin and end by the grace of God. Even our spiritual disciplines won’t by themselves change us, the Spirit is the one who grows us. Now, as I shared a couple weeks ago, we’re commanded to work out our own salvation, but recognize that it is God who wills and works in you.

-Friends: pray daily that you would believe and that God would help your unbelief! That’s how you can be counted among the righteous.

-Because the Lord is kind and gracious, He goes on to solidify this promise with Abram:

The Evidence of Things Unseen (7-21)

-As careful readers of the Bible, this first phrase should have special significance for us, can you think of another place where the Lord says something eerily similar? After delivering His people out from Egypt in Ex. 20. Abram is serving as the prototype of what’s to come for God’s people, we’re seeing glimpses of a divine design, an intent behind all the events that take place in this story. Because of the divine author of this text, we should expect to find repetition, glimpses of the story coming together throughout it, themes emerging, and we do! But at times I worry that we miss the bigger story for the individual little stories, we become far too granular in our approach, which is why I always try to show us where we see God’s story unfolding in the text.

-While the nation of Israel is in physical slavery, Abram was in spiritual slavery: worshipping false gods, then God saves Abram and delivers him out of bondage. Similarly for us, we were once slaves to sin, but through faith we can become slaves to righteousness (which is the way to find life). This isn’t a story about being a better person, or a list of 5 ways to grow your faith, it’s a story about God’s good plan to redeem a people for Himself and then using those people as His ambassadors of reconciliation – healing in a broken and divided world.

-And just as Abram was unconvinced about the promise to provide an heir, he’s also unconvinced by this promise to possess the land. So he asks the Lord how he’ll know. And the Lord accommodates Himself to something Abram would understand.

-This whole thing sounds like a bloody spectacle to us. Why is Abram cutting all these animals in half? What’s the point of any of it? When’s the last time you even saw an animal butchered? For me it was when I was about 10, and that was enough to last me the rest of my life.

-Number of ANE documents that talk about it, but this idea comes up again in Jer. 34:18. The way covenants would be enacted is you make a verbal agreement, then cut apart animals and both parties walk through the bloody middle of the carcasses, as a symbol of the curse you’re calling up on yourself if you break the covenant. Essentially, it’s saying that you’re agreeing to follow through on everything you’ve agreed to, or else you forfeit your right to life. This feels so foreign to us because we have ways of breaking out of everything! The closest parallel we have is marriage, but even in marriage with the rise of no-fault divorce that doesn’t come close to the way covenants were held to here!

-And I think the accommodation piece is something we miss: God could have just told Abram what He tells Moses “I am who I am” that’s sufficient for people to trust in Him, but He doesn’t. He uses the typical method people used to make a covenant, a promise with each other. He meets Abram just where he is instead of forcing him to adopt to something completely new, which is what God does for all of us! He meets us where we’re at, but doesn’t leave us there. He moves us (often far more slowly than we want) closer to Him, step by step.

-After Abram takes care of the animals, he has to ensure they’re not eaten! Birds of prey are used throughout the rest of the OT to refer to other foreign nations, potentially signifying the way God would protect Israel in the future. A deep sleep descends.

-This has been used previously in Genesis, back when God created Eve for Adam and then brings them together in the covenant of marriage. This time the covenant is between Abram and the Lord, but the idea of marriage permeates the rest of the OT as God is pursuing His people, His bride.

-Something unique about this experience with the Lord, because it’s the first time Abram is seen as being scared to be in the presence of God. Adam was scared, Jacob gets scared, Moses gets scared, the nation of Israel is scared, but Abram hadn’t been until now. Doesn’t say why, but it could be connected to what God proceeds to say:

-The land will most certainly belong to Abram’s descendants, but it’s going to take a while. A few things to note:

-Resident aliens where they will be slaves. This is setting us up for the Exodus account, where this book will end with Israel in Egypt, just like Abram’s journey. And just as Abram came out wealthy, they too will come out wealthy.

-But this doesn’t apply to Abram: he’ll have a long and healthy life. And why this time of waiting? Because the sin of the Amorites. They’re the people who are currently living in Canaan. And this verse is incredibly important! Because there’s all sorts of accusations today that God is genocidal! The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel destroying all the inhabitants of the promised land. And this verse tells us exactly why: they were a sinful people! Which means the destruction is just. It’s not like they were completely innocent bystanders who get stuck in crossfire, these are a brutal people! On my trip this summer, I got to go to the British Museum, here’s a glimpse of the Assyrians victory: the slaughter of children. And they put these on the gates to “welcome” people in. Amorites would have done the same thing! It’s a brutal world! So when we read about the conquest of Israel, these are the kind of people they’re defeating.

-And as Abram continues sleeping deeply, a theophany (appearance of God) walks through the divided animals, but not with Abram. That is incredibly important! This is why we spent so much time on the faith part at the beginning.

-A covenant is an agreement between 2 people that says if they break it they will be just like the animals, but if God made a covenant with Abram (or any human) it would never work. We’re sinners all the way down so we would never be able to uphold our end of the deal, and God knows that! So he makes the covenant by Himself, and tells Abram the length of his promised land, but the point is the covenant is dependent only on God keeping His word.

-Just as we’ve seen in many previous weeks, the author of Hebrews picks up on this idea in Heb. 6. Who else could God make a covenant with? No one else has more power, no one else will completely obey every component, no one else will do except God Himself.

-Which means when the consequences of breaking this covenant are inflected, God Himself will be torn apart like the carcasses. Do we see that happen anywhere in Scripture? When Jesus’ body was ripped apart and hung on a cross. If you didn’t know, this year is the 1700^th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, a statement of what all Christians throughout history have believed, and I love the way they summarized what Jesus did:

-Friends, Jesus bore the consequences for humanity’s repeated breaking of God’s covenant. But because of Jesus, we now have hope, which the author of Hebrews goes on to summarize:

-Friends, our freedom from sin is as guaranteed as the tomb is empty. Jesus is right now in heaven interceding for us, preparing a place for us, and the means by which we access it is faith. Either saving faith, or continual faith that prays “I believe, help my unbelief.”

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by mikethestrand on February 23, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Tagged abraham, Bible, faith, genesis, God

Posted by mikethestrand on February 23, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/02/23/genesis-15-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 13-14 – Sermon Manuscript

-Grew up loving jokes, discovered you could find whole books full of them! I know I drove my parents nuts with them, but I even took it a step further and compiled all my favorite jokes into a book that I printed and gave to my parents (I was homeschooled, we had to come up with our own kind of fun)

-What’s frustrating is my mom stole one of my jokes, and now tells it as her 1 joke that she knows: who’s bigger, Mr. Bigger or Mr. Bigger’s baby? Mr. Bigger’s baby is a LITTLE Bigger. (next time she comes make sure you laugh if she tells you that joke)

-But another one was: what’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm in your apple. And that joke has a bite to it, because I’m sure many of you have had an experience like that at some point in your life: bite into a delicious apple only to find out it’s rotten, take a big swig of milk before you realize it’s curdled on you. Or maybe you’ve gotten into that Netflix show “Is It Cake?” where the contestants compete to trick judges with their cakes that look like their real-life counterparts, yes one of those objects is a cake.

-How many times do things that appear wonderful at first glance just prove to be a veneer hiding something rotten underneath? I remember growing up idolizing Michael Jordan (in addition to being homeschooled I grew up in the 90s and my name is Michael, come on!) I wanted Air Jordan shoes, I had his jersey, watched as many games as my parents would let me stay up for. Turns out the guys a royal jerk! Trash talking, belittling teammates, gambling problem. I wouldn’t want his life for all his money! Sounds absolutely miserable! I’m sure you have someone like that: celebrity, influencer, hero, maybe even someone sitting next to you who seems like they have their life together (spoiler alert: they don’t!)

-You’ve probably heard the old phrase: grass is always greener on the other side, but that’s only true from the outside looking in! And you’ve probably heard the other old phrase that should go along with it: appearances can be deceiving.

-Friends, one of the realities about us is we need to meet together every week to be reminded what’s really real, what’s truly true. The world looks enticing, the world appears wonderful, but it’s fake! The church is here to remind us to look at the world from a heavenly perspective, and that changes the way we can engage the world. Today’s text reveals that truth to us in Abram’s life as we look at the difference between looking at the world through eyes of faith, or eyes tainted by sin.

READ/PRAY

-Summary of last week: Abram’s been promised land, seed, and blessing from God, but he’s not completely trusting in that plan. Barren wife, barren land, flees to Egypt where he throws his wife to the whims of a Pharoah (all while not calling on the name of the Lord or building altars), so then we’re up to this week’s text where we’ll continue to see the development of Abram’s faith:

Return to the Promised Land (13:1-18)

-Return back to the same place he left from (southern Canaan)

-Reminder that Abram had become very wealthy (remember how?), but his wealth didn’t extend to children, just livestock, silver, and gold.

-Egypt was a parenthesis, he’s now back where he’s supposed to be, the land promised to be his from God, and he’s back to calling on the name of the Lord again. Do you think he learned his lesson? (Not completely, as we’ll see later!)

-Lot, Abram’s nephew, has also been traveling with Abram, and has his own wealth that he needs to take care of. But they reach the age-old place of “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us.”

-2 things I think we should take away from this as careful readers of the text: first is the land once again appears to be barren, at least in provision for what Abram thinks it should be. Remember that God has promised to give this land to Abram and his descendants, but now they’ve reached a place where the land isn’t able to support 2 groups of people. Abram has become the leader of a multitude of people already (we’ll see that again in a few verses) but Lot is a tag-along at this point. God hasn’t promised Lot anything! It’s ONLY through Lot’s proximity to Abram that he’ll be blessed.

-Second is the question (again) of whether or not they have enough faith in God’s provision. The land was barren once before, and Abram fled to Egypt and gave up his wife to protect himself. Now, God had provided for Abram despite his disobedience, but will that continue?

-Starts to affect their families: herdsmen begin to fight. And it’s not just an empty land their dealing with, there’s also others living there that they’ll also need to deal with!

-Abram determines to deal with the problem: we have the whole country ahead of us, there’s no reason to continue fighting and staying here, so Abram gives the choice to Lot

-As the older, he had every right to tell Lot to beat it! But he doesn’t. Are we starting to see Abram’s faith growing as he’s starting to trust that whatever choice Lot makes, God will continue providing for him? I think so! And I think the text demonstrates that as we continue

-Lot looks out to the East and sees where the grass is greener and decides to pursue it. Can you think of any other places in Genesis where something appears beautiful at first glance?

-When the world fell apart in Gen. 3, look at the way the tree is described. Yes, it may look appealing at first glance, but the consequences are horrible!

-But not only is the grass greener on that side, Moses describes it very intentionally: ‘like the Lord’s garden” recalling the very beginning of this book, but notice the parenthetical note, because for the first readers this would have made no sense. The destruction of these cities is coming rendering this area useless. How could it be described like the Lord’s garden? Because it hasn’t been destroyed yet!

-Now, just as I said at the beginning, appearances can be deceiving, look at vs. 13. We can assume Lot would have known at least something about Sodom, they’d been in this area before, but Lot doesn’t care, he just wants the choicest land for himself.

-Journeyed eastward (vs. 11): East has been a theme throughout Genesis, and it’s never been positive. 3:24, 4:16, 11:2 – always negative, not moving towards the way God wants the people to go

-Lot is moving towards the sinners, we know where this story will end: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and notice the trajectory of Lot as we continue through this story: he begins “near” Sodom, keep that in your mind because his proximity to Sodom will come up again

-One of the pieces to keep in mind throughout this whole thing is that we’ve seen that God will bless whoever blesses Abram, so why wouldn’t you figure out a way to be near him? It reminds me of what my parents used to ask me when I was growing up: who are you spending time with, what kind of people are you in proximity to? Because it will affect the way you live.

-Lot chooses what appears to be the choicest spot, looks fantastic, but unfortunately it’s the land of evil. After Lot leaves, the Lord tells Abram that nothing will be left out of his possession. This land will be his in every direction. And now the promise is expanding: offspring more numerous than dust.

-Have you ever tried counting dust? I can’t even try counting the dog hair that ends in our house! No matter how much we vacuum there sems to be more dog hair than we can track! And here God is telling Abram to try counting the dust of the entire earth!

-This section ends reminding us that Abram is once again following in the steps of the Lord.

The Chase (14:1-16)

-Every single one of our choices has consequences, sometime the consequences are positive and sometimes they’re negative. The story shifts here to a story about a group of kings that sound like they’re coming out of LOTR.

-Many scholars believe this was a well-known story that Moses was borrowing from when he recounted this story in the Bible, because if you look at vs. 13 it describes Abram as a Hebrew, but the Hebrew people didn’t exist yet!

-Not much is known about these kings, not a lot of other content outside of this text written about them so we have to make some speculations about them (some from other texts in the Bible)

-The focus is what would take place frequently in the ANE: kings would conquer other kings and subject them to their service. Then there would be rebellions and infighting, territories won and territories lost. And all this background is to lead us to a battle that includes the king of Sodom (where Lot had pitched his tent). Some notes about these kings:

-Shinar- plain where Babylon is, last time we heard of Shinar was with Nimrod, mighty hunter, warrior

-Arioch – name that most likely means tall

-Chedorlaomer – leader of this group, king of kings

-Tidal is described as “of Goiim” – Hebrew word that means nations, which means he most likely runs an entire empire

-All these kings defeated the Rephaim (vs. 5), this means nothing to us, but the Rephaim turn up in 2 other places in the Bible: Deut 2:20, Deut. 3:11. These dudes are HUGE!

-All this to say that this is a formidable force that Abram is deciding to attack. Giants, multitude of them.

-And what does it say about Lot? (vs. 12) He went from living NEAR to living IN Sodom. The world tends to corrupt! I wonder if the Psalmist was reflecting on this idea when he penned Psalm 1 (which I preached on in 2021) but notice the progression of the wicked: walk, stand, sit. You progressively become more comfortable in the company of the wicked, they start to wear you down, so you end up planting yourself among them, which it seems Lot is doing. He moves near, then moves in, and in a couple chapters will continue living among them and understand their entire custom.

-But that doesn’t change Abram’s approach. He’s committed to Lot’s welfare, so he assembles his mighty men – if there’s 318 fighting men, Abram has assembled a significant force of people most likely numbering in the thousands. But think of where else in Scripture we’ve seen people facing these exact same odds:

–1 Sam. 30 – David has the city of Ziklag attacked, 400 men pursue and defeat their enemies. 400 isn’t much more than 318.

-What about Gideon? Started with 32,000 men, but the Lord kept whittling them down, and he ended with 300 men, and he also ambushed his enemies by night

-Moses sees the theme here of a conquering hero who puts himself at risk to “take captivity captive’ (Eph. 4:8)

-This is pointing forward to Jesus, where Jesus describes his ministry as binding the strong man, to bring back His bride, the church. And this whole picture is beginning here back in the early chapter of Genesis.

-Abram’s Aragorn moment – defeats this unstoppable force, just like Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli at the end of FOTR

–Psalm 110:5 – this Psalm as a reflection of Gen. 14, destruction of kings and meditation on Melchizedek. This descendent will shatter kings and crush leaders (roash head SINGULAR, the seed of the serpent) picking up Abram’s defeat over kings, and then focusing on Melchizedek (we’ll get there)

-But what’s fascinating about this is the response of all these leaders of the 300ish people: Abram uses the wealth to worship God, David uses the wealth for the building of the temple, Jesus uses the wealth to build the church, Gideon uses it to build an idol.

-Friends, what do you do with the gifts of the Lord? God’s gifts are meant to be things that point us to Him, that we can use to worship and glorify Him, or they can become idols that distract us from Him and turn into tokens that we use to worship ourselves instead. What do you do with God’s provision in your life?

The Reward (14:17-24)

-Abram is blessed, but 2 kings are contrasted here (city of God, or city of man?) Is he going to follow the king of Sodom or the king of Salem (peace)

-Bread and wine (communion?), tithes are taken, almost reads like a church service!

-Abram is recipient of the blessing of God, but there are other God worshippers who are also blessing Abram, which is exactly what God had predicted earlier.

-These two elements that Mel brings out have previously been connected to the curse.

-Bread (Gen. 3:19 eat the bread because of the curse)

-Noah gets drunk wine (Gen. 9:21), now it’s reinterpreted as a blessing,

-Then there’s the Passover meal where the God’s people take bread and wine together

-Finally, Jesus reinterprets it in light of his death, burial, and resurrection, AND His future coming. Friends, when we celebrate communion, we’re not just doing a meaningless celebration, we’re connecting it all the way back to Melchizedek who uses theses implications of the curse as a blessing for the people who worship the one true God. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jesus uses bread and wine, the implications of the fall, as his marker of celebration for those who are His people in the new covenant. The strong man has been bound, the captives have been taken captive, and He’s declaring to Satan that He is in charge.

-Then the king of Sodom (in contrast to Mel) offers earthly riches to Abram, but Abram denies him. He’ll have no part in earthly pursuits, his aim is to follow after the 1 true God, and he’s starting to trust that God will provide for him.

-As we conclude, the big question from this text is how are viewing the world? Lot shows us the depravity of looking at the world through human lenses, and Abram shows us the blessing that comes from looking at the world through a Godly lens. One leads to life, and one leads to death.

-Friends: stop comparing yourself to those around you, or even sitting next to you, God has different plans for them. Stop comparing yourself to your neighbors, your job is to be a representative of the one true God to them. Stop trying to achieve things the world wants, and instead work to build the things that will lead to an eternal reward. That’s what Abram eventually builds towards that’s what Lot should have built for, and it’s what we have the opportunity to build for today.

Pastor Mike's Musings

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Genesis 24 – Sermon Manuscript

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Genesis 21 – Sermon Manuscript

Genesis 20 – Sermon Manuscript

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Genesis 17 – Sermon Manuscript

Genesis 15 – Sermon Manuscript

Genesis 13-14 – Sermon Manuscript

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