Latest / Belin Memorial UMC / Pastor George Howle - "God, Family, and Nation"
Transcript
- Belin Memorial UMC: Today I want to read to you from the lectionary, ⁓ Genesis, the twenty-fourth chapter, ⁓ ⁓ in the ⁓ thirty-fourth verse. ⁓ Now, this is the story of Abraham sending his top servant, a servant that was in charge of all of his possessions, to go to the Ur of Chaldees and find a wife for his son Isaac. It was an arranged marriage. And so when you go home, I want you to read this whole chapter so you will understand this wonderful, beautiful story. And so he said, I am Abraham's servant. The Lord has blessed my master greatly, and he has become great. He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. And Sarah, my master's wife, bore a son to my master when she was old, and to him he has given all that he has. Now my master made me swear, said the servant, saying, You shall take a wife for my son, not from the daughters of the Canaanites, but in the land in which I dwell. But you shall go to my father's house and to my kindred and take a wife for my son. I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July. I hope you had a great celebration of our 250th birthday. Two hundred and fifty years. It's amazing that our republic has lasted so long. 250 years. Last Sunday I was in the sanctuary and Will Willeman preached one of the, I met Will Millambri, preached one of the best sermons I've ever heard him preach. It was a patriotic sermon without being political. Now, I want you to know that that is a very difficult thing to do. Only someone as smart as Will could pull something like that off. In my forty-five, forty-six years of ministry, I I have learned that you don't preach politics. Because as soon as you bring politics into the sermon, As soon as you pick a position, a political position, it doesn't matter which side you're on, this side or that side. It doesn't matter you're going to offend half of the people. In truth, I I think we have brought too much of the political, the politics into our faith. We've allowed politics to influence our faith rather than faith influencing. Our politics. This past Thursday night, our chancel choir, the band, they ⁓ our our youth ministry, our handbells, they all put on a spectacular concert. How many of you came? It was magnificent, it was amazing, and we were able to celebrate our country without being political. So, today, what I would like to do is to talk to you about what it takes to become a great nation. Now we have to go all the way back to Father Abraham. No, we got to go back even farther than that. We've got to go back all the way to the beginning. Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning. God. You see, that's the first element. That is the first ingredient it takes to become a great nation. God. Before there was anything, before there was the worlds, before there were people, before you and me, there was God. And God made heaven and earth. There was darkness and void covering the face of the deep. Darkness and God said Let there be light and there was light and the light he called day and the darkness he called night. Then he said, Let dry land appear. And the waters separated, land appeared, and it was so. And then God created all of the animals, every kind of animals, every creepy, crawly thing that ever crawled upon the face of the earth. God created. And then God said, Let us make man. In our own image. Mankind, humankind, male and female, let us make humankind in our own image. Now, who is us? Let us. It is nothing less than the Godhead Himself, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. As we begin this sermon, I want you to know that Jesus was there in the very beginning. John chapter 1, verse 1, Gospel of John. The word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word created everything into existence. And apart from him, nothing was created. In the beginning, Jesus, God, created the heavens and the earth, the first element in becoming a great nation. Is recognizing that God is our Creator. Our forefathers of this country realized that, following the thought of John Locke and the words of our Declaration of Independence, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, what is the pursuit of happiness? Now, God doesn't endow us with happiness, He gives us the gift to pursue happiness. And I want you to know you will never be happy in this life without God. I don't care what you accomplish, I don't care how powerful you become. I don't care all the possessions you have without God. You will never ever be happy. Without God, you'll never be free. You will never be free until you accept the liberty that God gives you. And one final thing: God is your life. Without God, you would not exist. Your family would not exist. This church would not exist. This country would not exist. This universe would not exist. Without God, you are nothing. So the first element in becoming a great nation is recognizing that God is our creator. The second thing God created was family. Adam and Eve. Now it was not a perfect family, was it? Cain kills Abel. Because Abel presented a more perfect sacrifice than Cain. Jealousy made him kill his brother. And like the very first family, all of our families are imperfect. We fail. But somehow God has chosen the family, imperfect as it is, to be the foundation. To be the core, to be the glue that that holds us all together into a society. Long before God ever created a nation, he created the family. Which brings me back to Father Abraham. He lived in a country called Ur, of the Chaldeans. God spoke to him and said, Abraham, I want. You to leave your country. I want you to leave your relatives. I want you to leave your father's house, your father, your mother, and I want you to go to a land that I will show you. God didn't tell Abraham the name of the land. He didn't even give Abraham a map so he would know where to go. He said, Abraham, go and I will show you. Now, when I was struggling to answer the call to ministry, ⁓ I wish I had a direct line to God like Abraham did. I wish God had a line straight to to me as saying, George, yes, I want you to be a minister. It didn't happen that way with me at all. But there was this pull, this struggle, this tugging. at my heart to become a minister and I felt so unworthy. I didn't have a college education. I hadn't been to seminary. I grew up on a small farm in Chesterfield County in the sand hills. My parents were poor. They had no money to send me to college, much less seminary. But that pull, that tug, It was like the hound, God was like the hound from heaven, and He would not let me go. And I remembered the night distinctly in which I surrendered to God. I was on lying on my bed, no one around, and I gave in to God. I said, Lord, I don't know if you want me to be a minister or not. But I tell you what, I can't stand this. I'm gonna go to college. I'm gonna go to seminary. But Lord, you have to open the door. You have to open the gates. You gotta make a make a way. And the amazing thing is, God made the way. Let me tell you, God's not gonna ever call you to anything that He doesn't give you. the provisions and the ability to answer that call no matter what that call is in your life. You see, that's another ingredient to becoming a great nation where God's people listen to God's voice. They struggle with God's voice. They listen. They obey God's voice. Which brings me now to Abraham's wife, Sarah, who in her old age gave birth to her son. Now Abraham was camping out under the oak trees at Mamre. And God Himself came to visit Abraham. Abraham was old. He was almost a hundred years old. His wife Sarah was almost 90 years old, and God said to Abraham under the oak trees at Mamre: This time, at the appointed time next year, your wife will have a son. Now, listen to this. Sarah was inside the tent. She was listening to God talk to Abraham. And when she heard she was going to have a child, she laughed out loud because she knew it was impossible for an old woman well beyond childbearing years to have a child. And so she laughed out loud, but the joke was on her. At the appointed time next year, she gave birth to a son. She named him Isaac because Isaac means laughter. Because she laughed out loud and she said, Now the whole world laughs with me. The whole world laughs with joy that I, at an old age, bore a child. The impossible. And this is another great element of becoming a great nation. That you believe with God everything is possible. Without God, nothing is possible. There is nothing that is impossible with God. And the possibilities are right before you. Now, we don't know too much about Isaac. The Bible doesn't tell us very much. There's no scandal in his life. But we do know in this arranged marriage with Rebekah ⁓ that they get married and they have two boys. They have twins. Isaac, no, Esau and Jacob. Now, Esau was born first. But Jacob wasn't far behind, and he was grabbing to the heel of Esau, trying to drag him back into his mother's womb so he could be number one. Now the scriptures tell us that Esau was Isaac's favorite child. The scriptures also tell us that Jacob was Rebekah's favorite child. Jacob was Rebekah's favorite child. ⁓ what happens in the family when parents pay play favorites? It tears up and creates so much pain that will last for years, maybe even an entire lifetime. We know a lot about Jacob. Jacob was a scoundrel, he was a liar, he was a thief. He cheated his brother Esau out of the birthright. Over a bowl of parridge, a bowl of soup, which meant that Jacob was number one, not Esau. And we know how Jacob and his mother Rebecca conspired against Isaac, and Isaac gave his final blessing on Jacob, not Esau, which meant that the promise of a great nation would come through. Jacob, not Esau. Now when Esau heard what Jacob has done, had done, he he ⁓ he swore that he would kill his brother. Jacob had to flee for his life. He went back to Ur of the Chaldeans and there lived with his uncle Laman, Rebekah's brother, for years. He became very successful, very wealthy. He married Leah and then Rachel. He had twelve children. And then one day God spoke to Jacob and said, It's time to go back to the land of promise. It's time to go back to Canaan. And on the way, one night he fought with a man all night long. But it wasn't an ordinary man. No, it was way beyond a man. He was wrestling all night long with God. It was about to become dawn. The sun was about to shine. And God said to Jacob, Let go of me. And they touched his hip. And his socket came out of joint. And for the rest of his life, Jacob. Walked with the limp. And he said, Lord, I will not let you go. See, that's another element to be in a great nation. You don't let God go for nothing. He said, I will not let you go, God, until you bless me. And there God changed his name from Jacob to Israel. Now, Jacob went on back to Cana. He reconciled with his brother Esau, and his sons became the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. You see, the promise finally became real. That the family would create a great nation, generation after generation after generation, until Abraham's great, great, great, so many great. Grandchildren, Joseph and Mary, gave birth to a son. Jesus. God's only Son. God allowed his son to die on the cross for the forgiveness of his family for all of our sins that we might become a part of the family of God. You see, that's what it takes to be a great nation. You will never be a great nation until you are a great people of God. Can any of you say amen? I want to close with this verse of scripture. It's 1 Peter 2 verse 9. You are a chosen people. You. You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are God's own possession, that you might show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Listen to the last part of that verse. You weren't, you were not, you once were not a people. You were no people, but now you are the people of God. And that, my friends, makes a great nation.