Latest / Pillar Church | Holland, MI | Sermon Podcast / September 20, 2026 | Anna Anderson

Transcript

September 20, 2026 | Anna Anderson · Pillar Church | Holland, MI | Sermon Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, God, we ask and invite you to speak to us in Jesus' name.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Anna.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, I would love to get to know you.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start by showing you an ancient prayer that doesn't come from a Christian community.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from a group of people called the Assyrians.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were living alongside, often warring with the Israelites in Old Testament times in the area we now call the Middle East.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a prayer that someone wrote to appease the gods.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is they didn't know what they'd done wrong or which God was listening to them.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was all a mystery.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in their worldview, there were many gods.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have a slide.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: When I weep, they do not come to my side.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I utter laments, but no one hears me.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm troubled, I'm overwhelmed, I cannot see.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whether a person commits sin or does good, they do not even know.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a vague kind of hopeless prayer that's grasping for relationship, grasping for clarity, grasping for some unknown God out there to maybe listen, to maybe have mercy.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: To no avail.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: This Assyrian person was speaking from a place of uncertainty and anxiety, this culture of polytheism, which just means many gods.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Any God out there, will you listen to me?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our own culture, though it's far more secular than this one, is similarly disturbed by the idea of God's absence in our need.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a contemporary British author who put it this way.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: If we're honest, the desires and pains of our heart long for a personal God who we can have relationship with, a personal God that makes himself known to us in a tangible and lasting way, not just a distant and mysterious way.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We long for someone who actually has the wisdom to answer our questions, not just give us an echo of ourselves.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the Assyrian prayer can kind of sound similar to the Psalms of Lament from the Christian Bible, but the main difference is that the psalmist knows where to turn to the one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who has shown up and listened and acts and moves.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is that in Genesis, in the Bible, in the story of our God, we encounter a very different God than the God that the Assyrians were guessing about.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: A very different God than the norms and surrounding cultures were wandering toward.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: In the story of the Bible, we meet a God who chooses to show us what he's like.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: A God who reveals himself.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the story of the Bible, we meet a God who desires and pursues relationship with his people and with you.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just throwing a prayer out there to any God who will listen.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a specific personal God who has said, here I am, I want to walk with you.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is a God who invites us to bring our honest prayers with confidence because he's already shown us his love.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: To catch you up, here's how the story unfolds.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Christians believe God made the world.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was beautiful and so good.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And God made humans and loved them and walked with them.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then everything becomes distorted when sin and evil and darkness and death and brokenness and however you want to call everything that's not right in the world.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: When that entered the picture, things are spiraling out of control.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And from the very beginning, God's heart is for a rescue plan to reach the people that he loves, to show his love to the whole world.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So God shows up to somebody named Noah.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And here today, somebody named Abram and chooses to make a promise to him.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he shows Abram what he's actually like.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a distant, far-off kind of God.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is a God who shows Abram what he's actually like, and a God who wants to show you what he's actually like.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to this next part in the story with me.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Abram and Nahor both married.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milka, the daughter of Haran, who was the father of both Milka and Isca.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now Sarai was childless because she was unable to conceive.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of Abram, and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when they came to the land of Haran, they settled there.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Terah lived to be 205 years old, and he died in the land of Haran.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your land and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I will bless you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And all the peoples of the world will be blessed through you.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Lot went with him.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Abram was 75 years old when he left the land of Haran.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot and all the possessions that he had gathered while in Haran, and all the persons that they had acquired while in that place, and they set off from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to a place called Shechem at the Oak of Morah, because at that time the land was occupied by Canaanites.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So Abram built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him there.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: From there he moved on to the hill country of Bethel to the east, and he pitched a tent with Bethel on the west and I on the left.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there he built an altar to the Lord and began to invoke the name of the Lord.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Abram journeyed on in stages toward the Negev.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Abram and Sarai's difficulty having children.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then God's call to Abram to go to a new land.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And all of it culminates in worship.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Abram building altars at the places where God showed up for him.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much we could focus on, but I want to pay attention together to the ways that God shows Abram who he is, and the ways that God invites Abram to participate in the thing that he's doing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the two points would be revelation, just God revealing himself, and participation.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: God inviting us in on it.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because the same God who shows up to Abram and invites him in is showing up to you today and inviting you in to the thing that he's doing in the world.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: First revelation, God revealed.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: God shows up to Abram as the kind of God who shows us who he is.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of God who takes initiative, pursues relationship, reaches out, speaks, invites response, promises blessing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It might seem simple, but this is a God who does stuff.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not a God who sits back passively waiting to watch us fail.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is a God who is involved and shows up.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: A God who is the actor and the mover and the subject of salvation history.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: God shows up to Abram as a God who acts.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to go through this passage, which is the end of Genesis 11 into the beginning of Genesis 12, and just underline who's the subject of the sentence?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I will, I will, I will, eight or ten times.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I will bless you, I will make you, I will show you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Again and again and again.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we all need a reminder today that God does stuff.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: God shows up to Abram as the kind of God who takes initiative, takes action, and gets involved with the people that he loves.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: God shows up to Abram not as some vague, distant, mystery God, not as some God who's teasing Abram or withholding himself, not like the gods of the surrounding nations that toy with people and have fickle emotions.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, this God, the Lord, the one God, this is the God who says, Abram, I will bless you, I am for you, I am on your side.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show the whole world my love through your family.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is who I am.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've chosen to love and give and to be for you.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just what God does and promises in this passage that's so striking to me.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the very fact that God chooses to show Abram what he's like.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: God has revealed himself to Abram.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then God promises to use Abram's family to reveal himself to the whole world, to show the whole world what he's really like.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not because Abram deserved it or did anything amazing, but because God said, I love you and I want to show up for you.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow God is gonna show the whole world through Abram his love.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: How does that happen?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing a little digging, and I think this quote from Old Testament scholar John Walton really helps explain it for me.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: It goes like this.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: The nature of the blessing on the nations is that God has revealed himself through Abram's family.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And here he's talking about the Bible.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: The law was given through them, the prophets were from among their number, scripture was written by them, and their history became a public record of God's attributes in action.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: This story is gonna show the world what I'm like, God says.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then to climax it all, his own son came through them, Jesus, and revealed the Father and the kingdom through his life and a plan of salvation for the world through his death.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Abram, all the nations of the earth were blessed as they were shown what God was like, and as the means were provided for them to become justified, reconciled to God, and forgiven of their sins.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's where this short conversation with Abram is heading.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: God's salvation plan for the whole world.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Through Abram's family, God will give the world Jesus, who is for us the clearest picture of what God is actually like.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and all the nations of the world will be blessed through you.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Remember how in Revelation, at the end of the Bible, all the nations of the world are gathered around the throne of Jesus, and he says, Behold, I am making everything new.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the phrase we've been gathering our hearts around the past couple weeks.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus on the throne at the end of it all.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: All the nations, and he says, I'm making everything new.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: That story is beginning to unfold here in Genesis 11 and 12.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: That story starts here with one man in the Middle East who's struggling to have children, one man who probably doesn't understand how God would make all of these promises actually come true for him and for his family.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: But he says yes.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yes, God, I'll go.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to focus on next.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Abram steps in to God's invitation to participate, revelation and participation.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then Abram went as the Lord had told him.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the verse that's most striking to me in this whole section.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then Abram went as the Lord had told him.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: The demands are intense, but God doesn't invite Abram to give up anything that God doesn't ultimately one day replace or redeem.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first ask is that Abram should leave his land.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God's gonna give him a new land, a good land.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: The second ask is that Abram should leave his kindred, his family.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm gonna give you a whole new family.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third act is that he should ask is that he should leave his father's house, which is his inheritance and all the rootedness and things he knew back in the land of Haran.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm gonna give you a different kind of inheritance, which is blessing for all the nations and salvation for the whole world.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: God shows up to Abram and invites intimate participation.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God's doing the same for you today, inviting you into the thing that He's doing in the world, maybe to alter your plans a little bit, maybe to draw you out of your comfort zone, maybe to invite you to go somewhere you didn't think God would invite you to go.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: All for the sake of the world that God loves, also that all the nations would be blessed through you.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Abram went as the Lord had told him.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where is God asking you to go?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where is God inviting you into the thing that he's doing?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love this section from Hebrews, author looking back at Abram and his faith.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's later given the name Abraham, so we're talking about the same person here.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out not knowing where he was going.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Has your life with God ever felt that way?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: For they looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's the all things new city.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of Revelation city.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Abram's willingness to participate came from an unselfish place that God's idea of a good future might be a little different than the idea that he had in mind.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, Abram went.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a response.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have the same kind of response when God invites my participation.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if in that moment Abram was remembering, okay, this is the God who's shown me what he's like.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the God who has moved in my life before.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: If this is the God that's been faithful before and shown me his love, he's calling me to go.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's the hesitation?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Think of all the ways God's been faithful in the past.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is a God who promises blessing and favor and companionship and presence alongside you in all the suffering and sacrifice that is to come.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: This God invites you to join in the work he's doing in the world.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not because he needs you.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has already done everything, but because it delights God's heart to invite you in.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: God delights to bless the world in relationship to you.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So where is God inviting your yes?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where is God inviting you to go?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your first year at Hope College and you moved here from far away and you're waiting to see how it will all unfold.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: God called you to Holland, you thought.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You go because the Lord has called you.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: This past Tuesday, Pillar got a call from one of you who was asked to remain anonymous.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: A retired person who had been on her Tuesday morning weekly five mile walk.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she was crossing the bridge from the north side to the south side and came across this woman who was postured as if to be jumping off the bridge.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this woman from Pillar was crossing her path and chose to stay and listen to her.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she called the church and wanted a little support.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I showed up to continue the conversation.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: We learned her name.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll call her Sarah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: We heard some of her story.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we learned that she was a month pregnant.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's forgotten to take her meds that morning.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Her mind was just total chaos.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of that, she'd wondered, what would it be like if I jumped off this bridge?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, God provided this retired woman from Pillar who was on her walk to be present to her.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And because she was available to the thing that God put right in front of her, the story ended differently than it might have.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Our hearts ached with her, and I was just so struck by the love and presence of this woman from Pillar who had been present to her in her story and her needs.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: After hearing a little bit more about her needs and what she was going through, we drove her to the place she was staying and connected her with some resources, and today she's safe and doing well.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: She's alright.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was most struck by this pillar woman's availability to the person who God had put in her path.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Her willingness to step into a complex situation that she didn't feel comfortable with or equipped to handle.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: But she still moved toward the thing that God was calling her to do, even though it felt initially beyond her comfort zone.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: She had her eyes open to the things of God.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she was on the lookout for how God might be inviting her in, even in this walk that she goes on every week.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: So she went as the Lord had told her.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.