Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. And we started last week with the life of Abraham. A very key figure in scripture. This is someone who is honored by Jews, Muslims, Christians, the majority of people in our world. And last, last week we looked at why Abraham or Abram as he’s first called, he was far from an obvious choice for God to choose to to draw his people from. Abram lived in a pagan city full of moon worshippers. His his family was pagan. He was married to his halfsister. There’s really nothing at all is said about Abram’s qualifications uh or giftings that would make him particularly worthy of God to to play such a key role in the salvation and blessing of all people on earth. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we think about that, I’m sure we’ll recognize that none of us should feel that God is lucky to have us in his family. you know, in bringing us into his church. Well, just look around. He wasn’t scooping up the cream of the crop. Uh the smart ones, the ones with all the natural ability and the natural talent and the spiritual intuition. Instead, he chose us. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul writes, “Well, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And he chose the lowly, even the despised things of the world to nullify any boasting that anyone would make about being a particularly good candidate for God to choose and to use. And that’s further confirmed this morning as we read about an incident in Abram’s life. This is not one of his finest moments. In fact, uh he goes through a pretty difficult time, but he makes an amazing recovery in the middle of it and it leads to a supreme moment of spiritual maturity. So in Abram’s life, it’s a trajectory of failure, repentance, and maturity. And that’s something I think that all of us can relate to and follow in our lives. We read this very compressed account of Abram’s life in Genesis 12-2. That’s what it covers in the book of Genesis. And we can come away with the impression that Abraham had this constant conversational intimate life with God and there were no silences and no doubts and no hiccups. But that’s just not the truth. You know, three times in the Bible, Abraham is called the friend of God. That indicates pretty close relationship. But if you count up the actual number of times that uh we read where Abram encountered God, where God revealed himself to Abram, starting with his call in chapter 12, the number is pretty small. We only have eight recorded conversations over the last hundred years of Abram’s life. Just think about that. Abram lived to be 175. After the flood, the lifespans of people just keep decreasing down to a normal lifespan that we would expect today. But Abram, he really only got going with God when he was already 75. That’s when he left Heron to finally relocate uh to the promised land. And we don’t know if God uh spoke to uh spoke or revealed himself to Abram more frequently over those hundred years other than these key events we read in Genesis. But we also read about all of his failures and his foibless. And we can probably assume that his life with God like very much like our own. This is not an uninterrupted stream of revelation that any of us receive. Like us, Abraham was Abram was required to walk by by faith, not by sight. And every now and then his faith hit a wall and it fell into a ditch. That’s what happens to him in the last half of Genesis 12. Remember from last week, God had called Abram to leave Heron. Go to the place that God would show him and just enormous promises that were made to Abram. I’ll make you into a great nation. I’ll bless you. I’ll make your name great. You’ll be a blessing. I’ll bless those who bless you. Whoever curses you, I’ll curse. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. And then when he arrived in Canaan in modern day Israel, we read that Abram walked through the land that God said he would give to Abram’s offspring, his descendants. And there are a couple of occasions early on in his time in the land where he started building these altars, these places of remembrance and worship along the way. Then we come to the ominous words of verse 10. Now there was a famine in the land and Abram went to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. Now, the promised land of Canaan still very much dependent on rain. It’s susceptible to food shortages. The Nile River in Egypt uh is a much more certain and reliable uh source of food. God’s people in Israel and the people of Egypt, they had this historically complicated relationship. In some instances, God would say, “Go to Egypt.” He told Abram’s grandson, Jacob, in Genesis 46, “It’s okay. Go see your son Joseph in Egypt.” God said to him, “I am the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt. I’ll make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you. I will surely bring you back again.” And similarly, in the birth narratives of Jesus, God also warned Joseph and Mary to take the baby and go down to Egypt and be protected from those who wanted to kill Jesus. And later, God directed the family back to Israel again. So, it seems that at times God did direct his people to Egypt, but he didn’t want them running down there in survival mode because they couldn’t trust God in the promised land where they were. We read in Isaiah 31, God says, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and the great strength of their horsemen, but they do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek help from the Lord.” Now in that verse, Egypt represents trusting in our own human resources rather than trusting in God. So the the famine in Canaan, it was like a test for Abram. Abram, what are you going to do when the promised land doesn’t look very promising? Are you going to stay? You going to trust? You going to cut and run? Abraham’s Abram’s test score this first time doesn’t come across very good. Briefly, the story is narrated. Abram left the promised land. He headed for the food security of Egypt. Apparently his wife Sarai, aged 65, she was still capable of turning heads. She was beautiful and aware that his wife was such a looker, Abram devised a plan. Says, as he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarah, “Oh, I know what a beautiful woman you are.” Which must have made her feel pretty good. And then he said, “When the Egyptians see you, they’ll say, “Oh, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but will let you live. So say you’re my sister so that I’ll be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you. You know Dr. Hook once saying when you’re in love with a beautiful woman it’s hard. Everybody wants her. Everybody loves her. Everybody wants to take your baby home. And those like Abram and myself who who live with beautiful women. They know exactly how hard it can be. Now for Abram this was a complete collapse of faith. God had promised that from Abram he would make him into a great nation out of fear through an act of deception. Abram very nearly lost his wife. In fact, without God’s intervention, the story of Abram would have ended before it even began. The officials of Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, told him of this new girl in town and how beautiful she was. And Pharaoh decided, I’ll absorb her into my royal royal herum of women. And then he treated Abram like he was a favorite brother-in-law. And he gave him all kinds of sheep and cattle and donkeys and those the big uh Tesla trucks of the desert, the camels. Those were the the choice item. And thankfully before anything serious happened between Pharaoh and his newest acquisition, God intervened by inflicting serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household. And he was able somehow to discern the true spiritual cause of his illness. And Pharaoh said to Abram, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why’d you say she’s my sister so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go. Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men. They sent him on his way with his wife and everything he had. So, it’s only through God’s grace and intervention that Abram dodged this bullet. His fear had caused his faith to falter and had left him vulnerable to what would have been a very debilitating loss. His narrative was one of fear. Fear of famine, fear of Pharaoh. God needed to change the story in Abram’s life so that the fears were not ruling him. You know, there’s a book entitled the stories we live by and the author speaks of going to an exhibition of JRR Tolkens, you know, the uh the author of Lord of the Rings. It was a an exhibition of his art and his letters and other material. And among the many items there was a small picture of an owl. And Tolken’s apparently Tolken’s second son, Michael, he had these recurring nightmares as a young child, particularly of a sinister looking owl, a figure named Alamu that perched on high furniture and on pictures and stared down at him. And so to the boy, to his son, Alamu was terrifying. So what did Tolkien do? He didn’t chastise his boy. He didn’t mock his fears. Instead, he asked Michael to describe Owlamo to him. And he drew a picture of the owl to help dispel his son’s fears. Now, how would drawing a picture help? It was a way of entering his son’s imagination and changing the story his son was telling himself. So, he drew the sinister owl exactly as his son described it, but then he painted it with bright, cartoonish, non-threatening colors. Tolken said that later in drawing and coloring that owl the way he did, it was a way of extracting the terror from the animal that his son was feeling. He took his son’s fears seriously, but then he redrew the owl to change the ending of the story. And doesn’t that that sound like something that God might do for us? You know, we all have fears like Abram, and we know what it’s like to have our faith slip and to fall into the ditch and to hit a wall. God intervened to save Abram from the fear of death, the fear of losing his wife. He colored in those alamuz of his fear, and even had Abram leave Egypt with a bunch of newly acquired abundance and wealth. So, he changed Abram’s Egyptian story from fear and desperation into a story of relief and laughter and abundance. Story of faith uh for you and me, it recognizes then that God can recolor the stories of our fears. the the owloos in our lives, they don’t have to leave us just shaking with fear and uncertainty and insecurity and even the thing we might most fear, even death. God says, “I’m going to recolor that with resurrection and eternal life.” So God acted despite Abram’s failure, his lack of faith. But then what Abram did next, I think this is the crucial key part of this passage, is the thing that could yield a mature faith in Abram’s life. When Abram was forced by Pharaoh’s command out of Egypt, despite the abundant livestock, he had to be something of an emotional wreck. I can’t can imagine his wife was very happy about how things had gone in Egypt. Probably a fairly fairly cold camel ride back to the promised land. She had been this helpless poker chip in this play between the two men. and and Abram, the the great irony is that Abram, this is the one chosen by God, called by God, the one who’s carrying God’s industrial strength promises for the world that would culminate in Christ. He’s being bered by a pagan ruler for his deception and his lying and uh and he was guilty as charged and it must have been humiliating for him to leave. He had failed the test of the famine pretty miserably. Instead of trusting God, he had just looked out for personal safety through the deception of a lie. In a late pastor and Bible teacher, Race Deadmond told the story. He was a young Christian living in Denver, Colorado. He took on the job of soliciting advertisements for a small church paper. And he wrote, “The pastor felt that some of the businesses with which the church dealt would be willing to put an ad in our little paper. So I was to call him on the telephone, solicit the business. Among others, he says, “I called the woman manager of a prominent restaurant nearby, and I opened the conversation by telling her I was calling for Mr. Hwitt, the pastor of the church, as he had given me permission to do.” Now, evidently, she misunderstood and thought that I was Mr. Hewitt. Throughout the conversation, she addressed me as Mr. Hewitt. It took me off guard at first, and I didn’t correct her at the time. She placed an ad. Next month, I called her again to renew it. It had worked so well to be mistaken for Mr. Hwitt that I thought I would tell her it was he calling again. So, I got another ad. Third month, I tried again, but this time her voice grew cold and distant. She said, “I don’t know who you are, but you are not Mr. Hwitt. As I can sit here in my office, I see Mr. Huitt and his wife are eating lunch in the restaurant. I don’t know what kind of church you run, but if this is the means you have of getting business, then don’t bother with me anymore. And then she hung up the phone. Raised Steman says he can still feel the shame and humiliation that moment as if it were yesterday with his you imagine Abram with his tail between his legs. His visitor’s visa has been cancelled. He’s heading back now to the land of promise. It must have been a humbled, probably very likely an ashamed Abram who made his way back out of Egypt into the negative, the southern region, the promised land. But just notice what he did next. From the negative, he went from place to place until he came to Bethl to the place between Bethl and Ai where his tent had been earlier where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord. Now, that very much reads to me like a journey of repentance. It’s a trip back to the altar that he had first built when he came into the land to get himself reacquainted with God and reoriented with God. In fact, nearly a dozen times in these brief chapters on Abram in Genesis, we see him worshiping at one of the altars he’s built. The opening chapters of Genesis, they just unfold uh his altar experiences. It’s like a chain and you can just see him maturing and seeing him developing. This is the development of a of a worshshiping believer. There’s about 25 years ago. It was an unsettled time in my life, my ministry. I came to Edmonton to work for the summer to do some landscaping for a friend. I had to pay some bills. It was a time I didn’t know what God wanted from me. I didn’t know what he had left for me. First day back in Edmonton, I went back to two places where I’d frequently met with God in the past. One was uh just a place in the river valley overlooking the Kapalano Bridge where I’d I’d met with God. I’d prayed and I’d worshiped as a very young Christian. And then I went uh into the Mil Creek Ravine where I’d spent many hours praying when I was uh working in a bank in the Bonnie Dune area. Spent my lunch hours there. And it was a it was a humbling time in my life, but I was instinctively drawn back to familiar places of worship just long at a time when you’re uncertain just to be in the presence of God where you know you’ve met with him in the past. I think that’s what Abram’s doing here. When he returned to his first altar, he had just seen how God could intervene to take take care of the things he most feared. how God could deliver him and send him back to Canaan with his life and his marriage intact and a lot more besides. So, he goes back to ground zero, back to where he began in the land. He wants to start over. He knew he was obeying when he’d built the altar and he wanted to pick up the path and pick up the plot from where he had lost it. So, he returned to a place, I believe, where he could humble himself and confess and worship. You know, CS Lewis wrote in his uh some of the letters he wrote about going to confession for the first time in the Church of England. Now, we think of confession mostly as a Catholic practice, but apparently the Church of England used it not as something necessary or essential for people, but something that they could take advantage of and it could be profitable for them. Lewis wrote in 1940 that going to confession for the he was going to confession for the first time the next week and he said that his decision to do so was one of the hardest he’d ever made in his life. He said it would be terrifying but it would be a wonderful opportunity and in another letter 13 years later he also wrote about confession. I apparently he’d been doing this as a regular practice. He said it it helped him not only believe in forgiveness but it helped him feel forgiven. He said, “There is gain in self-nowledge. Most of us have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade.” Says, “I certainly feel I profited enormously by the practice.” I think Abram had gone back to that altar because he had some unfinished business with God to do. He had a confession to make. He had some forgiveness to receive. at the altars he visits throughout Genesis, we can almost watch his watch Abram’s faith unfolding and flowering makes him into a new person. And we see the result of that even in the final event we’re looking at this morning. New Testament book of Hebrews chap 11 were we’re meant to be encouraged by all of these great heroes of faith who’ve gone before us. People like Enoch and Noah and Moses. And most of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 uh something is said about their faith in a verse or two. But then the author devotes a full 12 verses to the journey of Abraham. At one point it says, “By faith he made his way his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign city. He lived in tents for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.” By faith, Abram’s eyes were able to see this invisible city with a solid foundation, the city of God. And that explains, I think, after having spent time at the altar where he could get things right with God, he could next be so cavalier, almost reckless in his generosity toward his nephew Lot. We read this familiar passage. Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. land could not support them while they stayed together. Their possessions were so great they weren’t able to stay together. Quarreling arose between Abram‘s herdsmen, the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites, the Perizzites were also living in the land at that time. So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine. For we’re brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. You go left, I’ll go right. If you go right, I’ll go left.” very unnatural offer to make. This is a patriarchal society. Abram’s the senior man. He’s the uncle. Lot’s the nephew. Abram, he’d been the one who had been called by God to come into the land of Canaan. Abram’s future offspring were the ones that the land belonged to. His nephew Lot, his his brother’s son, he was just a tagalong relative. Something had shifted in Abraham’s foundation that caused him to hold everything with an open hand. Nephew, you take whatever you want. I’ll just go in the opposite direction. Offer must have surprised, even shocked Lot when his uncle made that that uh that offer. I was at a church conference once and I was sharing a a hotel room with another pastor. We walked into the room and and it had one decentsized bed and a little foldout cot on the other room. And I was the older man by a couple of decades, you know, but he chose the bed. And I said I said, “No problem. No worries.” Later I clambered into the cot that night and I froze all night because it didn’t have enough blankets. And I turned around and he was sleeping very soundly on the bed. And and I can’t pretend to be indignant about that because he’s a friend. He had some sleep apnea issues. He probably did need the bed more than I did, but I may have had an unsanctified thought or two that night as I was just shivering in that flimsy cot. See, the natural thing for Abram to do, he’s the senior man. He could choose the well-watered plain of Jordan, which we read incredibly was like the garden of the Lord. It it had the scent of Eden on it. And when Abram graciously offered it to his nephew, Lot said, “I’ll take that.” And his uncle had made this genuinely radically generous offer. And Lot Lot had every right to take him up on it. It was a genuine offer. and he took the land that was most promising. We do read it was a bit of an ominous decision because it left him living near the city of Sodom where it says the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord. And we see Abram the elder man being radically generous toward his nephew. Where did the power come from him to be able to do that? I think God was changing Abram’s foundation from something earthly and visible and fearing for his safety in Egypt. He returned to the altar and he was experiencing an eternal foundation that could only be grasped by faith. His fear just seemed to dissipate. He had fear in Egypt. But now, even when the land opposite Lot, it doesn’t look so attractive, Abram seems to have this delightfully carefree attitude toward it. his his his fear seems to have melted away. He doesn’t seem to be afraid at all about financial insecurity, how he was going to support his assets that were all tied up in livestock. He seems very content to leave it up to God. By faith, he made his home in the promised land. Like a stranger in a foreign country, he lived in tents, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. Interesting thing happens next because Abram’s watching Lot and his company wander down to that fruitful plain that looks like the garden of the Lord. God suddenly appeared to Abram and said,”Abram, lift up your eyes from where you are. Look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see, I’ll give to you and your offspring forever. I’ll make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, your offspring could be counted. Go walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I’m giving it to you.” So Abram moved his tents, went to live near the great trees of Mamry at Hebron, where he did what? Well, we’re getting used to seeing him do this, where he built an altar to the Lord. So, his faith really comes a long way in these two chapters this morning from forgetting about God in Egypt, uh, putting everything that God had promised him at risk, returning to the altar of worship, and then moving forward with really generous faith to respond to the promises of God. That episode in Egypt had taught Abram that it’s it wasn’t by his plan or his power that he was going to possess the promises of God. Not by jealously guarding what he thought was his. God would give it to him. He could give it away a hundred times and God would give it back to him. Abram came out of Egypt, a wealthy man, not because of his scheming, but because of God’s intervention. And once Abram returned to the altar, he came away with a freedom to act generously and mercifully toward others. And like Abram, we all know this that our faith grows really only through testing and trials. 1 Peter 1 says, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had suffered grief and all kinds of trials, these have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may your faith may be proved genuine, may result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” Goes on, though you have not seen him, you love him. Even though you don’t see him now, you believe in him and you’re filled with an inexpressable and glorious joy for you’re receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And none of us have seen Jesus by faith. We love him this morning. We sing words uh of in our worship songs that express our adoration for him. We don’t see him. We believe in him. We believe that he died on the cross. He suffered on our behalf for our redemption so he could deliver us from our sin. And that in dying and arising from the dead, when we put our faith and our trust in him, we can get a joy that’s inexpressable and full of glory for we’re receiving from him our salvation. I think so much uh from this passage speaks to those trials in our lives when we feel very stretched. We’re fearful when our resources don’t seem to be enough. We take matters into our own hands. We go into survival mode. We make maybe some moral compromises, some sketchy decisions. Will we at that time will we trust God and go back to the place where we last know we met with him where he’s there a place of worship and then will we return from that place of worship to to find that we can be open-handed and generous toward others in the world. God wants to develop all of us as people who whose worship never strays very far from the altar. He builds us up. He tests our faith obstacles of famine or conflict with others. He’ll take us through time when the resources don’t seem to be enough. temptation to take everything to our own hands, become deceitful, become stingy. God just calls us to be people who look up to be pilgrim people. We’re having faith. We’re looking forward to a city that’s not built by men, but whose builder and architect is God. That we can hold on to things loosely and uh and have in us kind of a discontent for what the world offers. A real hunger for something more. So, when the promised land doesn’t look very promising, we should learn to rejoice. our faith is being tested. It’s being proved uh so that God can fill us with an inexpressable joy and to learn not to head for Egypt at the first sign of anything going wrong, but to go for the altar instead. Couple things I think we want to pray about this morning and just give you an opportunity this moment to meet with God on your own. But you might want to come before God and just admit to God one of your deepest fears and ask him to recover recolor that like like Tolkien colored that owl for his son. You might want to confess to God any sins that you’re aware of things that are holding you back and return to that altar of worship and just pray for eyes of faith that enable you to see the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. This is your moment with God. So, take a few moments and I’ll close us off.