The Promise

Good morning. If you don't know, my name is Cody Stiltner, and I am one of the student ministers here at Greenwood Christian Church. And so what that means is I primarily work with middle school and high school students, but every once in a while, I get the pleasure of speaking to you all. And there's some things that are different about this room as opposed to the room that I usually speak in. One of those things is that this is being filmed live, and so I could say anything, and they can't stop me.

And it will be all over the Internet.

So because of that, I have to say one thing. It's not in my script. I'm sure people are very nervous right now, but as I look to the camera, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Congratulations on your engagement and the wedding that's to come. I do want to offer up my services to be an officiant for free.

All I ask is for a plus one. I need a plus one for my wife. Thank you. All right, now that we got that taken care of, we'll start to cycle that around the Internet, and I'll ask for those days off when they come.

No, today's gonna be fun. I'm gonna make a promise to you. I don't know if today's gonna be the day that you walk out of here and say, wow, that. That was the message that changed everything for me. Like, wow, that guy was so amazing.

I don't know if that will happen, but what I can promise you is that we are going to have some fun today and we're going to enjoy our time together today, and I hope that's good. Promises, though. Promises are interesting things when we think about them. Promises. When I think about promises, it's one of those words that actually, as I kind of thought about it, as much as our society has changed and shifted over all these years, promises are very much like something that we still hold very sacred.

Like, that word is very sacred to us. When someone promises you something, it still feels very important. It feels very good. And it doesn't mean that broken promises don't happen. Broken promises happen all the time.

But it's actually kind of the weight that we see when someone does break a promise. And that kind of adds to my case here that when someone breaks a promise, it almost feels way worse than, like, a normal disappointment, like someone promised you something and it didn't happen. And so that word promise, just. Even today, it still just has a lot of significance. Like, it's still a very sacred word in our culture.

And in our society. And so, honestly, that's why I don't make a ton of promises. Like, I really don't. And it's not because I'm not, like, I don't think I'm like, a dependable guy. But when I do make a promise, I want my promise to really mean something.

I don't want a long record of broken promises. When I make a promise, I want it to mean something. And there was one time that I did make a promise to my mom. Growing up, my mom, she worked in a hospital that kind of specialized in physical rehabilitation. And because of that, she worked in a unit called the brain injury unit.

And she would see all kinds of people come in after tragic accidents and lots of traumatic incidents. And as they came in her, she was part of a team that would help people learn how to walk again, how to eat again, how to function again, just get a little pieces of their life back. And so my mom kind of lived in that world, and she saw a lot of things that she kind of had to wrestle with. And the summer I went off to my freshman year of college, my mom was an emotional human, which I think a lot of moms are, if you've ever been through that. Sending a kid off can be emotional, especially someone like me, which was probably cool to have around.

So that summer before, I was going to go to Johnson University, and I had a friend who was a year older than me that had gone to Johnson for the whole year prior. And he was going to be my roommate the next year. And he was a really good friend. So he came back for the summer, and he's over at our house, and he's just kind of telling me. I'm asking him all these questions, you know, how is it?

What do you do all these kinds of things, and just trying to figure out what's going on. And he starts talking about how around Johnson, there's, like a bunch of these abandoned quarries that they've filled with water. And because of that, these spots have kind of become cool spots to go, like, cliff diving and to dive into the water. And my mom was in the room as we're having this conversation, of course, me, I'm like, ah, that is so cool. Like, I cannot wait to do that.

And my mom almost jumped out of her skin as she looks at me and she says, you are going to promise me or you're not going to go. You're going to promise me that you will never go cliff diving. And then she, like, scolded my friend, which he Was used to that by that point. But she's like, you have to promise, like, I will not let you go to college unless you promise that you're not going to go cliff diving. And that was from a good place for her.

She had seen people in their 20s go through her program that would never walk again, that wouldn't be able to feed themselves because of an incident that happened while, while they were. While they were cliff diving. And so I made that promise to my mom and I kept that promise to my mom. I would go to the quarry. I would never participate, but I just go, you know, if something does happen, they're going to need a driver, I'm assuming, Right?

So, like, I'm there. I had fun, but like, I didn't go. I made sure to keep that promise. And I never went cliff diving. I did a ton of cliff jumping, but I never.

I never went head first. And so, like, that was good. No, I'm kidding. I didn't do that. I didn't do that.

I kept my promise. I kept my promise. But yeah, promises mean something. Promises mean something. So how much more does it mean when God's actually the one promising something?

Like, I like to think that I'm a pretty good person at keeping promises. I have to imagine God's record is very good as well. And so what does it mean when God promises something? And that's where we are in the next story of the greatest story ever told. And in this chapter, I'm just calling it the Promise.

But before we move forward, we have to actually kind of look back at last week because there's a lot of what happened last week that's gonna hold a lot of significance for this week as well. Last week we introduced the story of Adam and Eve. And in our story, Matt kind of told us about the conflict. Adam and Eve are in a garden where all of their needs are being met. They live in abundance, they're being provided for, and they get to listen to the wisdom of God.

And a conflict happens when they come across this tree called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And they're told not to partake in this tree, but rather they're just supposed to listen to the wisdom that God is providing them. And, and what we read is that eventually Eve goes and she takes from this tree. She takes from this tree and she rebels against God and she's taking the knowledge of good and evil for herself, and then she gives it to Adam. And Adam openly rebels against God as well.

And he takes. And they kind of take this problem into their own hands. And because of this, they're thrown out of this Garden of Eden. Eden. And this is kind of what Matt summed up as the conflict.

But it's in this moment that it goes a little bit deeper than just about a tree. It's this moment that humanity is deciding what is right and what is wrong to do for themselves. And it sets up this greatest story ever told.

Now, over the next couple weeks, we actually are not going to go over every single story that's in the book of the Bible. This is like an eight week series, not a 652 week. Because of that, there's some things I need you to know. Even though it's only been a week's time for us, and even though we're going from Genesis chapter three to Genesis chapter 12, just nine chapters later, there's a huge time jump that we are going to experience. The world at this point has already been populated once and then there's been a flood and now it's being populated again.

And we have nations and we have kings, and we have people all over the place. When we get to Genesis chapter 12. And so we're going to go into Genesis chapter 12 and we're going to meet a man named Abram. And we don't really know much about Abram at this point. All that we know is that there's for some reason God has chosen this guy as someone that will not do the things that humanity has done up to this point.

And this guy is someone that's going to be to have a kind of heart that is willing to listen to his wisdom once again. And so we're going to jump right into chapter 12 verse. Verse 1. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land. I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation. And I will bless you and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And whoever curses you, I will curse you.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So right away we see God make a promise to Abram. And it's actually like three promises. And it's important to see these three things. The first thing that he's promising Abram is land.

And not just land. Like he's promising him quite a bit of land. A whole land to have a whole nation in. So this is not like 100 acres in brown County. Like this is like as cool as that would be.

This Is like a lot of land where you can have cities and you can have towns and you can have distance in between, and there's borders and there's oceans. It's like, this is a lot of land. And so he promises him quite a bit of land. And then the second thing that he promises him is he promises him a nation. He says, a nation will come out of you.

And what's interesting about the language that's being used here is that this nation, it doesn't seem like this is going to be a situation where he's going to go into a land, he's going to conquer a certain people, and then he's going to become their ruler. Like, it doesn't really sound like that. This promise actually kind of suggests that this nation is going to be born out of him, that this is. He's going to have kids who are going to have kids, who are going to have kids, who are going to have kids. And the cycle's going to continue and continue and continue until eventually, apparently, they're going to look around and say, look, there's a whole nation of us that come from this guy named Abram.

And this promise in particular is very interesting because the only detail we have about Abram up to this point in the story comes from the chapter previous to the one that we just read. In verse 29, it says this. It says, Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai. Now, Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

And so there's just this little detail thrown out by the author that, hey, I just want you to know, like, this is something that you need to kind of hold onto. And we'll just kind of hold that in our heads that he's married to a lady named Sarai and that they don't have children. So when God promises them that, hey, you're going to have children, who are going to have children, who are going to have children, eventually there's going to be a whole nation of you. You can imagine the immediate response to that is interesting, interesting. And so that's kind of just what we read.

But the third promise. The third promise is, the first one is land, and the second one is this nation is going to be born out of him. The third promise is very, very interesting as well. And the third promise is that this nation is going to be a blessing to all the other nations that surround them. And why this is particularly interesting is, is because this is a callback to that language that we heard last week in the Garden of Eden.

And if you were paying attention last week when we talked about the Garden of Eden, what we talked about is that we have Eden, and there's this river that flows through Eden. This river is described as being huge, and it's full of nourishment, and it provides for this garden. And what we read is that this river eventually splits out into four rivers, and it goes all over the world. And the imagery that's supposed to kind of. We're supposed to gather from that is that this river of Eden splits.

And what happens in Eden, the entire world is blessed because of it. Like, the entire world is taken care of because of this river that runs through Eden. And so in this promise to Abram, what we see is God says, your nation will be like that river in Eden where you are going to bless all of the nations around you. The provision and the abundance that comes from you will take care of not only your people, but it's going to take care of all of the nations around you. And so the third promise is very, very important as well.

And it's really cool to see how God's saying, hey, you are going to be like this Eden, like, nation to the people around you. And so Abram's story gets really interesting. And we're gonna skip a couple chapters, because over the next couple of chapters, what we read is that he kind of moves forward. And what we realize really quickly is that this was not a promise that was going to happen the next day. Like, instead, what we read is that he's running into lots of situations where these promises aren't happening.

And you start to wonder, as the reader of Scripture, like, is God going to keep his promise? Because what we read is that he goes to this land that's supposed to eventually be his. And. And there's kings there that, guess what, aren't super excited to, like, just give him this land. And so he's not really getting that.

And Sarai and him are not having kids still. And so, like, we just run into all these situations where it's like, man, God has not really delivered on this promise just yet. And we get all the way. We're gonna jump forward all the way to where Abram is 86 years old. And I don't want to offend anybody here that may be around that, but that is old.

And maybe more importantly than that, like, it's past, like, childbearing age. And so we've come to a real problem. And it's at this point that Abram and Sarai tried to take this problem into their own hands. We're going to read together. It says this.

Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

So after Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. So just to make sure that we are all on the same page here, Abram and Sarai get past the point where they can have kids, or at least where they think they could have kids, and they don't have children yet. And so, even though God has promised them, the both of them, that they are going to have a child together, what Sarai decides to do is she decides to take this problem into her own hands.

She's what she thinks is being a problem solver. And she goes and she finds this Egyptian slave named Hagar. And Abram gets her pregnant so that they can have a son. And as you can imagine, immediately this creates some tension between everyone involved. It creates tension between Sarai and Hagar.

It creates tension between Hagar and Abram. It creates tension between Sarai and Abram. And what we read is actually this. And in verse five, then Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for the wrong. I am suffering.

I put my slave in your arms. And now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. Your slave is in your hands. Abram said, do with her whatever you think best.

Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. And there's a couple of things that happen here in this story that should immediately remind us of the story that we read last week. We should be having, like, deja vu moments from last week and where last week we talked about a story where there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. And that may seem a little foreign, it may seem a little odd, may seem a little ambiguous and just kind of out there about this story about a tree and the fruit and a snake. And it might just seem a little odd.

What we see in this story is that story has really got some legs on it. And this is a story that we can look At. And we can say, yeah, I can see that happening, but it's really the same story. All they have to do is trust in the wisdom of God. All they have to do is trust that God, the God of this promise, is going to provide this answer to them.

But rather than waiting for this promise, what they go out and do is Sarai goes out and she takes this problem into her own hands. She goes out and she finds Hagar. And she. What we read in Scripture is she hands Hagar to Abram and says, I want you to consume her. And it's the exact same imagery that we see with Adam and Eve in the garden, except for this time, there's another human being involved in the middle of it.

And so Abram finds himself in. In the exact same place as Adam and Eve last week. He's a part of this problem that keeps happening where people are deciding what is right and what is wrong for themselves. They are deciding what is okay to do. They're trying to receive this abundance without surrender.

And there just seems to be something. And I think this is where we can all kind of relate. There seems to be something about human nature that when I decide what is right and when I decide what is wrong by my own thoughts and my own feelings and my own emotions, my own motives, that when I decide what is right and wrong, there are other people that are just hurt by that. When I decide what is appropriate and what is not, there are people that are hurt by that. There are people that are caught in the middle of that.

And it turns out, when we think about it, if we have a world with billions of people who are all doing what they think is right and what they think is and not doing the things that they think is wrong, and we have billions of people doing this, it turns out that our world gets pretty messy pretty quickly. And so what this story is trying to illustrate, once again, the same kind of story that we illustrated last week, is that my perspective is so limited and my viewpoint is so limited that I have to find someone else or something else that can provide the perspective that I cannot see.

And Scripture would suggest that that would be the voice of God listening to the voice of God. And so what's interesting about this is even though there's this moment of rebellion that we see that kind of mirrors this rebellious moment that we see in the garden, Abram and Sarah are actually still promised to have a son. God doesn't take away that promise. They have a conversation about it, but there's not a promise that's taken from them. And they actually go on.

And they do have a son by the name of Isaac. And so we're going to skip forward a little bit once again in Abram's story to the moment where Isaac is old enough to at least communicate and Isaac is able to carry heavy things. Both of these things happen in this story. So that's how we know that that's how old he is. And Abram's probably around 100 years old at this point of the story.

And one thing to note before we read this part and one thing I want you to know is that because we've jumping over a couple of things. Abram's name has been changed to Abraham and Sarai's name has been changed to Sarah. But these are the same people that we've been reading about. So chapter 22, we jump forward to this point with Abraham and Isaac. And this is what it says.

Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain. I will show you.

Early the next morning, Abraham got up and he loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. And when he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and he saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.

We will worship and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. And he himself carried the fire in the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and he said to the father. He said to his father Abraham, father?

Yes, my son? Abraham replied, the fire and wood are here. Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Very good question, Abraham answered. God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac, and he laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and he took the knife to slay his son. The end.

See, some of you are laughing because you know how the story ends. But the problem with knowing how the story ends is that we skip over this moment right here. And this is maybe One of the most important moments in the history of humanity. In this moment right here, after God has said, I want you to go up on this mountain and I want you to sacrifice your son. It's this moment when Abraham is 100 years old.

For the first time, he is willing to decide that, you know what? My perspective is incomplete. And if this is what God wants me to do, then it must be something that I have to do. This is a moment of true surrender. There is no chance that as Abraham ascends this mountain with his son, who he's waited all his life to meet, there's no chance that he thinks this is the right thing to do.

And yet this is the thing he is going to do because he is willing to surrender to God. And when we skip over this moment of the story, what we are skipping over is maybe one of the most powerful moments in scripture where humanity looks back at God and says, I don't know what I'm doing, but you do. And that's why it's important.

But as some of you know, this is not the end. It turns out that when we surrender, God provides. Verse 11 says this. The angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, abraham, Abraham, here I am, he replied, do not lay a hand on the boy, he said, do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

Abraham looked up, and there in a thicket, he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide. And to this day it is said, on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from a second time from heaven a second time.

And he said, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies. And through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me. And out of this story, Isaac will grow up to be a father himself, and he will have a son by the name of Jacob. And Jacob will grow up to be a father himself, and he will have 12 sons that we will know as the heads of the twelve tribes of the biblical nation of Israel.

And that biblical nation of Israel is then given this instruction to Go and to take a land and to be a blessing to all the nations that surround it. And over the next couple of weeks, we will see if they do that. But it turns out from this story that the promise of God requires total surrender from us. It requires me to get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, as complete as I think my perspective is, I surrender that there are parts that I just do not understand. There are parts of this life that I do not understand, I do not get.

There are things that I do not know. And because I am surrendered to God, I give these things to you. And I am simply listening for your voice. I am listening for your wisdom to guide me. And there are all kinds of parts of our lives where we have to do this.

When we think about our finances, we have to get up and say, I know what I think is right and what I think is wrong, but I am willing to surrender these things to you and look for your wisdom to guide me in my finances. And when it comes to, like, relationships, whether it's a relationship with a co worker at work or a boss or a friend or an ex friend or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a spouse, in all of these different relationships, in all of these different moments that we have in these relationships, there are moments where we must say, I know what I think is right and wrong in this situation, and yet I am going to surrender that to God and I am going to listen for his wisdom.

And if I can speak just super genuinely right now, that kind of surrender requires total trust.

You have to trust that God's going to provide. And I know there are some of us in this room who struggle with trust. We live in a world that struggles with trust. We struggle to trust any power that's held over us. We always think they're trying to get us.

But if we can't trust the Creator of the universe, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God that moves mountains, the God that created you and me, if we can't trust him, who can we trust?

And what I would say is, when we trust, when we trust in God so much that we're willing to surrender our version of right and wrong to him, what we see time and time again is that I get to walk forward as a little pocket of heaven on earth, and I get to bless those around me, that when I surrender my idea of evil and good to God and I just listen to the wisdom of his voice, the people that benefit, it's not only me, but it's the people around me that benefit from that. That when I go out of my way to listen to the wisdom of God, I can become a blessing to all those around me. Let's pray.

God, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to leave a room. Trusting you more than when we were walked in. Surrendering more than when we walked in. There are so many times in my life where I thought I was doing the right thing and yet I have caught people in the middle of messes and at the end of the day it was just because I was trusting in myself more than I could ever trust you.

So God, let us be a people that trust you, more people that are surrendered to you.