Week Commencing Sunday 16th January 2022

Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 16^th January 2022

Call to worship

We have come together as the family of God in our Father’s presence to offer Him praise and thanksgiving, to hear and receive His holy word, to bring before Him the needs of the world, to ask His forgiveness of our sins, and to seek His grace, that through His Son Jesus Christ we may give ourselves to His service.

‘God is our refuge and strength an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea…’ Psalm 46:1,2a

‘The Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish/ Psalm 1:6

Opening Hymn

‘Lead us Heavenly Father Lead us.’ MP 400 (Piano)

James Edmeston

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zgFXN1B8no

Opening Prayer

Father Almighty we worship You. You who are our refuge and watches over our lives, who knows the end from the beginning. We praise You for Your majesty and Your mercy, loving us still in our waywardness, forgiving us in our unworthiness.

Jesus our Redeemer, we worship you. You who have given us access to the Father through Your humility and sacrifice. Sharing our joys and sorrows, dying and rising for our salvation, interceding for us when we face trials and troubles.

Holy Spirit of God. We worship You. You live within us, shaping and refining our lives, making us like Christ, giving us power to live righteous, holy lives. You impress on us the demands of God’s Word as we face choices, and call us to faith in God’s good leading. Thank you for Your guidance and strengthening. Inspire and empower your church. Lead us now and reveal to us all truth as we worship this morning.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eternal Lord, Three in One: to You be glory, honour and praise for ever and ever.

Hymn

‘Jesus is the name we honour’ MP 870 (Guitar)

Phil Lawson Johnson

https://divinehymns.com/lyrics/jesus-is-the-name-we-honour/

Reading. Genesis 13

So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him.

Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.

From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the LORD.

Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents.

But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together.

And quarrelling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.

So Abram said to Lot, "Let's not have any quarrelling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left.

Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)

So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company:

Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.

Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD. The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you."

So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.

Prayers

Lord we praise You for the grand epic of our lives, which are laid before you. We thank you for Your gift of life, the guidance You offer and the presence You bring, Lord God of heaven and earth, we thank you that we encounter You in the ordinary, everyday aspects of our lives. And in our everyday lives, help us to make room for You.

Lord when we find ourselves in the wilderness, in the dark places, on the road of suffering, help us to make room for You. When we find ourselves in a state of satisfaction and joy, help us to make room for You.

Lord in our church, with its ministries and characters, and relationships, conversations, in our worship, in our pastoral care, in our talking over coffee, keep us alert to You, help us to make room for You.

And Lord, we pray for those close to us, who need Your grace to face particular hardships and challenges. We name them silently…by Your grace please minister to these in their experience.

God of grace, who loves each one of us, help us to make room for You:

In the profound and the simple

In the depths and in the trivial

In the epic and the ordinary

Keep us alert to you in the daily ground,

And help us always and everywhere to make room for You.

Show us the beauty of every moment

The sheer grace of every breath

The sheer wonder of these every day, ordinary lives You have given us

And by Your enabling power, help us

Always and everywhere, here and now, in the grand and the ordinary,

To make room for Your life giving, life-changing and glorious presence.

Hymn

‘Before the Throne of God Above’ 975

Charitie L Bancroft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZDzcMNJ-vY

Sermon. ‘Decisions, decisions.’

This morning as we continue to study the life of Abraham we will be thinking a lot about making right decisions. It is foundational that as Christians we make decisions that are based on trust in God. We seek Him first (Matt.6:3), and that includes our decision making. The Lord is Sovereign. In control. As we put Him first He is willing to oversee our path in life. He does not want us to make poor choices out of fear or greed for example, but rather out of obedience to Him, decisions that are morally right. God will bless such decisions. This morning we look briefly at a poor decision made by Abraham, followed by a God honouring one out of his faith in the Lord.

So let’s begin with Abraham, the man known for his faith in God, making some very poor decisions. I refer here not to our passage but from the previous one, that is from Chapter 12: verse 10ff.

It seems that Abraham forgot the great promises the Lord had made to him, the promises we looked at last time, and instead of faith, he acts on fear. In the face of famine he decided to live in Egypt. Egypt is seen in Scripture as an alliance with the world. The temptation to live by ‘bread alone’ is a great trap even for Christians. The Lord Jesus faced this as the first of three major temptations that come to us all

‘After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:2-4)

Fear drives us to make pragmatic considerations about material provision all important, which in turn drives our decision making. But the Lord’s promise challenges to put our trust in Him, for He is our Creator and the Provider of all we need. He says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things [basic material needs] will be added to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33, reflect on verses 25-34)

But worse Abraham’s fear is such that he decides to pretend Sarai is his sister rather than his wife! He does this because he fears that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his wife, since she was beautiful.

Note this is Abraham, a man with great awareness of God and yet so lax in his understanding of God’s moral requirements in this area, such was the influence of Paganism in his day.

For all those like me who have long suspected that the current move towards some kind of a post- Christian Utopia is really a fast track back to Paganism, please note Paganism isn’t great! The position of women isn’t great within Paganism! The leaving behind of a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman according to God’s marriage ordinance isn’t great! Sexuality becomes mundane rather than special and self-interest and desire rule in an increasingly dog eat dog pagan society.

Abraham thought he would be treated well by the Egyptians if they thought Sarai was his sister. So Abraham adds one sin to another. Rather than being motivated by faith in the Lord, he subsequently loses courage. In effect he is happy to sacrifice his nearest and dearest to save his own skin!

Abraham did not seek God in this decision, he acted according to his own judgment. He grasped at the first means of deliverance he could conceive of and his plan backfired spectacularly! That’s what poor, sinful, deceitful decisions do to our lives and within our closest relationships.

But we should also notice God’s mercy in His dealings with Abraham hear. Since Abraham had put his faith in the Lord previously, it seems the Lord protected him from suffering further for this action. It is amazing that Pharaoh did not have Abraham killed- Pharaoh was all ready to take Sarai as his wife before he found out Abraham had deceived him. The Lord worked to influence Pharaoh, so that Pharaoh did not even take the dowry back- expensive gifts for Abraham in exchange for Sarai’s hand. These gifts were the basis of Abraham’s wealth. But for God’s grace Abraham would have been as we say ‘dead meat!’

However in our passage- Genesis Chapter 13 -we are reminded of Abraham the man of faith again. Earlier God had made Abraham great promises: “Go to the land I will show you (and) I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; 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.” (12:2, 3). Abraham had no guarantees but God Himself. ‘I will show you…’ ‘I will make of you a great nation…’ ‘ I will bless you…’ Over and over ‘I will…’ It was God or nothing.

That is real allegiance. It’s the kind of decision that you make when you jump out of an airplane at 18,000 feet and hang your body on a parachute. That’s the kind of decision that John and James made in Matthew 4 when Jesus called them and they left their nets, their boat, and their father to follow Christ. That’s the kind of decision you see in Matthew 9 when Matthew left his job at the tax collector’s desk and followed Christ. This is the allegiance Abraham showed in accepting and leaving his own country in line with the promises God made him.

In Chapter 13 we see a disagreement between Abraham and his nephew Lot. Both had moved their families to an area called the Negev and things were going well. God had prospered their families just as He had promised. But as time went on their property had increased so much that there wasn’t enough room for both of them on the same land. Abraham’s herdsmen kept feuding with lot’s herdsmen because they were getting crowded in the grazing space. Abraham and lot had a tough decision to make.

They agreed the only reasonable thing to do would be for them to split up. Abraham and all of his kinsmen going one way, and lot with all of his family and servants going the other. So in verse 8, Abraham made a very generous offer. Standing high above the Jordan river valley, he called lot to take first choice of all the land he wished to settle in. Abraham would take the land left over. Abraham says in verse nine, “If you go to the left, Ill go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

This decision shows Abraham’s loyalty to God. He was now trusting God’s promise to bless his future anyway. His generous offer to Lot was made by faith.

Lot on the other hand, ‘looked up’ and in verse 11 we read ‘Lot chose for himself the whole plain of Jordan.” He saw what he thought was the best land and grabbed it. No generosity, no faith. Just selfishness. ‘Lot chose for himself’ He was looking after ‘number one.’

When Lot looked he saw the land was ‘like the land of Egypt.’ His heart really was ‘in Egypt’ He was centred on wealth and worldly achievement. These were his goals in life. Later Moses was to lead the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Sarah Groves has written a song called ‘Painting Pictures of Egypt’ which reflects on the temptation to return to the familiar ‘comfort’ of false gods and worldliness in the face of present difficulty in following the Lord:

‘Painting Pictures of Egypt’

(From the album ‘Conversations’)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcIA4Cnj6j4