Sermon for Sunday March 13th

Sunday March 13th 2022 - Reflections from the Wilderness: “You can count on God…” (Please Read Genesis 15; Psalm 32; Hebrews 11; Romans 4).

Genesis 15: 1 says, after these things… the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great." (I AM YOUR VERY GREAT REWARD)

 

I feel weak                                 But - I am your strength. 
 

I feel afraid                                But - I AM your courage. 
 

I feel sick                                  But - I AM your health. 
 

I feel hopeless                         But - I AM I am your hope. 
 

I feel lacking                            But - I AM your supply. 
 

I feel vulnerable                       But - I AM your defender. 
 

I feel lost                                   But - I AM your deliverer. 
 

I feel guilty                                But - I AM your forgiveness. 
 

I feel grief                                  But - I AM your joy. 
 

I am your future                        But – I AM YOUR EVERYTHING (Your very great reward)

 

God is saying to you and me, “I am whatever you need whenever you need it." You can count on it!

 

You can count on God. He is the all-sufficient God for every crisis. God’s answer to fear is not an argument or an algorithm. But a Person. That’s why he said to Abraham, “Fear not. I am your shield. I am your very great reward.” God himself is the final answer to every fear of the human heart. Abraham was just a man. He has faults, his doubts and questions. How can an old man and woman produce a child and have this posterity you promise?  But he knew who it was who made the promise.

More than anything else it was the object of his faith that mattered most.  I AM was the object of his faith, complete and incomparable. He trusted God. No one can be compared to him. He is complete in himself. God doesn’t need us but we desperately need him.

When all his own calculations came to zero, the old man trusted he could, against all hope and human logic, count on God…and he did, time-after-time…

 

And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."

 

Only God can count the stars. About 8, 000 stars are visible to the naked eye in the desert sky. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. (Ps 147: 4)

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. (Isa 40: 26)

 

If I AM can count the stars and care for them, do you think He will discount you or not care for you? No. 7 God continued, “I’m the same God who brought you from Ur of the Chaldees and gave you this land to own.” But just as He did with the father of all those who have faith, I AM called Abraham to look up…
 

I may be hemmed in on every side; but I am never hemmed in overhead. “If you cannot see a great way before you, or on either hand, you can see far enough straight up. When you question what God can do, look above, and see what God has done. This looking at obstacles, fixing our eyes on the hills or the bogs, on the lions or the bad men in our pathway, is discouraging business. It makes us believe that there is no way out of our difficulties. But to look up into the clear sky, and to see the moon and the stars in their marvellous beauty, inspires us to the feeling that there are no difficulties out of which their Maker cannot find the way for us. What is it that has discouraged you? Is it your empty purse; or the business outlook of the times; or the rumours of impending war; or the misdoing or the lack of your wayward boy; or the suspicious looks of those who used to trust you; or the sense of your own poor health; or a fresh conviction of your lack of mental power? Whatever it is that has made you anxious, "look now toward heaven": there is nothing discouraging in that direction. If the Lord who made the heavens, and keeps the moon and the stars in their places, has given you a promise, you may be sure that He can make that promise good.” (H. C. Trumbull.)

 

Have you noticed how very often the people of God encounter God in the desert or the wilderness?  Sometimes He took them there. Sometimes because of rebellion they languished there.  A place life and death and learning. Jesus went there to face the enemy and be tested there. Lent starts there…

 

There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” (DT 1:3)

He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything. (DT 2:7)  God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart… (DT 8:2)

“Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. (Ne 9:9)

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isa 43)

 

Abram believed the LORD… When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do.

And he credited it to him as righteousness. It was there in the desert wilderness that God counted (reckoned) Abraham a man of faith and God’s friend.

 

It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him. (Hebrews 11: 6)

God keeps records and books but (just as well!) for the believer, He is not counting sins!

6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

 

The happiest people, the blessed people, are the ones who know the truth of Psalm 32. God is not counting sins! God is not keeping a daily tally or record. That’s the sort of thing we do.

If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you…7 Israel put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. 8 He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. (Psalm 130)

 

"As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103)

God completely removes our sins. He does this through the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

23 The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

 

Our sins were credited to His account. His righteousness is credited to ours. A wonderful exchange. You can count on it…

 

People of faith (like Abraham) died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

 

You can count on it, be assured! You can count on I AM – your shield and very great reward.

 

MFR 11/03/22

 

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