Peace + Christmas Trees

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We are gonna be in Genesis today, so if you wanna turn there, we're gonna start in Genesis chapter 12. Also, if you do not have a Bible, or if you're just more comfortable, a lot of our scripture's gonna be on the screens behind me today, and so we're gonna be jumping around in Genesis 12, 13, and then into Genesis 22, finally. Have you ever written a note to yourself? Like buy more toilet paper, okay? Make sure that you do this thing on time. Make sure that you do these really important things, and maybe it's on your phone, it's like a to-do on your phone, maybe you just use a reminder app or something like that. Maybe you're old school and you write,

you write a post-it on the fridge. However you do it, it's a way for you to tell future you that something is important, okay? You're thinking to yourself, I'm gonna need to remember this, this is important, so I need to tell future you, future me, I need to tell that person to do this thing. It's almost like writing a note to self is an admission of forgetfulness, right? Like you're just kinda holding your hand up, you're like, I'm going to forget that we need toilet paper later. Later on this day, I'm going to forget it, and I need to be reminded of this important thing later, okay? This is kind of the premise of a note to self, the premise of a post-it note, of something that you need to be reminded of later. Throughout the Old Testament, we see these notes to self, but in the Old Testament, they were fresh out of post-its, okay, in the Old Testament, they didn't have paper,

they didn't have a cell phone to put the reminder on, but they did something a little bit different, so we're gonna look at what they did today. And if you want, you can turn with me now to Genesis 12, it's where we're gonna start, and we're gonna see Abram, we know him better as Abraham, but he hasn't received the name change yet, that happens a little bit later in Genesis. And so we see Abram, and he is writing a note to himself, okay, let's get a little bit of the backstory, look at Genesis 12, verse one, it says, now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. For Abram, this is a pivotal moment in his life, and it's actually interesting, we don't really know a lot about Abram before this verse, we hear about him at the end of Genesis 11, and then at the beginning of Genesis 12, Abram is taking center stage,

and he's taking center stage because God is speaking to him specifically, and is telling him something that is wildly unexpected. It is a command to leave everything he knows. And if you look at the verse, it actually, it kind of gives you that gravity, right? It's not just leave your house, it's go from your country, your kindred and your father's house, okay? That kind of entriplicate right there really kind of reinforces the fact that Abram is leaving his whole heritage, he's leaving his whole support structure. Now people are still going with him, but he's leaving this place where he has roots, and he's just going to a different place.

It's a pivotal moment, and not only is he going to a different place, he's going to a different place that he's never seen before. He doesn't know the way there, okay? He's not having to go one town over to get eggs at the HEB, he is going to a place he's never been, and he's taking everybody with him, or the people that he's in charge of, he's taking them with him. And in the middle of that, in the middle of that command that God is saying, go from here, go to a different place, in the middle of that, God gives him a purpose and a promise. Look at the next two verses. So go to this land that I'm gonna show you, and verse two, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I'll make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

It is difficult for us to understand the magnitude of this kind of promise, and it was probably difficult for Abram too, but this would be like a trillionaire going up to you personally. Clay, I'm gonna pick on you today. Clay Rickard, okay, Clay Rickard's one of our deacons, so it's safe to pick on him. It would be like a trillionaire. I don't even know if there are trillionaires, but let's just pretend there were trillionaires. And they go up to you, and they say, Clay, I want you to know I'm gonna solve world hunger. I'm gonna throw a ton of money at it, and I'm gonna do it all through you. I want you to be in charge of solving world hunger. And I have a plan, and I have all the resources that you're ever gonna need, and I'm gonna hire whoever you need me to hire. And I promise you, Clay, we're gonna solve world hunger, but it's gonna be through you. I don't know about you,

but I don't know how excited I am to receive that promise. Okay, I'm feeling the weight of that. Like, we're gonna do what? We're gonna solve world hunger? How are we gonna, you're gonna get the money to meet. It's a really unsettling moment. When Abram is receiving this promise from God, the heaviness of this promise should not be lost on us. This is actually more heavy than solving world hunger. This is every family, all the families that are gonna be blessed in you. And so, man, this is so big I don't even know if Abram is grasping all of it, but he's receiving it, right? He's receiving that promise, and he's like, okay, okay, this is the promise. And so Abram begins his journey, verses six and seven. Let's skip down to there. It says, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him, okay. Just a couple things about this verse. In verse six it says, at that time Canaanites were in the land. This kinda helps us understand that Abram was in a place where he was vulnerable, right? He was in the middle of a different territory, and he was a stranger in a strange land. And so he didn't have a lot going for him. He didn't have a lot of advantage.

And it says, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will give this land. It's a reminder of what he's already kind of said, but it's a more specific kind of portion of it, right? He's gonna do that, but he's gonna do that by giving him this land. And so when that happens, Abram writes a note to self. It doesn't say that in the scripture. It says that he built an altar, but that's the same thing. Okay, he built an altar to the Lord. That's his note to self. What's an altar? Well, an altar is a simple, usually a stone structure. It's not any more than, I don't know, a foot, foot and a half off the ground. It's a simple stone structure, right? It's usually kind of circular, square, whatever. It's enough to put something on to sacrifice, okay? So he builds an altar. And what we don't, what's inferred in the scripture is that not that he just kinda built that altar

and kinda moved on. He built the altar, he took an animal, he killed it, and he sacrificed it on the altar. He burned it on the altar in worship to the Lord. Okay, that's what's happening. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Why does he built an altar? Two reasons. The first reason's very practical, right? You're not going to sacrifice that animal on the ground, burn the animal on the ground. You need something to put that animal on, right? So it's kind of practical. To make an actual sacrifice, you need an altar to sacrifice upon. But the second thing, and really the more important thing of what's going on is that whenever Abram is building an altar like that,

he's remembering the peace in the promise. Abram is building this altar and he's remembering the peace of the promise. He's saying, he's saying, essentially, I'm a stranger in a strange land. My destination is unknown. And he does not have any other source of peace. He doesn't understand what's going to happen. He does, he cannot anticipate, he can't, all he sees is that he's a stranger in a strange land, there's Canaanites all around him, and the Lord, the God of heaven, is appearing to him and telling him, I'm gonna give you this land. I'm gonna solve all the world's problems through you, Abram, it's gonna be fine. But it doesn't feel fine.

It feels lonely, probably, it feels vulnerable. I don't know how well he's sleeping that night. What's gonna happen whenever he goes to bed? Are the people around the tribes around him, are they gonna take his animals? Are they gonna come in and they're gonna hurt him? Are they gonna threaten him? Let's keep reading. Verse eight, it says, from there, he moved to the hill country to the east of Bethel and pitched his tent.

With Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there, he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. This is interesting because it shows us a little bit of the process that Abram is going through. So Abram received the promise, moved along a little bit, received the promise again, built an altar, moves a little bit, receives the promise again, or a reminder of the promise again, builds an altar, moves a little bit, receives the promise again, builds another altar so that, essentially, there's this long train of altars behind where Abram's going and it reminds him of the peace of the promise. It reminds him that the Lord God in heaven came to him, said something specific to him, promised him something with a purpose and he's not going to forget it. He's gonna hold onto it. This is how Abram is obeying the Lord. In this season of Advent that we are in,

and we talk about how it's a season of renewal and we talk about it in terms of hope and peace and joy and love, and if we're not careful, these emphases, they're just words, man. They're just things that we kind of say, right? Like we just say, like peace be with you. Kind of the same way we say Merry Christmas. Like we might mean good things about us, but we're not really getting the gravity of it. We're not really holding onto the actual peace that we have.

As we read about Abram building altars and remembering the peace in the moment, it's not this vague feeling of peace. It's not some warm fuzzy. It's actual peace. God spoke directly to Abram's insecurity and his anxiety with a real promise, with a real purpose. Abram listened and believed God's promise to him and actually put one foot in front of the other and started to head toward the land that he didn't even know where it was. So when we talk about what is happening with Abram and these altars, what we are seeing is that he is actively embracing the peace of God by building these altars, making sacrifices on him and remembering. Look at the next chapter. Abram is still on that journey and he has just made a very tough decision to separate from his nephew Lot. Now they're fine. They're not mad at each other, but Abram, whenever he left, he was kind of older and he had a nephew who was of age.

He was a grown man. And so his nephew Lot came with him and at some point they separate. Okay, Lot goes where the land looks really great and Abram stays the course, okay. Right then I wanna read the verses right off of that. So this is Genesis 13, verses 14 and 15. The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give you and your offspring forever. God finds Abram again in what is likely a very anxious time for him. He was not expecting Lot to leave him. He wasn't expecting to divide his ability to defend himself. He wasn't expecting to send off this whole section of people that were with him. So Abram is now more vulnerable. He's more lonely. He is now he even feels even more that he has to kind of do this thing on his own.

God finds him in that moment and he provides peace to Abram by reminding him of what is true, by elaborating on the promise, if you will. The promise isn't changing, but God is telling him more and more and more and it provides peace. God continues to do this. Look at the next two verses in verses 16 and 17. It says, this is still God talking, I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I will give it to you. Man, what a promise. I mean, what a promise. Your offspring are gonna be counted as the dust of the earth. All those offspring, through that offspring, I'm going to bless the entire world. It's, I'm going to give you such favor so that if people bless you, I, the Lord God in heaven, will bless them and if they dishonor you, I will curse them.

Man, Abram is being given much, much favor, overwhelming favor, an overwhelming promise, an overwhelming command and God is just pouring out this blessing on him, not because he's been obedient, but because it's part and parcel with the promise, right? It's along with the promise. God's not making this up as he goes along. God had this in mind the whole time and so when Abram, just right whenever he's anxious, right whenever he's going to this straight part and Lot leaves him for actually what Lot describes as better land, like this land's better over here, peace out, I'm over here, you go that way and in that moment, whenever it happens, God says to Abram, look every cardinal direction around you. It's all yours and if you think that's too much land, wait till you see all the kids I'm gonna give you. Wait till you see how I'm going to fill this land with your offspring.

So what does Abram do next? How does he respond to that promise? Verse 18. So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron and there, he built an altar to the Lord. This is Abram's note to self. This is him remembering. This is him, this is his admission of forgetfulness, right? This is him banking on the fact that he's going to forget this peace. Why does he built an altar?

Is he somehow trying to keep the Lord nears? Is he somehow trying to say, okay, God really has to keep his promise now? No, Abram is banking on the fact that he's going to forget this peace. He's going to lose heart on the journey. He's going to walk away from there and it's not going to feel. The feeling that he has now is not going to last. The assurance that he feels in this moment right now will not last and Abram knows that. And he's building an altar almost to admit that that's going to happen. He needs an altar to remember.

So Abram builds altars. This Christmas I want to point out that many of you have an altar in your home already. You've probably already put it out. For many of you, it's one of the first decorations that you put up. It's a Christmas tree. It's a Christmas tree. Christmas trees are like big evergreen notes to self. Okay, I know you don't think about them that way. You just got a tree, it's just a pretty tree. But I'm telling you, it's a note to self. Think about it. What goes on your tree? Now you got ornaments, you got beads, tinsel, star. Some of you put fruit on there, weirdos. It's fine, do whatever you want. But what goes on besides the deco? What goes on besides that? Memories. Memories go on that. Pictures go on that. That trip you took to Florida and you took the picture and you put it in a little Christmas frame and you just hang that on the actual tree. The ornament that your kids made you in kindergarten,

that goes on the tree. We still have some ugly ornaments. I mean, oh. But you know what, they're memories, right? Even the kids who made them are just like, yeah, they're pretty ugly. But it's okay because that's not the point. The point is for them to be pretty, right? You have pretty on there, but you also have these memories, these pictures. Our first Christmas together, right? That's a common ornament. All these things are made to remember, right? And in your house, like most houses, maybe I'll just say most houses because you might do something different. Where did the presents go? Under the tree. Presents go under the tree.

Some of your most memorable times of Christmas are decorating the tree, the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree, if you let it, if you think about it, can remind us of what is true. There's two ways to do that. It does that, and I wanna show them both to you. The first, when you look at a Christmas tree, you can literally see your roots, okay? You just kinda stand back and look at it, and you can just see, like, this is what our life was like five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, right whenever we got married. Even before we were married, you know, all these things are just reminding, they're filling your heart with things, just memories of the past. And you can celebrate, you can kinda, you can kinda sit back and celebrate and just look at what the Lord's done, and celebrate that, be excited for that.

In our house, we have a giant ruler, have you guys ever seen those things? You have the giant ruler, and you measure the kid, right? Okay, that's a ghost. Some of you are gonna go out and buy a giant ruler for Christmas, I know, now. But we had a giant ruler, and so you just mark it, and the kids, you know, however tall they are, and our kids, you know, we are a tall family, and so, you know, all of our, we got the big stretch of height difference between, you know, age 10 and age 16, for example. Christmas trees are like those big rulers, except they don't measure height, they measure years. They measure memories, right? It's a way for us to remember, and for a Christian, it's a good way to remember God's goodness to you, right? Oh, two years ago, we went through that really hard time. Last year was difficult for these reasons. This thing over here, we remember now,

we remember God's goodness, because it's really easy to forget what God's done, right? It is so, so easy to lose that note to self, right? You're not looking at the Christmas tree as a note to self, maybe you're looking at it like decoration, and you're saying, well, you know, maybe it can look, you know, just so, maybe. Look, here's my encouragement. This season, I want you to take stock, I want you to stand and look at your Christmas tree, okay? And if it's not decorated, decorate it first, then do this, okay? If it's not decorated, that's pretty, pretty pointy, there's just staring at a tree. But I want you to stare at your tree, decorated, and I want you to take stock of God's faithfulness through the years, okay? So once you stand back, stare at your tree, your whole family's gonna think you're weird, and that's fine, just be okay with the moment. Stare at the tree and remember God's goodness.

I would encourage you to do this as a family, just take stock of God's faithfulness through the years. Make a list if you have to, right? Our family's kind of a list family. I got some questions for you, just think about it, think about this. I'm just gonna say a few of these questions, these aren't magic, you can come up with any other question you want, but maybe you can ask, like, how are you, either you or people in your family, you can kind of go around, how are you more like Jesus than you were three years ago? And look, don't take the occasion to be yourself up, all right? Don't think you had it all together three years ago, and now you're just kind of waylaying, you're just doing nothing. That's probably not true. How are you more like Jesus than you were three years ago? Remember a time whenever God really came through for you. All right, I've shared with you the story

of whenever my wife and I needed a ton of money, and we kind of walked in a furniture store, and there was a ton of money actually laid out, and we were like, oh, okay. We did it right, but still, the Lord just gave us cash out of nowhere, which was amazing, right? That was just God being faithful to us. Is there a relationship that you saw restored this last year, or these last few years? Is there a prayer that Jesus answered? Is there a great spiritual victory that you had? My encouragement, as you stand back and look at your tree, and as you just remember God's faithfulness, let that bring peace to you. Let that bring, not the peace that nothing bad is going to happen, but the peace that God is powerful enough to not freak out every time you freak out, to not worry every time you're worried. Remember God's faithfulness, let it bring peace.

That's kind of my first encouragement. And so let's be like Abram, let's have these notes to self. You don't have to build an altar. You already got one for Christmas. Find God's peace in his promise. So altars are a way, a place for us to remember the peace of God's promise, right? So it's almost a reaction to it, but altars also are a place for sacrifice, and this is the other story I wanna tell about Abram, except now in Genesis chapter 22 verse nine, where we're gonna read in a minute, he's now not Abram anymore, he's Abraham, okay? He is the father of many nations, basically now,

not just the father. And so Abraham is coming to this place, and now instead of God coming to him with a promise, and then Abraham building an altar in response, God comes to him and tells him to build an altar. Here's how it goes. Genesis 22 verse nine says, when they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood

in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Okay, this isn't just Abram being thankful and remembering God's promise, this is now Abram building an altar and laying his son on the altar. And what we've missed between Genesis 13 and Genesis 22 is that God said to Abram, hey, I'm gonna fulfill that promise in you by giving you a son, and they went through all this craziness, right? All these different things, and God finally, whenever Abraham was 99 years old, delivered a son to him and his wife, who was also, I think he was 100 and she was 99. Anyway, they were old. It almost doesn't matter the exact, they were old. And they get a son, and this is their son, this is Isaac, this is the kid, this was the fulfillment of that promise. Everything that God said was going to happen is now going to happen because Isaac is alive and Isaac is gonna have the children,

and Isaac's descendants are gonna be the same as Abraham's descendants, and they're gonna be the dust of the earth, they're gonna be all of that. And so God is now calling Abraham to build an altar, but it's not to remember, it's an altar to obey. It's an altar to sacrifice to God something so precious that his very existence and his legacy was built upon it. Next couple of verses, 10 and 11, Genesis chapter 22. It says, then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, here I am. And so the Lord stopped Abraham. He stopped him from killing his son, from sacrificing his only son. Look at verse 12, that's what the angel of the Lord said.

He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Now this story is rich. We're just, I mean, we're just touching on it this morning. This story is rich with meaning, but I wanna just, I wanna help you kind of understand something that as we look at our Christmas trees, as we stand back and we remember God's faithfulness, that's good, that's good, we can do that. We can take, we can remember the peace that all of that brings. We can remember God's faithfulness and just know God is faithful, right? It's in his character to be faithful, to bring that peace. But the basis for that peace is whenever God placed his son on the cross and offered it for us, for our sin.

The same way that Abraham was going to put the knife in Isaac, God sent Jesus to die for his enemies. Romans five makes this very clear. We were God's enemies, but Jesus, when he died, he died to make peace between us and God. Sometimes we don't feel like we're God's enemies, right? Sometimes we feel like we're just trying to do things the right way, we're just trying to keep our nose clean, we're just trying to do it right. There's a lot of ways to be God's enemies.

One of those ways to be God's enemy, right, is to try to do things on your own and do it in a kind of a wild way, like a prodigal son kind of way, right? Like you're just kind of running wild and not really caring, not really wanting to obey God, not really wanting to have anything to do with him, and you just kind of turn your nose up at him, right? And that's one way to live life on your own. There's another way to live life on your own that looks very religious and very moral. You're doing and saying all the right things, but in your heart, you're not getting peace from the Lord. In your heart, you are not looking to the Lord and saying, I need you to be made right. In your heart, you're not doing any of that, because in your heart, you're saying, I'm good enough. I'm a good person, I'm religious. I can make it to heaven on my own. I can live this life on my own.

I don't need help from God. God, I love you, but I'm gonna be, you don't need to worry about me, right? I've got it. And even though that sounds very moral and very religious, and it would probably be applauded in most churches, it is sin. It's a lie from the pit of hell that you can make it on your own. We were God's enemies, and Jesus died to make peace between us and God.

Much like Abraham in Genesis 22, in Romans 5-8, it says God demonstrated his love for us. So what was Abraham doing in Genesis 29? He was demonstrating his love for God. He was saying, I love you, God. I trust you, I trust you so much that I'm willing to sacrifice my son. I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna follow through with it. I'm gonna trust you for the results, but I'm gonna follow, this seems crazy to me, but I'm gonna follow through with it. I'm gonna trust you for the results. In that same way, in Genesis 22, Abraham and Isaac, it really is supposed to be a picture for us to understand what, it really happened, but it's supposed to be a picture for us to understand what God did for us. God demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus to die and end the war between us and God. This Christmas, as you're looking at your Christmas tree, I hope that it's more than just about your family.

I hope that it's more than just about your life. I hope that what you remember, as you stare at the Christmas tree, as you hear the songs, and we talked about peace even in our Christmas songs, as you hear all of those things, I want you to just be overcome by the fact that the war is over, and we are at peace because Jesus died, because God made it right. Here's what it is to be a Christian. It's not to perform religiously. It's not to, you don't have to read your Bible enough times or pray enough times or go to church enough times or anything like that. That's not what it is to be a Christian. What it is to be a Christian, the defining mark of a Christian is to say, God, I trust you that you have made me right. I trust you that you have brought peace between me and you. Period. That's it.

You trust the Lord that he has made peace, that he took you an enemy of God, whether you're a moralistic enemy or a wild child enemy, it doesn't matter. And God sent his son to bring peace, to make peace through the cross, it says. Make peace through the blood of the cross. Now, look, there's all kinds of deep theology there. Man, we could plumb the depths, but let's not plumb the depths and miss what's right in front of us. What's right in front of us is, this Christmas, if you are just caught up in kind of Christmas peace as a vagary, as a thought, just like, yeah, I feel peaceful because the Christmas lights make me warm inside. Okay, I mean, that's fine, but if you miss this other part, you've just missed Christmas. And the other part is, whenever Jesus came, I mean, we celebrate his coming to earth, Jesus came to die, he came to make peace. He came to be the prince of peace,

but he did that on a cross, not with a scepter. He did it by being a servant, not by coercion. He doesn't, Jesus doesn't make you do those things. He sacrifices for you even when you didn't even realize it. It says, while you were enemies, Christ died for you to bring you to God. During our time of response, what we always do is we open up the back there. There's a couch and a couple of chairs there, and I'm back there. And no pressure to go there, but what we wanna do every time is, we wanna help you just take a step forward, however that looks, whatever that's like, right? We want you to take a step forward in knowing what the Lord is calling you to do. And for some of you, that's gonna be a phone call. For some of you, that's gonna be a conversation. For some of you, that's just us sitting down, talking it through, praying. And sometimes, whenever we sit back there

and we talk and we pray and we're like, hey, there's more stuff for us to talk about, great. We'll meet for coffee, we'll do that, that's cool. At our church, what we wanna do every time is, sometimes, if you're in the middle of a religious service, right, you can make decisions because you're feeling a certain way, right? There's nothing wrong with that, but I have found, after doing this for 25 years, that sometimes those decisions don't stick on Monday. Sometimes the Sunday decision doesn't stick on Monday. Sometimes it just stays there. What I wanna encourage you to do is, I wanna encourage you to make real decisions. I want you to make real decisions based on what the Lord is calling you to do, based on what the Lord's asking you to do. To make those real decisions, it starts with the conversation. It starts with you saying I need help. It starts with you saying to somebody

that you wanna talk it out. It doesn't have to be me, right? Like I'm not some super highway to the Lord, okay? Jesus is the only highway we need, right? You can pray right in your seat. You can talk to the person next to you, that's cool. But what I don't want you to do is I don't want you to let the moment pass you by. I want you to hear it. I want you to respond. So as we sing, we're gonna sing here in just a second. As we do, I want you to consider how you're going to respond. Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we love you. We love you so imperfectly. We try to just do the best we know how. And you see that, you hear that, you receive that. Lord, I pray that you would just take just this little bit, just whatever we're trying to do, this really kind of awkward way forward, and that you would bless that, that you would meet us in that moment. Lord, help us to respond to you. In your name we pray, amen.