By Faith, God Makes the Impossible--Possible

            Before you start reading, take a couple of minutes to watch this film clip from the movie “Field of Dreams.”

I love that move! I can still remember the first time I saw it. I was amazed at how they were able to weave together reality and fantasy into such a compelling story. I wonder—does that sort of thing actually happen in real life? I don’t mean a voice telling you to plow down your cornfield and build a baseball diamond. See, Ray (played by Kevin Costner) reached a crossroads that required a decision—a decision that required a tremendous act of faith. Would God ever ask us to do something that requires tremendous faith—something that on the surface seems totally unreasonable, illogical or maybe even impossible? Below is the biblical story of a man named Abram who also came to a crossroads that required a tremendous act of faith.

Genesis 12:1-4:

¹ TheLORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

² 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.

³ I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.”

⁴ So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.

I’ve read that story countless times but I admit not very critically. So let’s take a look at the text carefully. After you read verse four, what do you think to yourself? “That’s way too neat and clean to be true for real life.” In other words, “You’re kidding right?” It bothers me. Not because of what’s in the text but because of what’s missing from the text. Try and put yourself into this story and see if it makes sense to you. God says leave your home and family and go to some strange place that I’ll tell you about later. I’m going to make you into a great nation and I’ll bless you and the world through you. What would you do? What about if you’re married? What was the conversation like for Abram when he got home and broke the news to his wife? Maybe something like this:

Sarai: “Hi Abe. How was your day?”

Abe: “Hi Sarai. It was very interesting. God spoke to me today.”

Sarai: “Really! What did he say?”

Abe: “Well, maybe you should sit down. God said that I should leave Haran. He said that he would make me into a great nation and bless me and the world through me.”

(Right here is where you have that long deadly silence. I’m sure if you’ve been married for any length of time, you’re familiar with this.)

Sarai: “Leave? Why?”

Abe: “I don’t know.”

Sarai: “Where are we supposed to go?”

Abe: “I don’t know.”

Sarai: “How will he make you into a great nation when you don’t even have an heir and your 75 years old?”

Abe: “I don’t know.”

Sarai: “How will you be blessed and the world be blessed through you?”

(Ok so right here, you realize that it never dawned on you that you should have gotten some additional information and clarification—maybe asked a few obvious questions.)

Abe: “I don’t know.”

Sarai: “Abe, it’s bad enough that you won’t ask for directions when we jump on the camel and get lost going across town but now we’re supposed to turn our lives upside down and you don’t bother to ask a few simple questions! What are we supposed to do now?

Abe: “Start packing?”

I obviously don’t know how that conversation really went but let’s take a brief look at the answers to the questions Abram doesn’t ask but that we probably would. Why did Abram have to leave his home and family? Well, Haran was on a major trade route in northern Mesopotamia. It was an affluent and vital business community. Abram and his family came in contact with people from even the farthest reaches of the region. As a consequence, Abram and his family were exposed to a variety of religious influences. Unfortunately, Abram’s family adopted some of those foreign religious practices. If we read Joshua 24:2, we see that Joshua recounts Israel’s earliest history that Abram was called to leave Haran where his family worshipped “foreign gods.” Sometimes, before God can fully use us, he may not only be calling us “to” something, he may first be calling us “away” from something.

Where was Abram going? In chapter eleven of Genesis, we see that Abram’s father, Terah, was on his way to Canaan when the clan stopped off in Haran and eventually settled there. But Genesis 13 shows us that Canaan is where God would eventually lead Abram. In case you miss the significance of the trip from Haran to the place in Canaan where Abram would eventually settle, Haran is in modern-day southeast Turkey and Abram finally settled in Hebron, which is in south/central Israel. That’s about 450 straight-line miles of rugged terrain in a harsh climate! Today we can travel around the entire world in only a few days but it probably took Abram more than a month to get to where he was going. If we look back over the entire story of Abram, we can see how God was at work in his life in various ways as he eventually led Abram to the land he had intended to give as a promise all along. When my kids were younger, every summer I would take them once a week to a nursing home to visit residents who didn’t get many visitors. One of the things I found interesting when I talked to residents about their lives in Christ is the common refrain of how when they looked back over their lives, they could see God weaving his plan in and through the events of their lives to accomplish his will. As I grow older, I see this at work in my own life. God is always at work around us to accomplish his plan for us even though we may not see it or understand it.

How will Abram become a great nation? I mean don’t you first need an heir—what was it going to be a nation of one? And what about the fact that Abram was 75 years old? Well don’t worry, God didn’t provide Abram with an heir when he was 75 years old because that would be crazy. Instead, in Genesis 17 we read that God waited until Abram was 99 years old! God visited Abram while he was living in Canaan and promised him a son. Abram and his wife Sarai, who was 90 at the time, did have a child who they named Isaac and the birth of Isaac was in fact the beginning of countless generations that would fulfill God’s promise that Abram would become a great nation. Just when we think God has forgotten us, he comes through with his promises for our lives. We always think he’s late but in fact, God’s timing is always perfect because he knows the beginning before the end. We often miss out on God’s blessings because we don’t trust God’s timing. We just don’t think it’s possible.

But if God’s plans are a blessing, how would the nations be blessed by and/or through Abram? If we were to go back and take a look at Israel’s history after Abram, we’d find that at various times, Israel was tremendously affluent and prosperous. No doubt, the nations who allied themselves with her shared in her success. Others may have even been encouraged to follow the God of Israel as a result of Israel’s prominence and influence in the region. However, there are two very important landmarks in Israel’s history that I want to bring to your attention. They can be found in the genealogical record at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel. Abram’s genealogical record is divided into two major blocks of fourteen generational periods. The first block culminates with David--arguably Israel’s greatest earthly king. There is little doubt that his rule benefited both Israel and Israel’s allies. However, it is the culmination of the second block of fourteen generational periods that is the most significant. You see it culminates with the generation of Jesus Christ himself. And we know that it is through Jesus, his earthly ministry, his death and his resurrection, that the blessing of salvation is now available to the entire world. So we see that God did, in fact, bless Abram and the world through Abram.

So now we have all the answers to our questions and now it’s OK for Abram to go! And here’s what I believe is the critical point that the author is trying to make with this text. See, we have this terrible tendency to read the text in the context of our knowledge of subsequent events. We just went through the answers to the questions that we may have asked had we been in Abram’s position. However, the problem with doing that is that it takes away from the tremendous impact of verse four of the text. You see, while we know what’s going to happen and how God is going to fulfill his promises to Abram, Abram didn’t know and had no way of knowing for certain and yet he went anyway! This is the key text that even the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:8 picks up on when he says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” By faith, God makes the impossible—possible! Can’t we say the same thing for our lives today? So many things seem impossible because we don’t have all the answers. But this story demonstrates to us that God works in and through our lives and that by faith, God make the impossible—possible in our lives as well.

But what does that look like in real life? First of all, let me say that God’s call in our lives may be as dramatic as Abram’s call to leave the familiar and travel to the unknown or as simple as a walk down the street to serve a neighbor in need. However, we often neglect these small acts of service because we don’t think they could possibly make a difference-but they do! Also, every one of you has been called by God in some unique way to fulfill a purpose that you have been designed to fulfill. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that we have been created in Christ to do good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. Here, however, is where many of us get stuck. When we look at these verses in Genesis and other similar verses, we find ourselves waiting for God to call us to something bigger and better but when it doesn’t happen or perhaps the opposite happens, we begin to think that God can’t possibly use us-but he does! What we need to remember is that sometimes, God’s not calling us to a life of earthly prosperity and glory but to a life of suffering, hardship and maybe even death. So here’s where the rubber meets the road; Can you identify anything in your life that God might be calling you to do that you’ve been putting off. Maybe that’s calling a parent, a child or a sibling you haven’t talked to in a while. Or saying sorry to a friend for something you said or did. Or resigning from that job that always presents you with an opportunity to be unfaithful to your spouse. Or maybe it’s getting help for some kind of addiction you may be struggling with. Or maybe it’s agreeing to leave the familiarity and comfort of your home and family and travel to the unknown where the message of God’s love has yet to be proclaimed. In any event, when it seems clear that God has called you to move in some way, then in the famous words from Nike; Just Do It!!! I have no doubt that God will demonstrate that he will be faithful when you are obedient and demonstrate your faith and trust in him. Because, by faith, God makes the impossible—possible!

            At the start, you watch the movie clip from “Field of Dreams” when Ray hears the voice imploring him to build what would eventually be a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield. The movie takes countless twists and turns from there that weaves the past into the present. Ultimately, however, the movie is about redemption. Ray, in an adolescent act of defiance against his father, says something hurtful about his father’s favorite baseball player, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the two become estranged thereafter. Ray’s father dies before they have a chance to reconcile their relationship. Take some time to enjoy the final scene of the movie. It is a moving scene where the reconciliation with Ray’s father that seemed impossible because of his father’s death becomes possible because Ray made the decision to plow under a section of his farmland to build a baseball field in obedience to the voice that said: “If you build it, he will come.” In some small way, Ray demonstrated a principle for our lives—By faith, God makes the impossible—possible .