Sermons

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The Fear of the Unknown
October 28, 2001
Fourth in a series on "Facing Our Fears"
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Genesis 12:1-9

It’s good to be here this morning. You are all looking well-rested from an extra hour of sleep. Good to be here with the Middle School kids leading our service. The sun coming in the window…and the Yankees losing last night!!

For the last three weeks, we’ve talked about Fear, and what words God might speak to our fears. The first week we looked at the Fear of Being Alone. God said “Don’t be afraid, I will be with you.” The second week we looked at the Fear of Being Insignificant and God said “You follow One who came not to be served, but to serve.” Last week, we talked about the Fear of the Dark, and God said in Christ “I am the light of the world.” The dark is powerful, but not nearly so strong as the light of Christ. Today, we look very briefly at one final fear: The Fear of the Unknown.

To do that we look at another part of the marvelous story of Abraham, from the book of Genesis. An earlier part than the kids just acted out (Gen 22) Actually, we’ll be looking at the story of Abram. Same person, slightly different name. His name first was Abram (Exalted Ancestor), then at age 99 (chpt.17), God re-named him to Abraham (Ancestor of a multitude)…part of God’s promise that God would make him the father of a great nation.

The Bible is such a remarkable book. Take this story of Abram. Abram’s father, Terah lived in the city of Ur of the Chaldeans (Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq). For some reason, this family set out to go to Canaan (Palestine, modern day Israel/Lebanon)…but when they came to Haran (Syria, modern day)…there they stayed. There Abram grew up. There Abram’s father Terah died.

At the beginning, then of chapter 12, God says to Abram “Leave here, leave your country, the land of your father and go to a place I’ll show you.” And the only response we’re given is what it says in verse 4: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”

Very interesting: Such a switch from the first 11 chapters of Genesis. By and large, the first 11 chapters of the Bible (with the exception of the Noah story) are the story of mistrust and rebellion: Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, the evil that preceded the flood, tower of Babel. But here in chapter 12, things change. Disobedience moves to obedience, distrust moves to trust.

God said “Go,” and “So Abram went.” Sometimes scripture is remarkable for what it DOESN’T say. I want to know: What happened between the time God said “Go,” and “Abram went?!”

Did Abram wrestle? Did he object? Did he ever say, “God I’ll do anything…just don’t send me to another country!” Did he stop and figure out the economics? Did he think about where he would get food for his flocks? Did he get onto MapQuest and figure out which camel trail he ought to take? Did he first tell God “No,” and only later “Yes?” Did he think about who he might see along the way? Did he plot out the trip? We don’t know. We just know God said “Go,” so he went.

I tried to think of an analogy in my life. The closest thing I could come up with was leaving business, going to New Jersey (talk about the wild unknown!)… to go back to school and head for ministry. It had a lot more between “Go,” and “they went.” A 2-year process, vacilating, agonizing, calculating finances, planning the route across the country, figuring out what dates and what cities, making sure we knew where we could get gas, where we knew people. In short, we controlled as many variables as we could possibly think of.

But for Abram…what a risky thing! No idea where he was going…just away from what had grown used to. John Calvin says God told Abram (and his wife, Sarah) to go “with closed eyes…until having renounced thy country, thou shalt have given thyself wholly to Me.” Abram only knew three things:

a) God clearly told him to go.

b) God would bless him…name, nation, land, all families of earth.

c) perhaps the most important? God would be in the driver’s seat: Look at the pronouns (verses 1-4): “I-I-I-I-I.”

What was Abram being asked to do? To take a huge step into the unknown. To let go of the controls…and trust God.

I don’t know what the unknown looks like for you right now. But I’m just pretty sure it’s there. The unknown. A place where God is calling you to trust Him. Maybe it’s a physical location, like Abram. Maybe it’s within a relationship. Maybe it’s in your spiritual life. Maybe you’ve always kept your faith in Christ pretty private, and God is calling you to begin to speak about it. Maybe you’ve never been able to pray out loud, but God is calling you to risk trying. Maybe all of your faith has been “doing” things, and God is calling you to go deeper by being quiet, by understanding that His love washes over you whether you have “done” anything or not.

There is a place of unknown in your life that you may be scared of…that God will call you into. But He never quits calling us deeper. He wants us to ask the question: “What would it look like for me to trust God here?” I think this is my learning edge right now…at every moment, it seems that God is asking me: “What would it look like to trust Me here…or here…or here.”

The equation changes here in Genesis 12. God begins to form a community for himself, a people beloved to him. And God asks for a response: Trust Me. Walter Brueggemann says that trust, that faith response is to “embrace the future so passionately, the present can be relinquished for the sake of the future.”

Again, trust is to “embrace the future so passionately, the present can be relinquished for the sake of the future.”

IF we can know that ultimately in Jesus Christ the future belongs to God…perhaps we actually COULD relinquish the present. …Notice it doesn’t say DISCOUNT the present, nor does it say just endure it…Only that it might be relinquished. I love that word. We might let go of our grip on our lives.

Max Lucado (The Applause of Heaven) tells a great story of taking his daughters to an amusement park, and going to one of those “pits” filled with thousands of bright plastic balls. His oldest daughter did great in it, but his 3-year-old Andrea had trouble. As soon as Andrea went in, she filled her arms full of balls. It’s hard enough to walk in waist deep balls with your arms to help balance you…but with her arms full, Andrea fell right over. She couldn’t get up with her arms full. She started to cry… Here is what Lucado writes:

“Andrea,” I said gently, “let go of the balls, and you can walk.”

“No!” she screamed, wiggling and submerging herself beneath the balls. I reached in and pulled her up. She was still clutching her armful of treasures.

“Andrea,” her wise, patient father said, “if you’ll let the balls go, you’ll be able to walk. Besides, there are plenty of balls near the table.”

“No!”

She took two steps and fell again.

Parents aren’t supposed to go into the pit. I tried to reach her from the edge, but I couldn’t. She was somewhere under the balls, so I spoke toward the area where she had fallen. “Andrea, let go of the balls so you can get up.”

I saw a movement under the balls. “Nooo!!”

“Andrea,” spoke her slightly agitated father. “You could get up if you would let go of…”

“Nooooo!!!!!”

“Jenna, come here and help your sister up.”

By now the other parents were beginning to look at me. Jenna waded through the balls toward her little sister. She reached down into the pit and tried to help Andrea onto her feet. Jenna wasn’t strong enough, and Andrea couldn’t help because she was still clutching the same balls she had grabbed when she first stepped into the pit.

Jenna straightened up and shook her head at me. “I can’t get her up, Daddy.”

“Andrea,” her increasingly irritated father said loudly, “let go of the balls so you can get up!”

The cry from beneath the balls was muffled, but distinct. “Noooo!!!!”

“Great,” I thought to myself. “She’s got what she wants, and she’s going to hold on to it if it kills her.”

Don’t we do that? Don’t we hold on to life so very tightly, try to control everthing? We hold onto life so tightly…sometimes our Father in heaven can’t pry it away from us. Even if God wanted to give us some incredible blessing…our arms are already full.

If we listen to the voices around us, we may think we have just two options:

a) live out of pride…the world has been entrusted to us, it’s our responsibility to buck up, and make our own future.

b) live out of despair…we are stuck with the world as it is…and it’s pretty crummy.

Abram’s story delivers to us a third option: we live out of a trust. Trust that transcends ordinary knowledge, a conviction with a firmer basis even than reason…trust that the character of God, and His promises…are firm enough to hold us.

We are called into the unknown…called out onto this bridge where we can’t see exactly what the other end looks like, but the bridgekeeper says “walk out anyway…it’s okay.” We’re called to trust out lives, our kids in baptism (we’ve had several baptisms today, and I think baptism itself is a great act of trust…trusting our children or lives to God, not knowing what the future will hold!) , our futures to God…and see what happens. We have no idea. We know there will be some joy and triumph, some pain and loss, along the way. Greatest risk ever.

We are told, begged, dared to trust the character of a God: Who would stop at nothing to know us, not even a cross. A God who longs for ALL people to know him, whose love and patience, in Jesus Christ, knows no bounds.

And we are to trust in God’s promises. That a truly rich, truly abundant life is available…in Christ. The promise word from Jesus…that He is coming back. That even death…is not the final word. That ultimately and finally, we worship a God who embraces us…and asks us to trust him…further, deeper, more. He wants us to risk. Brennan Manning writes “The Jesus of my journey will never say to me, “Brennan, you were too reckless, you confided in me too much, you trusted beyond reasonable limits, you hoped too much in me.” No, the Christ of my journey would never say that.”

Where might God be calling you to trust Him?

We stand…at each and every moment…on the brink of the unknown.

A hundred times, a million times in our lives, the word comes from God: “Go from your comfortable country…I will bless you. I want you to trust me.” Always the question is: “Can I trust? Will we go?” This story gives us such a simple, three word answer:

“So Abram went.”