Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Does Your Life Say About God? | Torah | Genesis 18:16-33

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Do your actions matter? How do you represent Jesus in your daily life? Does your life show others who God is? In today's episode, Keith uses God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 18:16-33 to discuss how God uses his people to teach others to follow him. Listen to find out how to use your life to build God's kingdom. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 18:16-33 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. One thing everybody can agree on is that this COVID virus has really shaken our society. It's caused every single person to reevaluate their life and their priorities. And it's exposed as fraudulent many of our culture's salvation stories, many of the things that people have put their hope in. Like, let's say that you believe in the gospel of politics. And so you pray to the donkey or elephant because you believe that if the right political party is elected, if the right

candidate assumes office, then things are going to get a lot better. Our world is going to be healed. And so each day, you get up and you check to see how your team, maybe it's team elephant or maybe it's team donkey, how your team is doing. And you define good, people as those people who agree with you and bad people are your political opponents. Because at the core of your being, you think that politics can usher in God's kingdom, a kingdom of love, justice, and mercy, a kingdom of peace and prosperity. How's that turning out for you? It's not, is it? I mean, this virus has exposed even further that no political party can quite get a handle on the right policies, that no political party can deliver national health.

It can't cure what's wrong with us as people. That no political party has all the answers. In fact, no political party, doesn't matter if it's team elephant or team donkey, can usher in God's kingdom. It almost makes you think that God wants us to pledge allegiance to the lamb instead of the donkey or the elephant.

Another one of our culture's salvation stories, is the Gospel of Retirement. The Gospel of Retirement promises that if you will work hard for decades of your life, one day you can walk out of work and never come back. The Gospel of Retirement says that if you save, if you save in your 20s and your 30s and 40s, if you will lay up your treasures in your 401k, then one day you will be able to relax and travel and enjoy your life. retirement starts sounding a lot like heaven, doesn't it? And who is the high priest in this belief system

of the gospel of retirement? Well, of course, it's your financial planner, because he or she can lead you to the promised land of prosperity. You just have to do what they say. But what happens when the stock market dips at the wrong time? What happens when there's a virus in your retirement years? And so that restricts a lot of your plans. It means you can't travel like you wanted, maybe not even to be able to travel and see the family that you looked forward to seeing. What about the gospel of medicine? One thing the virus has shown is that medicine is a great gift from God, but it makes a lousy God. That's not a rebuke to medicine. We should be thankful for all the doctors and all the researchers and all the scientists out there and all the work that they are doing,

it's a rebuke to you and me for putting them, putting science, and putting medicine into a place that it was never meant to be. As all these cultural salvation stories begin to crumble, and trust me, there's many more that we could work through, when they're all exposed as insufficient, then people start naturally searching for something more reliable, something more solid to build their life on. Maybe we'll get to the point of asking, what's God's plan to heal the world?

What's God's plan to save us and fix the broken world that we live in? I'll tell you this. It's not the plan I would have chosen. God's plan today is the same plan he began back in the book of Genesis. You might remember back at the end of chapter 11, the world was a mess. Sin had produced every kind of wickedness and brokenness. What's God to do? Well, he could have just judged us. He could have destroyed the world. He had a lot of options. But what God decided to do was to fix, to repair, to heal this wicked and broken world.

And the way he was going to do it was through an old childless couple named Abraham and Sarah. They were from Nowhere'sville, Mesopotamia, and he promised to bless the world through them, to bring healing and redemption and forgiveness to the world. world through this old couple. It's kind of weird. It's not what I would have done, but okay, it's what God's plan is. In Genesis 1819, God says this about Abraham. Ready? It's really important. So listen. For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. I want us to think about this verse together. What it says is that God chose

Abraham so that he would teach his descendants. Now, he's not just talking about biological descendants, but spiritual descendants, descendants who have the faith of Abraham. All Christians are children of Abraham because we share the same faith in God. So to go back, God is saying that he chose Abraham so that he would teach his descendants, all those with the faith of Abraham, to follow the way of the Lord so that the world will be blessed through him. God is going to bring healing and blessing to the world through this one family. Not just Abraham and Sarah, but all of their spiritual descendants, what we might think of as the church. And God is still on that same mission to bless the world. Max Lucado tells the story of Christina.

She was a young woman raised in a town right outside of Rio de Janeiro. There was lots of crime and problems in the city that she lived in. Strip joints, brothels, all kinds of stuff a young woman didn't want to get involved in, or a young man for that matter. Christina didn't listen to her mom when she said to avoid the dangers of the big city. So Christina went out into the city. and didn't come home. Her mom set out to find her. She searched the streets in vain. Fearing the worst, mom visits the sleazyest establishments of the city. And on the walls in those sleazy establishments,

she pinned a photo of herself. And on the back of the photo, she wrote a simple message. Then mom went back home. She was utterly devastated. Christina ended up being employed in one of those sleazy establishments. It was a brothel right there in the city of Rio de Janeiro. And one day, she noticed a photo on the wall of her mom. Well, this is really weird. So she took the photo off the wall and she turned it over. She read this simple message that her mom had written. It said this, whatever you've done, whatever you have become, please just come home. And Christina went home. Jesus is still in a mission to save sinners. He's left photos of himself all throughout the world.

Those pictures are of you and me. Every genuine Christian is a picture of Jesus, and attached to us is a simple message that welcomes sinners back to God. Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, please just come home. By what we say and do, we communicate to those around us. us that Jesus welcomes sinners. We are often the means that the Holy Spirit uses to call people to come home to the Father. We are Jesus's photos representing him in a sinful world. Back to Genesis 1819. For I have chosen him, that's Abraham, so that he will direct his children and his household after him,

that's all believers, to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. What's God's mission to rescue the world from sin, to heal the nations? That's what he promised Abraham he would do. How is he going to accomplish that mission? Well, God is going to call into existence a community of believers. We might think of it as the church, who will be taught to live according to. to the way of the Lord. And how will that community come into existence? Well, because God chose Abraham

and he chooses us and invites us into this community. Of course, this means that the way we live matters. It matters that we keep the way of the Lord, because it's through us that God wants to reach the world. Now, that gives us a bigger purpose for obeying God. God. See, our obedience isn't just for ourselves. We'd also do it for our neighbor. This is where Israel went wrong. It's where you and I often go wrong. Because Abraham and Israel, they became part of the problem. God had chosen them so that they would follow the way of the Lord so that other people would come to experience God's blessing. But instead, Abraham and Israel, and you and me have made sinful choices, we've become part of the problem.

Do you think that makes the nations of the world want to follow God? What about our neighbors? See, people won't pay attention to what you and I say about Jesus if Jesus doesn't make any difference in our life. Or we can say it positively. As Jesus affects your life, people begin to pay attention to what you have to say about him. We are God's photos. carrying the message of Christ. We're part of God's mission that he started with Abraham.

God chose us to follow him and to represent Jesus in a broken world. How you and I live is incredibly important. As Christians speak of God's generosity, we are also called to be generous to people in need. As we talk about God's forgiveness, we are called to forgive those who have hurt us. As we call others to believe in Jesus who is the truth, we are called to live in the truth, to live in the light. If we're a divided, gossiping, fighting, petty, stingy church, well, then we've got nothing to say to a divided, broken, and violent world. If we're a sexually immoral church, then we've got nothing to say to a sexually confused world. If we're a church that is riddled with corruption or discrimination or other forms of oppression,

then we have nothing to say to a world where things like that run rampant. A church with leaders obsessed with wealth and power has nothing to say to a world that is trying to escape greedy tyrants. A church that is bad news isn't in any position to be. to share the good news. But of course, it's not just the church. It's you and me, because it's people like you and me that make up Jesus' church.

Why would anyone be expected to listen to King Jesus if his own followers don't obey him? Okay, let me close with a powerful story. There's a guy named Tim Winton. He's Australia's most celebrated novelist, and he was being interviewed on a news program. and the interviewer asked him to talk about his faith. So the interviewer says, when you were about five, a stranger came into your family and affected

your family quite profoundly. Is that right? And then Witten goes on to tell the interviewer about how his father was a policeman and a drunk driver knocked him off his motorcycle while he was on duty. His father, the policeman, spent weeks in a coma. finally he was able to come home, but he was never the same person. He just sat in a chair. Tim Witten says, at five years old, I didn't really understand.

I was just horrified. Winton's dad was a big man, and his mom had great difficulty doing small things, important things, like bathing him. Now, Tim's only five, right, so he can't help. One day he says a guy knocks on their door and introduces himself as, Lynn. Lynn said he'd heard about the accident and asked if there was anything he could do to help. It turns out that the guy who knocked on the door was a guy named Lynn Thomas, and he was from a nearby church. He'd heard about the difficulties and decided he'd stopped by to see how he could help this family.

So what happens is that Lynn Thomas stopped by regularly, and he would carry Tim Witten's father, this large former policeman to the bathtub and give him a bath. According to Winton, this simple act of kindness from a single Christian man had a powerful effect. Tim Witten says this, it really touched me watching a grown man bother for nothing to show up and wash a sick man. You know, it really affected me. So this strange, sacrificial, uncomfortable, I'm sure embarrassing act was the doorway that the whole Winton family walked through to become Christians.

Lynn Thomas, he wasn't some Billy Graham, some great speaker. He just followed the way of Jesus by helping a neighbor in the name of Jesus. But that's always been God's plan to bless the world. He wants to bless the world through people like you and me who love Jesus and serve her neighbor. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith,

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