Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow / Livestream
Move forward and live in faith but know where that faith is rooted, said Sean Myers, lead pastor of Pella Communities, during Chapel on Monday at Grand Canyon University's Global Credit Union Arena.
“My hope is to start this year with you to know that our faith is rooted in someone who is more faithful than us, and everything else grows out of that,” said Myers, who referenced Romans 4, which emphasizes that the mark of faith makes people the people of God.
In continuing this year's Chapel theme of “Hall of Faith,” Myers stressed how God praised Abraham for placing his trust in Him after casting doubt when Abraham spoke to the Lord the first time.
After God appeared to Abraham in a vision, promising him a great reward, Abraham questioned the value of that reward, considering he was childless. Because God had given him no children, his servant, Eliezer of Damascus, would inherit his home.
God tells Abraham, “I know you have these doubts. Look to the sky, see how many stars there are. That's how many children you're going to have in regards to your lineage. The people of Abraham will be great.”
Furthermore, God told Abraham in Genesis 15:7, “I'm the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land to possess.”
Abraham replied, "Oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
God created a covenant with Abram – Abraham's original name before God gave him the name of Abraham, father of many nations – telling him to bring him a 3-year old heifer, a 3-year-old goat, a 3-year-old ram, a turtle, dove and young pigeon.
Every animal but the birds were cut in half, with an aisle created between the severed parts. When the birds hovered over the halves of the cut animals, Abram drove them away to show his faith in God.
The agreement, according to Jeremiah 34:18, was such that breaking a promise would cause the violator to face the same consequences as the slashed animals: “The dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”
There is a twist, as in Genesis 15:12, when Abram fell asleep with a “thick and dreadful darkness over him.” God tells Abram that his descendants will be mistreated as slaves for 400 years but He would punish the nation they serve and that Abram's descendants will leave with great possessions.
God, symbolized by a smoking firepot and flaming torch, passes between the pieces of animals, telling Abram’s offspring, “I will give you this land from the river of Egypt to the great river of Euphrates, to the land of the Kenites,” and He mentions all the other lands Abram's offspring will inherit.
“The problem is Abraham didn't walk through the slaughtered animals,” Myers said, since he was in that deep sleep. By passing between the pieces alone, God was taking the curse upon himself. “And so God's declaration of the Abrahamic covenant is so intense that He makes this declaration, ‘When I break My side of the covenant, and I stop being the God of you, My people, may I be slaughtered.
“'But let me be clear, when you break your side of the covenants, let Me be slaughtered.’"
This sums up Myers’ emphasis on faith, as he points to Romans 4, in which people are declared righteous by God solely through faith and not by their actions.
Myers points to prominent pastor Tim Keller's central basis for Christianity – on our assurance of how unshakably God’s heart is set on us and not how much our hearts are set on God. He also referenced Exodus 14:14, when the Israelites escaped from Egypt and were trapped between the advancing Egyptian army and the Red Sea – when God tells them to be still and that He will save them.
Myers concluded Chapel by sharing a story written by Brian Chapell, senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois. Chapell wrote about two young boys raised in a small Louisiana town who decided to play around a river but started to sink in the sand. As nightfall arrived, their parents started to worry.
One of the younger boys is found unconscious while in sand up to his neck. He’s finally lifted up to his waist and regains his breath while visibly rattled.
His mother asked about his older brother. The boy doesn’t want to reply until asked by his father in a firm tone.
“In a short, little sentence, he simply responds with, ‘I’m standing on his shoulders,’" Myers said.
This reflects Genesis 15, according to Myers, as it represented an act of grace in which the older brother knew they weren’t getting out of the sand but told his younger brother to get his head above the sand so he could live.
“This is us,” Myers said. “This is the story of our big brother, Jesus, giving His life away so we can continue to live. We can continue to walk in faith. This is the story that's in front of us. This is what drives everything that we do for the glory of God.
“I pray, more than anything this year, you find yourself being rooted in the fact that God is big enough to keep you. He's the one who started it. He will keep you to the very, very end.”
Myers, who started speaking at GCU 10 years ago as a guest at The Gathering, praised Worship Manager Jared Ulrich for his work behind the scenes.
University Pastor and Dean of Students Dr. Tim Griffin also announced a Unite GCU concert on Oct. 21 at Antelope Gymnasium. This event is a Christian worship and revival concert that started two years ago at Auburn University. UPPERROOM will perform, and tickets are available only to GCU students.
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Next Chapel speaker: Jeff Dyer, Heartfire Missions, 11 a.m., Monday, Global Credit Union Arena
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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