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Ever been responsible for a spill that was so big you didn’t know where to start or how to clean it up? Eventually, you have to start somewhere. Can you imagine what God must have thought as he looked down on the perfect earth he had made and saw the mess that Adam, Eve and their family tree had made of it? Just one act of disobedience sent the whole world into a moral tailspin. Imagine the frustration God must have felt every time a child was born and the moral mess got bigger and uglier.

If you were God, where would you start to clean up the huge moral mess in this world? I figure it would be easier to hang a big condemned sign over the earth, go somewhere else and start over again rather than clean up the mess. The Bible says that in spite of the moral mess and devastating effects of sin, God decided to clean it up. So where did He start? He decided to get everyone’s attention by creating a new nation to help Him with the cleanup.

This new nation would set an example to follow because they worshipped a powerful God who offered the solution to their moral mess, and other nations would be drawn to this nation. God could have jump-started the process with an existing nation, but instead He decided to create a nation that would require decades to establish. That’s a lot like calling 911 and the dispatcher telling you they’re on the way as soon as they manufacture an ambulance. But God decided to start somewhere, and He wasn’t going to let the size of the mess intimidate Him.

Out of all the possibilities on the earth, God, for some reason, reached down and picked out Abraham to be the father of this new nation. He didn’t start with a popular leader, king or celebrity. He started with an unknown husband-wife duo that was too old to birth babies. To make matters more challenging, God sent Abraham to an unknown land where he had no family to help make babies. He was Mr. No-body. We’re talking an odd way to ramp up a new nation.

We pick up our story with God offering Abraham the opportunity of a lifetime. This rare opportunity came with a promise and a pattern to follow. First the promise: Genesis 12:1-4 says, "Then the LORD told Abram, 'Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others…All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.' So Abram departed as the LORD had instructed him…Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran."

God had not spoken for a long time, but he broke His silence with three promises to Mr. No-body. First, God promised to make Abraham the father of a great nation. Anyone know the name of that nation? Israel. Second, God promised to make Abraham famous. How many of you have heard of Abraham before today? Do any of these names sound familiar—Amraphel, Kedorlaomer, Birsha, or Shinab? These were all powerful kings during Abraham’s day, yet no one knows them. Here’s the third promise: "All the families of the earth will be blessed through you."

Through these three promises, God outlined His whole plan of redemption for the world. Again, redemption means "to buy back, to regain possession of; to recover by payment or sacrifice." God, who lost His prized creation in the Garden of Eden, puts together a plan that included creating a nation to facilitate the buying back or redemption of His prodigal people.

God was saying, "Abraham, I’m going to make you into a great nation that will get the attention of other nations around you. I’ll confound those other nations with my power, so they will turn to Me for answers to the moral mess they’re in. And Abraham, your name will be great. At the right time, there will be an offspring—a redeemer who will come from your nation and who will be a blessing to the world by offering a remedy for the world’s moral mess."

Two thousand years after God made these promises, the Apostle Paul understood how these promises to Abraham were ultimately fulfilled in one of Abraham’s descendents—Jesus Christ. Paul writes in Galatians 3:8, "What's more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would accept the Gentiles, too, on the basis of their faith. God promised this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, 'All nations will be blessed through you.'" All the nations of the world have the potential of being blessed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Abraham was the first piece in God’s puzzle for cleaning up the moral mess that we all created.

Not only did God make Abraham three promises, He also laid out a pattern for how Abraham would relate to God. Up until this point, there were no rules to live by. Adam and Eve blew the only rule God had given. The 10 commandments didn’t exist. So when God approached Abraham, he didn’t base it on do’s and don’ts but on promises. God started with promises and a request for Abraham to trust him. Trust was going to be the pattern for Abraham’s relationship with God. It’s the same pattern for you and me if we want to be in a relationship with God.

Hebrews 11:8 says, "It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. God was asking of Abraham, "Trust me even though you know little or nothing about where you’re going. You go on that basis, or you don’t go at all."

Let’s listen in on Abraham and God’s conversation in Genesis 15:2-5, "'O Sovereign LORD, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son… You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir.' Then the LORD said to him, 'No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.' Then the LORD brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, 'Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!'"

In that moment, as Abraham was staring at the stars, he made a decision. He decided to believe or trust God. He didn’t have a lot to base his faith on—he’s not particularly religious, he’s just met this God, he has no kids, he and his wife are beyond child-bearing age, he’s Mr. No-body in an unknown land, all he has are some promises to hold onto. Yet he decides to trust God without much to go on. And at that moment, something happened that had never happened before in history. God provided Abraham with the gift of righteousness and total acceptance.

Genesis 15:6 says, "And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD declared him righteous because of his faith." In the very moment Abraham believed God and His promises, he experienced a right standing with God—not because of something he did, but because he had put his trust in God.

Don’t miss this. The way to a right relationship with God is based—not on rules, not on performance, not on good looks, not on being religious or on lack of moral messes, but on believing in God and the truth of His promises. None of us deserve this relationship. None of us have earned it. Trusting God is the pattern—the key to a right relationship with God.

On that day, Abraham believed God and His promises. So God confirmed His promises by making a covenant or a formal agreement with Abraham where animals died and blood was shed. Again, this was a foreshadowing of the final payment for sin by God’s own son on the cross 2,000 years later. By trusting Jesus as your Savior you become right with God.

How incredible is that? Four thousand years ago God put into place a plan to clean up the moral mess and make it possible for us to have a right relationship with Him, totally acceptable before God.

You’ll have to read the details later, but let me fast forward the story. After 25 years of waiting for an heir, Abraham and Sarah have a child named Isaac who has a son named Jacob who has 12 sons. But Abraham dies before seeing God’s promises fulfilled. He wasn’t a great nation … yet. His name wasn’t great … yet. The nations of the earth hadn’t been blessed … yet. But God was in the process of fulfilling His promises to Abraham to redeem His prodigal people.

Later Jacob’s extended family moved to Egypt due to a famine where they multiplied like rabbits, reaching nation status. This concerned the Egyptian rulers so they turned Abraham’s descendants into a slave nation for 400 years. Still the nation was not great; Abraham’s name wasn’t great … yet, other nations weren’t being blessed … yet. But as we’ll discover next week, God had the nation just where he wanted them to be so that the world would take notice.

God wants the same thing from you and me that he wanted from Abraham. He wants our trust. "God, it doesn’t seem possible that you will put my life back together again or help me work through my destructive habits, but I will trust you. I can’t imagine you’d ever let me into heaven with my track record, but I trust you." So why does God want our trust?

God wants your trust because he wants a relationship with you. You can’t have a relationship without trust. Trust paves the way to a relationship with God. God went to great lengths to clean up the mess, and all He wants from you initially is to trust Him. And when you put your trust in Jesus who died to pay for your moral mistakes, God gives you the gift he gave Abraham—the gift of a right standing—the gift of being fully acceptable to God.

Abraham was a coward, his marriage stunk, he was an adulterer, he lied twice about not being married to his wife Sarah. Yet God said, "Abraham, through you the world will be blessed." And Abraham said, "I believe. I trust you." And God gave him a right standing.

What do you have a hard time trusting God with? For some of you, you haven’t placed your trust in Jesus as your Savior. For some of you, it’s your finances, your marriage, your kids, your career, your sexuality, your past, your bad habits, and you’ve heard what God says about these things in the Bible, but you don’t know whether you can ever trust Him and follow His principles for life.

When you don’t trust God with an area of your life, you miss out on relationship with Him. You can’t have much of a relationship with someone you don’t trust. It’s all about looking up into the heavens and saying, "God, I don’t understand; I don’t have it figured out, but I trust You with my future, my work, my home, and my marriage even though I might not see the end result in my lifetime." When you do that, you pave the way to strengthening your relationship with a God who loves you as His prized creation.

What areas are you holding onto and not trusting God for? Why don’t you symbolically open your hands and present those areas to God as an act of trust, worship and obedience?