Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. All right, let's get into it. We are on our Genesis series week four, and we're looking at incredible stories here from God's word.
We're looking at the Tower of Babel, we're looking at the calling of Abram. Some really substantial passages here. I'm excited to unpack this with you with my good friend, Kim Hamilton. What's happening, Kim?
Hey, good to be with you. Hi, everybody. Yeah, Kim, good things going on, right? All things, young adults, Thursday night at Mariners, so many great things that you're a part of.
Just give us a little bit of what you're excited for, what you see God doing. Oh, it's so exciting. It's amazing to see people inviting their friends, like their work friends, their neighbors, people that don't go to church, haven't gone to church their whole life, stepping in the door and saying, oh, there's rooted. All right, I'll try that.
Yeah. So our rooted groups are full of people that are just exploring Jesus. And it is the most exciting thing ever. It's amazing.
Love that. And then we know those groups are many of them trying to be life groups and come right into all the great care and things that you have set up for them with your incredible team and so, yeah, I got to do great things. And love in love in this series too, we were just talking before we got started just the insights and how much we're enjoying studying the book of Genesis. Like how many times have we heard these stories, right?
Like they're even in our children's Bible to reach our kids when they're little, but the freshness of the series and the depth of it is just incredible. I just love it. And the conversations that are coming from it this time, when rooted started, it just so happened that week one lined up with the Genesis. It's the first one and it was such a great discussion hearing the girls that had actually gone to church and able to tie that all together.
It's so great. I hope you're enjoying it within your groups. And the discussions are as rich and fulfilling. Yeah.
And for those that are in rooted right now, we're coming around the corner of coming near just strongholds. And even this week has an element of that, of the longing for community, security, identity and how we did for that in ourselves. And so loads of great things in here. I think for me too, it's just really, yeah, putting in front of me that longing for Jesus and the appreciation that we know where the story is going, because Genesis is so much the story.
It's an origin story of humanity. It's a story about God and his graciousness and his compassion. It's so much a story as well as of calling and failure. You see that all the way from Adam.
You see that in Noah. As we track the story, you'll see that in Abraham turned Abraham. I mean, I don't think we talked about it this week or last week, but Noah's fall himself, you know, in Genesis 9 through drunkenness and nakedness. There's a lot of parallels there that go back to the garden about exposure and shame.
How God calls us, but there's a failure of us trying to do things in our own way on our own terms. And we see that play out in devastating ways. But the beauty is that where the story is going is Jesus, the one that fulfills all the promises, Jesus, the one that we put our final trust and rest in and rest in. And so for me, it's like, yeah, it's longing that thankfulness for what Jesus has accomplished and brought us into.
Yeah, it's so good. It's never about the perfection in us. Over and over again, we're saying it is never about our own perfection because we're not never happened. And Jesus is grace for us.
Yeah, it's awesome. So leaders, you set the tone, right? With your enthusiasm goes a long way. Like talk about what you're excited for, what you're seeing, bring that into your discussions each week.
There's a temptation sometimes when you hear these familiar stories with those that have been around church for a while, that they can kind of sit in that corner of the flannel graph. We're dating ourselves with flannel graph storytelling. So cool. But there's so much vibrancy.
There's so much life in it. I mean, every word in scripture is God inspired. It's God breathing. Nothing's wasted at the story is so intentional all the way through.
And so lead with your enthusiasm through it. Awesome. All right, let's get into this week. We're going to look at a couple of important passages, Genesis 11, looking at the story of the Tower of Babel, the people of Babylon.
They discovered an asphalt, basically, this new technology, how they're going to use that, how they're going to use that for their own names and never going to look at the calling of Abram as well. So before we get into the passage, just let our lean in, it says, have you ever tried to do something totally on your own that would have gone better if you had just asked for help? What happened? How could others have helped you in that situation?
How could that have gone better? Oh my gosh, I have so many. Yeah, what do you got? Much of life.
You learned it the hard way, right? The ones that first kind of my mind are moving. Yeah. You think, oh, yeah, we got this.
We'll be fine. And then you pull a muscle or realize 10 days later, you should have asked a few friends. Yeah. And the, I think the one that I look back and think I finally learned a little bit and I did ask for help eventually was caring for my parents when they before they passed.
And even emotionally do have people do community in that space and to care for me and my parents as well. It was really a huge blessing that I would have missed out on if I had asked people. That's great. And you can take this question a deep cut deeper too.
What do you think that is about us that drives us to maybe want to try things ourselves to power up and to power through? And I think, you know, when I think about this question, I immediately go to all the very many house improvement things that I've tried and it's all because it's not, I think, all the most recent was our sprinkler system. The mess, right? Our timer was down.
I think I could fix it. Let me change a fuse. Let me change a 9 volt battery. Let me do the thing.
Actually, can you guys just come over and reinstall this thing for me and rewire everything that I might have messed up? But there is a sense of I want to do it because I want to show that I can do it. I want to show that I'm worthy of it. I can prove to myself or more importantly to my wife that look, I can handle these chores, which often don't go the right way.
And we see that. We see that in the story of humanity. We see that in the story of Genesis that we want life on our own terms. We want our own sense of belonging and authority and control.
And God is very happy to say, go for it. Let's see what that story goes. And he's gracious enough to have a redemption plan with her too. So yeah, I think there's a reason behind behind that question.
You could have a fun conversation about that. All right, let's get into that passage. We're going to read 1st Genesis 11 and then Genesis 12. And you're going to see some parallels in here.
A lot of parallelism in the book of Genesis. Genesis 11, 1 through 9. Do you have that one? Handy, why don't you go for that one, Kim?
If you've got it. Okay. The whole earth had the same language in vocabulary. As people migrated from the East, they found a valley in the land of Shenar and settled there.
They said to each other, come, let's make an oven-fired pricks. They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top and sky. Let's make a name for ourselves.
Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth. Right. So new technology on the scenes here. Now we're going to use it.
How we're going to use the gifts that God gives us here. Well, not for really anything great here. They're pretty proud of me. Yeah, they are.
And the question is, why did the people want to construct a giant tower that reached all the way to the sky? And what did God do in verse 8? So what do we think? What's the motivation here and how does God intervene?
Well, the scripture says, let's make a name for ourselves. Let's be noticed. Let's stick together. This will make us famous for what we did.
Right. Let's build a city. That's that part of community and belonging, a tower that reaches to the sky. That speaks of security.
So we can look far off. We can see our enemies that are coming. We can survey the land and see everything. And then, yeah, a name for ourselves.
That's an identity piece. And Eric talks about that all throughout the message that those are inherent belongings of every single person, longings of every single person, a sense of community, security and identity. What we see in the passage here is they're going after all those things, but they're going after them all in their own strength. So how does God intervene?
Well, what do we see in verse 8? It says, the Lord scattered them throughout the earth and they stopped building the city. So he intervenes, right? Yeah.
I let that Eric picks up on the language too of them saying, come, let us, let us go up, let us come and let us do this. And then God's like, okay, actually, come, let us go down. Nice drive. Let us stop these attempts.
These feeble attempts that they're using their own strength in. So yeah, God, God, intervenes me, intervenes and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another speech, right? Only the way that God could do that. Right.
Right. And then in a beautiful reversal, right? It's not in the passage, but you get to it to the day of Pentecost and the language, Spirit falls and, you know, there's a lot of parallels between what happens here in the book of Acts 2, but that's not a message. So you can get distracted by that.
Talk about that. We probably will. My life group will focus in here here. Awesome.
And then we get to Genesis 12. And this is really, and this is the hinge story, the hinge passage, not only in the book of Genesis, but rightly so, really throughout the whole, whole scripture, right? This is Genesis one through 11. You see the creation, you see fall, you see rebellion.
And you see that reset, that cosmic reset that Eric talked about last week in the flood. And now with Abraham, you see, God has not given up more forsaken his people that there's a blessing and out of this blessing is going to come a blessing, not only for this immediate generation, but for generations to come. And so man, it's such a really important hinge passage, not only for Genesis, but for the whole Bible. So Genesis 12, one through four, and the question here asked you to compare the promises made to Abraham against the desires of the people at the Tower of Babel.
So if the desires of the people of Babel at the Tower of Babel were a community security and identity, how do you see that in this passage? And then what do you learn about faith and obedience? So 12, one through four, it says this, the Lord said to Abraham, go from your land, your relatives and your father's house into the land and I will show you and I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you.
I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt and all the people on earth will be blessed through you. So Abraham went as a Lord had told him and lot with him with him and Abraham was 75 years old when he left Huron.
75 years old. All right, so what do we see? Compare and contrast what stands out. Well, in the first part, the Lord said to Abraham, go from your land, which is his security.
Yep. Leave your relatives, your community, your family, and your father's house, your identity. Who are you to the land that I will show you? Like leave without even knowing where you're going, but I will show you.
So all of it, everything that's important, security, community, identity, all wrapped in. Right. Yeah, that's it. And it's something that's given to him as a response to obedience, right?
It's it's go and I will go and I will. It's not strive. It's not hold on to it's not build up. It's not a master wealth and you're on security yourself and tower it up to the sky.
It's actually go and leave what you think is your community. What you think is your security. What you think is your identity. And these are all good and right things.
But there's this calling again, you see it again all throughout Genesis, there's a calling and there's a calling and there's a calling, but there's a calling here in a real substantial way of go leave these things and I will, I will make you a great nation. I will make you a great name. I will bless those that bless you. And so the one you learned about faith and obedience here, I mean, it's pretty outlandish really.
I mean, 75 years old, he's got the people, you know, he's got relatives, he's in his father's house, which there's a lot of security that can come that can come from there. There's a lot of things that are known for him there 75 years of one way of life and and go and I will make, you know, we can read these stories and think, well, yeah, that's so easy because we know where the story is going. But Abram is just like you and I that he had real people, real relationships, real things. And so what do you learn about faith and obedience?
Well, you learn that it's there's a lot of it in here. There's a lot of trust that comes in comes into play there. So it's, you know, the story of God's faithfulness is built upon his grace and grace in our lives that he has a plan that he wants to outwork that he invites us into. And it just makes you think how much maybe we maybe missed that by holding on to what we know, that there's often blessing and stepping out on what we can't see and what we don't know.
So really, really beautiful, really important passage. Oh, because we're afraid to go because the action thing he's asking is just go. Yeah, that is the biggest hurdle even for us today. Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, and he took God at his word, right? He knew that this is the promise keeping God that he can be trusted. And so if he says that he's going to complete it, so he says, go, I'm going to follow him because he's faithful, even when I can't see you. So that's what faith and obedience is.
It's not faith in your own ingenuity or in your own understanding. It's not that faith is in an economy that we have enough of that we can cash in our chips. Now, faith is in a person, it's not in our own understanding. It's in God's faithfulness that we can follow through the obedience.
Great. All right. So into the lookout section, it says, Eric, in his siren, said that we all want three things. We want community, which is to be loved.
We want security to be safe and identity to be known. Where do people search for these things? And what does it look like when these desires are unmet? So many places, so many things, so many relationships in our society.
I feel like that is a constant that we're always looking for that, whether it's in friends, work, fame, family, riches, it's everywhere. Yeah, it can be all consuming. Right. Yeah.
And all of them are forms of worship, right? We all worship. You know, Jesus, we're following an atheist. We all we all worship.
We all assign worth to something and whatever you worship, whatever you think can hold the weight of your wants, wishes and desires will be proved out over time. And all of those things, your career, your family, all of all of it can't bear that weight. The only thing that can bear the weight of your appropriate worship is the creator, the sustainer, the one that sees you, the one that knows you and loves you. And yeah, all those things, all those false functioning idols, ultimately, they turn inward, they cannibalize themselves, and they just fail to deliver.
And so yeah, you can have a good discussion in your group about where you've seen that, how you've seen that work in your life and in the life of others. And then to look in, how have you seen your desires for community, security, and identity met in your relationship with God? Then how might we as the body of Christ help one another find community, security and identity in God and in his church? All right.
How would you respond or help our leaders to think through that question? I would encourage you to be the first one that's transparent in that question. Have you seen your desires met with relationship with God? And how have you wrestled that help?
Just be transparent, because when you are, then the group will follow that. For my own life, I would say, through the mirror of God's word, and his truth, measuring where I'm running to and what I'm thinking against the word of God, because that's the only place that there is truth and it brings it back to the sweet community with the body of Christ, which comes from leaning into his word, encouraging one another. And then how might we as the body of Christ help one another? That's such a good question for a life group, because the opportunities to serve are great.
And the opportunities, even individually to serve, you know, talking to the person at the grocery store that helps you check like a conversation that they might see something different, or you might be able to encourage them in a place that they're deeply hurting and inviting them to community, stepping out of our comfort box. Sometimes, yeah, absolutely. I'm serving, sharing your story. I think inviting people to see the kindness and the faithfulness of God that often there's a barrier to entry for people when you start talking about the promises and the blessings of God is like, well, that can't be for me.
And Eric talks about this beautifully in the message, you know, I'm disqualified. I've done the wrong things. I haven't done enough of the right things. I don't understand things.
And it's has nothing to do with your worthiness of it with your level of righteousness to receive it. It's all about a God who is faithful inviting you into it. And I love what Eric says about this new thing into the message. If you feel like you're that person, but yeah, that was God's promises to Abraham, but I'm not like him.
My life is far from him. He says, God promised this is true to Abraham and I have a worshiping man who struggled with infertility that he would do great things in his life. God did not find the strongest man or the wisest engineer building the tower. He found an unlikely person.
You feel like you're an unlikely or unworthy person perfect, because then you are more likely to rely on his grace. So all the more reason to fall into his grace. I think that's what we do when we share a story when we serve that we showcase the beauty of Christ through our lives, drawing perfection that is grace to be made none more. So that's it.
Beautiful. So good. This is such a great passage to have such good discussions and to look out the last part as you look in it makes you look out. Don't miss that great opportunity as a group.
And come up with your next place you're going to serve together too. There's so much joy in that. Awesome. All right, guys.
Well, thanks for joining us. King thanks for hanging out with me. Yeah, so much fun. All right, guys.
I'll get you on it next week.