What kind of person are you?

Sabbath 2/1/2014 Lessons From Abraham
 
Bereshit 12-18 — What kind of person are you? QUESTION — Are you dead or alive? — Are you like this dead fish?
 
We just started a new year from the Chinese point of view — But several days after people already feel like dead zombies. FIRST LESSON FROM ABRAHAM — COURAGE — People with courage become Leaders. Leaders lead.
 
That does not mean that leaders don’t follow. But what they follow is different from what most people follow. They don’t conform for the sake of conforming. They don’t do what others do merely because others are doing it.
 
They follow an inner voice, a call. They have a vision, not of what is, but of what might be. They think outside their box. They march to a different tune.Never was this more dramatically signalled than in the first words of YHWH to Abraham, the words that set Jewish history in motion:
 

 
 
Why do you think this was the first command of YHWH to Abraham? Because people do conform. Abraham had 75 years of conformity in him.
 
People adopt the standards and absorb the culture of the time and place in which they live – “your country.”
 
At a deeper level they are influenced by relatives – “your family.” More deeply still they are shaped by their parents and the family in which
 
they grew up – “your father’s house.”
 
Joshua 24:1-3 NKJV

1 Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God.

2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD [YHWH] God of Israel: ‘Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the River in old times; and they served other gods.

3 Then I (YHWH) took your father Abraham from the other side of the River, led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac.

 
YHWH is a leader. He is not just the Creator of the Universe but He is the “Commander-In-Chief” of His people. He is very involved in their affairs.
 
YHWH wanted Abraham, to be different from the rest of the world. Not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of starting something new: a nation that will not worship power and the symbols of power – for that is what idols really were and are.
 
YHWH wanted Abraham to “teach your children and your household afterward to follow the way of YHWH by doing what is right and just.”
 
To be like Abraham is to be willing to challenge the prevailing consensus when, as so often happens, nations slip into worshipping the old gods.
 
They did so in Europe throughout the 19th and early 20th century. That was the age of nationalism: the pursuit of power in the name of the nation-state that led to two world wars and tens of millions of deaths.
 
It is the age we are living in now as North Korea acquires and Iran pursues nuclear weapons so that they can impose their ambitions by force.
 
It is what is happening today throughout much of the Middle East and Africa as nations descend into violence and what Hobbes called “the war of every man against every man.”
 
We make a mistake when we think of idols in terms of their physical appearance – statues, figurines, icons.
 
In that sense, they belong to ancient times we have long outgrown.
 
Instead, the right way to think of idols is in terms of what they represent. They symbolise power. That is what Ra was for the Egyptians, Baal for the Canaanites, Chemosh
 
for the Moabites, Zeus for the Greeks, and missiles and bombs for terrorists and rogue states today.
 
Power allows men to rule over others without their consent. As the Greek historian Thucydides put it:

“The strong do what they wish and the weak suffer what they must.“

Abraham’s nation would be formed on the basis of obedience to YHWH where the real power reside.
 
It is about how to construct a society that honours the human person as the image and likeness of God. It is about a vision, never fully realised but never abandoned, of a world based on justice and compassion, in which “They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD [YHWH] as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).
 
Abraham is without doubt the most influential person who ever lived.
 
Today, in the 21st century, he is claimed as the spiritual ancestor of 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims and 13 million Jews, more than half the people alive today.
 
Yet Abraham ruled no empire, commanded no great army, performed no miracles and proclaimed no prophecy. He is the supreme example in all of history of influence without human power.
 
Why? Because he was prepared to be different. He was prepared to follow YHWH rather than lean on his own understanding. He was willing to let go of those closest to him to follow YHWH, his God.
 
Leadership, as every leader knows, can be lonely. Yet you continue to do what you have to do, because you know that the majority is OFTEN not right and conventional wisdom is not often wise.
 
Dead fish go with the flow. Live fish swim against the current.
 
Which one are you?
 
So it is with courage. So it is with the children of Abraham. They are prepared to challenge the idols (symbols of power) of their age.
 
After the Holocaust some social scientists were haunted by the question of why so many people were prepared, whether by active participation or silent consent, to go along with a regime that they knew was committing one of the great crimes against humanity.
 
One key experiment was conducted by Solomon Asch.
 
He assembled a group of people, asking them to perform a series of simple cognitive tasks. They were shown two cards, one with a line on it, the other with three lines of different lengths, and asked which was the same size as the line on the first. Unbeknown to one participant, all the others had been briefed by Asch to give the right answer for the first few cards, then the wrong one for most of the rest.
 
On a significant number of occasions the experimental subject gave an answer he could see was the wrong, because everyone else had done so. Such is the power of the pressure to conform — it can lead us to say what we know is untrue.
 
The pressure to conform to assigned roles is strong enough to lead people into doing what they know is wrong — like women maintaining their virginity in an age where pre-marital sex is very prevalent.
 
Story of young woman who, in the midst of her peers, was being cajoled by her friends to have pre-marital sex like they had all done. Because of her strong value system she learned as a child, she said:
 
“I can give away my virginity like you all have done, any day; but I choose not to become “average” like you. I choose to reserve this for the man I will marry.”
 
How many young women today are like her? Very few. Statistics show that more than in the USA, 50% of women, aged 13 and below, not only
 
are not virgins anymore but already have had an abortion. Do you want your daughter to be one of these statistics? Hopefully not.
 
That is why Abraham, at the start of his mission, was told to leave “his land, his birthplace and his father’s house,” to free himself from the pressure to conform.
 
Leaders must be prepared not to follow the consensus. One of the great writers on leadership, Warren Bennis writes: 

“By the time we reach puberty, the world has shaped us to a greater extent than we realise. Our family, friends, and society in general have told us – by word and example – how to be. But people begin to become leaders at that moment when they decide for themselves how to be.”

One reason why Jews have become, out of all proportion to their numbers, leaders in almost every sphere of human endeavour, is precisely this willingness to be different. Throughout the centuries Jews have been the most striking example of a group that refused to assimilate to the dominant culture or convert to the dominant faith.
 
Will you continue to be conformed, even when you know that there are errors or things that are wrong in YHWH’s eyes?
 
In the business world examples abound. — Understating the value of a shipment of goods so that you pay less taxes. In the “religious” world examples abound. — People stick to their beliefs even if they know it is pure superstition and displeasing to the God of Scripture and totally against reason — simply because this is what the majority is following.
 
One other finding of Solomon Asch is worth noting. If just one other person was willing to support the individual who could see that the others were giving the wrong answer, it gave him the strength to stand out against the consensus.
 
That is why, however small their numbers, Jews created communities. It is hard to lead alone, far less hard to lead in the company of others even if you are a minority.
 
This is why we have started this “community” of like-minded people who are willing to stand up and say to the world that YHWH is their God — their only God — the God they will follow like Abraham did.
 
Show “Most Important Video About Israel” They are following Abraham.
 
Jews do not follow the majority merely because it is the majority. In age after age, century after century, Jews were prepared to do what the poet Robert Frost immortalised in his book, The Road Not Taken:
 
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
 
APPLICATION TO US:

Will we follow Abraham’s example of COURAGE not to CONFORM?

Joshua 1:5-9 [NKJV]

Be Strong and of Good Courage are the two characteristics that we must seek to develop in 2014 so that we can become the leaders that YHWH created us to be.
 
Let us share with the world YHWH’s vision of a “great nation” who will be blessed and become a blessing to others.
 
Imagine if you are a networker or an entrepreneur, and your organization was filled with leaders who will follow YHWH … Your business results would be phenomenal!

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