Coming Home

Home is one of the best words in the English language. In just four little letters, it speaks directly to our hearts. Home describes a place where you can lay down your tired body and your bruised ego in safety. Home is a place of shelter; a refuge from the storms of the world. The tragedy of a refugee is that he has lost his home.

Home is where you are accepted and loved; where you are safe and secure; where you have that sense of “belonging” that we human beings seem to need so much. The words “Home Sweet Home” are probably on more plaques than any other motto.

The word “home” brings to mind the image of a cozy fire in the fireplace, mouth watering aromas emanating from the kitchen, laughter and friendly conversation in the family room. Nostalgic songs like “I’ll be home for Christmas” reinforce that image. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

Think about all the ways that we use the word “home”.

When someone comes to visit you and you want to make them welcome, you say “Make yourself at home”. Then you treat them to some good home cooking - maybe a slice of Mom’s home made apple pie. My wife subscribes to a cooking magazine that’s just full of delicious recipes. It’s called “Taste of Home”.

Many restaurants advertise home-style cooking - at some of them you can order home fries for breakfast - but they’re never quite as good as the real thing.

If you’re a sports fan, you can appreciate the significance of the word home. Everybody wants home-ice or home-field advantage for the playoffs because it’s always better to play at home than to play on the road in front of a hostile crowd.

Think about baseball for a moment. The whole game of baseball is built around the concept of home. When you go up to bat, home is where you start out and that’s where you want to end up. And if you look at what Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire have done over the past two years, there’s nothing more electrifying than making that happen in one heroic swing of the bat - a home run.

Think about the world of computers. If you’re a computer user surfing the World Wide Web, you’ll want to know how to get to the home page of the site you’re looking for. And when you’re done there, your web browser has a little button with a picture of a house on it that you can click on to return to your own home page. Your computer keyboard has a key on it that says “home” - it takes you back to the beginning of the line you’re on, or the top of the document you’re creating.

Our kids returned to school this week, and that can be a harrowing experience. You feel strange and out of place - especially if you’re moving into a new school. Everything is different and unfamiliar. The first thing you want to do in a new school or a new grade is to find your home room.

The word “home” even has a special significance on the mean streets of the inner city. Gang members call their best friends “homies” because those are the guys they can trust. They’re the guys who’ll accept them and love them and will look out for them. They’re the home boys.

And in the big city, there’s nothing so sad as a homeless person - someone who sleeps on sidewalks and dines from dumpsters.

Yes, home is a great word. And whether you’re in school, or using a computer, or playing baseball, or just living life itself, coming home is a great thing. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, because as a family, we have been officially “homeless” for about three weeks. We don’t have a place to call our own - and we won’t until this Wednesday. In the meantime, we’ve been living temporarily in other people’s houses - people like the Culham’s and the Tabet’s who have so graciously welcomed us into their homes. But living in someone else’s home isn’t like having your own, and we’re looking forward to moving into our own home this week.

In a deeper and more profound sense, the desire for home, and the urge to have a home, and to come home, is the motivation for much of what we do. We all have a deep yearning in our souls to find that special place of belonging, of love, of acceptance, of security. The old TV comedy Cheers had a theme song that went “People want to go where everybody knows your name”.

As we live life in this world, we’re trying to get home. We’re trying to create a place where we’ll be safe, secure, loved, and appreciated. We live in a scary, dangerous world where it’s easy to get kicked around and rejected and treated like a nobody and we’re looking for a place where that’s not going to happen to us.

Back in 1969, 450,000 young people gathered on a farm in upstate New York to try to create such a place. They called it Woodstock. And afterward, Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it. She wrote “We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.” She was talking about the Garden of Eden - our original home. A place of peace, security and total trust and harmony with one another and with God.

But Genesis 3 tells us that something shattered that dream - something that the Bible calls sin. We lost that sense of security. We lost our intimacy with God and with each other. The world became a lonely and dangerous place. Humanity became homeless.

Now we’ve been trying to put the pieces of that broken dream back together ever since. But without success. Joni Mitchell’s song says “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden” but that’s the rub - we can’t do it ourselves; it never works out.

All of our efforts to create a real home for ourselves - whether through money or manipulation or hard work or intelligence - never quite seem to get us to the place where we can sit back and relax and say “I’ve arrived. I’m at peace. I’ve finally made it home.”

So how DO we get home? Let’s look at Genesis 12 at a man named Abram.

Genesis 12:1-4 The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram left, as the Lord had told him

Abram lived in the city of Ur, which was located in Mesopotamia at the head of the Persian Gulf near present day Kuwait. Ur was a cosmopolitan, sophisticated city. As far as we know, it was the center of world civilization in its heyday, around 2500 BC. Ur was not only the economic hub of the Middle East, it was a highly cultured place as well. It had libraries, art galleries, and great temples and pyramids decorated with the finest craftsmanship. Ur was at the forefront of science and learning.

Abram would have been familiar with all these things. He was a city-dweller, an urban creature comfortable with life in the big city. He may have had the benefit of an advanced education. From every indication, he came from a rather successful and wealthy family, so he would have been accustomed to the finer things in life. He probably knew all the best restaurants. He probably could get tickets to the finest theaters and sporting events. Perhaps he even owned some of the magnificent art treasures that archaeologists have uncovered from the ruins of Ur.

At any rate, there he was busily carving out a good life in the big city, trying to make himself a home, when God intruded into his life.

“Abram, I want you to leave your country, your people, and your father’s household, and go to a land I will show you.”

How did God speak to Abram? We don’t know. Did he speak in an audible voice? We don’t know. Did he appear to him in a vision? We don’t know. All we do know is that Abram believed that it was God telling him to do this. How do we know that? Because he went ahead and did it.

Stephen tells us in Acts 7:2 that “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.”

Hebrews 11:8 tells us that “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Now I want you to stop and think about this scenario for a moment. Here is a wealthy, successful man who lives in the most prestigious, sophisticated city in the world. He probably owns his own business. He has a good livelihood. He has an extended family around him. And in the midst of all that prosperity and accomplishment, God steps in and says “Drop everything and leave. Turn your back on everything that is familiar, say good-bye to everyone who knows you, including your extended family. Bid farewell to this great cosmopolitan city that you call home and come with me out into the wilderness to a place I will show you.”

God didn’t even have the courtesy to tell Abram where he was going. He simply said “Come with me to a place I will show you.”

Folks, what Abram did next is among the most significant things that any human being has ever done on this planet. He simply laced on his sandals, shut the door of his house behind him, and walked out of the gates of Ur in obedience to the call of God.

Can you hear his family? Can you hear the conversation they must have had? Can you hear Sarai his wife: “We’re going to do WHAT? We’re going WHERE? You mean you can’t even TELL me where? Abram, have you lost your mind?”

When Abram walked out of Ur, he didn’t know it, but he was literally changing the destiny of the whole human race. With every step of his sandals away from Ur, he was making an impact on world history - an impact that is still felt to this very day, 4,000 years later. But all he knew was that he was putting one foot in front of the other in obedience to what God had told him.

I’m sure that it must have been hard for Abram as he walked away from his home in Ur. I’m sure that he must have had second and third thoughts about what he was doing. And God wasn’t always there whispering in his ear to reassure him that he was doing the right thing. There were long periods of silence when Abram didn’t hear from God. All he could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. Walking by faith in obedience to the call of God.

What he didn’t know at the time was that every step he took out of Ur was taking him a step closer to home. Abram thought that Ur was his home, but it wasn’t. God had a much better home planned for Abram. God had a much better destiny for Abram than to just be a successful businessman in a pagan city. God had big plans for Abram. But to realize those plans, Abram had to put one foot in front of the other in obedience to what God was telling him to do.

Now this is where God wants to talk to you and me this morning. As it was true for Abram in 2000 BC, so it is true for us in 2000 AD. Every step of obedience to God will take us a step closer to home.

You say “Wait a minute. I’m not like Abram. I haven’t heard God speaking to me lately.” Oh? You haven’t? Maybe God has been speaking to you but you haven’t recognized his voice. Like young Samuel, you thought it was someone else talking to you, but it really was God.

You see, God speaks to us in many ways - through His Word, through our conscience, through the ordering of circumstances in our lives. And his voice is a still, small voice. He doesn’t shout at us like the world does. He speaks quietly, but persistently. He puts His thoughts in our minds and in our hearts.

Is God calling you, today? Is God telling you to do something? To contact someone? To share with someone? To make a wrong right? To turn away from sin and turn to righteousness?

Perhaps He’s been telling you to do this for a long time now. Maybe you’ve been resisting. Maybe you’ve been afraid that if you do it, it will jeopardize this “home” that you’ve been trying to make for yourself in this world.

Brothers and sisters, if God is telling you to do something, just go ahead and do it. Don’t ask questions, don’t try to rationalize your way out of it. Just do it. Because every step of obedience to God brings you a step closer to home - the real home that God has for you. The real home you’ve been looking for all along.