We will be in chapter 12 this morning.
In chapter 12 marks a transition in the Genesis story.
We generally divide Genesis up into two sections, 1st 11
chapters and then 12 through 50 after that.
So things will be a little bit different here from this point
on then what we what we covered earlier.
So I hope you're enjoying it. I am and I am learning a lot.
Yeah. It's amazing how many times you
can read something, you know, I don't know how many times I've
read Genesis over the years. And there's always something to
learn. When our family left the Bay
Area and moved to Iowa in January of 2011, in a sense we
made a move by sight. Sure, it was a huge step of
faith, but we had the luxury of the Internet.
We were able to look up and see what Eldridge and the Quad
Cities had to offer. We could see what kind of people
lived here. We could check rental prices for
homes. I was able to go online and see
if there was a Chipotle here. There wasn't, and I determined
the closest one was in Iowa City.
Then I asked people on Facebook what my options would be when I
needed a Chipotle fix and they said, oh, go to Pancheros and
Qdoba. Those are your best options.
Not great options. They do not satisfy when you
need Chipotle. Before ever visiting the Quad
Cities, we already knew a lot about it.
Leaving our family behind in the Bay Area was enormously
difficult to do, and it was a huge step of faith.
But in some sense, it was calculated.
We had a home lined up to live in for at least a few months.
I had my position as worship pastor at Cornerstone, and we
were beginning to develop relationships with people
through Facebook, all helping make things up just a little bit
less scary for the webs. Abram, He didn't have the luxury
of the Internet. He didn't have the luxury of
consulting Google. When he made his move, he first
moved 600 miles northwest with his with his father, Tara and
family. Now he was about to move another
400 miles southwest, not knowing what's and who awaited him
there. So this morning we'll examine
Abraham's move that was purely by faith and way out of his
comfort zone. If you're able, would you stand
as we read from Genesis chapter 12 verses one through 9?
Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your
kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show
you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless
you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I
will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had
told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he
departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarah his wife,
and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they
had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and
they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the
land to the place that shechem to the oak of Moray.
At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring, I
will give this land. So he built there an altar to
the Lord, who had appeared to him.
From there he moved to the Hill Country on the east of Bethel
and pitched his tent with Bethel on the West and AI on the east.
And there he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the
name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still
going toward the Negeb. You may be seated now.
Last week Genesis 1131 read Tara took Abram his son, and Lot the
son of Haran his grandson, and Sarah his Sarah his daughter,
daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife.
And they went forth together from ur the Chaldeans to go into
the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran,
they settled there. So they left ER, which is down
South of Babylon, and headed towards Canaan, but ended up
making a long layover in Haran. Why did they make this trip?
Well, it was simply because it was God's call to Abram.
Verse one read. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go
from your country and your kindred and your father's house
to the land that I will show you.
God instructed Abram to go to Canaan.
And when we consider this strictly from the immediate
context of Genesis, the timeline of when God called Abram isn't
so clear. Had God called Abram while he
was in Quran? Or had God called Abram when
they were still in err, thus precipitating the move with Tara
and his family? Fast forward nearly 2000 years.
Stephen was being interrogated by the Jewish Sanhedrin.
The false accusers claimed that he was preaching against the
Temple and against the Torah. Acts 613 and 14 read.
They set up false witnesses who said this man never ceases to
speak words against this holy place in the law.
For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will
destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses
delivered to us. Stephen spoke with immense
wisdom as the Spirit moved in him and and they just couldn't
compete with his words, so they brought him to the Jewish
leaders. That is the Sanhedrin in Acts 7
one through 4, the high priest asked are these things so
meaning it? Is it true that Jesus said he
would destroy the temple? And Stephen said, brothers and
fathers, hear me, the God of glory appeared to our father
Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, that is when he was
in ER before he lived in Quran. And he said to him, Go out from
your land and from your kindred, and go into the land that I will
show you. And then he went out from the
land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran.
And after his father died, God removed him from there into this
land in which you are now living.
So Stephen gave us the timeline when Terrace family was still
living in UR. God revealed himself to Abram
and told him to go to the land that Yahweh would show him.
From the text it seems that they'd intended to make their
way all the way West to to Canaan, to the promised land
that we call it, but for some reason they got stopped in Quran
for a good number of years, possibly even 60 years.
When Tara Abrams father died at the age of 205, Abram continued
the rest of the journey to Canaan.
At the age of 75, God had called Abram to something unknown to A
to a land he'd never been to and where we had no connections or
relationships. Verse 6 tells us Canaanites were
in the land so there would be people Abram would have to
contend with. Also, the name of the place
Abram had been called to wasn't exactly flattering.
Canaan means humiliated and is from the word kana to bend the
knee, humiliate or Vanquish. They were cursed because of
Ham's behavior, would one day be servants of Israel and they were
despised by everyone else. That's who the Canaanites were.
It's good to remind ourselves that when Abram was called, his
understanding of Yahweh was was quite limited.
Joshua 24 two reads. Thus says the Lord, the God of
Israel, long ago your father's lived beyond the Euphrates.
Euphrates terror, the father of Abram and of Nahor, and they
served other gods. Tara and his family served in
the NA and other false idols of UR.
This was their natural tendency and if they if they knew
anything of Yahweh at all, it was probably in the context of
throwing Yahweh into the mix with the with their false idols
that they worshipped. Yes, somehow, likely in
Abraham's youth, Yahweh had called to Abram and said go to
Canaan. This was a pivotal moment for
Abram, as God called him to a place that he didn't know to
worship a God he didn't yet fully know, so that he could be
part of the story of bringing God's redemption to the world.
Yahweh had called Abram to reject those other gods and to
worship him alone. That's the call that went out to
Abram. Leave your country and and home
and go to a place that I will show you.
So next we look at the Abrahamic covenant.
As we begin looking at the covenant, we first want to
consider what a covenant is. Now, a covenant was a formal
contract in the ancient Near East.
It involved two parties, usually a superior, and that superior is
referred to as a suzarin and the subordinates as a vassal.
This contract was legally binding.
There are two basic types of covenants.
There's a promissory covenant and an obligatory covenant.
A promissory covenant unilaterally boundless sovereign
to the vassal. In this case the the sovereign
or the OR the suzuron was committed to taking care of the
vassal and to meet the vassals needs.
An obligatory covenant bound a vassal to the suzuron in a in a
servant like role outlining the vassals obligations to the
suzuron. Should the vassal not uphold his
side of the covenant there would be consequences or or curses as
it's sometimes called and the covenant would become null and
void. In the Old Testament we see four
primary covenants. As some people will say, there's
other covenants. Yes there there are other forms
of covenants, but there are four primary covenants in the Old
Testament. First of all is the Noah
covenant. This was a one way covenant
where Noah and his and the rest of humanity didn't need to do
anything. God had made a promise the earth
would continue to be evil and filled with sin, but God made a
promise to not destroy it again. Then there was this one, the
Abrahamic Covenant. It governs God's unique
relationship with Israel, giving them a home and a special place
in God's eyes. And 3rd is the Mosaic covenant.
This is the covenant Yahweh established with the nation of
Israel declaring that if they would obey His laws then they
will receive blessing for it, but if they don't obey His laws
then they would experience curses.
Then lastly is the Davidic covenant.
One day one of David's sons would reign on the throne and
and establish God's peace and blessing over the nations and
for the rest of eternity. Now normally when two parties
wanted to establish a covenant, first they would set the terms,
then animals would be sacrificed and their carcasses would be
arranged on a ground, on the ground in a manner that created
a a path through them. So 1/2 on one side, the other
half on the other side. Creating a path passing between
the halves of the animals was a sign that each party swore to
uphold their end of the covenant.
This was the norm when establishing a covenant.
But this isn't what happened with Abram in chapter 15.
Here, in a few chapters, we'll see that Abram prepared the
animals and and made the path. But when the moment came to
ratify the covenant, God put Abram into a deep sleep.
And then only God, only God in his glory, passed between the
animals. God was the only one to ratify
the covenant, meaning that God's people, that is, the vassals in
this covenant, couldn't break this promissory covenant.
There were no stipulations for Abram to keep, and God was
forever committing himself to Abram and his descendants.
That's what a covenant is. But now let's look at
specifically at the three promises of the Abrahamic
covenant. Some will say, oh, there's 3.
Some will say there's four promises.
Some will say there's seven promises made here.
Yes, you can find all these things, but we will distill it
all down to three promises that are made here.
The first promise begins in verse 1 and culminates in verse
7. God said to Abram in verse one,
go from your country and your kindred to and your father's
house to the land that I will show you.
And then verse 7 says, then the Lord appeared to Abram and said
to your offspring, I will give this land.
God promised Abram land. So what was the land that was
promised to Abram and his descendants?
Well, we can see a representation of that on this
map here. The purple section outlines
everything that God had promised Abram and his seed, and this is
outlined. We'll come back to the map in a
moment. This is outlined in Genesis 1518
through 21. It says on that day the Lord
made a covenant with Abram saying to your offspring, I give
this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the
river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenozites, the
Cadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the
Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites
Parasites. No, I no, all the, all the
sites. So the southern border, if we
look at at the map again, the southern border, the river of
Egypt, some people say, oh, the river of Egypt, that must be the
Nile River. No, it is not generally
understood to be the Nile River. The river of Egypt is generally
understood to be Wadi al Arish, which is a dry riverbed that
that floods during the rainy season and and it it's there in
the Sinai Peninsula and it flows N to the Mediterranean Sea.
The northern border is the Euphrates River all the way up
in Syria and Turkey. Then there are all sorts of
other markers in the text to help us understand the borders
of the land God was promising to Abrams descendants.
The green is the the land Joshua's generation actually
settled. That is what they settled when
they came into the promised land.
And then the red outline is the modern states of Israel.
Of course with the West Bank cuts out of it.
Now Yahweh had promised Abram that he would receive all of the
land in purple, yet at no point in its history have Abrams
descendants ever occupied all of this territory.
So that's the the first promise. And the second promise was to
make Abram a great nation. The second promise is to make of
Abram a great nation. Verse 2 says, And I will make of
you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name
great. Remember Genesis 1130 told us
Sarah I was barren and she didn't have a child.
However, in chapter 15 God tells Abram his descendants will be as
numerous as the stars. It must have been hard to
imagine that coming to be, and it would still be another 25
years before Yahweh would fulfill this promise to Abram.
The 1st 11 chapters of Genesis showed humanity determining
right and wrong for themselves, exercising their own wisdom to
seek their own fame. The builders of the city and the
tower or ziggurats and Babel sought to make a name for
themselves. Yet here God said that He would
make Abram's name great. Chapter 12 is a demonstrable
shift. A follower of Yahweh received a
name simply by divine grant. A great name points not only to
Abraham's reputation, but also to the fact that God would
literally change Abraham's name. His name was changed from Abram,
which is high father, to Abraham, which is father of a
multitude. One day there would come a
literal fulfillment of the promise to make of Abram a great
nation. But the promise didn't stop with
physical descendants. Galatians 3, seven through 9
says this. Know, then, that it is those of
faith who were the sons of Abraham.
And the scriptures, foreseeing that God would justify the
Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel was beforehand to
Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.
So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham,
the man of faith. The true sons and daughters of
Abraham aren't just those who are physically descended from
him, but are those who share in his faith.
Romans 416 says Abraham is the father of us all.
The third promise in the Abrahamic covenant was that he
and his posterity would be a blessing to the world.
They would be a blessing to the world.
Verse 3 reads In you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed. This is the spiritual component
to the promise and and it centers around the fact that
Yahweh had chosen Abram and his future family to be the ones
through whom God would bring salvation to the world, the ones
through whom the seed of the woman would come.
The blessing lies in the fact that freedom from the curse that
was this freedom was prophesied in Genesis 315.
It was to come through Abram and his family.
A couple thousand years after Abram, a new covenant would be
established by Jesus the Christ, the Messiah.
Jeremiah spoke of the new covenants being the ultimate
fulfillment of this blessing. Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through
34. There's a number of slides here,
but I have it all on the screen. Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the
House of Israel and the House of Judah.
Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the
day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt. My covenant that they broke,
though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the House of
Israel after those days, declares the Lord.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor, and each his
brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from
the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more. This is the blessing, God
forgiving sin and putting it out of His mind one day when when we
realized the ultimate fulfillment of that blessing,
we'll have full knowledge of Yahweh.
Now let me read verses 2 and 3 again, and I will make of you a
great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so
that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Now there's a lot that I can't necessarily go into this morning
about that blessing, but but the use of this word bless or a
derivative of it is mentioned five times.
The text is communicating something new to us.
This is a new sentiment, something different than than
what we primarily saw in the 1st 11 chapters.
There were a few times where where God would bless His
creations, but now God was imparting blessing through this
particular family line. And the repetition of the verb
bless reverses the predominantly negative experiences of chapters
3 through 11. Now through Abram, people
everywhere can experience God's favor.
This is a profound turning point within history and the book of
Genesis. God had called out to Abram, had
told him of the promises to come.
And so now we look at Abram's response.
First of all, Abram had a response of obedience, verses 4
through 6 read. So Abram went as the Lord had
told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he
departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarah, his wife, and Lot,
his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had
gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and
they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
Abraham's responsive obedience meant that he took his whole
entourage. It wasn't just Abraham, Sarah
and Lot making the journey. By this point, after some
probably 60 years in Quran, Abram and Lot had acquired a
pretty large retinue of people. Yahweh had materially blessed
them and and they had many belongings and people who worked
for them helping take care of the animals and all their
property. Everything that needed to be
done. Abram responded to God in
obedience. He could have chosen to not
obey, instead staying in the comforts of Quran.
It was a nice city with a number of beneficial amenities,
especially since it was at the crossroads of an important trade
route. Instead, Abram chose to step out
of his comfort zone. He heeded God's call and opted
for a life of nomadic tent dwelling.
Abram responded in obedience to Yahweh.
He also had a response of worship.
Verses 7 and 8 said Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and
said, To your offspring, I will give this land.
So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to
him. From there he moved to the Hill
Country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel
on the West and AI on the east, and there he built an altar to
the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.
Building these two altars was a response of worship.
Now, you might be wondering, what exactly was an altar?
What did it look like? Well, throughout history there
have been varying versions of altars.
They could be something from a single simple large stone,
perhaps a pile of unworked stones, or or something much
more elaborate like the temple altar.
Something like you see there on the on the right altars were
erected out of devotion to God and were a place to offer
sacrifices. They also served as a claim on
the land and A and a testament to future generations of what
God had done. So Abram built these two altars
at Shechem and near Bethel. Now Shechem is in Samaria or the
West Bank and is about halfway between Jerusalem and the and
the Sea of Galilee, and it becomes an important location.
It's not just the the scene of Abraham's first altar built in
worship to Yahweh, but Shechem is strategically located in the
past between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim.
This is where, hundreds of years later, Joshua calls the people
to recite the blessings from Mount Gerizim and the curses
from Mount Ebal. Joshua also built an altar on
Mount Ebal to renew the covenant that had been given to Israel.
Abram's altar at Shechem near the Oka Mori was the first of
four altars that he built. The second altar he built, by
the way, the altar that Joshua built there.
I just saw this. This just happened to be had an
e-mail sent to me that showing where it was and the remnants of
it. Kind of amazing to see something
like that. The second altar that that he
built was between Bethel and AI. The label Bethel actually is is
a later edition because at the time when Abram was there, when
Abram built the altar, this was actually called loose.
And this place is just 20 miles South of Shechem.
Now there's speculation that that this might be Abram's altar
at loose. We don't know for sure, but it
seems to be quite old, so perhaps that's it.
And that looks much more like 1 of the larger altars.
Loose eventually becomes important in the story since
loose is where Jacob has has a dream of a stairway to heaven
and and he renames the place from loose to Bethel, meaning
House of God. So Abram's building an altar was
a Worshipful response and in a sense it it laid claim to the
land that Yahweh had promised them.
Abram's responses of obedience and worship were also
expressions of faith. So his responses of obedience
and worship were expressions of faith.
Hebrews 11, verses 8 and 10 read by faith Abraham when when he
Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that
he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not
knowing where he was going by faith he went to live in the
land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with
Isaac, and Jacob airs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations
whose designer and builder is God.
As I mentioned earlier, when Abram arrived in the land that
the Canaanites were there. These were the descendants of
Ham, the recipients of the curse after Ham humiliated his father
Noah in the tent of. These were cruel, corrupt people
and and they become quite problematic in in Israel's
history and in the biblical story.
Abraham had left all the comfortable environs of UR and
Quran. Now here he was roaming around
the wilderness, living in a tent and hoping for the best as he
attempted to occupy this land that God had promised, but which
was already inhabited by problematic people who no doubt
would not have wanted him in the land.
But Yahweh was with Abraham and his entourage.
It was in this setting that God issued the covenants, the
promises of land, a nation and and to be a great name and also
to be a blessing to the world. And this is the first
significant covenant in Israel's history.
How would Abraham respond? How would his descendants
respond? God promised the land to them.
Would they go in and take it? They certainly become a great
nation of people and and we have become recipients of the
blessing promised to Abraham. As we close, it's good for us to
consider our own lives. Yahweh's first call is first of
all, for us to receive the blessing that comes through
Abram, to receive victory over the curse, victory that comes
through Jesus Christ. Beyond that though, the question
is what's your response when God calls you to something great and
perhaps even fearful or daunting?
Do we respond in obedience? Or does your obedience take a
long time, possibly looking more like disobedience, just as Abram
was in Quran for 60 years after he had received the call?
When you respond, is it begrudgingly or is it in the
spirits of worship and submission?
Yes God, I will do what you say. Lastly, where's your faith?
Do you struggle to believe that God will do what he said he'll
do? Or do you boldly step into that
calling, knowing full well that God will provide for what he has
called you? 2 When God calls, he provides.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes as we approach this
time. We look at our our own lives and
and you may have something before you that looks daunting.
These can be all sorts of things from maybe work a new position
that is you feel like you're in over your head.
Maybe things are difficult at work and you're hoping you can
just stick it out. Raising children to be followers
of Christ. Influencing people around you.
There are a number of things in our lives that could be
potentially daunting, but God has called us to influence and
to reach those around us. So the question is, how will we
respond? Do we lack faith or will we
respond in faith, trusting that God will work when we step out?
God will work in the parenting of our children.
God will work in the situation at our job.
God will work and whatever it is that that seems daunting and and
nearly impossible, trust in him. He's great.
He's greater than anything that we face so trust that he will
work. God, we thank you, thank you for
your presence in this place this morning, Your word to us, the
model of Abram stepping out into something that would have seemed
quite daunting and then his faith to trust that you would
work as you said. May we follow his example.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.