December 15, 2024|The Promise Clarified |Genesis 12:1-3
John-Daniel Cutler
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As we continue our Advent series entitled ‘The Promise’, I will remind you that last week we looked at The Promise Made from Genesis 3, where we saw the seed of the gospel promise that God would ultimately defeat Satan through the offspring of Eve.
Of course, we understand, from our vantage point that God would fulfill that promise through Jesus, born of a virgin, born in the likeness of men to save people from sin and death that entered as a result of mankind’s rebellion against God. But in the redemptive narrative of scripture we are left with an incomplete idea of how God is going to fulfill his promise. As we move through scripture, this morning we come to Genesis chapter 12 where God is going to begin to clarify his promise in the calling of a man named Abram. This morning we will look at Abram, better known as Abraham, and that call under the heading ‘The Promise Clarified’.
If you have been around the church for any length of time, you have probably heard about Abraham, if you grew up in the church you may remember singing ‘Father Abraham’. No doubt Abraham is a central character in the Old Testament. It is not surprising then to see NT authors referencing Abraham in their writings. For instance, in his letter to the church in Galatia, the Apostle Paul refers to the promise made to Abram in our passage this morning as the gospel preached before the gospel was preached. In that letter he is reminding the Galatian believers that justification comes by faith and as the Bible says elsewhere, ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness’, so too those who have faith in God, regardless of their nationality, are justified by faith.
Writing by divine inspiration, the Apostle Paul helps us understand that there is more going on in Genesis 12 than we might first see. Within these words of promise to Abraham, we have the gospel quietly proclaimed before God brought about the fulfillment of his promise and the gospel was clearly proclaimed.
With that in mind this morning, my prayer is not only that we will see God clarifying his promise in his calling of Abraham, but that we will also reflect on our own call and whether or not we are living by faith and trusting the promises of God as we see in the life of Abraham.
If you have not already, open your bibles to Genesis chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. In these first three short verses we are going to look at God’s call, God’s promises, and finally this morning, God’s purposes. It is to the first we turn our attention this morning…
I. God's Call
Let’s read verse 1 together now.
Genesis 12:1 (ESV)
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.
One interesting thing to note, in terms of context, this is the first time God is recorded speaking to an individual since Noah and his family left the Ark. There are ten generations recorded between Noah and Abram. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, God speaks to this man who lives in the middle of a pagan nation full of idolatry, known for its worship of a moon god and tells him to ‘Go’.
While there are some details given, the single imperative or command is go. The command in the Hebrew is something like ‘Go forth’.
In terms of details Abram is commanded to leave behind three things for one thing. His country, his kindred, and his father’s house, for a place that God would show him. In a fairly non-migratory society where many were born, lived, and died in one place, this was a radical call on Abram, not to mention Abram was 75 years old at this time. Let’s look at each one of these things he is called to leave.
His country- where you are born and where you grown up, where you are from, is one of the sources we derive our identity from. Much of our identity is developed from values, beliefs, interests, and personalities we observe and inherit from those around us.
His kindred- maybe translated relatives. All those related to you by blood or marriage. Abram’s extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins. For a patriarchal society, these relations made up your clan, who you belonged to. If where you are from has impacts on your personality, then your relatives have even more. Here we get into particulars, maybe your grandparents were farmers who raised your parents, aunts, and uncles to be farmers, who raised their kids to be farmers. It was not unusual for a family to have a particular deity that they worshipped. All contributing to your identity and personality.
His father’s house- your father’s household. Perhaps the most radical is God’s call for Abram to leave his father’s house. Our immediate family has the most impact on who we are and how we see ourselves.
All of that to say, don’t miss that God’s call essentially demanded that Abram leave behind these things that defined him, these things that were an integral part of his identity, in order to follow Him. For what? A land that I will show you. No specifics, no real details are recorded for us, and yet, as we see in verse 4. ‘So Abram went, as the Lord had told him’.
As radical as the call was, Abram was obedient.
But, is it even fair to call this interaction radical? Isn’t this, at its core, the scriptural call to follow Jesus? Is the call to follow Christ not a call to radical self abandonment?
Matthew 4:18–22 “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”
Matthew 9:9 “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.”
Are these not the kind of demands Christ made on his disciples?
Matthew 10:37–39 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Luke 14:25–27 “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
The disciples so clearly broke from who they were, that Peter, without any sense of embarrassment could look at Jesus and say “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Mt 19:27)
When God calls you to Christ, Christ’s invitation is to be his disciple. Friends, somewhere along the way, we have gotten confused. We started issuing the invitation of Christ as inviting Jesus into our hearts. That’s not biblical language. Christ’s call is to self-abandonment, it is total surrender. It is to lay aside what you wanted for and from your life, it is to lay aside what your family wanted for your life, and it is to completely follow Christ where he leads you.
Some of Christ’s final words to his disciples sound very similar to the Father’s call to Abram here. Matthew 28:18–20 “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””
Listen, I don’t know what it is going to cost you to follow Christ, I only know that it is going to cost you. It cost Abram his homeland, his extended family, and the comforts of his father’s house. It cost the apostles their lives, as it has many of those who came after them. God may not call you to physically leave but he absolutely calls you to leave your old life behind and live in the newness of life that he has given you. To put off the old self and put on the new. This is God’s call on his people.
Moving beyond God’s call, we come to…
II. God’s Promises
Let’s pick up in verse 2.
Genesis 12:2 (ESV)
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.
Here God gives the first 2 of five ‘I will’ statements. At this point Abram’s only imperative is to go, to depart and journey towards a place God will show him. God’s promises made in verses 2 and 3 here are only dependent on Abram reacting in faith.
Yes God calls Abram to go, and yes, he doesn’t know exactly where he is going, but God does not withhold from him why he wants him to go.
God will make him a great nation and will bless him and make his name great.
In these verses God’s promises are not fully developed, God would go on to expand his promises to Abram that he would give him the land he led him to for him and his descendent, that he would make his offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth, as numerous as the stars, which by the way still essentially homeless and childless, the Bible says Abram believed God. God would then initiate a covenant with Abram where God signed for both parties, indicating that he would uphold his covenant without fail, also telling Abram that the process of making him a great nation would not be without pain, Abram’s descendents would be captive for four hundred years, but they would come out a great nation with great possessions. Almost 25 years after his initial promise to make Abram a great nation and still without a legitimate heir, God would change his name to Abraham, because God has made him the father of a multitude of nations. All this before God ever gave Abram, now Abraham, any requirements. God calls Abraham and his male descendents to bear a mark of the covenant, circumcision, and once again promises that through Sarai, now called Sarah, God would give him a descendent, who would carry forth the covenant promises. Finally, after waiting 25 years, God gives Abraham and Sarah the promised child through which God will carry out his promises.
Here in what we might call the abridged promises, God says he will make him a great nation, which we understand that God did physically through not only Isaac but through 7 other sons. He also says he will bless him. From chapter 12 we don’t have to read to far before in chapter 13 we already see God’s material blessing on Abram and his family. Between Abram and his nephew Lot, they have so many animals and servants that the land cannot support them together and they have to separate. As we go on through the story, God gives Abraham victory over his enemies, he provides a spouse for Isaac, and continues to be with Abram and prosper him in the land he had brought him to.
Here’s what I want you to see. All of Abram’s blessings, God making him a great nation and blessing him, were dependent on Abram trusting these initial promises that when he obeyed God and went, God would bless him.
We have already made the connection between God calling Abram and the way Christ calls us to follow him, to obey him, but just as God did with Abram, Christ also gives us promises through his word.
Just a brief examination of the NT tells us that God will provide for our daily needs, that he will never leave us or separate from us, that he gives us eternal life, his indwelling presence, fullness of life, spiritual fruit, supernatural peace, an eternal destination and an inheritance, forgiveness, and freedom.
God tells Abram when he makes the covenant with Abram to walk before me and be blameless. Which may be more literally translated ‘walk sincerely in my presence’. You see God’s promises are connected to his presence. There is no experiencing God’s promises apart from being in his presence.
So when I ask are you trusting God’s promises, I don’t mean can you tell me what they are, or if you have them written on a bookmark, I mean are you being obedient to his commands so that you will experience his presence and his promises will be true in your life.
I think too many of us want God’s promises apart from his presence. We want the blessing without the obedience.
Look again at the beginning of Verse 2. Don’t miss that simple three letter word that begins the sentence. And. Go ‘and’ I will. Those who belong to Christ, those that have answered his call to self-abandonment and surrender, to follow him completely can rest in the blessed promises that God makes to his children. Those that simply give lip service to Christ should not expect to experience any of the blessings we highlighted.
Without obedience there is no presence and without presence there is no promise.
One last observation from Abram’s story before we move on. How do we know that he trusted God’s promises? Because he went. Trust creates action.
So as we think about Abram’s call and reflect on our own call today, ask yourself if your life displays trust in God’s promises by displaying obedience to his commands. As verse 2 closes and we look at verse 3 we see that God is going to do what he is going to do for Abram for a purpose. So that. Let’s turn our attention to verse 3 and move to…
III. God’s Purposes
Let’s read verse 3 together.
Genesis 12:3 (ESV)
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.”
God tells Abram that he is to become a vessel both blessed and being a blessing to others. Since God has chosen Abram to be His and through which to build a great nation, God will bless those who bless Abram and curse him who dishonors him.
This can be seen clearly in Abrams life in the scripture. As we have noted, God does indeed bless Abram materially and prospers him and those around him and brings curses on those who dishonor him. But his purposes in calling Abram are not limited to material blessings, God has a plan to bless all the families of the earth in Abram.
Similar to Adam and Eve last week, Abram surely did not recognize everything God meant by this promise, but for us we can begin to see that God has narrowed the means of his promise down from the offspring of Eve, to Abraham and his offspring.
Speaking of, God begins his promise to bless all the families or nations of the earth by saying ‘in you’. But after Abraham obeys God, brings Isaac, the very child of the promise to an altar and raises the knife, God says, ‘and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’. Abraham himself will not bless all the nations, but his offspring will. By the way, when God speaks to Isaac after the death of his father Abraham, he says again to Isaac, ‘in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed’. And again to Jacob, he says ‘in you and your offspring’. So God changes the wording there, why? Of course from Jacob would come the twelve tribes of Israel, the very nation God had promised and from which would come the offspring that would indeed bless people from all nations and tribes.
Looking from God’s perspective and purposes, we know that the promise ‘that all the nations of the families of the earth shall be blessed’ meant that through the offspring of Abram, He would accomplish something that would impact every family or nation of the earth. God meant the same thing in every instance of the promise being made, culminating in Genesis chapter Genesis 22:18 “and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.””
To return to the Apostle Paul for a moment and his inspired writing in the NT, he references this promise when he writes the Galatians Galatians 3:16 (ESV) 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
Paul argues that even in the promise, God chose to use the singular, offspring, rather than offsprings to signify that his purpose was the raising up of a singular offspring of Abraham that would secure the means of blessing all the nations of the earth. Paul goes on, Galatians 3:24-29 (ESV) 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
No matter whether you are physically descended from Abraham or not, no matter whether you are a slave or a freeman, no matter whether you or male or female, if you have been brought into Christ, you are one in Christ, and if you are Christ’s, you are what? You are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Ultimately then, we see God’s purposes for electing, choosing, Abram was that through the nation he would create from Abraham, he would bring forth a future offspring that would bring about the fulfillment of his promise in Genesis 3:15 that the offspring of woman would crush the head of satan, blessing all those who, in him, would be free from the curse of the fall.
Is this not what we celebrate at Christmas? That God kept his promise in sending his Messiah, his Savior, that in him people from all nations may be blessed? Amen?
So prayerfully you see that if you are in Christ, God has called you to himself and commands you to follow Christ, you see that those in Christ have promises made to them that God will keep, but what about your purpose? What was God’s purpose in calling you?
I want to walk you through, one more time, a portion of what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians. Galatians 3:7–9 “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel 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.”
Now, this is a little technical regarding the language, but as the apostle Paul has shown us, the words scripture uses, with his offspring vs offsprings discussion, are important.
When Peter quoted Genesis 12:3 in Solomon’s Portico he says, Acts 3:25 “You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’” The word he translated from Genesis 12:3 families of the earth, seems like a pretty much a straightforward greek translation of the Hebrew, understanding there are always linguistic options when translating from one language to another. His choice makes sense, since he is speaking to Jews in the temple. The word families, or clans, points back to the promises that God had made to the physical descendents of Abraham. He even says there, you are the sons of the prophets and God sent to you first his servant, to bless you, how? by turning every one of you from his wickedness.
When Paul quotes Genesis 12:3 in his letter he chooses a different word. Gal 3:8b-9 “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Paul translates the families of the earth from Genesis 12 as nations. Why? because his emphasis is on the fact that God’s purposes extend beyond the nation of Israel, and faith in Christ is given to men and women from all nations, not just the Jews. Why is this important? Because by choosing this word, I think Paul is showing us the outworking of his theology, the revelation God has given him as the Apostle to the gentiles. Where else does this word nation show up?
Matthew 28:18–20 “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””
What is the command to those who follow Jesus? Make disciples. Of who? all the nations.
Friends, why did God call you? So that you would participate in the blessing of the nations in Christ. How? By making disciples that make disciples. If you are in Christ, you have been blessed. You have been turned from your sin and united with Christ. You have been elected, chosen, before the foundation of the world, not only to be blessed, but to be a blessing. From everything we have seen today, how are we to be a blessing?
By introducing people to Christ, by proclaiming the good news of the gospel, by living obedient lives that show the men and the women of the nations who God is and what he does in the life of those he calls. You were saved for a purpose.
Here’s the question, then. Are you walking in the purposes God has for you? Having been blessed are you being a blessing to others?
Conclusion-
Here’s where I want to wrap up this morning. Abram had no idea what it would entail for him to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, but he knew what he had to do in order for it to be true. He had to go. He had to obey. He had to exercise faith in God by responding to what God had spoken to him.
Here is God’s message to those he calls. Repent and Believe. Turn from yourself. Turn from trusting in your goodness, turn from loving your sin, turn from rebelling against God, and turn to trusting in God, trusting in Christ for forgiveness, and surrendering to the will of God as your creator, your redeemer, and your sustainer.
How? By believing that because of your sin you were separated from God, living in a land of idolatry, destined for an eternity of just punishment of your sin. By believing that God displayed his love by sending his son, to be born of a woman, in the likeness of men, in order to live a sinless obedient life in line with the will of the Father, who then voluntarily bore the just wrath of God against sin for his people, died, was buried, but God raised him from the dead, he ascended into heaven where he sits, the great high priest and king of all things waiting for the culmination of his kingdom when he returns to gather to himself those that are his from every nation, tribe, time, and tongue, so that he may usher his people, his bride into the presence of the Father forevermore.
This is the gospel, that began with a promise, one that God began clarifying in Abraham’s call and fulfilled in Christ.
Do you believe that?
I do not mean, did one time you come down and say some words in a church, but does your life bear that out? Have you answered God’s call to repent, believe, and follow him wherever he leads?
Let us pray.
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