Genesis 12: Abraham

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0:00 We're going to talk about Abraham 2. Abraham comes up first in Genesis chapter 12 if you want to turn there or punch that in. Genesis chapter 12. And we're starting off this year here thinking about the church. And last week we talked about where Jesus uses the word church. It's the Greek word echlesia. It's like to call out. He says he's going to call out. He's going to build his church's called out crew around when Peter makes the statement.

0:39 So we talked about this word called out echlesia. This called out group of people that Greek towns would use an echlesia to make decisions. The town might walk into the middle of a town square and call out all the citizens. They would come out then. The echlesia would assemble and then they would make decisions about how the town is going to run. So this idea of an echlesia group called out from others that are the decision makers, that are the ones with the seat that are the citizens. It's not a foreign idea, but Jesus uses this idea echlesia when he asks his closest friends who do people say that I am in Peter.

1:16 By some miracle can understand and announce who Jesus is. He says Jesus you are the Christ the Son of God. Of course Peter, that's a moment in time where Peter believes and then he has other moments after it where he doesn't believe and then other moments after that again where he does believe and then other moments after that where he doesn't believe. He's like not a steady light of faith. He's like a flickering light of faith. In one moment when Jesus asks him do you believe he's all on. The light's all on. He all the way believes and Jesus says to Peter, the Holy Spirit has revealed this to you.

1:56 This is some sort of miracle. The rich and the powerful have missed it. The righteous and the holy have missed it. The church people, the political people, the kings, the poor ones, the ones who were fed food, the ones who weren't, the ones who were with John the Baptist, the ones who weren't. Very few people missed it and in one moment Peter got it. He says the Holy Spirit has given it to you and on that thing I'll build my church. We talked last week about not only is it a miracle that anybody could believe in Jesus but that the church, this thing that Jesus starts with the flickering faith of Peter would persist throughout history and time is some kind of miracle.

2:37 The fact that you and I would gather in a nondescript warehouse in Paramore on a Sunday morning when we could be doing anything else is some kind of miracle. It's evidence enough to me that God is at work. The fact that the church continues. We talked about indulgences and then we talked about enslavement and then we talked about just melding of politics and church in the world today and all the reasons why the church ought to have imploded on itself.

3:15 In many places, implosions happen and amongst the implosion the church endures. Praise God. What we want to look at for the next several weeks is what is the church? What is God trying to do with this miracle of people of which we're apart? To start that story I want to look in Genesis chapter 12 before we get there let me pray for us. Hey Lord thank you for the story of your church in Scripture. Thank you for the testimony of your son Abram.

3:47 Enliven us today with your truth and remind us of the beauty and opportunity of being church together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In Genesis chapter 12 if you look right before there at the end of Genesis chapter 11 they've been going through these descendants. Remember how we got here real quickly. I just want to remind you because in about 11 chapters all the story of creation is unfolded before us.

4:27 We're pretty sure Genesis is written by Moses while they're wandering in the desert. Moses meets with God in the tent of meetings, speaks to him as another man, speaks to another man face to face and God outlines the story of creation for Moses and it gets written down. And perhaps the most striking component in the story, the beginning is how God makes the world out of nothing because of no lack or no need just because he wanted to.

4:57 He makes the world and gives the world to humanity. And if you can imagine the first ones in a pristine earth walking around completely confident and unafraid. Think about it. Adam and Eve the first ones walking around as the image bearers of God with authority to rule and reign in the garden naked and unafraid.

5:32 No fear or anxiety, no guilt or depression, no worry about the future, no concern about what the other one thinks about them, complete transparency authenticity. Think about how tall you walk without any weight of self doubt or fear. Think about how confidently you move what ideas you come up with when you're not second guessing every thought or worried about how they'll be perceived.

6:15 This is the life God makes for humanity. Right? And what the point of the story is he's trying to get humanity back there. Outside the garden they so often forget. We pick up the stories, several generations in Tara in chapter 11 verse 31. Tara took Abraham or Abram, sorry, Tara took Abram his son and Lot the son of Heron, his grandson and Sarah, his daughter-in-law, his son's Abram's wife.

6:50 And they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Huron they settled there. The days of Tara were 205 years and Tara died in Heron. It says that Tara, Abram's dad was going to go to Canaan but he gets to Heron and it's like, this looks pretty good. To get from Heron to Canaan you got across like a long way and not all of it is great or safe.

7:21 He's in that part of that fertile crescent where it's a little bit more settled, a little bit more substantial, and where all those rivers are. So it's easier to graze cattle and things. He finds it gets just far enough to the end of it, maybe where it's less populated. And he's got less people competing for grazing lands and so he just stops there rather than continue the hard part of the journey and get down to Canaan. Chapter 12 verse 1, 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.

7:57 And I will make 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. It's a pretty good promise from God. I'll bless everybody who blesses you and the people who curse you. I'll curse through you. All the world will be blessed. Leave your father and your family and all your things and go to the land. I'll show you. He's not telling him quite where it is yet.

8:32 But he's like, just go there. And if you take the risk, I'm going to bless the whole world through you. And whoever blesses you, I'll bless them and whoever curses you, I'll curse them. You're going to be my guide. This comes after Babel where God comes after Babel and after the Flood. See, humanity left the garden. God estures them out of the garden away from the tree of life so they don't live in the fallen state forever.

9:02 And they're dying on a cycle. But outside the garden, in the midst of death, it seems like, though they know God, they forget God over and over again. They forget the capacity of the God, the willingness of the God, the intent of the God to care for them. They put the God on par with all these other motivations in their life. And then they start thinking about themselves more than anyone else. They feel like they have to provide for themselves. They have to care for themselves. Their future depends on themselves. They forget that they have a God looking out for them. And when your whole future depends on you, you don't have the time or the capacity to care about anybody else.

9:39 You've got to care about yourself. And this is why when Noah comes on the scene, God says, all desires of their heart were all evil all the time. He means that they're focused on themselves all the time outside the garden apart from God. So he wipes out the earth and starts again. And in a couple of generations, after Noah, after the Flood, they're in Babel and they're building a thing up. Now they're working together, right? But they're working together to realize that we can do anything we want.

10:10 We don't even need a God. There may have been a God at one time. We haven't seen him in a while. And so we'll be our own God. And God, though he has been relegated and neglected and abused and disregarded, God's persistent. And so he's trying something new with Abram. He says, I'll establish a relationship with you, Abram. You one person. And I'll put you strategically in the land and the world will see what it looks like when you line up with a God.

10:46 They can't see me. I'm unbounded, infinite God. They can see you, Abram. And when they recognize you, they'll be recognizing me. It's similar to what he tried to do with Adam and Eve. And Abram, you walk around, tend your herds, tribe your people, and your children and your children's children will carry this same thing. That when the world sees you, they'll be reminded of me. And when they submit to me, when they bless you, it'll be like they're blessing me.

11:21 And I'll run out the blessing on them. If they curse you and disregard you, it'll be like they're cursing and disregarding me and their life won't work. This is what God's trying to do. It's almost like a new strategy. It's at least an unfolding strategy with Abram, right? What's interesting to me, a lot of things, but one is that story. He makes the promise to Abram in 12 and then again in 15.

11:52 He makes it again in 17. He makes versions of this promise over and over and over again, right? Finally, the last time he does the traditional covenant thing where he puts animals on either side of them and they walk through the animals. Why does he do that? Because every other time, it's like just Abram and God usually at night. Some of us are night people. I have had good moments of clarity at night, but not very often.

12:30 In college, I couldn't even stay up all night to write a paper or something. I would always wait until the end to write because I felt like I wrote better under pressure. It was a lie. I just, pressure was the only thing I could get to make myself do the work. But it would get to be late and I'd have five of the eight pages done or eight of the 12 pages done. That's good enough. Put a conclusion on there and get out. I'm not a night person.

13:04 Any more, if I wake up at night or if I'm up late at night, my mind starts running on ideas, I know they're usually terrible and not based in truth. It seems very logical, either brilliance or terror that's coming. The problem that I can't imagine my way out of or the brilliant solution I've devised in the middle of the night, but I've had that time enough now to know just by the fact that it's late at night, there's probably no logic in my brain at all.

13:47 Abram has a conversation where God makes perhaps the best covenantal offer anyone's ever gotten and it's just a conversation between Abram and God. That's crazy. It's not like God sends a prophet. It's not like Elijah comes running down out of Mount Horob and with 200 attendants in front of a whole crowd announces the great covenant to Abram.

14:30 So there are all the witnesses. It's not as though Abram walks into the river Euphrates and comes up out of the water and a dove descends on his shoulder and all the people around hear a voice from heaven that says the great covenant of God to Abram. It's not as though Abram leads an army to defeat the Canaanites and on the field of victory he gets a sense that God has given him this great covenant that now he'll be a blessing to all the world.

15:12 It's God and Abram going for a walk and God offers him the great covenant promise that will animate generations. What kind of, like we talk about later it would say Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

15:43 And often when I tell that story it's to point out what little Abram had to do which is true. He didn't have to do anything. God said, what could I give this to you? And Abram said sure I'll take it. That's his defining characteristic. And it's true. That's not anything. And also who would believe that?

16:13 How would you walk around the world honestly believing through me comes the blessing for all the world? The God of the universe has made a covenant to me which is for the good of all people. I told him he could do it. You're welcome. Right?

16:43 But this is the calling for Abram to believe that God loves humanity enough that he will use Abram to bless the world. Abram is called to believe that. It takes some kind of weird confidence. And Abram, like Peter, is shaky at best.

17:23 Remember the time they're going into Egypt and he's like, Sarah here's the situation. You're very pretty. If they know that you're my wife they'll probably kill me so they can add you to their household. Let's just say you're my sister because then they'll pay me to add you to the harem. Then we all win. You go live in the Pharaoh's house. I make a bunch of money. And that's what they do.

17:58 They go in and say, yeah, this is my sister no big deal. She goes to live in the house of the Pharaoh. They give Abram like sheeps and herds. Thanks for your sister. No problem. And then everything bad like God starts cursing Pharaoh. And Pharaoh recognizes it. It's like, hey, dude, the God is cursing me because you stuck me with your wife. And I'm here bringing your wife into my house.

18:32 Like she could be my wife, not cool man. And so he sends him away. Let's him keep everything. Abram's kind of, he's shaky. He's selfish. He's fearful. And also he's faithful. He's very fair with the laban. He's empathetic in the Sodom situation, fights for him, advocates for him. Abram is shaky, selfish, fearful, but also faithful, fair and empathetic.

19:07 And God's gonna bless the world through him. He doesn't really say how he's gonna do it. Like, yeah, the world will be better off because you're here. Abram. So kind of seems like he takes his time. Like if he wants to bless the world through Abram, why is Abram like waiting around for the kid?

19:53 When we realized we were gonna try and start a little congregation and be Christians in Orlando, I had been around enough churches to know a lot of ways I didn't want to do church if I could. I had seen a lot of like, I mean basically the churches I knew and seen, the goal was get as many people in a room as you can by whatever means you need.

20:29 Give stuff away. Pay people. Look a certain way in the community. Do lots of good t-shirts. Have a really good band. Right. I like had seen a lot of the goal was get as many people in a room as you could. And if I pressed and was like, why? What's your, get billboards, get TV commercials, buy social media ads, put videos of the husband, put videos of the husband and the wife, put videos of the kids, right?

21:10 And I had to tell videos like all kinds of marketing. Well, because we got to get them in the room. Why? Well, if we get them in the room, then we can get them to the next thing. If we can get them to the next thing, they can get into our system. We got to assimilate them. And I started like learning about a simulation process. Anyway, I could go down the long road. The reason I started telling that is because I decided this is kind of a, give you a glimpse in what I think Abrams attitude might have been. I started thinking like, look.

21:47 I think like I've seen changes in me that are only, I can only imagine God's size changes. And, and I feel like what he's trying to do with Abram or with me is like, let people see that if you align with the God of creation and life, he'll change your experience of life.

22:30 But I just want people to know that. So I started thinking he's not coming down out of wherever with dubs and clouds. He's doing it in private conversations and asking people to bank on them. The best thing I could do is find a way to make friends. And if I can make friends, then people might see the way my faith is like shaky at best, but pragmatic and practical. They might see that I'm selfish and empathetic. Right?

23:03 The goal for me was just like, how can I find a way to make as many friends as possible? That people might see little glimpses of what it looks like to have the God of the universe make a covenant with you. A promise to you. What it does to your life, when you realize you don't have to micromanage your future, your provision isn't dependent on your own ingenuity or capacity to save and make money, make money.

23:41 Your purpose isn't dependent upon the task that your boss gives you or the job you're able to negotiate. Your path through life isn't determined by the sum of your worst choices. Your character isn't defined by the set of your basis instincts that your identity in the world can be set by the God who loves you and has prepared a future for you. What it does to open you up so that you needn't live selfishly, fearfully, anxiously when you are promised by the God.

24:21 God starts something with Abraham. He's like, I'm going to make a promise to you that we'll change the way you can live and then just go. Live among the Egyptians. Live among the Canaanites. Yes, I'll give you actual kids be patient. But in the meantime, fill the earth and subdue it.

24:53 Let people find me through you. It's kind of like a... It's a crazy strategy. But it is not new. It's like God did it with Abraham and he does it with us. Next week we'll keep looking down the road because he does this thing with Abraham and it kind of starts to take shape.

25:34 And then Abraham has kids and they try and mess it up. So we'll look at Isaac and Jacob next week. Let me pray that you would receive the promise of God one and make friends. Two. Hey Lord, thank you for this room of people. Thank you for the story of Abraham and your commitment to him and to us. Open our eyes to the promises that you have made us that would free us up to live.

26:06 And then Lord, to the degree that we have the patience and the love and the faith, make us agents of friendship. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.