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Sermons at Trinity Church |
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Genesis 12 BELIEVING THE UNBELIEVABLE 18th January 2004 Jonny Elvin
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All Bible references in this sermon transcript are taken from the English Standard Version. This can be found at www.biblegateway.com
Chapters 1-11 = creation history. In the light of chs 1-11 ch12 comes as an amazing turn.
Chapter 12 à = salvation history
In other words what we see from ch12 is nothing less than a new beginning for humanity. Instead of God’s curse, which has been pronounced 5 times in the first 11 chapters, comes God’s blessing. God begins the process of re-creating for himself a people through whom he will pour out his blessing on the whole world. And Abraham is where that blessing starts.
1. God promises blessing to Abram and his offspring 12.1-3
1Now the LORD said[1] to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
‘Go’ is the key command. The blessing is a consequence of going. It could be translated as ‘Go…so that I may make you…bless you, etc’. It’s not ‘if you go I’ll bless you’. It’s not a request with a carrot attached. It’s a command with a promise.
The nature of the blessing:
· Land, v1, 7; 15.7 Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
We’ll see next week just how extensive the land was. But why do the people need a land to live in? Because God will make them into a great nation. It’s not just going to be Abraham and his family, it will be countless offspring. · People (or ‘nationhood’), v2 And I will make of you a great nation
Nation implies more than ‘people’, it implies a political unit with a common land, language and government. This is extraordinary, considering Abram’s current family circumstances – old, childless and barren. · Fame, v2 and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
People will remember Abraham and say ‘May God make me as blessed as Abraham’. His name will be a byword for God’s blessing as well as a model of faith for us.
· Protection, v3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse
You see God is concerned for Abram’s welfare. Retribution and justice are not left to chance. The Lord himself will actively intervene on Abram’s side, even if anyone verbally assaults him, which is the implication of the word ‘dishonours’.
· Blessing to all people, v3 and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Not every individual is promised blessing, but every major people group. Groups well disposed to Abram and his descendants will prosper: those who oppose them will not. Cf. 17.16, 18.18
In short – God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. Just as God intended it to be in the beginning. But this 5-fold blessing is only fitfully seen in the life of Abram’s descendants. It’s only seen fully in Christ. He is the one in whom all the promises find their fulfilment.
Note now these are all as a result of God’s gracious action: ‘I will show you’, ‘I will make you’, ‘I will bless you’. God will bless Abram and his offspring. These are solemn promises, without the insecurity of human fallibility – God doesn’t break his promises. We all fail, we all let each other down and we let God down. We all break our promises to him. Our promises and vows fail because we’re not God. That’s why we don’t sing the type of song that says ‘I will always love you to the end’ without saying ‘by God’s grace’. If any blessing is to come to fallen humanity then this must be the work of God. Notice how these are all future blessings. Not ‘I have made you a great nation or I have made your name great’, but I will.
There are some fundamental obstacles along the road to fulfilment of the promises of ch12. 1. How can sinners enjoy God’s blessing? 2. How can an elderly and barren couple have descendants? 3. How can a handful of people possess a land that is already occupied by others?
From a human point of view these seem insurmountable. But as the story unfolds we’ll see that nothing can stop God’s plans and purposes being fulfilled. This is the God who made everything out of nothing with a word. So what seem like mountains to us are molehills for God.
2. Abraham worships God through costly obedience 12.4-9
4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5And Abram took Sarai 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.
Most people want to settle down when they reach retirement age, take things easy, do the things that they want with the leisure time they can now look forward to. Most 75 year olds are doing day trips to Sidmouth, playing bowls at the club or enjoying afternoon tea at the Royal Clarence. But God has other plans for Abram. No cottage by the sea, no modest pension, no visits to the grandchildren. At 75 Abram is still childless and travelling.
This travelling in faith is costly. V1 Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house. He has to leave all he holds dear – his extended family and his friends and the place he calls home. He has to abandon all he knows as his security for the greater security of God’s promises.
When Jesus calls us he calls us to follow him whatever the cost. He doesn’t say ‘follow me and your life will become more comfortable.’ As someone once put it ‘when Christ calls a man he bids him ‘come and die’. We have to put to death our worldliness, which I wrestle with as much as you, and say ‘Jesus, where you send me I will go.’
I love the Methodist Covenant Prayer which says: I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will; rank me with whom you will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed by you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low by you. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am yours. So be it. And the covenant, which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. #607 United Methodist Hymnal (Reprinted with permission, United Methodist Publishing House )
So often the cost is more evident than the blessing. It was for Abram – it is for us.
When it comes to us as a church there is a costly obedience which is our worship too. We don’t know where we will end up as a church. It may be Whipton, it may be elsewhere. But there’s a great danger for us – that is that we base where we end up on middle-class criteria rather than Christian criteria. I want to go where there’s nice schools for my kids, where people will be like me.
Once Abram knows that his inheritance is a backwater regularly overrun by invading armies he doesn’t have second thoughts. He doesn’t say ‘Can’t I go somewhere nicer? Can’t I move to a nice leafy neighbourhood rather than this downtrodden strip of third-rate real estate?’ Neither does he say ‘Here I am Lord send me… but don’t send me there!’ Abram goes, trusting that God knows what he’s doing. When we are obedient to the Lord there will be blessing – even though it might be hard for us.
Once there what does Abram do? When they came to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak[3] of Moreh.
The name Moreh means ‘teacher’ – which suggests that this is a place where oracles or revelations could be obtained. The name anticipates that God will appear. And that’s exactly what happens…
7Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land."
Not yet, because… v6 At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Once Abram knows that he has reached his goal his first act is to worship, not with Matt Redman songs, but by building an altar, v7 – perhaps to offer sacrifices or maybe in anticipation of his return – a way of marking the land for the Lord and saying ‘I’ll be back’. This is rather like sticking a flag in the ground to claim it for your king or country – like the US flag on the moon.
Whatever the case he doesn’t stick around, but keeps travelling to see the Promised Land…
8From 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. 9And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
He’s gone from the north of Canaan to the south, walking through it and worshipping in it – all has been promised to him. However what happens next puts the whole thing in jeopardy.
3. God protects his promises and his chosen ones
Almost as soon as Abram has settled in Canaan he’s off again. Why is he so quickly deserting the land of promise? 10Now there was a famine in the land. A severe famine. Fortunately few of us in the West will ever know firsthand how foreboding this situation is.
So to escape the danger of starvation Abram decides to take his family to Egypt for a while. But he anticipates another danger facing them there. As an immigrant he’ll lack the family support and protection he’s been used to. And immigrants are so often exploited by the unscrupulous. Things haven’t changed much over these thousands of years, have they? That’s why the Law, when it ws given to Moses some 400 years later would go on so much about not exploiting the alien and the stranger.
Well there they are taking in the sights, when they’re spotted. Or should I say she is spotted by Egypt’s princes. Sarai is 65, but she still turns heads in Egypt.
Vv11-13 tell us that Abram has arranged things with Sarai so that she’ll pose as his sister wherever they go. And they’d agreed how they’d play it even before they left Ur (20.12-13). There’s a reason for this. Had Pharaoh seen Sarai and wanted her in his harem he wouldn’t have been the first monarch to dispose of a husband in order to add to his collection of wives (cf. 2 Samuel 11). Abram is thinking ‘security, security’. But his actions only make things worse. Sarai is taken into Pharaoh’s household, whilst Abram is given some livestock as bride money to keep him sweet, vv14-16.
It’ll take God’s power to save them.
Look at where things have got:
They were God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. But now they are still God’s people – but they’ve left God’s place and they’re under the rule of Pharaoh.
The whole promise has been put in jeopardy, humanly speaking. OK they can go back to the land, but how will Abram and Sarai have descendants now she’s married to old Tutankhamun (not literally)?!
But clearly God is sovereign here. He steps in in a dramatic and painful way to reunite Abram and Sarai and send them back to Canaan. The Egyptian royal family are afflicted with plagues. And Pharaoh somehow recognises that their suffering is from the Lord. But he is furious, and asks the same question of Abram that God asks of Eve in the garden, ‘what is this you have done?’ And Pharaoh expels them, just as God expelled Adam and Eve.
Pharaoh barks out his command: literally ‘Here…wife…take…go’. . Adultery in the ancient world was seen as ‘the great sin’ deserving the death penalty. Abram and Sarai are sent away (v17-20), lucky to escape with deportation. The royal leniency is remarkable. God has protected them.
It’s not been a commendable episode has it? Abram has great faith, but his dishonesty is shocking. Indeed, Pharaoh seems to act with greater morality and deference to God than Abram does. Abram is not being a blessing to the nations here is he? Still, God entrusts his eternal purposes to human with flaws. He entrusts his gospel message to us, doesn’t he?
Abram’s failure, like Israel’s later sinfulness in the wilderness, is recorded as a warning for later generations – 1 Corinthians 10.11 says ‘these things were written down for our instruction’. But it also encourages us – as Romans 11.29 says ‘the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.’ God keeps his promises and fulfils his purposes.
In the end this story points us to Christ. Paul writes of Jesus in 2 Corinthians 1.20 ‘all the promises of God find their Yes in him.’ Christ has stepped in in a dramatic and painful way to reunite all of humanity with God. On the cross Jesus suffers so that we might be blessed – so that we might be God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule.
Ab didn’t fulfil the promises – Christ did. He is the ‘seed’ of Abraham (cf. Galatians 3).
But why do we need to know this story here? The key is that not even Abram’s mistakes can wreck God’s plan. He made great promises to Abram and he has fulfilled them in Christ.
God keeps his covenant promises. That’s what we remember as we come to prayer and to the Lord’s table. We come, like Abram, as failed sinners to receive grace from him in our time of need. |