Well, from Genesis 12, verses 1 through 9, I say, Now the Lord God said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all families of the earth will be blessed. So Abraham went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and a lot went with him. Now Abraham was 75 years old when the Lord, when he departed from Heron. Abraham took Sarah, his wife, and lots his nephew, and all their possessions which he had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in her arm, and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abraham passed through the land as far as the sight of Shrekam to the Oak of Mora, now the Canaanite was then in the land, and the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, to your descendants, I will give this land, so he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and AI on the east, there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Abraham journeyed on continuing toward the negative. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, we pray now that you would simply come and you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, that we might see even the beginning of the promise of the gospel today. In your name we pray. Amen. This week I'm actually starting another series on the Book of Genesis. If you remember last fall I began the Book of Genesis, and this fall I'm continuing with the Book of Genesis, and before I jump into today's text I've got to give you some background. If you remember from last many of you weren't here last year, last year I made the point that Genesis is probably the most disputed book in all of the Bible. People want to use it to combat evolution or people want to use it to discredit Jesus. Any number of things the Book of Genesis is incredibly debated, and within the church and within even Jewish and Muslim culture, really Genesis has looked at only as history, generally speaking, that we look back and we say okay, we see the history of the fall, we see all of these things, and really it's much more than that. If you remember Genesis is infinitely more than that. Really what Genesis is is the prologue and the first act of this great cosmic drama. It's this great cosmic drama in which God is redeeming a people unto himself. It's sort of the great meta-narrative of you will of sin and redemption. Every movie you see, every book that you read, every story that you ever tell, is somehow or another about sin and redemption or falling or something, and the reason that is is because they're all wannabes. They're all looking and they're trying to emulate this story, this drama that you see throughout the whole Bible, and what Genesis is really is the prologue and the first act of that. And it's where we find God beginning this promise, this promise of the gospel. And if you remember the Nation of Israel primarily, the Book of Genesis was written primarily and originally for the Nation of Israel. While they were either they were probably in Egypt and bondage or they were on the edge of the promised land waiting to go in, and the Book of Genesis was written by Moses to convince them of the promise of God. That God had not only promised to deliver them out of their bondage, but in fact he would finish the job and he would get them into the promised land. And he promised that would happen and what Genesis does is it reminds them of that promise. You know what Genesis does for us? It reminds us of the same promise. Right? Because the New Testament says that all of us were born in Egypt, if you will. We were born in bondage. Remember the Matrix again? Remember when Neo finally meets Morpheus? And you know, if you've not seen the Matrix, it's about, you know, this artificial intelligence that has enslaved the human race, and there's a small band of freedom fighters, and Morpheus is the head of them at the beginning, at least, and Morpheus finds Neo. And he says to that, he says to Neo, he says they have us all, they had us all in prison. And Neo says, I don't remember ever being enslaved. And remember what Morpheus says to him? He leans really close to his face and says the reason you don't remember is because you were born in bondage. Remember that? Morpheus stole that line from Jesus. All right, remember the Jews in John chapter 8? They came confronting Jesus, and they said Jesus said that everyone is a slave, and they said we've never been enslaved to anybody. Right, which is laughable because obviously we're enslaved in Egypt, and currently they're enslaved, if you will, to the Romans, and they said Jesus cut them underneath, and he said, I'll tell you what, if you've ever committed sin, you're a slave to sin. You see, and what Genesis does is it reminds us of the promise of the gospel that Jesus came to release us from our bondage, and not only to release us from our bondage, but to finish the job, to complete it, to get us into the land, unto final rest into heaven, if you will. You see, so that's what a book of Genesis was written. And what we see today is really where it starts. Today's text with that whole story of being in bondage and released from bondage, really the release, the redemption, starts today. This is act one scene one, if you will. Now if you remember, the prologue was quite grim. The first 11 chapters of Genesis. Remember with my daughters last week, I told you that two weeks ago, I taught them the happy truth about humanity and their catechism lessons. Remember that? And I made sure that they realized that God created them. His original intention for them was that they would be kings and queens. Remember Flannery said, oh, I'm a princess. Well, this week, this week was the sad truth about humanity, and I wanted to spice it up a little bit. So what I did was I told them both to go in the room and wait for me to do their lesson. But while they were waiting for me, I told them I wanted them to dress up like Adam and Eve. I wanted to see if they got it or not. And so I walked in the room and they were butt naked. You know, it followed instructions. And I said, oh, you know, that's actually what I wanted. But I want you to put your underwear on it, least. So they put their underwear on and I pulled their big box of crazy dress up clothes and put it in the middle of the floor. And we did a dramatic reading of Genesis of the fall. Abby was Adam, Flannery was Eve, and I was God and the serpent. Remember, and I told them, you know, you should not eat of any tree in the garden. You can eat of every tree if it's something with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what happens? Flannery read. The serpent came and the serpent says to her eat of the tree and she eats. And then God comes and they see that they are naked. Remember that? And so what do they do? I said, you better get dressed. And so they scrambled and put all their crazy clothes on and went and hid. And I went to them and I said, ooh, who told you you are naked? And you know what Abby did? She pointed at Flannery, right? And you know what Flannery did? She pointed at me because the Satan serpent told me. And you see the fact is that they got it. And I said, you know, the sin in the garden, that original sin. I said, girls, who really is guilty of that? And they went, we are. And I said, bingo, you get it. Snacks for everybody. Remember all this is the door is shut. Judy doesn't know what is going on in there. But nonetheless, they have this fall. And right in the midst of the fall, there is this mysterious sort of promise given, if you will. Remember Genesis 3, 15, that God says that behold, there will be enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And the seed of the serpent will strike the heel of the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. And you think, oh, this is beautiful. There is going to be some redemption here. And then immediately what happens? Cain and Abel. Man, Cain kills Abel. The first murder, lying, cheating, stealing. All of this happens. And you go, how bad could it get? What happens next? Noah. God says he looked upon mankind and saw that every intention of his heart was only evil all the time. But Noah found grace with God. And so what did God do? He rescued Noah in the ark. And then you think, well, this is beautiful. We got a fresh start with Noah. And what happens? He gets off the ark and gets completely drunk. And his sons commit some kind of sexual business with him. And so all this cursing begins all over again. And then you say, how bad can it get? Then what happens? The tower of Abel. Remember the tower of Abel? That all these men got together and they decided we will make a name for ourselves. We will build a tower to the heavens. And what did God do? He came and confused their language and made them into nations, if you will. And what do nations generally tend to do? They fight with each other. And so from Genesis 1 to the prologue in chapter 11, it gets nothing but grim. And you have to ask yourself, what is God going to do here? With Abraham and Sarah, we have the answer. With Abraham and Sarah, we see the intervention of God into all of this. That all of the history of redemption starts here. And it's, besides Jesus, Abraham and Sarah are among the most important people in the whole Bible. And Sarah, as a side note, is the only woman in the Bible. She is so important. She is the only woman in the Bible whose age is given. Her age is given. And not only that, she is the only woman in the Bible whose name is changed. So with all of that, we are going to look at God dealing with Abraham. And today I was going to look at two things, but this morning I was going over it. And I said, you know, I hate long sermons as much as anyone else, so I mixed .3. So today we are just going to look at two things. We are going to look at the call of Abraham and the promise of God. Okay? So the call of Abraham and the promise of God. If you look at your text, I am just going to read verse 1. The first point, the call of Abraham, says, now the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. Okay? Now to understand the gravity of what God has just done with Abraham, you've got to understand Abraham's background. Basically, Abraham's background was this. Abraham was in the truest sense of the word, a pagan. Abraham was just this very comfortable, pagan guy. He lived in the land of Er of the called these. You know, and he had a very tight-knit family. We know that from the Bible. And it was a very tight-knit family who were very comfortable in their worship of what was probably the moon gods. So you have this tight-knit family who worshiped moon gods. You know, he had a great job at whatever the call of the inversion of Microsoft was. I mean, his life was together. He had everything that he needed. He had sheep. He had a lot of stuff, except on one hand he was very comfortable. On the other hand, he was very hopeless because it's not in your text. You don't have your Bible, but right before this passage, there's this editorial comment where it tells Abraham's background and there's this editorial comment that says, now Sarah was barren and had no child. And then it just goes on. Whenever you're reading the Bible, you need to pay attention to those editorial comments in the midst of what seems like just history. It says, now Sarah was barren. What does God do? He comes to this guy who is completely and utterly comfortable, but his wife is barren and he says, I want you to go and I want you to leave everything you know. Think of the unreasonableness of this call, really. God comes to it from nowhere and he says, it doesn't ever get easier. You see, he takes it and he says, don't just follow me. He says, I want you to go forth from your country. Okay, that's cool. And from your relatives. Okay. And from your father's house, that would have been all of his security to a land which I will show you. He says, leave everything you've known, every bit of your comfort, everything that defines you and I want you to head out to some place that I'm going to show you. He doesn't even tell him where he's going to go. Okay. That is a problem. There would be a problem for me. And you see Israel would have identified with that problem. Why? Because God told them the same thing. When they were in bondage in Egypt, God came to them and he said that I will deliver you from your bondage. And what I want you to do is I want you to go forth from Egypt. I want you to leave Egypt. And in fact, it's very interesting when you look at the promise that we see to Abraham, that God always refers back, or when he talks to Israel, he always refers back to Abram. I'll talk about that later. But basically, he says to them, go and leave your country, leave Egypt. Now, the problem with Egypt for the Israelites is you think, gosh, this great. God is delivering them from their bondage and their cruel oppression and their harsh taskmasters. And you would think they would be very thankful. But what happens when they get in the wilderness? They grumble and complain. Remember, as soon as they get out in the wilderness, as soon as things get a little bit difficult, they say to Moses, you know, why did you bring us out here? Were there not enough graves in Egypt at least in Egypt? We had leaks and onions to eat and water to drink. Out here, we have nothing. You see, now, here's the problem. Israel, on one hand, they were in bondage, but on the other hand, their bondage was also the source of their comfort. Do you see that? And you see that all around you, right? Often you see in my own family, women who are abused for decades. And instead of leaving their place of bondage and instead of leaving their place of abuse, what they do is they just stay there. Why? Because that's what they know. At least there's a paycheck here. At least someone is here if something happens to me, right? They're afraid of leaving into the unknown. And you see, that's very important for us as well. You see, Israel had it better than Abraham because God came to Abraham and he said, Abraham, go. That's all Abraham got go to a place that I will show you. At least with Israel, God went to them and said, leave Egypt and I will come to you and a pillar of fire and smoke and you can follow me. So Israel could have looked at least and seen the presence of God and followed him. You see, that's exactly how it is with the gospel and the church and us. You see, Israel had it better than Abraham, but we have it better than Israel. Why? Because God came, went to Israel and he said, follow the pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke and it will lead you to safety. And what Jesus says in the gospel is not follow the pillar of fire, but Jesus comes and he says, follow me. God, instead of manifesting himself and fire and smoke comes in a person and he says, follow me. And you know the reason that most people don't follow Jesus? It's not because they don't believe in God. It's not even that they don't believe in Jesus. Most people do not follow Jesus. They do not heed this call of Jesus to follow him because they are comfortable. Not only are they comfortable, but they are comfortable in their bondage. Most people that I know whether they are Christians or not are not very satisfied with their lives. They're not very satisfied with the things that they do. They're not very satisfied with the fact that they can't even maintain their own low standards of morality. And yet Jesus comes and he says, follow me into the unknown, follow me to perfect freedom. And what do we do? We don't. We're like the librarian in Shawshank Redemption. Her Shawshank Redemption, Timothy Robbins is falsely accused and he's put in prison and he works in the library. And in the library there's a man who has served a 50 year term. And his time is coming up and remember Timothy Robbins says, man, you've got to be so excited that after 50 years you will finally be free and Timothy Robbins comes one day and he says, he finds the man hanging dead. And he's completely shocked. And then he goes to one of my favorite actors, Morgan Freeman and he says, why? Why? After 50 years in prison would he hang himself? Everything outside waited for him. And what does Morgan Freeman say? That's the point, Andy. Remember that? He says, he isn't present for 50 years but this was his present. He knew it. He was comfortable with his prison. And the thought of leaving what he knew and leaving his comfort was so much and so hard that what he did instead was kill himself. And that's what a lot of us do. That's what a lot of you do. We kill ourselves. And the gospel says that Jesus offers this thing perfect freedom and he says, follow me. But it's going to cost you everything. Remember Jesus and the rich young ruler? One of my favorite passages. Remember the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he says, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, well, it's very simple. Sell all you own and give to the poor. And then come follow me and what does it say? He says, he hung his head and walked away because he had great wealth. Now my favorite part is the next part where Peter steps in and he had to be very crass and he had to be very bold because it starts out with behold. Peter steps in and he says, behold, we've left everything to follow you. Right? I've left everything. What am I going to get? And Jesus says, Peter, I tell you the truth. If you leave everything to follow me, whoever does that will receive in this life and the life to come. Brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, a hundredfold. You see, Jesus answers Peter's question, his spoken question, the same way God answers Abraham's unspoken question. And the unspoken question is why in the world, what is the motivation for me to follow you? And the motivation is simply this. It's the promise of the gospel. It's the promise of God. Look at the next two verses. God says to him, after he tells him to leave to the land which I will show you, he says, and I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great and so shall you be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, think of the promise that God gives to Abraham here. Think of how ludicrous the promise is, really. God tells him to leave all his comfort with his barren wife. He says, leave what you know with your wife who is not able to have children and go out here and I promise you that I will make you a great nation. And I will make your name great and I will bless you. Now, what is the problem there? It takes two things to make a nation, right? It takes people, that is children, and it takes land. And it's very instructive and later on in the passage which I'm not going to look at where it says when Abraham got to the place that God appointed to him, the canonites were in the land. Why is that instructive? Because the canonites were a horror to everybody. The canonites were the worst of the worst. They were the worst idolaters. You know, they sacrificed their children in the fire. They were horrific warriors, all of these things. And it says the canonites were in the land. And immediately God comes and says, this is the place, baby. He says, this is the land that I will give to your descendants. He repeats this promise. And so, Abraham is thinking, okay, this God is promising me that I'm going to be a great nation which means my wife apparently will have to have children but she is barren and 75 years old. And there are these terrible warriors in the land. And he says, he will bless me. Now, what does it mean for Abraham to leave them? It's not a leap of faith. That's what you need to get. When Abraham leaves, which he will do, and I'm not going to talk about because I don't have time today, when he leaves to set out for canon, it is not a leap of faith. It is embracing the promise of God. God came to him and he said, I'm going to give you this land and I'm going to make you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make a name for you. Remember that? How different that is from Babel? What happened in Babel? They said, we will make a name for ourselves and God sees Abraham. You don't even have to worry about that. When Abraham moved out, he was simply believing the gospel. He was believing the promise of God. And it's very important for you to understand what happens at the end of verse 2 because actually I don't like the way it's translated. It's actually, they're trying to help you there but I don't think it does. The end of verse 2 says, and so you shall be a blessing that really is an imperative in the Hebrew. So really what that should say is, I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. Be a blessing. In other words, God says, Abram, I am calling you. I am initiating this relationship with you in order that you may be a blessing. I'm not doing it just for you. I'm doing it so that in fact you may be a blessing to all those around you. The end of verse 3 says, what? He says, Abraham and you, all the nations of the earth, will be blessed. You see, that's the whole story of the Bible. If you want the Bible in the nutshell, it is basically God coming to an individual and telling the individual, I will make you a nation. And because of that nation, all the nations on the earth will be blessed. Abram, you are called to be a blessing. And Israel needed to hear that why? Because Israel somehow got it in their mind that God had created them as a nation in order to distinguish them from everyone else. In order to make them set apart and to make them bigger and better and above all, above everyone else. And what God says is, I didn't create you to be that kind of nation. He says, I created you to be a blessing to the Goyean, to the nations. And it's also interesting that the word for nation that he uses for Israel is Goy. He says, I created you to be a Goy in order to bless the rest of the Goy. That your job Israel is not to fight them, but your job in fact is to mediate the gospel, to mediate the presence of God to the rest of the world. You see in the church, the church needs to hear that. Because generally as a church, we think our role is twofold. Depending on which church you're in, one type of church says that our job as a church is to provide services for our members. Do you want childcare? Do you want to financial seminars? What do you need? We'll provide it for you and our job primarily is to take care of you. Now of course another kind of church says our primary job is to fight the culture war. It's to be involved in battling the forces of evil in our country and somehow making America a more moral place in both of those views are wrong. The whole purpose of the church, the existence of the church, we were called to be a blessing. That the church was called to fulfill this promise that God gave to Abram. Because remember if you go through the history of redemption when God heard the groaning of Israel in Egypt, he says I remembered the promise I made to whom? Abram. And when Jesus talks about being a blessing to all the nations, when Jesus says I have come to give you eternal life, he says what am I doing? I am fulfilling the promise that God made to Abram. In other words Jesus comes and he says you know I did not come to start a new religion but in fact I came to fulfill an old promise. The promise that God gave to Abram that he would be a blessing to all nations. But in him all nations would come and they would worship and they would be redeemed and they would get along again. Now it's interesting that when Jesus comes and says this when Jesus makes himself out to be is the one who fulfills the promise of Abram. It begins to make sense as to why Jesus was so concerned with how people responded to him. Jesus was unbelievably concerned. Remember I always tell you that Jesus was humble but not modest? That he would be in a conversation with you and in some point in the conversation he'd say that's great about you but what are you going to do with me? What do you think about me? What are you going to do with me? He was always positioning himself so that people would have to deal with him. Why? It's because of this promise made to Abram. If you look in the verse 3 there this is the most unbelievable thing that I can imagine God saying to a man. He says Abram I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. Do you see what God has done here with Abram? For some reason God has said to Abram Abram from now on I will deal with every person in the world, every human being, not on a basis of what they do with me but I will deal with them on the basis of what they do with you. Think about that. That God sort of imputes himself, his own glory, his own standards, his own everything on to Abram. And so now Abram is standing there and basically saying what are you going to do with me? And God says whoever blesses you Abram I will bless. And he says whoever curses you I will curse. And it's very interesting in the Hebrew because the use is two different words for curse. The first one he says Abram whoever curses you that word is a word which means to hold in light of steam. It doesn't mean sort of to rain down curses on you, curses on Abraham, a pox on your children Abram. It doesn't mean that. It means Abram whoever looks at you and does not hold you in high esteem, whoever looks at you and does not honor the promise that I've made. Whoever refuses to be blessed because of you them I will curse. And that second word is that. The second word is very drastic. It's sort of the it is mean sort of a pox on your children and may your goats never have milk again. It's a bad thing. And that's the reason that Jesus was so concerned that people deal with him because Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise to Abram. You know how the book of Matthew begins? It says the genealogy of Jesus Christ the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham. And Jesus comes and he says the blessing that God gave to Abram and the promise that he gave to him is here now in your midst baby. I am the one and however you deal with me those who bless me will be blessed and those who curse me that is hold me in light of steam. God will curse. Now you can imagine the Jewish people did not take to that very well. And in John chapter 8 I'm going to close with this because I don't want to go too long and John chapter 8 Jesus is actually in a debate with the Jewish leadership about Abraham. And Jesus has aligned himself with Abraham and listen to what they say to him. And John 8 they say to Jesus you're surely not greater than our father Abram who died. The prophets died too. Whom do you make yourself out to be? And Jesus answered if I glorify myself my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me of whom you say he is our God and you have not come to know him but I know him. And if I say that I do not know I would be a liar like you but I do know him and keep his word. Now listen this beautiful line he says your father Abraham rejoice to see my day. And he saw it and was glad that Abram looked forward to this one who would finally unconditionally meet the promise of God to bless all the nations. And it says that he looked forward to it and he saw it. The Jesus is the one and he continues so the Jews said to him you're not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abram? Jesus said to them truly truly I say to you before Abraham was born I am. You guys think about that this week that the gospel is simply this that God always initiates with sinners and he does not initiate in a vacuum. He initiates and he gives this great promise in this great promise is fulfilled in the person of Jesus. He won't remember Jesus says I will not leave you as orphans but I will come to you. Think about that let me pray. Jesus we pray simply that you somehow would help us to see and to understand this promise the God gave to Abram that you would be a blessing to all people. And I pray for this church great Seattle that we would mediate the presence of your blessing that people would look at our church and they say we are blessed because of that church. Whether they believe or not I thank you and we praise you and your name. Amen.