Genesis #11 - The Gospel According to Abraham #1 - "Covenant Grace Pt. 1" (Gen 11:10-12:9)

Covenant Grace in the Call of Abraham

Well, it's our custom here at Redeemer to work our way, passage by passage, through books in the Bible. And we've been out... Well, we started Genesis at the beginning of the year. We took a break to look at some other things, and now we are returning back to Genesis as we start a new series that I've called, The Gospel According to Abraham.

I've called this The Gospel According to Abraham because, while Abraham is really the central human character we're going to follow from chapter 12 through to 25 of Genesis, really the story is not about Abraham per se.

Ultimately, it's about God and his faithfulness in the life of Abraham, even at moments where Abraham is anything but faithful. And so we come back to our study in the life of Abraham, and we're going to pick it up in chapter 12 this afternoon.

And really, we'll briefly look at the end of chapter 11, but the focus of our time will be chapter 12. So if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, please turn with me to Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12 and verses 1 through 9.

Genesis chapter 12 and verses 1 through 9. If you grabbed one of the red hardback Bibles that we give away at the welcome table, it's on page 9. And by the way, if you want one of those, they are yours to take and to keep.

So please help yourself. Genesis chapter 12 and verses 1 through 9. It's our custom here at Redeemer that we stand for the reading of God's word when it comes to the sermon. So if I can invite you to stand.

Genesis chapter 12, beginning in verse 1 and reading through to verse 9. Brothers and sisters, these are God's words.

Yahweh said to Abram,.

So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions he had accumulated, and the people he had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan.

Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Morah, at the time the Canaanites were in the land. Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. So he built an altar there to Yahweh who had appeared to him.

From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to Yahweh there, and he called on the name of Yahweh. Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

The gospel is, the flower fades, but this word of God will abide forever. Join with me as I pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and we come to this message in God's word. Well, Heavenly Father, we would ask that as we open up your word now, you would speak to each heart, that you would open our eyes, that we would see wonderful things out of your law.

May your spirit be at work, helping us to hear a better word than that which is preached, as he takes the truth and writes it upon our hearts. We ask all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.

Please be seated. Well, as I said, we are beginning this new series that we are calling The Gospel According to Abraham. And I'm kicking off this new series this afternoon with part one of a message that I have called Covenant Grace.

Covenant Grace.

Since we've been out of Genesis for quite a while, I think it was about March time that we put, well, it was about the summer actually, that we put a pin in Genesis, I thought it would be good for a moment to kind of reintroduce Genesis to us, just to bring us all to speed.

Some of you weren't here when we started that series.

We're glad you're here.

And so for a moment, like to just kind of bring you up to speed of where we are in the book of Genesis. So for a moment, let's talk about Genesis so far. So we've touched chapters one through the first nine verses of chapter 11.

And really that covers what you could call primeval history, the beginning of history as we know it. Easy way to remember what happens in Genesis one through 11, you've got four big events that happen.

So you have creation in chapters one and two. You have the fall and its effects in chapters three, four and five. You have the flood narrative that really covers chapters six through eight and the effects of the fall narrative in nine and 10.

And then we have the Tower of Babel incident beginning chapter 11. So that's where we've been so far. That series was called Foundations. If you go to either our website or our YouTube channel, you can catch up with the messages in Genesis one through 11.

We are coming to the second part of the book of Genesis where the focus shifts from what we could call primeval history, the beginning of history to patriarchal history. Patriarchal is a word that's not very popular these days.

All we mean by that is it's the history of the patriarchs, these fathers of the nation of Israel. And so where you had four key events in Genesis one through 11, you've got four key people in chapter 11 right through to the end.

So we're going to be looking at Abraham, and as you can see, that's going to cover 11 right through to 25. We'll look at Isaac's life in 25 and 26, Jacob in 27 to 36, and then finally Joseph in 37 to 50 where we're actually reading in our scripture readings at the moment.

You remember those of you who were here for that very first message in Genesis that I said that if you were to sum up the book of Genesis into one sentence, it would be this, that despite the failure of God's covenant people, God's purposes and plans will come to fulfillment, not through the faithfulness of others, but the faithfulness of God.

Let me say that again.

Despite the failure of God's covenant people, God's purposes and plans will come to fulfillment, not through the faithfulness of others, but the faithfulness of God. That was what we called it the melodic line, the theme that runs through this book we call Genesis.

And we're going to see that particular theme play itself out in the life of Abraham as we walk through this series. We're going to see that theme play out in so many rich ways, and I think ultimately we will see the grace and the goodness of God shown to Abraham.

As we look at Abraham, we'll be able to see some of how it is that God deals with us. That's why I've called this series, The Gospel According to Abraham. So that's my really lightning review of Genesis.

But we're coming to a narrative, and we're coming to a narrative about a particular person. And the temptation may be to just kind of open up Genesis chapter 12 and start reading. But we need to take a moment before we come to the text proper to talk about how we handle biblical narratives.

Because if we don't handle biblical narratives well, what will happen is we'll read this and we'll either come away with the wrong impression, or we'll come away saying, I didn't get anything out of that because we're expecting things from the text that maybe the text isn't designed to do.

So for a moment, let's talk about understanding Old Testament narratives. When we read biblical narratives, which is what we're about to read in the story of Abraham, I would argue that if this is like a journey and we're traveling on this journey, if we're not careful, we can slide off into one of two ditches when it comes to the narratives of the Bible.

And I think especially for people like me, who have the privilege of preaching God's word regularly, we, more than anyone, find ourselves in danger of falling off into one of these two ditches. So for a moment, I want to kind of identify those ditches and kind of give something of a helpful set of instructions for reading Old Testament narrative when we come to it.

So if there are two ditches, what are they? Well, what are they? The first one I've just called, it's all about me and my life. This is when biblical narratives turn into moral examples alone. Biblical narratives turn into moral examples alone.

Now, keyword here is alone. It might be a controversial point with some, but I do not believe that it's a deficient view of the Old Testament. I don't think you're reading it wrong. If you read the Old Testament and you ask the question, okay, is there something God wants me to learn from the example of these people?

I don't have time to read it, but if you're taking notes, Romans chapter 15, verse 4, Paul says that the scriptures are given for our learning,.

For our instruction.

1 Corinthians 10, verse 11, he says that these things, and he's talking about Old Testament Israel, he says these things happened as examples, which I had time to unpack that verse and all it has to say, but suffice it to say, if we have a problem with using the Old Testament or reading the Old Testament and getting moral instruction from it, then there are whole parts of the Bible that you have to throw out.

So I just alluded to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Paul uses the example of the sin of the nation of Israel and says, don't sin like they did to the Corinthians, who kind of were sinning like they did. The authors of the Hebrews does this in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4.

He looks at the Exodus generation and he says to his audience, listen, they were unable to inherit because of their unbelief. That can happen to you, so keep on believing. You see it again in chapter 11.

And in chapter 11, these examples of faith that are used to bolster the faith of God's people. James chapter 5, James says that we are to learn from the patience of Job. As you look at the patience of Job, you're supposed to learn something from that.

So you get my point, I hope. The Bible uses moral examples to teach. That's not what I talk about when I mention this here. What I'm talking about is when we take these examples and we make moral instruction the sole point of a biblical narrative.

So it's not so much, okay, I'm looking to learn from Abraham's example, or I'm looking to learn from David's example, or any other example. It's when you say the only thing that this is good for is moral instruction.

And I'll say that there's two dangers that comes with that. First of all, it promotes a very self-centered way of looking at your Bible. I mean, if you've gone up in church like I have, you've all heard the sermons about David and Goliath, which basically turned David and Goliath into your personal story.

You're David, Goliath is your problem, and whatever tools you use to fight your problems are your five stones, so use your five stones wisely. Anyone heard those sermons? If you've been in church for any length of time?

Okay.

That's how not to read your Old Testament. It's a profoundly me-centered way of looking at it. Never mind what the human author, and more importantly the divine author, had to say. Never mind the fact that that really wouldn't have crossed the author's mind when he wrote this.

No, no, no.

If you kind of take a bad view of reading Old Testament narrative, you'll read the Bible with you as the hero all the time, not you as the one who needs saving. Kind of leads to my second big issue with that, which is it misses the fact that these narratives are smaller scenes in the grand narrative of redemption.

So all of these people that you read about, all of these events that you see happen, God is using them to teach us something about his plan of redemption. As one author puts it, God doesn't just write history with words, he writes it with people and with events.

And so as you look at these events in the Old Testament, if you merely make them kind of moral examples, well you're going to miss out the fact that ultimately this book is not about you. But this book that we hold is a book that is ultimately God's self-disclosure, his self-revelation about himself, proclaiming who he is and what he has done in redeeming the people by himself, for himself, and for his glory.

So that's the danger when we read biblical narratives as moral examples alone. But I think in reaction to that, what can happen is, some people say, well it's not about that, therefore, problem number two, it's all about Jesus.

Sort of. Biblical narratives as types alone. So whereas one side basically says it's all about me, with basically me learning things about Abraham or whatever biblical character, the other side says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's not going to give you any sort of moral instruction at all. It's all about Jesus. Kind of, sort of, in some ways. Now, I want to be clear. I do believe that the whole Bible bears witness to the redemptive work of God in Christ.

I do believe that the whole Bible does so either in preparing us for Jesus or in proclaiming Jesus. I also believe that the New Testament tells us explicitly that there were types and shadows in the Old Testament, the substance of which is found in Christ.

So if you read the Bible and you don't get the sense that this Bible, in some way, shape, or form, is always pointing us to Christ, I would highly recommend you read it again and read it properly. That all being said, here's the danger that I think I'm trying to get to here.

It is all too easy for us to read biblical narratives, ignore what's happening in those narratives, ignore the clear lessons that are being given to us in those narratives, and to basically say, how do I get to Jesus from this text, ignoring what is said by the text itself?

The text just becomes a springboard for getting to Jesus. I think that can be an unhelpful way of reading the Bible. You think, wait, did you just say it's unhelpful to look for Jesus in the Bible? No, not what I said.

What I'm saying is that it is all too easy to read biblical narratives to ignore what's actually happening in that narrative and what God is trying to teach in a well-meaning but slightly misguided pursuit to make this text talk about Jesus when it's doing more than just that.

The dangers with this, I think, are kind of obvious. For one thing, in the most un-Godded way that this can be done, it kind of turns the Bible into the divine equivalent of a code book. Only a few people with the right initiate knowledge and skills can detect where Jesus is.

It's kind of like playing Where's Waldo with Jesus in the Old Testament. You have to be really good at seeing small details. Us regular people, we have to work hard to read things. I think that's not a healthy way to approach Scripture.

Secondly, I think it flattens the shape of biblical revelation. God revealed the Bible in real time, in real settings, with real people. And to kind of just flatten the Bible, I think, takes the power out of Scripture to a degree.

God didn't just... Think about it. The Bible was simply just a recitation of the gospel and a recitation of how to get saved. The Bible doesn't need to be this big. But God in his providence allowed history to play itself out with particular events, with particular people, with particular moral instruction.

And we have to be wise and discerning in, yes, not making it all about moral instruction, but not throwing that out entirely. Kind of leads to my third problem, which is that if 2 Timothy 3 .16 says that Scripture is given to us for instruction, for training in righteousness, where else will we learn best that training in righteousness, that instruction in righteousness, than from the walk of those, good or bad, who have walked before us?

And so I wanted to start there for a moment because I want to measure expectations when it comes to this series. If you've come expecting me to give you a bunch of moral instruction, you will at times be disappointed, because I might not do that.

But if you've come to this text expecting me to just say, well, that's what it says, but really it's just talking about Jesus. Well, you might want to be a bit more responsible in how we do that. Let's be clear.

We will see much about Christ. We will see much about the grace of God. We will see much about the gospel as we look at the life of Abraham. Let's be clear. But if we don't have our expectations rightly measured, if we don't negotiate the road, as it were, so we don't slide off into one of these ditches, we'll actually miss out on some great instruction from the Word of God.

Well, with that in mind, all of that was introduction. Let's come to Genesis chapter 12, finally. Genesis chapter 12. And here I just want to ask a simple question. What does this text, Genesis chapter 12, that we're going to look at, what does this text have to teach weary pilgrims like us who are looking for the grace of God, who are looking for deeper and greater assurance?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

I'll put it to you that Genesis chapter 12 teaches us that God's relationship with His people is founded on covenant grace. That's my big idea for this message. That God's relationship with His people is founded on covenant grace.

That God enters into covenant relationship with His people. And that is how we come to experience His grace. Well, for the rest of our time this afternoon, I want to consider three glorious truths about covenant grace.

Three lessons we learn about grace from these opening words in the life of Abraham that should help us to find assurance and to help us find hope in our walk with the Lord. So, three lessons. I'll do my best to be brief.

Covenant Grace Is Grounded in Real Promises

First of all, consider with me the fact that covenant grace is grounded in real promises. Covenant grace is grounded in real promises. Before we get to chapter 12, I need to take a moment and finish off chapter 11.

So we're going to look at chapter 11, 10 through 32 very quickly. This is going to be a very brief point, but it's still worth exploring. For those of you who've been reading through Genesis, this is the third time in Genesis when you come to Genesis 11, 10.

The third time you have a listing of family names and family records. Now, because I love you all and it's later in the day, I intentionally didn't have us read that long section with a bunch of names.

But I encourage you to read it in your own time. But while there's a lot of names and numbers in this opening section in chapter 11, don't lose sight of the fact that these names and these numbers are here for a reason.

In fact, whenever you read Genesis, you should always ask yourself when we get to a section in Genesis, why is this section of Genesis here? Well, all you have to do, I would argue, is to look at what came before it.

So chapter 11, 1 through 9 is the story of the Tower of Babel, the dispersion of the nations, the fact that rather than obey God's word, we said that man is to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth, people wanted to stay together and God said, okay, if that's the case, I will separate you myself.

And so God separates the nations in chapter 11, 1 through 9. And if you're reading the story carefully, you're supposed to read that and ask yourself the question, okay, if the nations are now dispersed and they're all separate from each other, how is the plan of God that we've already seen mentioned in Genesis chapter 3 and in Genesis chapter 8 and in chapter 9, how are we going to see this plan unfold if all the nations are scattered?

Well, here's the beautiful thing. Sin, once again, has introduced a complicated situation. Doesn't it always in the life of the people of God? Just like the first sin with Adam, just like the sin that led to the flood, just like the sin that led to Babel, just like the sin that you and I grapple with, sin has led to some devastating consequences because here's a lesson, sin is never without consequence.

But just because sin is never without consequence doesn't mean that sin is not without, or not with cure, excuse me, or sin is without cure. Sin might catch us off guard, but it doesn't catch God off guard.

Yes, the nations rebelled against God and decided that they were not going to separate, so God had to judge them and do it Himself. But God already had a plan in motion. God had already made a promise, remember back in Genesis 3 .15, that the woman would give birth to a seed, the seed that would one day crush the head of our enemy, the devil?

Well, I would argue Genesis 11 .10 -32, long list of names that it is, what this section does is it shows that God's great promise marches on, that He focuses His promise through delivering them through the flood, bringing them to this point, and now you have Shem, verse 10, who basically becomes the father of a line, and it's through this line that God's promises will be fulfilled.

Through Shem, Himself a recipient of an inspired blessing in chapter 9, and ultimately through this man Abram that we're about to meet, these promises are made with real people in real time. And so chapter 11, verses 10 -32, if you read it rightly, ought to teach you that God is still at work, that His promises are real, and that His people can trust His promises even when men fail.

Before we move on to chapter 12, there's one little detail we need to deal with. So look with me at chapter 11, verse 31. Chapter 11, verse 31, it says, Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, Haran's son, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there. They think, okay, what's the detail we need to deal with there? Well, this text says that they went to Abram and his father, and his father's house, went from where they were in Ur of the Chaldeans, and they go to the land of Canaan.

Here's the thing, multiple times in the Bible, it says that the call of God that we're going to read in chapter 12 in just a few moments, that the call of God didn't come to them in Haran, it came to them in Ur.

So Genesis chapter 15, verse 7, he also said to him, I am Yahweh who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land. In the book of Acts, Stephen says in Acts chapter 7, he says, Brothers, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran.

So hold on, how did Abraham move from Ur of the Chaldeans to here? But we pick up the story in chapter 12. I bring this up because you'll meet some people who are more clever than they should be. They'll read this and say, see, contradiction in the Bible.

The Bible says this happened here, but here it says this happened. That's a contradiction in terms. Well, I've put a little quote there in the study guide if you picked one up. The long and short of this is, Abraham was still with his father when the call came.

And Genesis is not trying to be strictly chronological at this point. He's with his father. This call from God comes that we're going to read in chapter 12. But he doesn't immediately obey it. Again, I'll leave you to read that long quote there.

But again, I want to take a moment and think about that because you'll meet people who will bring up a passage like this. But let me get back to my main point. That's my technical moment over for a second.

Don't get distracted by the main point of this section in Genesis 11. That covenant grace is grounded in real promises. That God's promises are real and that he brings them about even when men fail. Alright, we can come to chapter 12 proper now.

That's the first lesson that we learn from this text. That covenant grace is founded in great promises. But secondly, I want you to note with me here. Covenant grace creates relationship. Covenant grace creates relationship.

Chapter 12 verses 1 through 3.

If that first poem is relatively short, here we might be a while. And in fact, so much so that I'm actually going to come back to these verses next week and we'll deal with them in much more detail. For now, I just want to focus on one simple aspect of this passage.

In chapter 12 verses 1 through 3. Which is that God's grace creates relationship. And I'm going to add something here. With unlikely people. That God's grace creates relationship with unlikely people.

To understand this, we need to talk about this idea of covenant in the Bible. Covenant. Big word, appears in the Bible multiple times. First time in Genesis chapter 9 with God's dealings with Noah. Covenants in the Bible are very simple.

A covenant in the Bible is a, number one, binding agreement. So there is a agreement that has some teeth to it. This isn't just a handshake deal as it were. Or sort of, we would say, a verbal contract.

No, this is a binding agreement. Secondly, it's made between two parties. You've got two different groups with two different sets of interests. Third, it involves an oath. A solemn promise. And fourth, the promise is that one or both of them will keep their word in relation to the thing that's being discussed.

That's what a covenant is. Like I said, I kind of rushed through that because next week we'll come back and look at the covenant with Abraham in way more detail. But I bring that up because what you see here in chapter 12, like I said, is the foundation of what's called the Abrahamic covenant.

God's relationship that he enters into with Abraham. And here I think there are some tremendous lessons to be learned about relationship with God. So pick it up with me in chapter 12 and verse 1. Here's the first thing we learn.

Letter A there in your study guide. God initiates relationships with sinful people. That's the first thing we see in this passage. Do you know in verse 1 it says, Yahweh the Lord said to Abram. That's important.

It's God who calls out to Abraham. God doesn't wait for Abraham to reach out to him.

No.

God is the one who initiates. God is the one who extends his gracious hand first. You've already seen that happen in Genesis over and over again. So when Adam and Eve sinned, remember who was the one who went looking for Adam and Eve when they hid?

God was the one who did that. When the curses of the fall are handed down, it's God who makes the first pronouncement of hope in Genesis 315. Before the flood, it's God who reaches out to Noah. We have no indication in the passage that Noah was looking for God or reaching out to God.

After the flood, it's God who establishes his covenant with Noah, not the other way around. Can I take a moment and just apply this for a second? I don't know about you, but I think that's something that should prompt us to have a moment of praise for our God.

Can we praise God for the fact that he doesn't wait on us, as it were, to get our act together before he reaches out? Isn't it a joy to know that, as Jesus said in John chapter 15, verse 5, you didn't choose me, but I chose you?

Isn't it a joy to know what 1 John 4 .10 says? That love consists in this, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Isn't it good to know that God's grace doesn't need an invite?

It creates its own invite. We can praise God that he initiated that relationship with Abraham because if he hadn't have done that, you and I wouldn't be sitting here. Not only do we learn that God initiates relationships with sinful people, secondly, God calls us to an exclusive relationship.

God calls us to an exclusive relationship. So look at the rest of verse 1. Yahweh said to Abraham, Go from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.

God lays out pretty clear terms. You are to leave your land, the physical location you are at. You are to leave your relatives, the people who are closest to you. You are to leave your father's house, not the physical building his father lived in, but that's a reference to the household, and most importantly, the inheritance that came as being part of that household.

Everything that gives you security, Abraham, you are to leave that behind and to follow me. God was now going to become Abraham's exclusive provision. All ties to all that he had known needed to be cut.

And think about this for a moment. It kind of hit me this week when I was studying this. Abraham's not a young man when God says this to him. He's about 75 years old. At least in our culture, that's kind of, I'm slowing down, I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor age.

That's not, I'm starting over again. I mentioned it in the first point, but Abraham wasn't looking for God either. He was an idol worshiper. This wasn't your nice granddad doing his quiet time every day and helping saintly old ladies to cross the streets of Ur as it were.

This was a man who was a pagan. And God calls him away from all of that. God essentially says that there is no room for one foot in life as he had known it and one foot in life as God was now framing it.

There was no room for any of that. And I think it's interesting. This is a point of personal application. I think it's interesting. Please follow me here. I think it's interesting that sometimes we think, and I know I've thought this before, so maybe it's just me, but I've thought this before, that we think that we can have God and all of his benefits and keep everything that we want, even if, and sometimes especially if, it doesn't fit with what God is calling us to.

Have you ever thought about that? How sometimes you meet some people and it's like you've got one foot in the world, one foot in the things of God, and you can't make up where you are. I'm more inclined to agree with the great puritan Matthew Henry when he said, The world and our enjoyments in it must be looked on with a holy indifference and contempt.