God's Chosen Man Genesis 12:1-9

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When I was in college, I was a history minor, and this was actually my textbook.
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One of my textbooks for one of the classes that I took, as you can see here, America's History. This traces the history of our country back to about the 1400s all the way into the 20th century.
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If you look at the history of any country, they always have a history book that tells all the details of the founding fathers all the way to a time close to the present.
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If we think about the history of the nation of Israel, they don't have a book that looks like this, that really details their history.
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If you're going to go to the most important book that's going to detail the history of Israel, the book that you would go to is actually this right here, the
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Bible. The Bible tells the history of Israel, and it starts with a man, a man that God chose.
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And God makes a promise to this man that a nation is going to come from him, and the nation would be
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Israel. And that man is Abram. And in our sermon today, we're going to be looking at, as we continue our sermon series, we're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 9.
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And the title of the sermon is God's Chosen Man. God's Chosen Man.
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And I encourage you, if you have a Bible, turn in there to Genesis chapter 12. It's just a few pages in.
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If you didn't bring a Bible with today, you could use the red Bible that's in the pews. And the big idea this morning is
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God makes unbreakable promises to his people that always come to pass.
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God makes unbreakable promises to his people that always come to pass. Last week, we left off seeing hope in the midst of despair.
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Right after the Tower of Babel account, God once again showed that he once again had plans for the human race.
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The promises that God made to humanity before the dark account of the Tower of Babel still stood strong.
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Namely, that the eventual offspring from Eve, Christ, would eventually crush
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Satan. Jesus did this at the cross. That promise was made in Genesis 3 .15. Secondly, during the flood, another very, very big time for humanity,
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God planned to preserve the human race through Noah. He would be used as an instrument that would bless humanity for all time.
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Since not only did he preserve the human race by building the Ark, but also from his line would come the
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Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. So when humanity pledged to another low, as we saw last week, by living lives of defiance to God at the
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Tower of Babel, God's plan was not to forget his promises in the bright future that he had for the human race.
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Last week we saw this by the insertion of the chosen line, the line of Shem, that God's commitment to humanity still stood strong.
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So after the Tower of Babel account, instead of just jumping right into the history of Israel, God gives them hope.
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And he gives them hope by saying, okay, this line that I promised you that starts with the line of Seth in Genesis 5, it's still going.
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And this line is going to continue, it goes from Noah, and it's going to continue all the way to Jesus Christ.
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Okay, so you might say, how in the world does a genealogy bring us hope? Well, that's how. It's saying this is going to continue.
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God's plan is still continuing through these people. Now, as we look here at chapter 12, what we're going to see today is the preview of this hope.
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Today we are going to see the hope, and God shows his tremendous faithfulness to the man,
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Abram. And he makes incredible promises to him. The Lord is going to make more promises to Abram in chapter 15, where he expands on the promises that we're going to see today in chapter 12.
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So what we're going to see today is a taste of these promises that God gives to Abram. And we are going to see four promises that God makes to Abram.
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And the first promise is that a great nation would come from him. A great nation would come from this man.
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Last week we saw that Abram and his family lived in Ur. It's a great name for a hometown, right?
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Ur is located in present -day Iraq. This is where ancient Babylon was located.
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Genesis 11 .31 says that they traveled west, and they settled in Haran, which is located in present -day
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Turkey. So you kind of get an idea, we kind of know where Iraq is, right? We fought a war there recently.
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They went west to where modern -day Turkey is. So that gives you kind of an idea of where Abram is as God makes these promises to him today.
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So modern -day Turkey. As God commands Abram in verse 1, this is what he tells him.
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It says, God is telling
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Abram to leave all that he has known to go to a place that is completely foreign to him.
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Could you imagine this? Now this was in the days before cars, cell phones, Skype, FaceTime, where you could video someone across the world.
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The place God was sending Abram to was several hundred miles from what he knew. And back then, several hundred miles, you might as well be 3 ,000 miles away, because several hundred miles is a long ways away.
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And the author of Hebrews actually commends Abram's faith in Hebrews 11 .8 when he writes about his faithfulness in leaving the land that he knew to go to a land that he did not know.
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Just imagine someone showing up to your door one day, knocking on your door, and this person is a messenger from God, and saying, you know what, you need to pack your bags.
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I'm sending you to this place. You've never been there before. And I'm not sending you there for a week.
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I'm going to send you there for the rest of your life. Can you imagine that? This is what Abram faced when
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God said this to him. And the Lord makes this promise to him that he would make from him a great nation.
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So in other words, he is not sending him on a failed mission. He is not sending him to a place where he is going to waste his life away and be forgotten.
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To the contrary, he's going to be remembered for all time. God is going to accomplish great things through Abram as he sends him to this foreign land.
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The Lord is going to build a significant nation from him, the nation of Israel. Now we live in a time where we can look back at this.
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We live in the 21st century. This account would have taken place about 4 ,000 years ago.
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We stand in an interesting time where we can look back and say, did God accomplish this promise that he made to Abram?
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We can read the history of the Bible. We can read the history of Israel in the
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Bible. And we can see all that God accomplished through this people by delivering them from Egypt as they were held in captivity by them.
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By giving them the ability to defend themselves and to defeat their surrounding enemies after he had already given them the land of Canaan.
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We can see that God established a monarchy with a long legacy of kings. If you read the history of Israel, you can see it starts with Saul, and then
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David, and then Solomon, and then there's this long list of kings that eventually leads to the greatest king of all,
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Jesus. To this day, the world still notices the presence of what
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God called a great nation. There are 14 million people in the world known as Jews who derive from Abram and Israel.
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In 1948, the nation of Israel was established once again with the Jewish people being able once again to call their land home.
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And God is not done with Israel. As you read the Bible, you see this. God's not done with them.
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God has not replaced Israel with the church. There's some views out there that says that the church replaces
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Israel. I don't think the Bible says that. There's actually a future for Israel still yet.
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And I say this because the Apostle Paul says in Romans 11, 26 that all Israel will be saved.
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So in other words, Israel is still God's people, but they're his people at arm's length.
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The church is obviously his people, you know, closely right now. But Israel is at arm's length.
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But one day, when Jesus returns, there's going to be many Jews who are going to believe in the Messiah, that the
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Messiah is Jesus Christ, and they're going to trust in him for the forgiveness of their sins, and they're going to be saved. So we can see clearly that the
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Lord indeed does deliver on his promise to Abram. As we stand here 4 ,000 years after this promise, we can see that God indeed did cause a great nation to come from this man.
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This is the first promise that God made to Abram. He promised a great nation, and he brought this to pass.
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The second promise that God makes to Abram— and by the way, I'm calling him Abram because that's what he's called here.
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Later on, his name's going to be changed to Abraham, so I thought I should make that clear. So the second promise that God makes to Abram is he would be a blessing and a curse to people in the world.
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He would be a blessing and a curse to people in the world. What we will see in the second half of verse 2 and the first half of verse 3 is that through this man, people will be blessed and people will be cursed.
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This is what God says here. 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.
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I will bless those who bless you, and to him who dishonors you I will curse.
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Those are very straightforward, very strong words that the Lord gives Abram. What we can see clearly is that Abram is
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God's man. You don't mess with God's man. At this point in history, this is the man that God has decided to accomplish his work through.
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We have already seen God ally himself with Noah. Now several hundred years later, he has done the same thing with Abram.
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What God says here, to use our modern language, is if you mess with him, you mess with me. You have to deal with me if you dishonor this man.
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And the reverse is true also. If anyone treats you well, then I will bless them. In our experience, we see this with bigger brothers protecting their little brothers.
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My dad was the oldest of three sons. And the middle brother was the one who picked on the younger brother.
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And so he knew, my dad's younger brother who was his middle brother, that if he picked on the youngest brother, he was going to have to deal with the oldest brother.
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And so in that way, it prevented him from picking on him as much as he could have. Now this promise that God makes to Abram applies to him personally.
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Anyone who treated him well would be blessed by the Lord. Anyone who treated him poorly would be cursed.
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For example, in the account right after this, that we will see in next week's sermon, the pharaoh in Egypt unknowingly took
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Abram's wife as his wife, and God sent a plague. The pharaoh did not deliberately dishonor
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Abram, but because Abram is God's man, he is protected. And God performs the necessary measures to protect him.
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So this applies to Abram personally, but as we look at the context here of this passage, it also applies to the people that would come from Abram, the people of Israel.
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In verse 2, the Lord said that a great nation would come from Abram. So this promise that those who bless you, I will bless, and those who dishonor you,
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I will curse, applies to the people that come from Abram as well, the nation of Israel.
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And all you have to do is look at history to see that this is true. God always punished
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Israel's enemies, the people who hated them, the people who wanted to destroy them.
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Look at Egypt and the plagues they endured through holding the Hebrew people captive for so many years.
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Now there were times when Israel was disobedient and God used a nation to punish
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Israel, but even after God used this nation to punish
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Israel, then he would punish the nation after the fact. So it wasn't like they got off scot -free.
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They actually were punished as well. And it has become popular in recent years for Christians to side with Palestinians instead of modern
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Israel. An ethnic animosity exists between Palestinian countries and Israel.
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Even some Palestinians who become Christians still hold this animosity toward Israel. And this is a grave mistake because they are disobeying what this text is saying.
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Those who dishonor Abram and his descendants will be cursed.
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Now this does not mean that everything that modern Israel does is noble or right. They sin. They do things that are dishonoring to God, no question about it.
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But that does not change that they are the offspring of Abram. And if you bless
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Abram's people, you will be blessed. But if you dishonor them, you will be cursed. I'm not sure if you've ever thought of this this way.
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This verse, I think on the authority of Scripture, I can say that. And not many of us know
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Jews or come across Jews in our lives, but if you do, the Lord wants you to treat them well, even if they have yet to receive
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Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. So this is the second promise that God makes to Abram.
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He would be a blessing and a curse to people in the world. The third promise that God makes to Abram is all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him.
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All the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. We just saw that how you treat
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Abram and his descendants has an effect on how the Lord treats you. But this text also makes something else very clear.
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Through this man, people from every nation across planet earth will be blessed.
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The end of verse 3 says, In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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With this point, I'm going to begin with the end in mind. At the end of history, the
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Apostle John paints a picture of what is going to happen, of how things are going to be at the end of the world.
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And this is what he says in Revelation 5, verses 9 and 10.
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It says, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain.
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And by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
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And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.
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So this is the picture. God has this plan that at the end of the world, there will be people from everywhere on earth who are followers of Jesus Christ.
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So God has a global mission. And he accomplishes this global mission by choosing a nation.
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Salvation comes from the nation of Israel. It comes from their Messiah. And all these people from all over the earth, this includes
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China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Egypt, and everywhere else, even
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Eureka. I mean, everywhere on planet earth, people are going to name the name of Christ.
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And it's already this way. There's people all over the world who are followers of Jesus Christ. And this is so significant as we look at this story to see how
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God accomplishes this. We saw from Revelation that people from everywhere on earth will be saved by Christ.
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And this promise starts right here with Abram. He told
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Abram, In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The question is, how are they blessed through Abram?
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Abram is the first Israelite. This is where genealogy is so significant.
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We looked at a genealogy last week, and this verse implies the importance of genealogy in Scripture.
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From Abram would eventually come the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He is in this line.
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God planned that Israel's Messiah would also be the Savior of the world. He would not only save Israel from their sins, he would save peoples from all over the earth from their sins through his death on the cross.
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After Jesus' resurrection, so this is right before he ascends to heaven, after his resurrection, he stands before his disciples.
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And this is what he says to them. In Luke 24 -49, Then he said to them,
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These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the
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Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them,
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Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
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You are witnesses to these things. Do you see that? He's saying, You're going to bring this message that I died on the cross for people's sins and that I was raised from the dead.
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That's the gospel. That's what we call the gospel. You're going to bring this message to the whole world.
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And you know what? They did. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting in this room right now. Think about that.
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It started with a group of 12 disciples. And it multiplied and it multiplied and it multiplied.
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And here we are today because of their witness. We are those nations. We are a part of that that they mention.
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And when Jesus says that he opened the Scriptures to them, he's talking about the Old Testament. And I often wonder what specific passages
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Jesus was pointing to when he talked about the salvation of the nations. My guess is Genesis 12, 3 was one of those passages, our text today.
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That in you, in Abram, all the families of the earth shall be blessed because through his line would come the
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Savior, Jesus Christ, who's going to save the world. And the Apostle Paul quoted this verse,
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Genesis 12, 3, in Galatians 3, 7 through 9. And what we see in Galatians 3, 7 through 9 is how we fit into this.
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When we talk about the offspring of Abram, we're not talking about just Israel, we're talking about the whole world.
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It says, So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
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Okay, so if you belong to Jesus Christ, you are Abraham's offspring. You are in this number.
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You are in this number who is blessed through this man. Do you see how wonderful the
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Bible is? There's so much glory in the pages of Scripture.
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When we read the Bible, it should cause our jaw to drop. This isn't just an ancient book that you leave on your shelf and it collects dust.
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Sadly, that's what happens too often. This is a book that changes lives. This is the book, if you're going to read one book in the whole world, this is the book to read.
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You can read a lot of books, but don't read those books until you read this book and understand it. We need to do that.
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And that's why we preach from this book. This is the only book that has the authority of God behind it. And it's the only book with the words of God.
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So if you look at a 15 ,000 foot mountain and your jaw drops, you should look at the Bible and your jaw should drop as the
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Spirit opens up the glory of the meaning in these texts. So this is the third promise that God makes to Abraham.
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All the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. The fourth and final promise that God makes to Abraham is his offspring would attain the land.
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His offspring would attain the land. What we will see in the following verses is that God commands
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Abraham to leave his homeland. And Abraham responds faithfully by listening and going.
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Verses 4 and 5. So Abraham went as the
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Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took
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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.
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And they set out to go to the land of Canaan. So what we see here is that Abram is not going on a solo mission.
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He is bringing several people with him. It would be like someone showing up at your door and saying, okay, you're going to go to this place that you've never been to before.
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How much more comforting it would be if you said, okay, and your family is coming with you. You're not going alone.
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That's what makes it so difficult for people in the military. When they go overseas, oftentimes they don't get to take their family with them.
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But in this case, Abram is able to go with his family to this new place. And we see the list here.
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His wife Sarai, her name would later be Sarah, his nephew Lot, and other people from Haran, and all the possessions they had gathered they brought with as well.
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And as a reminder, they are traveling south from modern -day Turkey to modern -day
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Israel. A car drive in the modern day would probably be half a day or so.
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Back then, as they journeyed probably on camel, it would have taken several weeks. So this would have been a long journey for them.
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The following verses give us details about the place where they settled. The end of verse 5 and 6 says,
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When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh.
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At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. So once they arrived in the region known as the land of Canaan, and this is where modern -day
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Israel is, the land of Canaan, Abram arrived at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh.
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And this oak, the oak of Moreh, was the famous tree where this event happened.
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So this would have been a place where they were like, Oh yeah, this is a significant place where this happened. Just like the signing of the
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Declaration of Independence is a significant place. They mark where this is. Now Shechem is located north of Jerusalem.
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Not that far, actually 41 miles to be exact. And we get a parenthesis at the end of verse 6 that says that this was the home of the
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Canaanites. Do you remember the Canaanites, their identity? We saw this a few weeks back.
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A few weeks ago we looked at how these people came from Noah's evil son, Ham. And from Ham came the wicked lion.
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And so they were not entering friendly confines here. I'm a baseball fan.
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They always talk about the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. This is not a friendly place that they are going to.
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This is actually a terrifying place. Then the Lord makes a bold statement to Abram in verse 7.
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And as I read this, remember, these aren't people who are just going to say, Oh yeah, take our land, that's fine.
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These are people who are going to have to fight to get this land. This is what he says in 7. He says,
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To your offspring I will give this land. So the Lord appears to Abram and he says, To your offspring
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I will give this land. I just told you that this was not a friendly place.
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And the Lord makes this bold statement. That he is going to give him and his descendants this land. If you think about maybe one of the worst places to live in the world today, where it's really an evil country, evil leaders, dictatorship.
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You can think of maybe North Korea would be an example of that. Imagine if the Lord said to a country, I'm going to give this land to you.
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Even though they have all these nuclear weapons and they treat their people very poorly and they have this powerful dictatorship.
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The Lord would say to you, I'm going to give you this land. It kind of gives you an idea of what this might have been like. As he says this to Abram.
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Giving Abram and his offspring this hostile land would have been a huge deal. And to give you an idea about this promise when it was fulfilled.
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God's promises sometimes don't happen overnight. Some of you have walked with the
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Lord for many, many years. Do you know that this is true? The Lord often cares about our character so much that he wants to produce something in us.
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As he makes promises to us. And then the promise comes much later. God made this promise to Abram and it took about six to seven hundred years for it to come to pass.
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So obviously it did not come to pass in Abram's lifetime. His descendants would get this land long after he was gone.
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And this was when Joshua and the Israelites conquered the peoples in the land and then inhabited it. And this shows the
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Lord's faithfulness. It shows his faithfulness. Sometimes we wait for the Lord to do something in our life and it takes time.
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This is your experience as you walk with the Lord. Think about the return of Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago,
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God, through the writers of scripture, made the promise that Jesus would come back. Where is he?
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He hasn't come yet. He's not here yet. And there are actually atheists who have mocked
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Christians for believing this. That Jesus is going to come back. My sister was telling me, she lives in California, they actually had a billboard there mocking
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Christians saying, where is Jesus? He's not coming back. Which is terrifying.
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You don't want to be those people who are making, God is going to deal with them someday. And you do not want to be them.
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The return of Christ is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when. It is going to happen.
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And it could be in our lifetime. But with one hundred percent certainty, it will happen.
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Now, to show his devotion to the Lord, what we see here is Abram's faithfulness to the
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Lord, as the Lord shows faithfulness to him. We see that Abram builds an altar in Shechem, in verse 7.
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It says here, then the Lord appeared to Abram. And by the way, is the Lord's appearing to him here? This is what we call a theophany.
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God takes on human form. And then actually leaves human form after the fact.
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And so, God is spirit. And so, when God appears to someone, he has to take on a body in order to do it.
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And that's what's happening here. And what it says here is that Abram builds an altar to the
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Lord, as the Lord appears to him. And then he travels near Bethel, which is just north of Jerusalem, in verse 8.
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It says, from there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west, and I on the east.
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And there he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. Now, we have a school in St.
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Paul named after this early Abrahamic settlement, Bethel. Actually, my friend here, Scott, today, he's a proud alumnus of this school.
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Abram already built an altar in Shechem, and now he builds an altar in between Bethel and Ai.
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So these altars, these are places that are showing his devotion to the Lord. Obviously, in our time period, this might sound strange to us, but back then, that's what people did.
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When they wanted to honor deities, they built an altar to them. And he's building an altar here to the one true
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God. And we see here that he calls upon the name of the Lord. So we can see his faithfulness not only by building these altars, but also by what comes out of his mouth.
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He's calling upon the name of the Lord. He's living his life for the Lord. We actually heard this phrase, call upon the name of the
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Lord, from the line of Seth in Genesis chapter 5. These were godly people who were known as people who walked with God.
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And now Abram is known as that as well. And we, in the 21st century, we should be known as people who call upon the name of the
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Lord. When someone describes you, do they say, this person calls upon the name of the
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Lord? I hope we can say that, that we live that out where they can say that. Now Abram continues his journey in the land of Canaan by going further south.
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So his journey here, he started up in modern -day Turkey, and then he goes to Shechem, and then he goes to Bethel, which is just north of Jerusalem, and then he goes south to the
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Negev in verse 9. And it says, Abram journeying on, still going toward the
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Negev. And he believes in God, and he is showing his faithfulness. Everywhere Abram goes, he shows his devotion to the
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Lord by building him these altars. And all these places that Abram traveled to, you've got to remember, he would have been reminded, someday this is going to be mine.
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Imagine that, maybe when you're a child, your parent promises you something.
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Maybe they have a car that they're saving for you for when you get older, and you say, you know what, someday this car is going to be mine.
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Or this house, my parents are going to pass this house on to me someday. And when you're young, you're thinking, man, this is going to be amazing,
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I can't wait until that comes. And Abram is thinking, as he travels through this whole land, he's thinking, this is going to be mine.
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Even though all these intimidating enemies are here, this place is going to be mine.
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Now he himself would not get to experience this, but his ancestors would.
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And what a great delight that would have been for him, knowing that it would be in his family line, this place.
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And we know that the Lord would later deliver on his promise, as he always does.
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Because, of course, the Lord does give this land to the people of Israel. And we read that in the
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Old Testament. The Lord gives them the land of Canaan. So this was the fourth promise that God made to Abram.
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His offspring would inherit the land. So what we saw today is that God makes unbreakable promises to his people that always come to pass.
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And we have seen this clearly in each of these four promises. A great nation would come from him. He would be a blessing and a curse to people in the world.
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All the nations of the earth would be blessed through him, and his offspring would inherit the land. And as we read this, we need to understand,
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Abram was a man much like us. It is easy to put biblical figures on a pedestal, like somehow they were superhuman.
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Abram was not. He was an ordinary man, just like you and me. And God had this relationship with him, and he made promises to him.
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And every one of these promises the Lord would keep. And what a reminder to us in our life.
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God promises in his word that all who sincerely believe in Jesus Christ will have eternal life.
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Your sins are forgiven. His righteousness is credited to you. And as he was raised from the dead, as Jesus was raised from the dead 2 ,000 years ago, so too when he returns, you will also be raised from the dead.
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These promises are true. They are unbreakable, and God makes them, and God cannot lie.
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God always keeps his promises. That's what Titus 1 -2 says, God cannot lie.
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And that gives us great comfort, knowing that he will deliver. And one day these will come to pass, and you will see with your eyes, and you will forever praise
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God for his faithfulness. Next week we're going to continue in Genesis 12 with Abram and Sarah in Egypt.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we ponder what we read this morning, the glory that's in this text,
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Lord, we see that you are a God who makes promises, and you are a
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God who keeps promises. And we praise you for that. This is your character.
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You are a promise -keeping God. And thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that he has promised to deliver us from our sins, that this sin that holds us down,
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Jesus paid for it at the cross, and one day we will be completely free from this sin, and we will forever dwell in your presence, in your kingdom forever.
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This is the hope that we have, that we can taste it now in this life, and we will see it with our eyes one day.
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And so Lord, fill us with this hope today, and may we praise you and look forward to being with you forever.