MIDWEEK LENT 2 – March 12, 2020 – Gen. 12:1-9
Introduction: Grace be to you and peace, from God our Father, and from our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text is Genesis 12:1-9. We hear from Abram.
My history is quite unique, and my life – by God’s grace and choosing – was a most remarkable and blessed life. My ancestry is recorded in the first book of Moses. My history really begins after the flood. Obviously I am descended from Noah, from his son Shem. After the flood people were godly, righteous like Noah, believing the promise of God of a “Seed” of the woman Who would save us. But this god-fearing piety didn’t last for long.
Soon enough people were again arrogant and ignorant of God – and they decided that they could join God in heaven. So they began building a magnificent tower at Babel. Such arrogance and stupidity was insufferable to God – so He dispersed the survivors of the flood and their ancestors by confusing their languages so that they could no longer understand each other.
My ancestors were descendants of Shem, Noah’s godly son, and they settled in Ur of the Chaldeans. This was not a great distance from the original city of Babel. We were still living there with my father Terah, when my brother Haran died. Soon after my father and my own family left Ur, heading north and west along the Euphrates River, thinking we would go to Canaan. However, we decided to settle in the small town of Haran. It was in Haran that my father died. This is where the LORD, the only true and living God found me when He bestowed His grace and His calling upon me.
This was a particularly gracious calling. Later, after the exodus, God explained our situation through Joshua, challenging my descendants not to be like we were back in Ur and Haran. Joshua told the people: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.” [Josh. 24:2,3]
I don’t know how my people had drifted away from God to serve idols. It is hard to fathom, but we didn’t know any better. No one told us about the real God, the LORD! What a startling incident when He first spoke to me. And what an astonishing and mind-blowing message. I could scarcely wrap my mind around what was happening – and I know that without His help, His gracious work in my heart and soul, I would never have believed Him. Consider what He promised to me, a wicked idolator! He said: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Now remember – none of this was earned, deserved, or even contemplated! He promised physical blessings – that I would have offspring [even though Sarah was barren], that I would become a great nation, that I would become famous, and that I would be a blessing to others! He promised protection from all of my enemies. And then there was this universal, cosmic promise: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Later, He reiterated the promise in this way: “In your Seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”
God had to teach me the connection between the “Seed” of the woman promised in the Garden of Eden and “my Seed.” He also had to teach me the meaning of this Seed crushing the head of the serpent, the devil. He had to teach me about His forgiveness. He had to teach me about His justification – how He accounts as righteous all those who confess their sins and believe and trust in Him for forgiveness and salvation! And so it was asserted, way back then, that “Abraham believed in the LORD and He counted it to him for righteousness.” He counted it to me, He saved me for eternal life.
What an astronomical change all of this made for me. When we worshiped idols we had no clue about the true God. We had no conception of Who He is and what He is like! We had only myths – ridiculous myths – about how the world came to be. We had no way to know how to repent of our sin, how to think of it, or that there might be forgiveness and healing. No, our minds were buried in absurd wishful thinking and blind optimism – as we suffered from the sins of others, and inflicted suffering upon them.
But the LORD is merciful, kind, gracious, and loving. He taught me this when He tested me. It was a brutal test – the matter of offering up Isaac as a sacrifice to God. At this point in time I pretty much believed God and His promises. After all, I was living in Canaan, I was successful, I had wealth, and I had this miraculous child, Isaac. And the promises of God were centered in Isaac – so I knew that somehow God would enable Isaac to survive, or that He would have to recreate His life. Otherwise, God would be a liar – and not God at all! So I trusted and loved God and did as He had instructed, knowing that He is good and that He is love, and that He would never have us do anything that turns out permanently bad. And He didn’t. He stopped me. And then He taught me. This is what would happen to the Seed. This is how our redemption and salvation would be provided. With justice – God’s justice upon His Seed, the woman’s Seed, my Seed, so that mercy and justification would be upon “all nations,” all people everywhere and of every time.
So the knowledge of God was restored to my family. Circumcision was given to us as a constant reminder of the blessed love, gracious mercy, and utter goodness of God. It was to remind us to confess our sins, and to rejoice in God’s promised gift of a Savior. And it bound us to God – at least for a time. Things began to slip with Isaac and Rebekah. They turned much worse with Jacob and Esau. Still, the promise continued on, the promise of a Seed, the Savior. Jacob’s family became the foundation of the nation – twelve sons. But they were for the most part wretched sons, evil, bereft of the knowledge of God’s love. Joseph, he retained faith, which was strengthened through his difficult experiences. But the promise went on through Judah, not Joseph.
I had assumed that the restoration of the knowledge of God in my family would become a shining, marvelous example to the rest of mankind – for all ages – of the goodness and love of God. I was mistaken. Though the knowledge of God’s great love was kept alive, through the sacred Scriptures, the people did not cherish His love and salvation. Like my family of origin, they were inclined to idols and false gods. And so the history of the great nation God made from me was an account of the patience, kindness, and goodness of God. It was also an account of His faithfulness to His Word and to His people. It also became an account of what happens when people forsake God’s love, His forgiveness, and His goodness.
When we arrived in Canaan, God reiterated His Word and blessing to me. My response was the joyous blessing of worshiping God in that place. Calling on the Name of the Lord – that is, recalling all that the LORD is: mercy, forgiveness, grace, love, kindness, goodness, blessing, and salvation. And His nature does not change. So He indeed sent the Seed, His own Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, as the Lamb of God. He justified the faith of everyone He who trusted in Him. All that He says is true and trustworthy.
He made me a hero of great faith. He desires the same for you. I was just like you – sinful, lacking true knowledge of God, weak in trusting Him. But I held to His Word, and held Him to His Word, and He never disappointed me. He will never disappoint you either, as you wait the culmination of His glorious kingdom! Of that you may be absolutely certain. Amen.
Votum: And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, shall keep you hearts and minds in the true faith, which is in Christ Jesus, even unto life everlasting, Amen.