I want to tell you a story. I think you will really like this story because the main character in this story…is you. In this story, you have been through a lot. You have worked hard all your life. You have a good family that loves you. You have a loving church family here at Christ Fellowship. You aren’t perfect but you are getting better and you have seen God’s blessings on your life.
You are finally seeing some fruit in your life from the work you have done and it feels good. You aren’t wealthy by any means but you are getting by and the future looks promising and interesting. There is great potential in how your life is finally turning out. You like your life and you like yourself. How do you like my story so far?
Then one day, you have a thought about moving away. The thought comes out of nowhere and surprises you. You don’t want to move anywhere. Your family is here. Your church, your friends, your job; it’s all here. So, you just blow off that thought. But then, one night you have a dream about moving. “I had the weirdest dream” you say.
Then, pretty soon, you are thinking about it more and more and finally you ask God if this is coming from Him and He tells you plainly, “I want you to move to Australia.” You pray and pray and that is all you get. “I want you to move to Australia.” You “inform” God of all the reasons why that will never work. You fight it. You put it off but you have no peace about not being obedient. Finally, you tell your spouse, “Honey, I feel like God wants us to move.” And your spouse says, “Yes, I know. To Australia. He has told me too.”
What do you do? What’s the end of this story? We would all like to think we would be obedient to God’s calling but that’s a hard one. But what if God revealed to you that if you would just be obedient and move to Australia that He would bless you in every way? He would bless you and your family. He would bless the whole world by your obedience and through you the whole world would be blessed. Would that convince you?
It convinced Abram. Abram – who later became Abraham - lived in what was called Ur of the Chaldeans. It was in probably modern-day Iraq. God told him to move to Canaan, which is roughly what we call Israel today. That doesn’t look too far away on a map but for Abram, it meant a trip of about 500 miles which would be like moving to Australia for us today.
Let me read to you exactly what God said in Genesis chapter 12. It was a life-changing promise from God; life-changing for Abram and his family and it continues to change lives even today. What a huge thing God asked of Abram and I want you to see that, the huge promise that God makes and Abrams epic response to it. Let’s read Genesis 12:1-5.
The LORD had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. 2"I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." 4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
Let me ask you a question. Why? Not, “Why would Abram agree to this promise and be obedient?” That’s not hard to see at all. He was going to make out like a bandit in this deal. I want to know why God would offer this promise in the first place. And…why Abram? What had Abram done to deserve to become the father of the great nation of Israel?
But, this is not to diminish the sacrifice Abram had to make and the huge leap of faith he had to take. Abram had to walk away from everyone and everything he knows and go to a place God had yet to reveal. But when he did, God promised three big blessings. God will bless him. He will be a blessing and he will be a channel of blessing.
The first means that Abram will come under God’s care, protection and favor. The second means that Abram will provide care and protection to those in favor with him. Lot is an example of that in chapter 14. The third means that God will bring blessing to other people through Abram and his family. (NIV Application Commentary)
Those are huge, in fact, unfathomable promises from God. There is no way Abram could have foreseen all that this would mean just for his own family, not to mention the world. But, I go back to the question, why? What’s in it for God? We see some of what it means for Abram but what’s in it for God? Well, I have come to understand that the ultimate reason that God does anything is for His glory. There may be other reasons for things happening but all things are for God’s glory.
In Psalm 19 it says He created the world to declare his glory. Isaiah 43 says He made man for His glory. He gave us the Law for His glory. I could go on and on. He allows some to get sick and some to be healed for His glory. And He should! That is why He is God. God made people out of a desire to glorify himself. If it didn’t glorify God to make us, to save us, to love us, he wouldn’t have done it. God never ever puts anything above himself. The fact that God made and commands all living creatures to worship him is the very evidence he alone is God. (Mark Ballenger)
So, the ultimate reason that God made this deal; this promise; this covenant with Abram was for God’s glory. But I see at least three other specific reasons why God did this and as we have been focusing on seeing Jesus in the Old Testament, I believe that all three reasons make this a prophecy that is completely fulfilled in Jesus. I didn’t set out to make them all start with the letter “R” but it just worked out.
The first part of this prophecy is a promise for a relationship. In verse 2, God says, "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” Think about your kids and your grandkids for a minute. What is the absolute best thing you can do for your them? Would giving them a million dollars be best for them? I don’t care how old they are. Lots of money is rarely the best thing for anybody.
If you want to make your kids grow up into great people, the best thing you can do for them is have a good relationship with them. When they are little, you don’t have to be their friend. You teach them how to behave and how to interact with others and to show character and have morals and love God and they will be great.
That’s what our Heavenly Father promised Abram. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” What better way of doing that; what better way to make a person great than to have a relationship with God? Does God give you everything you want? Does He spoil you? Does He ever give you anything that is going to harm you? Sometimes we get our hands on things (or people) that are not good for us but that is not God’s will. James 1:17 says every good and perfect thing comes from God.
Imagine this with me. Triune God; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are looking down from Heaven to earth. God has created all things and now wants to have a closer relationship with what He has created so the Spirit goes down to Abram and starts to place thoughts in his mind about something better and something different. He causes Abram to have dreams about moving. He does the same for Abram’s wife, Sarai, giving her peace about packing up and leaving so that when God speaks to Abram, His word is verified by Sarai and makes the choice to be obedient an easy one.
But God cannot tolerate sin. He can’t be around it. He doesn’t want to look at it and for God to have a better relationship with man, He gives man the institutions of sacrifice and the Law of Moses. With the Law, man can see he is sinful and with the sacrifice of an animal, his sins are covered over.
But we have Jesus. We don’t need the Law. We follow Jesus. We don’t need the sacrifice anymore. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. Do you see how Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of the prophecy and the promise God gave to Abram back thousands of years before Jesus came to earth in the flesh? God doesn’t want your sacrifice. He doesn’t want your religion. He wants you and only you but all of you and we can now have that relationship with God through His Son, Jesus.
The second part of this prophecy is a promise for revelation. I’m not talking about just the last book of the Bible. I mean God has revealed Himself to us. At the end of verse 2, God tells Abe, “I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” It’s not going to be long before people start seeing Abram and seeing how he is blessed and how he’s a blessing and they start saying, “I don’t know who his God is, but I need to find out.” And God will reveal Himself to them. Can you imagine not having that revelation of who God is?
There is an ancient Babylonian story of two Hindu men on their way to their temple. One is happy and whistling on his way to worship their thousands of gods while the other one is a bit upset. Ayyab is the name of the happy guy and Rab-ilu is not so much. (I didn’t make up this story.)
Ayyab asks Rab-ilu why he is so upset. He should be happy. They are both going to the temple to feast and worship and Ayyab has been very blessed by the gods so he doesn’t understand what Rab-ilu’s problem is. Rab-ilu gets angry and says, “Gods? What gods? Which ones? Who are they? What do they want? What does it take to earn their favor? Your circumstances are good. Your family is growing and healthy but I am losing everything even though I sacrifice and pray and worship. What do the gods want?”
Isn’t that a sad story? That must be miserable. You may snicker at that illustration but too many churchgoers today have a lack of knowledge about God that leads them into wrong thinking. God is not your genie that is going to make all your dreams come true and all your problems disappear. If God wants to make a deal with you like He did with Abram, that His business but you can’t make a deal with God. Foxhole religion or jailhouse religion is just that – religion. It is not a relationship and in this relationship you may go through some very difficult times.
But a big part of being a disciple of Jesus is the peace and joy we can have even in the difficult times and we have that peace and joy because we know God. And God wants to reveal Himself to us. How does God reveal Himself to us today? He has given us His Holy Spirit to live inside us. 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
He reveals Himself through His creation. Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
He reveals Himself through prayer. David prayed in Psalm 143:10, “God, Teach me to do your will.” What God wants is revealed to us through prayer. Don’t you know Rab-ilu would have loved to know what his god’s will was? All we have to do is ask. God wants you to know His will and He wants to reveal it to you.
But the greatest way that God reveals Himself to us is through the life of Jesus as found in scripture. In John 14:8-10 Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
Again, Jesus fulfilled the promise of God to Abram. He wants a relationship with us and so He has revealed Himself to us, mainly through His Son, Jesus. And the last part of this promise to Abram is the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled of redemption. One of the most world-changing verses in scripture is found in this passage in verse 3 where God says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
Abram became the father of the nation of Israel, the same nation of Israel that still sits over in the Middle East and is hated by every country around it. You know, I’m not a very smart guy (you don’t have to say amen right there) but I wish I could give one piece of advice to every world leader. All you democrats that hate Israel, all you countries around Israel, the leader of Russia and China and everybody else, let me give you this advice.
God, the Creator of the universe, the Almighty, the One who is and was and is to come made a promise several thousand years ago to a little guy named Abram and that promise has no expiration date. If you bless Israel, you will be blessed. If you curse Israel, you will be cursed. Period. So, when the president says we are going to give Israel millions of dollars, that is a great investment. Go for it. We should all support Israel, if no other reason than because God says we will be blessed if we do.
But there is more to this than just supporting Israel. God said that all peoples on earth will be blessed through Abram and Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that because it is through Jesus that we are redeemed. Do you know what it means to be redeemed? Somebody tell me what it means to you.
I was walking the dogs the other day and the little boy across the street was out playing so I went over to that side of the street to see what he was doing. He had a beat-up old dog crate with a little wild bird in it. It looked like the bird had something wrong with its wing and the boy said he caught it and put it in that cage.
I asked what he was going to do with it and he said he didn’t know. He was probably just going to feed it to one of the cats that live around here. So, I told him I’d give him $2 for the bird and the beat-up little cage and he said, “Aw, you don’t want this bird. There’s something wrong with him. And he doesn’t even sing very well.” But I pulled out two dollars and he didn’t argue.
So, I brought the bird back over here, took it out back and opened that cage door and you should have seen that bird take off! He hopped around for a second but finally was able to get some air and then he was gone. And while he might not have been much of a songbird, I’m pretty sure I heard him sing, “I Am Redeemed” as he flew off. (Okay, that’s not a true story but it could be.)
That is just what Jesus has done for us! God told Abram that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him and we have been because Jesus has paid the price that we could never pay. His death on the cross was the price that God charges us for our sin. In the Old Testament, animals were required to die to cover over their sin. For us, Jesus died and our sins are forgiven, forgotten and thrown away as far as the east is from the west.
We are redeemed to have a new life in Christ. My friend Arthur, who lives in Livingston, Texas, wrote me this week and said, “I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, who Himself was crucified on the Old Rugged Cross, but three days later, He defeated the tomb and sin, death could not hold him. I also crucify my sin nailed it to the cross with the old man.”
Arthur gets it! He is a new creation. He’s not a better man or an improved person. He is new, changed, different and alive. Yes, like he said, we all have that old man living inside of us but it is our responsibility to crucify that old man every day. Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
If your life has never changed; if you can sin and it doesn’t bother you; if you don’t have a desire to be more and more like Jesus, then you are not a true Christian. A true believer is a new creation, redeemed; bought with a precious price and we ought to fly off every day believing, remembering and singing about our redemption that we have through Jesus.
Galatians 3:16 has a fitting word to close us with. It says, “the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. (Paul is talking about this passage in Genesis.) Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ.”
Because Abram was obedient, we have all been blessed through Jesus. He was born, lived, died and rose again to bring us a relationship with God, revelation of God and redemption by God. Do you believe that? Does your life reflect that belief? If not, let’s get it right today. You are either blessed by God or cursed by God. There is no in between.
Ask God to forgive you of your sins. Repent of those sins and allow God to change your life and make you a new creation as God’s Spirit comes to live in your heart. I’d love to pray with you about that or anything else right now as the music plays.
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