“Abram” – Genesis 12:1-3

Okay, I want to show you a trick I used to do on my skateboard. (Skateboard in hand, helmet on head) It’s a really good trick. I think you’ll be impressed. Are you ready? Here we go. You know what? I think I better not. Years ago, I might have done it but now, when I get tempted to ride this thing, there is a little voice in my head that tells me not to. And the older I get, the louder that voice becomes. Anybody know what I’m talking about? I bet my mother is thinking, “Finally, that voice started talking to him!”

I have a question for you. How do you know when God is speaking to you? How do you know it is God and not your own idea, or even worse, a temptation from Satan to do something that is wrong? How do you know when it’s not just common sense telling you something like, don’t ride that skateboard, old man? How do you know? I ask that because rarely does God speak to us audibly. It would be a lot easier to know it was God if He would just say, “Hey, Todd! This is God. I want you to do so and so.” But He has never done that for me.

First, to hear God’s voice we must belong to God. Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27) Those who hear God’s voice are those who belong to Him—those who have been saved by His grace through faith in Jesus. These are the sheep who hear and recognize His voice, because they know Him as their Shepherd. If we are to recognize God’s voice, we must belong to Him. If you never hear God speaking to you, it may be because you don’t truly know Him.

God speaks to us most often through His Word, the Bible, and through prayer. If you never hear God speaking to you and you do know Him, you should probably start there. God also speaks through His Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He does that by speaking to us in a still, small voice just like God did with Elijah. But sometimes that voice is so still and small that it can be hard to hear.

Can you imagine, though, living before any scripture was written, before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and lived in every believer like He does now and before much was known about God at all? Abram lived before Christianity and even before Judaism and yet Genesis 12 says that God spoke to Abram. Stephen tells us in the New Testament in Acts 7 that God gave Abram some specific instructions and that Abram just obeyed.

We don’t know but I think God must have spoken to him audibly but however God spoke, Abram was obedient. I could stop right there and camp out just on that thought. God spoke to Abram and Abram was obedient. What a concept! It doesn’t say Abram had to pray about it or that Abram doubted or tried to explain to God all the reasons why he couldn’t do what God asked. And God asked him to do a big thing. Let’s look at it in Genesis 12, verses 1-3.

We are continuing our study in Genesis trying to know God better and you can’t deal with Genesis without dealing with Abram who most of us know became the great Abraham, the father of Judaism and Christianity. Abram is a fascinating character. Like I said he was born before any real organized religion and his family would have been considered pagans. There was nothing really special about Abe before God spoke to him and yet God made him great.

Abram 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 the huge promise that God makes and Abram’s response to it. Let’s read Genesis 12:1-3.

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."

Let’s stop right there. That’s enough to keep us busy for a while. 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 knew 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 knowing God better, 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 aren’t under 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?

How does God reveal Himself to us? 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? One way is 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. 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. What does it mean to be redeemed? How did God redeem you? The word redeem means “to buy out.” The term was used specifically in reference to the purchase of a slave’s freedom. We were all slaves to sin and the Law said that sin required death. That was God’s Law. But God sent Jesus to pay that price; literally to redeem us and make us right with Him.

For Abram, it says he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15). He was saved by grace and through faith just like we are. And God was faithful to Abram and did all that He promised and continues that promise even today. How has God been faithful to you in the past?  Let’s think about that for a minute. What promises has God made us?

God promised protection for His children (Psalm 121). God promised that His love will never fail (1 Chronicles 16:34). God promised that all things will work out for good for His children (Romans 8:28). God promised comfort in our trials (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). God promised new life in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). God promised peace when we pray (Philippians 4:6–7). God promised to supply our needs (Matthew 6:33; Philippians 4:19). I could go on and on. But God has been faithful to keep every promise He has ever made. He has been faithful!

God called Abram out of his old life and into a new life and promised Abe He would bless him and God was faithful. That same God loves you too much to leave you alone where you are. He is always calling us out of the old and into the new. He is always calling us to look and act more like Jesus and when we are obedient, God is still faithful.

What is He calling you out of today? Is it a place, a thing, a habit? It might be a person or a way of life. It may be completely life-changing or it may be a small thing. But like Abram’s obedience affecting the whole rest of the world, oftentimes our obedience has a great affect on other people.

There is a great story that I read that illustrates this. You probably know the story. It never mentions God but it doesn’t have to. It’s still a great story. I’ll paraphrase it and you will still probably recognize it. Years ago, there was a beautiful young queen. And all she had to do was go talk to the king. Actually, all she had to do was go stand in the king’s presence. That’s all she had to do and it would have been no big deal but the problem was, it was against the law to go into the king’s presence, even for the queen, if you hadn’t been summoned. She could be killed just for going into his inner court unless he extended his golden scepter towards her when he saw her.

She told her uncle, “Look Uncle Mordy, I can’t do that. He might have me killed before I can even talk to him.” But her uncle was a wise old man and he said, “Look, girl, this is not just for your benefit. It is for the benefit of your whole family and even the whole nation that you do this. And it will be done by somebody even if you don’t. But if you aren’t obedient, you will miss out on the blessing. And who knows but maybe this is the very reason that God made you and put you in this place for this very thing?” (Esther 4)

Do y’all want to guess how the story ends? The queen was obedient and it all worked out better than expected. Do you know what God did? He was faithful. He was so faithful it was literally funny! He was so faithful to her and to her uncle and God did more than they could ever ask or imagine for the whole nation just because the queen was obedient.

What is God asking you to do? Maybe He wants you to do something in your family or in the church. Maybe He wants you to start something or to stop something. Maybe it involves what you put in your mouth or maybe it involves what comes out of your mouth. Maybe He is telling you what He has told everybody else already or maybe He wants you to do what nobody has ever done before. It may be dangerous or it may be no big deal. All you have to do is be obedient. And do you know what God will do? He will be faithful. He will be faithful to the promises He has given in the Bible. He will be faithful to the promises He gives you in prayer. He will be faithful and it will often affect the people around you.

If you knew that your obedience to that thing He is telling you about right now would be the catalyst to bringing your friend or your relative or even your child or grandchild to Christ, would you do it? Would you be obedient if it meant changing the world? It might. And God’s will is going to be done. But if you aren’t obedient, you will miss out on the blessing. But who knows? Maybe you were put in this position for such a time as this?

Let’s pray.