Finding Christ in the Family
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Good morning church! Open or click on your Bibles to Genesis 12. That’s where we will be here shortly.
The last time we were in this series, two weeks ago, we talked about how God had destroyed the earth with a flood because of the awfulness of sin. When some people think of the flood and how terrible it was, they are quick to look at God in a bad light. How could he do something so bad! But that’s focusing on the wrong thing! When we see the flood, we should be reminded of how bad our sin is!
And we saw that even though God chose by his grace a pretty good dude in Noah to restart the world with, humanity was still going to sin and mess things up.
Well, that continues to spiral… again!
In Genesis 11, right before the story we are going to look at today, is a story of how sinful the human race can find themselves when they work together in their sinfulness! They got together in a place called Babel to “make a name for themselves.” They were going to build a huge, impressive tower in honor of their own name instead of honoring God’s name.
God didn’t like this, as you can imagine! So, he confuses them so that this task becomes impossible and they are scattered throughout the earth. It’s kind of a strange story, but the point is a continuation of the Noah story and all the way back to the first sin of man, WE ARE A MESS. There still is no answer for sin.
If you remember, the last time we saw sin in a large scope, we were introduced to Noah. This time, we are introduced to a man named Abram (who God would later name Abraham).
There is nothing special that we can see about Abram, and honestly if you read his whole story from the Bible, he is not an incredibly good dude, but just like Noah, God shows grace in his choosing. He calls out to Abram to be obedient to him in some really cool ways.
I want to read the first three verses of the beginning of this relationship to set the stage and then we will look from a higher point down and see the story as a whole.
The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
PRAY
If you are really familiar with this story, it can be easy to breeze through all this, but try and see it with new eyes...
Here is a seemingly random guy from a town called Ur who is currently living in Haran who may or may not even know who God is! And Yahweh, the God of all creation speaks to him… Isn’t that intense!?
And what does he tell him to do?
Leave where you are and your family, and head towards an undisclosed location that I will tell you about later. That’s a big ask!
At the Haney house I can’t even get the kids in the car without an explanation of the destination… “Let’s get in the car kids.” “Where we going?” “Why does it matter?” JUST GET IN THE CAR!
Here God doesn’t just ask him though, he lays out for him what becomes more formal later as a covenant. A covenant is an unbreakable promise.
This morning, I want to show you that there are three key parts to this covenant that become themes throughout the rest of the Old Testament. If you grasp these, the rest of the Scriptures will pop a whole lot more for you. And we will make some good application for us along the way, alright?
I’ll go on and give you the three points...
God promised Good Land
a Big Family
and that his family would provide an international blessing.
As we go through this, you will see the importance of each of these.
So, God promised
1. Good Land
1. Good Land
After Abram leaves Haran, the Lord leads him to Canaan. They pass through the land as nomads, but God speaks to Abram there and says...
The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring, I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
The Lord commits to give the land of Canaan to this promised family of Abram. The problem is that it was inhabited. It wasn’t just a huge piece of land just waiting to be picked up. The Canaanites who lived there, we find later, are pretty intimidating dudes.
This tension becomes a plotline through the rest of the Old Testament!
In fact, here is a little bible trivia for you...
What was the first piece of property possessed by Abraham’s family?
In Genesis 23, Sarah dies. Abraham is living in Canaan at the time and wants to bury her there. Someone offers to let her be buried for free in a tomb they own. Instead, Abraham chooses a piece of property and says “Name your price.” Instead of burying her for free, he pays 400 sheckles of silver for a field and a cave at Machpelah.
This piece of property becomes the only land owned by Abraham’s family for generations. It’s not until they come out of bondage in Egypt and Joshua leads the conquering of the land that they own more than this field and cave...
Think about that!
The God of all creation calls Abram to Canaan. Then shows him all of it, and says, “I’m going to give this to your ancestors.” But for 400 years, the only down payment they had on this promise was a field with a cave on it. Yet, Abram believed God. He trusted him, and faith in the promise was passed down through the generations so that when time came for Joshua to lead the people into the Promised Land of Canaan, they had 400 years of waiting and anticipation!
For 400 years, while they waited, the Machpelah cave had to be enough.
What a challenge to us today!
We want everything RIGHT NOW! The things we used to wait for, we now claim early in life. Newly wed couples in their early 20s are building brand new homes and buying brand new cars. This used to be a think you saved for and looked forward to, but now it is a simple step that many seem to be taking. We don’t like to wait!
And it can become difficult to wait on God too.
Will he fulfill the promises he has made us? Will you carry out his end of the deal? If we have trusted in him as Savior, can I be confident that he will bring to an eternal place of rest in his presence?
He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.
The Holy Spirit in us is the down payment on the eternal promise that awaits those who are in Christ! Church, have confidence today! If you have trusted in Christ, you are filled with the Spirit. And if you are filled with the Spirit, you will taste the fullness of his presence one day for all eternity! That’s good stuff!
Let’s rewind...
2. God promised a Big Family
2. God promised a Big Family
God told him, “I will make you into a great nation.”
Abram is 75 at this time. And guess what? He doesn’t have any children! How can God make a man that old into a great nation if he can’t have kids!?
But it gets crazier from there!
10 years later, God speaks to Abram again and reiterates this promise of a family
He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.”
WHAT!?
Abram was already making plans for one of his servants to be heir to his estate, but God says, “NO! You will have a child!”
But he is 85 at this point! His wife is over 70. This probably ain’t happening. No way he believes it, right?
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Get out of here! Abram believe GOD!? Are you kidding me?
Abram and Sarai his wife make plans for him to have a child with one of their servant girls. And Abram has to think, “Well, maybe this is God’s plan.” So, he has a kid named Ishmael. But God quickly tells him that Sarai will have a kid with him. Just be patient.
Then Abram turns 99 years old, still no kid. God comes again to him to renew this promise...
Then Abram fell facedown and God spoke with him:
“As for me, here is my covenant with you: You will become the father of many nations.
Your name will no longer be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations.
Abram - Exalted Father or My Father is exalted
Abraham - Father of multitudes (many nations)
Catch the humor in this! At 75 God said, I will make you into a great NATION (no s). God waits 24 more years and then says, “You know what, you aren’t just gonna be father of one nation. You will be the father of MANY NATIONS!” This is irony at its best here! Is God just making fun of the guy at this point?
But then it happens. Sarah (God changed her name from Sarai to Sarah) Sarah gets pregnant. They call his name Isaac, which means “laughter.”
This is the son God had promised 25 years earlier. But he finally came!
What we see happen for the rest of the Old Testament is that this family line is always in jeopardy. There are barren families, early deaths, and it seems like this family would be a better fit for Jerry Springer or Maury Povich than the Bible. But this is the family God chooses to bring through Abraham.
While Abraham was waiting, he got antsy. At one point he was willing to settle for less than God intended by giving his estate to a servant’s child. Then he took matters into his own hands and tried to make it happen with a servant. But he finally waited on God.
No doubt, it wasn’t easy. But he waited and God came through.
When you are waiting on God, it can be tough to not try to make it happen on your own, but you have to be committed to doing things the right way. Wait on God and work with him not against him.
Abraham waited 25 years for a son. His family would wait 400+ years to possess the Promised Land, but that waiting was nothing in comparison to the third part of the promise God made to Abram back in chapter 12.
3. A special, international blessing
3. A special, international blessing
I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
The other two parts of the promise we see take the front seat through the rest of the Old Testament, but it is this part that hangs in the background. God’s people had to wait some 2000 years before they would see this promise fulfilled.
Revelation 7:9 speaks of a worship service with people from every nation, tribe, people and language that is innumerable! This occurs because these people have all been redeemed by Jesus’ blood.
When God spoke this promise to Abraham, he no doubt intended that Abraham’s family could live as a blessing to the nations around them; however, God ultimately was pointing forward towards a climactic moment of redemption when Jesus Christ would lay down his life, not just for the Israelites, Abraham’s family, but for all the nations of the world!
Paul writes in his letters in the New Testament that though we are not Abraham’s descendants by DNA, we are his descendants through faith.
Today, if you have not trusted fully in the name of Jesus as your Savior, you can! Just as it was said of Abraham, “He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” it can be said of you! If you will repent of your sin, believing that Jesus is the only one to right your broken relationship with God, and that he was killed and raised up for you, God will give you a righteousness that you didn’t earn. God will take your sin and give that to Jesus. Then he will take Jesus’ righteousness and give it to you. Sweet trade, huh? That’s salvation!
Today if you would like to talk with someone about savlation, I would love to talk with you and let one of our decision counselors talk with you.
Also, if you are having trouble waiting on God for something in your life, you may want to lay that at God’s feet today.
As always, we can talk about joining this church and about getting baptized as well.
I’m gonna pray, then we will all stand and you respond.