The Blessing of Abram
Download MP3If you would, open your bibles to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12, and we will read the first nine verses. Now the lord said to Abram, 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.
Joel Brooks:And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took 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. And they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
Joel Brooks:When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Morah. And at that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then 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. From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.
Joel Brooks:And there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on still going toward the Negeb. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would bless through your spirit, the very reading of your word. We take your word seriously because we know that your word is different than any other word we have come across this week, come across in our lifetime.
Joel Brooks:In your words, there is power. Through your spirit, you breathe life into them and and your word goes forth and it can change lives. That's what we want now, Lord. God, I pray that I would not add anything to your word. Lord, let my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. We saw last week how Abram is really kind of the anti babble. He's the anti babble because Abram left his comfort, he left his security, and instead of trying to create it, He he left what he knew instead of staying.
Joel Brooks:He trusted in God instead of rebelling, And Abram didn't try to make a name for himself, instead God looked at him and said, I will make your name great. And then God chose Abram to be a blessing to the entire world. And so this text is so important. We're we're now looking at it for the 2nd week. We could really land here for weeks.
Joel Brooks:This this passage is so rich that really it takes the rest of the Bible to unpack it. The rest of the Bible flows out of the first three chapters of Genesis or three verses of Genesis 12. You're gonna find the themes of blessing and curse, not only here in Genesis, but all through scripture. Well, the first thing in this text that we see is that Abraham is called to do something. He is called to go.
Joel Brooks:Go, Abram. And then we find that God does everything else. Notice all of the the I wills that God says after this. He says, I will bless you. I will make your name great.
Joel Brooks:I will bless those who bless you, and on and on. Abram only has to go. He has to believe in god and he has to go. And then god is the one who's going to take care of the rest. God is the one who's going to bless the world through his life.
Joel Brooks:This is actually very very similar to what the lord tells Moses, in which we looked at a couple of years ago, in which in Exodus 6, when god is calling Moses to go to pharaoh, he simply says, go. I want you to go to pharaoh and I will do the rest. He says after in Exodus 6, after go to pharaoh, he says, I will bring them out of Egypt. I will deliver them. I will give them the land of Canaan.
Joel Brooks:I will redeem you. I will establish my covenant with you. I will take you to be my people, and you get all these I wills, I will, I will. All you have to do is go, Moses. Trust me and go.
Joel Brooks:God is the one who does the work. And this is very important for us to realize, because I think most of us are very task oriented people. We evaluate our lives by how many tasks we can perform, how many I wills we can actually do. And we think that when God calls us, he's calling us to do all of these things. You know, God's calling me to do some some great thing.
Joel Brooks:To go and perform some great task. And everything depends upon me and my abilities to go and to do this great task that the Lord has called me to do. And so we spend all of our time and all of our energy thinking about the task. What we're supposed to do. We spend all of our energy on that instead of thinking of simply trusting and loving God during this.
Joel Brooks:Don't forget here in this passage that God first calls Abraham to himself. There's first a saving faith here. He calls him to his self. God will call him to task. He will call him to do things, but first, he calls Abram to himself.
Joel Brooks:And we see this because god just, he loved Abram. He loved Abram and he wants Abram to love him. And so, god could accomplish his purpose any way he wants to. He doesn't need Abram. He could accomplish his task, if you will, however he wants to.
Joel Brooks:But instead he says, But I want to bring Abram in on this, because I love Abram. I want a relationship with Abram. So you got to kind of put the task a little bit in the back burner here because it's more than that. If, if you think this story is simply about, you know, God calling Abraham to go to another land, that's his task. You could pretty much tweet the entire thing because he kind of is called to go and then he goes.
Joel Brooks:And that's it. You, you, you look at, you look at verse 4, or look at verse 5 and it says, and they said at the end of it, they set out to go to the land of Canaan. And when they came to the land of Canaan I mean, that's it. When they left, they came. And in between that is actually a 400 mile dangerous journey that's not even mentioned Because it's not about the task.
Joel Brooks:It's if the task was God's primary goal, there there had been so many other ways to get somebody from point a to point b. He could have just maybe caused a famine over here in point a, so everybody has to go to point b, or or cause a war here and everybody has to go to point b. God can be creative in how he moves people around. We saw this in Luke, in which God causes the most powerful man on the planet to cause, to call a worldwide census or empire wide census, just to move a carpenter and his pregnant wife from Nazareth to Bethlehem. When when you have everything at your disposal, you could get kind of creative in how you want to move a person from point a to point b.
Joel Brooks:But God, he uses Abram here. He's after a relationship with Abram, not just the task. You see this all through the life of Jesus. Jesus, I don't know if you've noticed this in the scripture, but he never just jumps from place to place, from task to task. He's never rushed.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it's amazing. He's never rushed. I spend my life rushing from task to task to task. And here's Jesus never rushed. I mean, he's going to Jerusalem for the triumphal entry.
Joel Brooks:He's going for his parade and he stops and he takes time to talk to a blind beggar, Bartimaeus, and heal him. You can almost picture the disciples like, gotta get there. Passover. And then after he leaves Bartimaeus, he stops and he notices Zacchaeus in a tree and he's like, hey, come on down. I can have supper at your place tonight.
Joel Brooks:The disciples say, Well, we're, we're on a tight schedule. People are waiting. Crowds are waiting for you. Jesus is relationally driven. He takes time just to love on people.
Joel Brooks:You know, all my girls, I have 3 little girls, Caroline, Natalie, and Georgia. They all love to help me with task And I guess I should put help in quotations. You know, now already, you know, Caroline and Natalie, Georgia doesn't. But they know the difference between, you know, crescent wrench, pliers, and screwdrivers, and all that. And they're they're always helping me.
Joel Brooks:One time I got stuck in a tree. I was climbing and the ladder fell down. I'm just holding on this limb for dear life, and Caroline's there, and she was probably 2 or 3 at the time, and I said, go get help. And so she ran off, and I'm just I'm just hanging from a limb about 15, 20 feet off the ground, and Caroline comes back holding pliers. I'm here to help daddy.
Joel Brooks:It's like, go get people. But but my my girls, they they love to to help me. In this past spring, we fixed some bird houses that we had earlier made. And so I got, you know, the girls around and, they held some nails for me and some boards and I'm let them make some measurements and, and all of this, they were part of the process. Now I can assure you, I did not ask them to help me because I needed their help making bird houses or I, you know, I'm stumped on this one.
Joel Brooks:You know, Natalie, can you come in here, swing the hammer, fix this for me? It's no, the bird houses actually didn't turn out nearly as well as I wanted, But, I wanted to be with them. And so I invited them to to come join me in this task. You know, I love watching Caroline just, you know, so cautious and analytical and she's just processing everything. Daddy, are you sure you measured that twice?
Joel Brooks:You You know, there's Natalie who just gets the hammer and just starts hammering and not even thinking about it at all. And there's Georgia who just can't pronounce a single word right. She's out, tape mehwa. You know, I just love it, hearing her and just processing that. I love being with them, as they help me in on these tasks.
Joel Brooks:God does have a task for Abram. He does. But do you think he's thinking, gosh, I can't do this on my own. I need to bring in Abram so I have some help, so I can complete this? It's like a father with his children saying, come in, I wanna spend time with you.
Joel Brooks:This is about relationship, it's not about the task. Now I just feel like I I need to share this because if you're anything like me, God might be giving you a task and you stay so focused on the task, you completely miss the relationship. God, you want me to start a church here. Okay, I'm gonna work so hard. I'm gonna start a church.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna pour all my efforts into it, all my time. I'm gonna do this this. God's like, Yeah, but I'm after relationship with you, Joel. That's what I'm after. God is after your heart.
Joel Brooks:I mean, God might very well want you to move to India, start an orphanage, or you know, something like that. But the task is secondary to his relationship with you. God is bringing Abraham in. He's teaching them things like I would teach my child, teaching them kindness, teaching them patience, teaching them about himself. So God first calls Abraham to himself, and then he calls Abraham to go and to be a blessing.
Joel Brooks:God wants to bless all of the people in the earth through the life of Abram. Which is a pretty big thing. So you got to ask the question, how, how is it going to go about doing this? What's this going to look like? We're going to see this blessing go forth in 4 ways.
Joel Brooks:Four ways. First Abraham immediately becomes a blessing when he goes. He immediately becomes a blessing to his wife and family. Immediately. Sarai is barren.
Joel Brooks:She's old and she's passed the age of having children. Her only comfort in life is, you know, that she, she probably is surrounded by friends and family and has a comfortable, secure life. But then her husband decides to trust God and rip her from all of this. But because of his obedience, she is now later going to be blessed with a child. Not just any child, but the child of promise.
Joel Brooks:She's blessed through her husband's obedience. Husbands and wives, you will immediately bless your spouse through your obedience to God's call. Do not let comfort, security, those things hold you captive to obeying God's call. Some of you might even be holding on to those things because you think in holding on to comfort, holding on to security, I'm being a blessing to my wife, or I'm being a blessing to my husband. That's what they need right now.
Joel Brooks:You're not being a blessing, you're trying to be God to them, and that's not your role. But if you can let go of those things and trust God, you will instantly become a blessing to your spouse. Following God is the best way to bless your family. A second way that we see this blessing going forth can be found in verse 5. And this is, this is often overlooked here.
Joel Brooks:Verse 5, it says, and Abraham took Sarai, his wife and lot, his brother's sons and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran. That, that phrase, that the people he acquired in Haran is a very interesting phrase. For a long time, I had assumed that this simply meant the the slaves or the servants that he had acquired. But the word that's used there, the Hebrew word that's used there, nowhere else in scripture is it used to refer to servants or slaves. And so it is very, very, very likely that it does not refer to that here.
Joel Brooks:The word is nepes. And throughout scripture, it's always just used to describe people. Not slaves, not servants, just people. And I think the ESV gets it correct here. And so a growing number of scholars are beginning to think that when Abram was in Haran, he's already building a community of faith.
Joel Brooks:He's already spreading the word about the Lord. And the vision he has received from the Lord. And the calling that he has to go and to be a blessing to the world. And the people are already gathering around him. These are the people that he has acquired.
Joel Brooks:And if this is the case, which I think it is, Abraham understands his calling a lot more than you at first think. He understands that he is to be a light unto the nations. He's to bless others. That God has so much more in mind than just his fame. And what we could take away from this is that Abram did not waste time in Haran, which is what we looked at like last week.
Joel Brooks:That kind of waiting place for Abram. He was, you know, called out of Ur, but then he kind of landed in Haran for who knows how many years, but he didn't waste that time. He was building a community of faith. I can remember, Lauren and I, we were from Atlanta. We moved to Birmingham to go to seminary, so we could go on the mission field.
Joel Brooks:And so, we go to seminary, and God begins closing the door to the place we were going right as I was graduating. So I didn't know what I was going to do. I only knew I hated Birmingham, and I wanted to get out of here. And so Lauren and I are talking, you know, where are we going to go? What are we going to do?
Joel Brooks:I said, I don't know. We're going to be any place but Birmingham. I can tell you that. But as we were waiting, and we're in this waiting period, we're in Haran, we decided, okay, well let's at least start a college Bible study Sunday school class. We'll do that while we're waiting.
Joel Brooks:It wasn't what we thought was our calling. It was what we were going to do while we were waiting. And then out of that, God grew UCF. He grew university Christian People were called into missions. People were called, you know, into the pastorate.
Joel Brooks:Through this ministry. I had no idea what God was doing in Haran. None. I'm looking around, I'm seeing many of your faces who grew up through that ministry. God used that in your lives.
Joel Brooks:That was in Haran. So so if you think, you know, God's called you to this, but you're here in this waiting period, don't just sit. You have no idea how the lord is gonna use that time. Try to acquire people. Try to build a community of faith.
Joel Brooks:3rd way Abram becomes a blessing as found in verses 6 through 8. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring, I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the lord who had appeared to him.
Joel Brooks:From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and the eye on the east. And there he built an altar to the lord and called upon the name of the Lord. So this group, you know, following Abram, you know, they all come, to this place of Shechem. They go north and then they begin working their way back south and they go to the oaks of Moreh. And it says that the Canaanites were in the land.
Joel Brooks:That's kind of an ominous phrase at that time, the Canaanites were in the land. You kind of hear the music, creepy music starting to play, ominous note here. The Canaanites, they're the descendants, obviously, of Canaan. If you remember from Genesis 9, Canaan is the one who is cursed. So these were the cursed people of the world.
Joel Brooks:So Abram's now confronted with people who are under a curse, and he's in a land that has been under a curse since Genesis 3, this fallen world. And the first thing that he does is he goes to the pagan center of worship, and he builds an altar for the Lord. That's what these Oaks of Moreh are. Some of your translations might say the tiberence instead of the Oaks. And this is the location of a very pagan shrine in which the Canaanites would come and they would worship their idols here.
Joel Brooks:And this is the first place Abraham goes to. He goes here, then the Lord appears to him. And then Abraham worships him there. He builds an altar and worships him. Then he goes to Bethel.
Joel Brooks:South, he goes to Bethel where he builds another altar to the Lord. In chapter 13, he goes to some other oaks of Mamre. He goes there and he builds another altar to the lord. Another pagan shrine place. And so you got you got to ask, what's going on here?
Joel Brooks:Why is he going to these shrines? Why is he going to these centers of the pagan religion setting up altars? The land is his, so why isn't he building houses? Instead, he's pitching tents and he's building all altars, not building houses. And what's going on here is Abraham is reclaiming this land for the Lord.
Joel Brooks:He's reclaiming it. Going amongst a curse people in a curse land and he is reclaiming it for the Lord. This is very similar to the, I think the soldiers, in World War II at Iwo Jima, lifting up the flag, saying, This is now our land. But Abraham is not saying, this is my land. He's saying, I'm reclaiming this for the Lord's.
Joel Brooks:This is the Lord's land. The Lord is going to be worshiped here, even at this pagan place. I mean, this, this scene is awkward. You know, sometimes we just kind of read through scripture and we forget the emotions that would have been around this. What if God was calling you to do this?
Joel Brooks:You know, go to a place where you know there is pagan worship. That's what everybody does. And you kind of go and you move in right next door and, you start building your altar and you start worshiping the Lord right next to them. Just awkward. Unusual.
Joel Brooks:What the heck are you doing? You're invading our turf. Who is this God you're calling to? At the end of verse 8 you read, called upon the name of the Lord, which Martin Luther loved to translate and you can translate it this way, preached the name of the Lord Or proclaimed the name of the Lord. So Abram doesn't just build altars, he then begins to preach to all of the people around him.
Joel Brooks:Telling them about Yahweh, telling them about the Lord. And so I'd say that, Abraham's got a pretty good grasp at this point of God's call on his life and how he's supposed to go and be a blessing to others. He's got a pretty good grasp of it. So how do we apply this? I want us to start inward and then we're going to move outward in how we apply this.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna start inward first. First of all, you have to realize that you personally need to be reclaimed by the Lord. Your very life, at least at one point was a very dark and pagan place that needed to be reclaimed. You need to be saved, but even after you are saved, there are still very dark things going on in you. There's dark places in your heart that need to be reclaimed.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps for some of you, it's a terrible spiritual heritage. You, you come from awful parents who did not love God, who whose parents before them did not love God. And, and, and you've had all of these kind of generational sins passed down and you find yourself falling into the same traps and the same sins as your parents, well, you need to stop. And through the blood of Jesus, you need to reclaim that for the Lord and say, no more will there be that pagan place in my life. It's gonna be a place of worship.
Joel Brooks:You got to recognize that the blood of Jesus has freed you from that ungodly heritage. He is giving you a new godly heritage. Perhaps you are so bound to money that you absolutely cannot let it go. You believe that it's your money for you to do with as you will. If that's the case, you need to stop and you need to reclaim that for the Lord.
Joel Brooks:You need to hold that up to the Lord and and through the blood of Jesus, reclaim that. Say that this is actually your money, my possessions or your possessions. And I reclaim that for you Lord. Perhaps some of you need, you satisfied your need for worship. You, you satisfy your need for worship, by an addiction to sports, or an addiction to entertainment.
Joel Brooks:That's the dark area in your life. You you have channeled this God given desire to to worship. This God given desire to applaud greatness. You were made to applaud greatness. I would actually say, you were made always applauding greatness.
Joel Brooks:You can't help but applaud greatness. But then you have channeled that into such pathetic things that take up so much of your time and your energy. And you give God your second best. That's an area in your life that you need to reclaim. That's idolatry.
Joel Brooks:Say, God, you deserve my greatest praise. You deserve my greatest energy. You deserve my worship. So we can start by looking inward and then we need to move outward. As the spiritual children of Abraham, we've got to realize that our calling is also to be a blessing to the nations.
Joel Brooks:The church is called to be a light unto the nations. We are called to be a blessing to people who live in the darkest places in all the world. Jesus said, go into the world, make disciples of the nations. So we have to be a missional church. And this means if we have to sacrificially give up our time, sacrificially give up our money and all of our efforts and all of our energies for this cause, we are going to do it.
Joel Brooks:Our efforts are not going to be spent building buildings to ourself, building, altars to our own comfort. We need to build altars of worship for the nations. We need to realize that places like Sedan need people to go there and to call on the name of the Lord. Places like Yemen need you to raise up the flag and say, no this place and these people belong to the Lord. The people of Macassar, the Macassar people in Indonesia need people to go there and say, Hey, I claim this place for the Lord.
Joel Brooks:People in Uganda, they they need to have somebody go to them and say, hey, you're the Lord's people. This is the Lord's land. We need to go to those dark, dark areas and proclaim the name of the Lord. Reclaim that as his. And the reason we do this, the reason we do this is because Christ has made claim to us.
Joel Brooks:That's the 4th and final way that we see Abraham becoming a blessing. It's actually his seed that becomes the blessing. His offspring is Jesus. Jesus is the seed of Abraham that's going to bring blessing to the entire earth. Jesus is the one who's going to come and reconcile the whole world to himself.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the seed of Abraham that bought us with his very blood. He's the one who removes the curse and brings blessing into our life through Jesus. I hope you realize that the world isn't just hurting out there, it is broken. And you cannot fix it because you're broken. So Jesus comes to us and he has to fix our brokenness, and then he calls us into the task to begin fixing the world's brokenness.
Joel Brooks:It's not because he needs your help. No. He's calling you into a relationship with himself as he goes and he accomplishes his great purpose of reconciling all the world to himself. He's a good father who wants to spend time with his children. And so he calls us to join him in his work.
Joel Brooks:This is the great calling of the church. It's the great calling for you.
