God's Faithfulness in the Promise

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles, this morning to Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12, as we continue in our series to the book of Genesis, we come this morning to Genesis chapter 12, and my goal this morning is to cover verses 12, and 3. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be God's faithfulness in the Promise. God's faithfulness In the promise. And part of the reason we're only gonna cover three verses today is because I have a very long introduction.

but trust me, we will get done on, on time, this morning. it may seem like a small step for us to move from Genesis chapter 11, verse 32, which is the last verse of Genesis 11, which we studied last week, to step from Genesis 11:32 into Genesis chapter 12 and verse 1. But it's actually a very big deal. Probably bigger than you might think.

Listen to how J. Vernon McGee describes this, where we stand basically at this juncture of our study of Genesis. He says there is a great Grand Canyon which goes right down through the Book of Genesis. The 1st 11 chapters are on one side and the last 39 chapters are on the other side.

Essentially, the 1st 11 chapters cover approximately 2000 years of human history. If we add up the genealogies in the strictest of ways, it's a minimum of 2000 years. Guys, the next 39 chapters cover 250. In fact, the 1st 11 chapters of Genesis cover at least 2000 years, and that's about how much time the rest of the entire Bible covers about 2000 years.

And so there is a Grand Canyon that we are standing before today. Now, for some of you, a huge divide as deep as the Grand Canyon does not Make you dizzy. in fact, here's a picture of my son Benjamin last fall looking over the Grand Canyon. While he was on his way off to college in Virginia, he clearly is not troubled by the height at which he is standing, nor is he troubled by the depth of the canyon floor below, nor is he troubled by the three lines of cracks in the rocky ledge.

that he is standing on. but his mama, who took the picture. had sweaty hands as she held the camera and she literally ran away from the scene as soon as she took the picture. And when I saw the picture on Facebook, I had a woozy feeling in my stomach just looking at the picture.

I could never stand where Benjamin is standing in this photo, but there is a sense. In which we are all standing in that spot. This morning as we approach Genesis chapter 12 verse 1. I don't know for sure what all J.

Vernon McGee was thinking about when he talked about a grand canyon between Genesis 11 and 12, but the metaphor is useful for our purposes this morning. Because in my opinion, the canyon that lies between Genesis 11 and 12 is the unresolved tension. That we are left with when we reach the end of Genesis 11, there is a huge gaping hole. That needs to be filled.

And on the other side of this canyon is the immediate and epic and stunning resolution to this tension that we are left with at the end of Genesis chapter 11. To appreciate where we stand at this juncture of Genesis, we need to back up and do some review. And in order to appreciate the powerful unresolved tension that we find by the time we reach the end of Genesis 11. Just by way of review in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, we see that man was created in the image of God and lavishly provided for in the Garden of Eden.

In chapter 3, we see Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit in violation of God's expressed will. You might think that their sin would spell the end of mankind, but it doesn't. God shows up. He moves toward them in their sin and says to Adam, where are you?

And he draws a confession of sin out of Adam and Eve, and then God opens his mouth and begins to speak in Genesis chapter 3, and among the first words out of his mouth are words that bring hope to the human race. In verse 15 of Genesis 3, God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman. And between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. From this promise alone, we see that God has a gracious plan of salvation for mankind.

There are 4 things we can know for sure from Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. We can know, here's what God is promising that the serpent who led Adam and Eve into sin will be defeated one day. This defeat will be wrought by God. This defeat will come through a human champion born of woman, the seed of the woman, and We can learn from Genesis 3:15 that this champion will suffer.

In the battle This is a staggering promise in Genesis 3:15 and some writers say that this promise is the linchpin for interpreting the rest of the book of Genesis and all of the Old Testament and even the New Testament. George Peters, in his book, A Biblical Theology of Missions describes Genesis 3:15. As the morning star in the midst of the darkest night of mankind, containing a promise of universal significance, a promise that becomes the guiding star throughout history and prophecy of the Old Testament until it finds its fulfillment in Christ, the seed of the woman.

So we reached Genesis 3:15 and just this far into the text of Genesis, we arrive at a pretty mature understanding of mankind.

Just this far into the text of the Bible, we see that man is beautifully made. Tragically broken. And expensively. Rescued Beautifully made, tragically broken, expensively rescued.

We are also left With the expectation that the rest of Genesis will advance us toward the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. It's right here in Genesis 3 that we also began to observe a pattern that follows all the way through Genesis chapter 11, a pattern that our lives depend on actually. We can call this the sin, judgment, grace pattern. And let me show you examples of this in 4 episodes.

Episode number 1 is found, as I've already mentioned in chapter 3, we see the sin, Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and disobedience to God. There is judgment, God delivers consequences upon them, including expelling them from the Garden of Eden. But then there is grace. God lets them live, God seeks them out, and he lets them live, and he clothes them with the skins of a slain animal, and he promises that the seed of the woman will ultimately defeat.

The serpent, we have sin, judgment, and then we have grace. We move into chapter 4 and we see a second episode regarding Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. Cain commits a sin, he murders, a life-altering sin. He murders his brother Abel in cold blood.

There is judgment. God curses Cain with regard to the ground, saying that he would be a wanderer and the ground would not yield up his produce to him. But then on the other side of that sin and judgment toward Cain, There is grace. God makes a gracious promise to Cain.

And puts his mark on Cain in order to protect his life. As the narrative continues to unfold, there's a 3rd episode in Genesis chapters 6 through 9, where we see sin and judgment and grace. We see the sin, mankind becomes utterly irredeemably wicked and violent. Every thought and intention in everybody's heart was only evil continually.

Genesis chapter 6 says, there is judgment. God sends the flood to destroy every living thing that moves on the surface of the land. But thankfully, there is also grace. Noah, we are told, finds grace in the eyes of the Lord and The human race and all animal kinds are saved through him.

We studied that story at length. In fact, after the flood, Noah, we saw in Genesis chapter 9, offers a massive sacrifice to the Lord. God smells the pacifying aroma of Noah's sacrifice, and he promises to never Destroy the world again through a flood. He provides the sign of the rainbow as a sign of his gracious promise.

God also blesses Noah and his sons and commands them to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. So yes, there has been sin. And there will continue to be sin, and yes, there was awful judgment in the form of the flood, and yet grace survives through that judgment. Grace prevails in the end, which finishes the pattern of the third episode of sin, judgment, and grace.

You guys tracking with me so far? So far in all three of these episodes, we see sin, judgment, and grace, but there is one more episode that we find in Genesis. Chapters 1 through 11 and that is the story of the Tower of Babel. Let's see if the pattern holds true.

As the narrative continues, the human population after the flood, The human population begins to grow and flourish under God's blessing, but sadly, there comes a point in time where mankind unites in an active rebellion against God. They settle together in the land of Shinar and resolved to build a city and a tower that reaches into the heavens. Their goal is not only evidently to build their own way to God. But also to make a name for themselves.

That's what they say, we want to make a name for ourselves and to keep themselves from being scattered over the face of the earth, even though God had commanded them to multiply and to fill the earth. So we have here the beginnings of yet another cycle of sin, judgment, and grace. Man sins by uniting. In arrogant rebellion against God, and God responds in judgment by confounding their languages and scattering them across the face of the earth.

And so there's the pattern. But you'll notice, looking at the screen, That grace is missing. We have sin, and we have judgment, but we're left asking where is the grace that finishes the pattern. We don't see it anywhere in chapter 11, no matter how hard we look.

What we do see is a scattered humanity. In Genesis 11:9, the text tells us that God scattered them. He confounded them by language and then scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. We see the scattering represented throughout Genesis chapter 10 which chronologically takes us to a point beyond.

The Tower of Babel. Summing up the movements of the descendants of Noah's three sons, Genesis 10 ends with these words. These are the families of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies by their nations, and out of these, the nations were separated on the earth. And we learned earlier in the chapter of chapter 10 that language played a vital role in that.

And so we're left asking Where is the grace that finishes the pattern? Is this the end of the story? Is a hopelessly scattered and divided humanity how it all ends? Where is the divine gesture of grace toward this scattered humanity that finish, finishes the pattern that we have been seeing?

Are all the families of the earth now doomed to live in a separated existence divided from one another by geography, by nations and genealogy and by language? Is God's grace, Finished? Has man's sinfulness finally overwhelmed the grace of God? Has God finally thrown in the towel and decided to leave mankind to Himself, to leave man alone in his sin?

Has God given up the dream of Genesis chapter 3 verse 15? We come to Genesis chapter 11 verse 10. After the incident with the Tower of Babel, expecting some gesture of grace from God to finish the pattern. We see a genealogy that extends 9 generations from Shem to a man named Terra.

Shem was the son of Noah who was most blessed in Noah's last will and testament. So we're hopeful as we read starting in Genesis 11:10. And following. Tara's name is mentioned 10 times in Genesis 11, so we wonder if Tara is somehow the means of God's grace that finishes the pattern.

We see him leaving for Canaan, but he gets about halfway to Canaan and settles in Haran, and then he dies there, so we realize that Tara is not the answer. Tara had 3 sons. One of them died before his time. The other took a wife for himself.

Another named Abraham took a wife for himself, but she was barren and could have no children. And with that, chapter 11 comes to an end, leaving us wondering, where is the grace? That finishes the pattern. Moses is a skillful writer, as we have seen, and he leaves us with this unresolved tension for a little while as the narrative unfolds through chapter 11.

This is why we could never just do a series on Genesis 1 through 11 and stop. To our delight though. We come to Genesis chapter 12 this morning, verses 12 and 3, and we immediately see the grace that finishes the pattern. Genesis 12 begins with the words, the Lord said.

The Lord said, as one writer says, this means that the divine silence that persisted for 10 generations is shattered. The same God who spoke the universe into existence is speaking here. The same God who spoke the promise of Genesis 3:15 is speaking here. The same God who blessed Noah and his sons and promised to never flood the earth again is speaking here.

And when he speaks, he speaks to a man named Abraham. And what he says is filled with the language of blessing. Let me read the passage to you. Beginning in verse one.

Says now the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land which I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you, All the families of the earth will be blessed. In all of Genesis chapter 1 to 11, we see the Hebrew word Barak.

Which means bless 4 times with man as the recipient. Genesis 1 through 11, Barak occurs 4 times with man as the recipient. In the 1st 3 verses of Genesis chapter 12, we see the word Barak 5 times with a human recipient, which means that there is as much blessing, if not more blessing in these 3 verses of chapter 12 as there is in all of Genesis 1 through 11 combined. What we see here.

Is an atomic explosion, a blessing that is ever widening in its sweep. You asked me, Milton, is the big bang in the Bible? My answer is a resounding yes, but it's not in Genesis 1. It's in Genesis chapter 12, verses 12, and 3.

This is the Big bang of blessing that ought to sound very loud to our ears. This blessing starts off with Abraham, and by the time God has finished speaking, he is promising that this blessing will have swept over the whole world, extending to every one of the scattered people groups, the families on earth. Evidently, God is not done giving His grace to mankind. In fact, he is just getting started.

And it is here that we find the grace that finishes the pattern. God promises Abraham that through him he will bless all the scattered families of the earth. And the rest of Genesis and the rest of the Bible is merely the unfolding of this gracious plan of God. I love the way R.

Kent Hughes. communicates the theme of grace in the book of Genesis. He says Genesis is all about grace. The apostle Paul's statement that where sin increased, grace abounded all the more in Romans chapter 5 verse 20 sums up this major theme of Genesis.

Genesis, far from being a faded page, fallen from antiquity, breathes the grace of God. How true that is. The Book of Genesis is a living document and when we put our finger on the text of Genesis chapter 12, verses 12 and 3, We feel the mighty pulse of the heart of God beating for sinful men, beating for the whole world. Far from being discouraged by all this sin, far from being discouraged in his resolve to bless a sinful world, God thunders his resolve in these three verses.

We actually see in these three verses a 5-fold series of I will. I will. I will, God says, I will, I will, I will, I will. And by the time he's done talking, he's saying essentially, I will do these things and in the end, every family on earth will be blessed by me through Abraham.

With the time that we have. Remaining this morning, I want us to look at verses 1 through 3 and observe 7 promises that God gives to Abraham. 7 promises that God makes to Abraham and launching his plan to bring blessing to all the scattered families of the earth through this man, Abraham. The first promise that he gives in these verses is this, he promises to show Abraham the land.

That he is to arrive at. He promises to show Abraham the land that would be his destination. He says now the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that here's the promise, I will show you. That's the promise.

Some of your translations translate the beginning of verse one by saying now the Lord had said, To Abraham. But the most natural way to translate the Hebrew of Genesis 12:1 is to understand it as sequential. A good paraphrase would be, and the next thing that happened was that the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country, meaning that this particular call came after Abraham had settled in Haran. With his father Terra and those who were traveling with them.

However, according to Acts 7, we know that Abraham did receive a call when he was back in Ur of the Chalde, and he and his father departed in response to that call and began to head for Canaan, but as we saw last Sunday, they ended up settling at a halfway point in their journey in the city of Huron. And now here in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1, God is coming to Abraham and he is rousing Abraham from his settling, and God delivers his call to Abraham again, making this, as we said last Sunday, the 2.0 version of God's call upon Abraham's life.

God will not let Abraham settle any longer. He shakes him awake and beckons him back to the journey that he had given up on.

We see the grace of God here. And we also see God's relentless commitment to moving forward his plan of redemption that would bring blessing to all of the families of the earth. God is up to something big here. And he calls Abraham out of his settling ways to be involved in this grand enterprise that God describes here.

Notice the opening command, go forth, God says, or go out. And then he says, from your country. The language here indicates that Harran had become more to Abraham than just a stopover place. Haran had become home.

And God is commanding Abraham to leave this place that he had allowed to become his second home. God hits even closer to home when he also tells Abraham to go forth from your relatives and from your father's house. Leave the comfort of family, the comfort of kin. Of this second home and go out, he says, get out of Harran.

And he tells Abraham to go forth from Haran and journey to what he describes as the land, which I will show you. Rather than explaining all the details to Abraham about the GPS location of where his destination would be, God simply makes a promise to Abraham and says, trust me, just get out of Haran and I will show you the specifics. As you start journeying, I will show you the specifics. Of your destination.

Man, I ask you, What would you do if God asked this of you? How would you break the news to your wife? Wives, how would you respond if God asked this of your husband? I can just hear Sarah saying to Abraham, we, we have to leave Haran with all of our relatives and where are we going?

And Abraham says, I'm not entirely sure where we're supposed to go, but God is promising me that he will show us our destination after we leave. That's tough. And that's all Abraham has to go on here. The only thing he has to go on is the promise of God, the word of God.

John Calvin, I love this, he says that in this instance, Abraham is being asked to believe the verbum nudum, which means the naked word of God. That's all he had to go on was the naked word or promise of God. That's it, and Sarah will be joining him in that journey. Abraham may not know his ultimate destination, but what he does know, if he believes the promise of God, he can know with absolute certainty that God is going to show it to him.

God makes another promise to Abraham as this passage unfolds, and this brings us to our next point. The second promise God makes in launching his plan to bring blessing to all the scattered families of the earth through Abraham, and that is he promises to make of Abraham a great nation. He says in verse 2, and I will make you a great nation. If this weren't God speaking, And making this promise to Abraham.

This would actually be a cruel thing to say. We learn in verse 4 that Abraham is 75 at this point of his life, and we find out later that Sarah was about 10 years younger than Abraham, and that she had no children and was unable to bear children, and yet God speaks to the 75-year-old man married to a barren 65-year-old woman, and he says, I will make you into a great nation. The promise That Abraham would become a great nation, not only in this moment contradicted reality, but it assaulted reality due to Abraham's age and Sarah's barrenness.

But that's the thing about the word of God.

Guys, God's word is always true, powerfully true. Sometimes it is true in the sense that it conforms to reality. But other times, like here, God's word is true in the sense that it actually bends reality to itself and makes what God has spoken come to pass. That's the power of the word of God that he speaks into our lives through this book right here.

You think about that the next time you are discouraged by Who you are, and how old you are or how little you have and all the brokenness that you see when you hear God saying to you through his word, I will make you into a holy and triumphant person, a champion for my cause, and I will glorify you. And telling Abraham that he will make of him a great nation. God is telling Abraham that there will be a great many descendants that will arise from him and that a nation is actually going to develop from his descendants.

A nation that features a government and cities and a land to call home.

This is why God is calling Abraham to leave Haran. And go to a land that he will show him. You can't have a nation without a land. As one writer says, according to this promise, Abraham's descendants will become a powerful political entity with a land and language and government.

Not only is God promising here that he will make Abraham a great nation, but he tells him that he will make of him. are, are not just a nation, but a great nation. In the world there are nations, many nations, and then there are great nations, and God is telling Abraham. This will be no puny, small, insignificant nation.

Your descendants will become a great nation, a nation that is great in significance. As it factors into human history and the unfolding plan of redemption, a nation that will be great in power and in number and in impact upon the world. This is not all that God promises. Observe the next promise of God as he pushes forward his plan to bless all the peoples of the earth through Abraham, and that is he promises to bless Abraham.

He says, and I will bless you. I will bless you. Part of what's implied in this statement is that, is that God is saying, Abraham, I'm already blessing you and telling you to get out of Haran. Guys, when God calls us to leave our places of settling, he's blessing us and delivering those calls.

And we should embrace those rousing calls for the blessings that they are. Yeah, there's blessings to come, but for God to get in our grill and to say, get out of this place of settling and journey on to where I want you to be, that rousing call, however uncomfortable it might be, is a blessing to us. God is telling Abraham even more than this. He's telling Abraham that he wants to bless him in the future, and Abraham must leave his place of settling to experience the fullness of the blessing that God has in store for him.

In promising to bless Abraham, God is promising that he will prosper Abraham and all that he does spiritually, physically, materially, and this is certainly what God does in the chapters to come, even in spite of. Abrams' failures. But God's blessing of Abraham entails even more than this, and Isaiah, write down this reference, Isaiah 51:2. That passage lets us in on something specific that God means by this promise.

Speaking to the Israelites, 1000 years after Abraham, God gives to the Israelites this council. He says this, look back. Back to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah who brought you forth, for he, Abraham, was only one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. From this verse alone, we see that God's blessing.

That he's promising Abraham here is equated. With giving Abraham many, many descendants. The promise of prosperity and thriving in many descendants is contained inside this promise of blessing from God to Abraham, but God is not finished. God gives Abraham yet another promise as he is articulating his plan to bring blessing to all the families of the earth, which includes you and I.

And that is he promises to make Abraham's name great. He promises to make Abraham's name great. He says, and I will bless you and make your name great. This is a promise that is loaded with, with meaning and with instruction for us.

You get no impression here that Abraham is seeking for a great name for himself. He probably would have been quite content to not have any fame, but here God comes to him, and God says, I want to make your name great. Understand that a person's name in this day was not merely, as one writer says, a convenient designation, but it was an expression of the very essence of that person's being. So God is not simply promising to make Abraham famous, he's promising to make Abraham a great person in his character, such that he will be worthy of the great fame.

That will be bestowed on him. I hope this will make sense, but to really appreciate what's happening here, you have to go back to Genesis 11:4. You guys remember a few weeks ago how we saw in Genesis 11, how the people of the world settled in the land of Shinar and they resolved to build a city and a tower and through that means, they said to make for ourselves a name. A name they were wanting for themselves, that it was of such gravitas that it would serve as a rallying point and keep all of them and their descendants from being scattered across the face of the earth.

what the Hebrew word for name. I It's, it's the Hebrew word shem. You might want to write that down and keep that thought in mind. God won't let these Babylonian rebels succeed in making a shim for themselves, so he confounds their efforts by confusing their languages and he scatters them across the face of the earth.

why he does this? Because he knows the danger of a united humanity, united in its fallenness, but he also confounds their efforts and brings their efforts to an end, because he has his own plan. In place. A plan that literally starts to unfold in the very next verse.

The very next verse after the Tower of Babel story says this, these are the records of the generations of whom? Shem. Notice the name of Noah's son, Shem. In other words, these are the records of the generations of the one whose name means name.

That's literally what Shem means. Which I don't know, I maybe Noah had some agenda in giving him that name or maybe Noah couldn't think of a name so he said I'll name him name. Imagine giving your child the name name. But I think Noah had something profound in mind.

And naming this son whom he knew based on his last will and testament was the one from whom blessing to the world would come. And he named this one. Name. Shem.

And what follows in Genesis 11 is the trail of descent from Shem all the way down to Abraham, who will be God's chosen means through whom he would bless all the scattered families of the earth. It would be from the line of Shem through Abraham that the Messiah would come and this messianic son of Shem would be given a Shem above every Shem. It will be at the shem of Jesus that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord. It will be those who call upon the Shem, the name, the Shem of the Lord who will be saved.

And all this happens through the lineage of the son of Noah named Shem. And now here in Genesis 12, God is speaking to Abraham, a descendant of Shem, and God says to Abraham, I will make your Shem great. Your name great. In other words, what the Tower of Babel builders were striving to achieve and attain for themselves, God ends up placing that into the hands of a man named Abraham who wasn't even looking for it, and he gives it to Abraham.

As a gift. And if you, if you try to make a name for yourself and exalt yourself, you're only going to get cast down. You not only won't succeed, you'll be cast down. If you humble yourself before God and give yourself to Him, He will exalt you to heights.

That you cannot even imagine. Those of us who know Jesus one day are gonna be before Christ in glory, fully clothed with immortality and glory, bodily and spiritually. In every way exuding glory and strength that we don't deserve. God will make our name, as it were great.

In Christ. This is the promise he's making to Abraham that he will make his name great and boy did God ever make Abraham's name great. This is why Abraham figures so prominently in redemption history. This is why the rest of the book of Genesis is all about Abraham and Abraham's son and grandsons and great grandsons, and about how God is faithful to all of them by way of keeping his promise to Abraham.

And God even says, I'm doing this because I made a promise to Abraham. This is why the rest of the Old Testament is about the nation that comes from Abraham. This is why the name Abraham shows up 64 times in the New Testament. This is why Jesus refers to Paradise as Abraham's bosom.

Guys, when you get Paradise renamed after you, you've arrived, I think. It's just a thought, but, just thinking out loud here, but, that is, that's amazing. Paradise. Abraham's bosom, Jesus calls it.

This is why the name Abraham shows up in the very first verse of the New Testament. Matthew chapter one, verse one. This is why it is that when the Messiah is introduced in the very first verse of the New Testament, he is introduced to the world in part. As the son of Abraham.

That is the highest honor that could ever be bestowed upon any person to have his name attached to the Messiah in this way, when Jehovah God on earth in the form of the God man. Introduces himself to us in the New Testament. He says, my name is Jesus Christ, I am the son of Abraham. God promised to make Abraham's name great and he made good on that promise in ways that I don't think Abraham could have even imagined when he first heard this promise.

This is a wonderful promise, but It gets even better. This brings us to the next promise of God to Abraham as he pushes forward his plan to bless all the peoples of the earth, and that is he promises that Abraham will be a blessing. He says, and so, you shall be a blessing. I'm doing all this stuff.

I'm making your name great. I'm blessing you so that you will be a blessing to others. There's an element of divine expectation and responsibility that God is imposing upon Abraham here. God wants Abraham to know, I'm not blessing you and doing all of this and making your name great as an end in itself.

I am blessing you with the intent that you would take that blessing and be a blessing to other people. And the same is true for us as Christians, God has blessed us in Christ so that we would be a blessing. Read Ephesians in Ephesians one, we're told that we have been blessed. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

And in the very next chapter, we're told that we've been saved for good works. Which God has foreordained that we should walk in them. What God is telling us is I blessed you so that you can be a blessing to others. And the same thing is happening here with Abraham.

There's another promise that God delivers here to Abraham that unfolds what that blessing ultimately will look like in the next two promises, but promise number 6 that God makes. To Abraham is that he promises to protect Abraham and all of his dealings. He promises to protect Abraham and all of his dealings with people. God says, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse.

Wow. On one level, this is God telling Abraham that I'm gonna look after you. He's telling Abraham that he has nothing to worry about because I've got your back, God says. I'm gonna go with you on your journeys.

I'm gonna bless anyone who blesses you, I'm gonna curse anyone who messes with you, they won't prosper and whatever they try to do against you, he's saying. So you can just trust me for your protection. This is an assuring promise that God is giving to Abraham here. But while that is indeed what God is saying here, that he will protect Abraham and go with him.

There's also another element in this promise. In this promise, God is not simply promising that he will react. He, God will react towards people in certain ways who may bless or curse Abraham. God is actually telling Abraham that he is making Abraham a decisive factor in how he, God decides the fates of people.

In all the world, you can put everybody into one of two categories, those who are blessed of God, and those who are cursed of God. Those are the only two categories. And in this passage, God is telling Abraham that how people interface with Abraham will be the deciding factor. About which of those two categories they end up in.

If anyone blesses Abraham and shows solidarity with him, and what Abraham represents and stands for, then God will put that person in the category of one who is blessed by God. If anyone demeans or disrespects Abraham and what he represents, God will put that person in the category of one cursed by God. God is literally telling Abraham, amongst other things, that he will bless some people and he will be cursing other people and the deciding factor about whether he will bless or curse them is how they interface with Abraham and what Abraham represents.

God is saying here, I will protect you.

I'll go with you. You have nothing to worry about. And I'm also gonna make you a decisive. Factor in human history.

You will be a central figure. A decisive factor in determining whether people are blessed or cursed by me. There's a 7th promise that God delivers to Abraham here. As he articulates his agenda to use Abraham as an instrument of his blessing to all the families of the earth, and that is he promises to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham.

God says, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed and here The plan of God is fully unfurled. Yes, it is true that some individuals are going to experience blessing, and some will experience cursing based on how they interface with Abraham, but from a broader point of view, God is saying it will come to pass, ultimately that every family or people group on earth will be blessed, and that blessing is going to come through you, Abraham. As one writer says, God is telling Abraham that he would be the channel of blessing for the whole world.

No one would find divine blessing apart from the blessing given through Abraham and through his seed.

What does God mean? When he makes this promise to Abraham, and you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. It'd be nice if we had divinely inspired commentary on this passage to unpack the meaning, telling us what God is thinking about specifically as he delivers this promise to Abraham. And fortunately, there is a divinely inspired commentary on this promise found in Galatians chapter 3, verse 8.

Paul says, speaking to the Galatian Christians. In Galatians 3:8, Paul says the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, all the nations will be blessed in you. So then Paul says, those who are of faith, are blessed with Abraham, the believer. Paul is telling us here that in Genesis 12:3, God is literally preaching the gospel to Abraham.

Paul is also telling us that when God spoke this promise to Abraham, he had in mind his intention to save Gentiles like you and like me, to forgive us of our sins, and to justify us and to make us righteous before God. And to bring us under God's favor by faith and not by works. Christ's death and Christ's resurrection and the going forth of the gospel to all the world over the last 2000 years has merely been the fulfillment of this promise of God. God was actually thinking about the salvation of we Gentiles when he spoke this promise to Abraham 3500 years ago.

God had many in this room in mind. He was thinking about us when he spoke this promise. To Abraham. So as we conclude this morning, I ask you just what really has moved me this week is the glimpse that we see here of the heart of God for the world.

And I would just ask you, does this heart of God revealed in this passage. Does this ambition of God expressed in these verses to bring blessing to every people group on earth, does this ambition govern your life? Does it govern the way that we operate as a church? Does God's heartbeat for the world shape the decisions that you and I make and how we invest our time and our resources and our life?

We need to know, guys, as we think about this, this vision that God expresses here. It governed Jesus' life. It's what he was all about. Jesus was all about fulfilling this vision that God expresses here, that it might come to pass that all the scattered families of the earth would be blessed.

That's precisely why in Revelation chapter 5, verse 9, We are told that Jesus died on the cross in order to purchase for God with His blood, people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And that's why the resurrected Jesus. speaks to us and says, go into all the world. And preach the gospel to every person, regardless of ethnicity.

This is why Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all the nations, not just some. This is why Jesus tells the early Christians in Acts one to be witnesses for him starting in Jerusalem, and then in all Judea, and then in Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. Why does Jesus push us To these global extremes. why?

One reason is because Jesus was a student of Genesis 12:1, 2 and 3. And Jesus knew the heart of his father. And he knew that his father's heartfelt plan. was to bring blessing.

To every people group on earth with salvation through Christ, by faith. In Genesis 12:1 through 3, God calls Abraham from his settling ways and calls upon him. He calls him into his God's ambition to bring salvation by faith to all the scattered families of the earth. And Jesus Christ.

He is speaking to us this morning and he calls us from our settlings into the same vision. It's so easy. To be small minded and to lose the big picture. It's easy to get caught up in the affairs of living from day to day that we lose the grand vision expressed by God in this passage today.

But here's the deal. God, this is the heart of God for the world. It's what Christ was all about and if we want to be like him, it's what we need to be all about as well. And so I don't, I don't preach this sermon to you this morning in the hopes that you might take some little nugget and find something somewhere to apply to your life.

I actually preached this sermon today in order to call upon you to apply your life to this text. Instead of applying the Bible to your life, apply your life to the Bible and embrace your role as a key player in the unfolding drama of redemption and helping to fulfill God's plan to bring the blessing of salvation to every people group. On earth, starting with those closest to you. And whom you interact with on a regular basis.

And as you do that, don't just think back to Genesis chapter 12 verse 1 through 3. Look ahead to the moment when all this is fulfilled and God's dream has been fulfilled, and you will be able to look upon an amazing scene recorded in Revelation 7:9. The apostle John looks into the future. And he sees the throne of God and he says, I saw a great multitude which no one could count from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, that's Jesus.

And they cry out with a loud voice saying, salvation to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. That is, the whole Bible is moving towards that fulfillment and we get to be a part of that master plan of God expressed. In the vision that he gives to Abraham in this passage. Just lastly, very quickly, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, I, I, I just close by asking you, how does the pattern in your life go?

Is the sin, judgment, grace pattern complete in your life? Yeah, you've sinned. The Bible tells us that, and yes, you have the verdict of God's judgment upon your life because of your sin, but is God's grace operative in your life through Jesus Christ? And I'm here to tell you that that grace is available.

That's why Jesus came and died on the cross and shed his blood so that you could have atonement for your sins and find forgiveness in Him and be clothed with his perfect righteousness. And if you've never repented of your sins and humbled yourself and, and cried out to him, admitting your sin, confessing your sin, And saying, Jesus, I want you to be my savior, I cannot save myself. If you've never done that, I urge you to look to Christ today and believe in him. And experience the blessing.

The blessing that we see exploding. In our passage today, let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for For your word, we, we stand before a vision of you and your heart that is dizzying, that is So much more awe inspiring than any Grand Canyon we could ever look at. And I'm just so moved, Lord, that you never threw in the towel on mankind.

But in this passage, we see your heart exploding with a firm resolve that you will continue to bless sinful man, and you will bring blessing to every people group scattered around the globe. And you call Abraham from his settling ways into this vision and you call us. To do the same Help us, Lord, as a people to be done with lesser things, and to be all about This vision. We ask you, Lord, not to just give us a heart for you, we, we actually ask you to put your heart in us so that our heart beats in tune with yours and your heartbeat is our heartbeat, and what you long for is what we long for, and what you're all about is what we're all about, and we learn in our passage today what you're all about and what Jesus was all about.

And Jesus died to fulfill this vision. And what are we willing to do? So thank you for the glory of all of this, Lord, you're a good God. Challenge us.

And, and move our hearts to become active participants in the unfolding drama of redemption in the lives of others. We thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you this morning. We ask Lord that you would receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of the vision we've had expressed in our passage today. We ask all of these things in the name of Jesus.

And all God's people said, Amen.