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INTRODUCTION
We began our Hope of the Ages Advent series last week and we continue with it today.
We are looking at Old Testament passages and seeing how the birth of Christ has fulfilled them.
Last week, we saw how Jesus is Isaiah’s Great Light prophesied about 700 years before Jesus was even born.
This morning we go back even further and look at how Jesus is Abraham’s Offspring in Genesis 12.
And in that passage, we will learn some important lessons about faith for this season of Advent.
CONTEXT
Before I read it, let me give us a little background on the first book of the Bible.
The book begins with Moses’ record of creation—God creating all things out of nothing through the power of His Son.
Everything He made is good
Then we get to the creation of man and woman and God says it is very good
He creates Adam and Eve in His image and designs them to worship Him and glorify Him and receive joy from that
But in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin against God.
He gave them every tree in the Garden to eat from, but told them they would die if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
When they eat of this tree, they are separated from God and their relationship with Him is broken
He lets them live for many years so that His grace would abound, but their lives will now end in death because of sin
And the next seven chapters of Genesis are really the outworking of sin entering the world.
You see depravity on full display.
Adam’s son, Cain, murders his brother Abel out of jealousy in Genesis 4...
We are reminded of the death that is in the world because of sin in Genesis 5 because as we read through the list of Adam’s descendants, they all died, with the exception of Enoch.
Sin has brought death and death is rampant
Of course, we see it in chapters 6-9 in God’s global judgment of the flood because of the depravity in the earth
We see in the generations of Noah in chapter 10, where we are once again reminded that death is taking the life of every person who walks on the earth
And we see it in chapter 11, when the whole earth has one language and people migrate and attempt to build a tower for themselves to make their own name great
They attempt to steal God’s glory
And God scatters the nations in judgment
So after seeing how sin has wreaked havoc throughout God’s glorious creation, the reader is left longing for a way to fix it.
How will God reverse the curse of sin and death?
How will God recover His worship from the mouths of humanity, who are deeply entangled in horrible sin?
This is where Terah’s family enters the picture and his son Abram is called by God to a life of faith that would change the eternal story line of existence.
READ Genesis 12:1-3
FAITH IS A RESPONSE TO GOD’S CALL (v. 1)
As we trek through this text today, I want to give us three teaching points.
We will be seeing how Christ is the fulfillment of Genesis 12:1-3, but as we go along, there is great application to be made about faith.
So we begin with Teaching Point #1: Faith is a Response to God’s Call (v. 1).
In verse 1, we see that 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.”
Where exactly is Abram’s country?
Who are his people?
Where does he come from?
Well here is what we get at the end of chapter 11:
Abram’s family came from Ur, which is an ancient city 186 miles southeast of modern-day Baghdad.
It was a peaceful and prosperous city located on the Euphrates River.
At the center of the city, there was a ziggurat built for the worship of the moon god Nanna
What this tells us is that Abram came from idolaters.
He came from a people who bowed down to a false god.
In fact, Nanna is one of the oldest false gods of Mesopotamia.
He was seen as the creator of the moon and time and as wise and kind.
And Abram worshipped him.
It is weird to think about it.
When we think of Abraham, we think of the father of the faith.
The patriarch of patriarchs.
God’s man of belief who becomes this prototype for faith throughout the Scriptures.
We don’t think of him bowing down to anyone or anything but Yahweh, but that is what is happening here.
Abram is an idolater from Ur.
So when 12:1 says, “Now the Lord said to Abram…,” what we have is God speaking in His sovereign grace.
The One who governs all things chose that at this moment in time, He would speak to Abram.
Abram as done nothing to deserve hearing God’s voice.
He has no merit to offer God.
We just established that he is an idolater
But God sovereignly and lovingly chose to call Abram out of his idolatry.
Out of his Nanna-worshipping world.
He plucked him.
And He is calling Him to something.
To leave his country.
To leave his kindred.
To leave his father’s house.
In this gracious and sovereign call, God is calling Abraham to three things:
Leave his land
Leave his family
Leave his inheritance—that is likely what is meant by “Father’s house.”
That is a lot to leave.
It is a lot to give up.
ILLUSTRATION: Imagine right now that God called you out of nowhere and said, “I want you to leave Yorktown, VA.
Outside of your immediate family, I want you to leave everyone behind.
And I want you to give up your 401k.”
Might you have some questions?
See—it is really easy to read this and say, “Yeah, yeah—Abram got called and he went,” but if you think about your own life, this was more than difficult for Abram.
It was one of the harder things God calls anyone to in the Scriptures.
If Abram was going to listen, he would not just be giving up those physical things, he would also be giving up his faith that he had practiced his whole life.
The worship of gods was attached to households.
The worship of Nanna was all that Abram knew.
The expectation would be that any future generations of Terah’s house would worship Nanna as well.
For Abram to leave his father’s household was to leave his father’s god.
He would be leaving Nanna behind.
But notice that everything God is calling Abram to, He will give back to him.
Go from your country (v.
1)…to the land that I will show you (v. 1)
Leave your family (v.
1)…I will make of you a great nation (v. 2)
Leave your inheritance (Father’s house)…But receive the role of being a blessing to all of the families of the earth
And implied in all of that is, “Leave Nanna…worship Yahweh!”
The rest of Genesis moves from being about the history of the created world to being about the history of Abraham’s family.
If that is the case, then we know Abram answered this call.
He believed God.
He followed God.
And He trust in God to come through on His promises.
APPLICATION OF TEACHING POINT #1
I think that every Christian experiences something of what Abram is experiencing here on a couple of levels.
First of all, we experience it in our initial calling to salvation.
The Gospel call to believe.
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