Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning everyone…Thank you all for choosing to worship with us this morning.

This is not a responsibility I take lightly and I am just excited and honored that you all have chosen to partner with me as we see what God has for us moving forward.

Right now all of our kids get to go and hang out with their amazing teachers who will teach them Scriptures in a way that makes sense to them.

Now, just like i have shared with you all that you have to read the Bible for yourself…You need to be checking in your your kids about what they are learning.

We are here to partner with you as parents, and so we want to encourage you to talk to your kids about what they are learning, and even take that throughout the week and continue to talk to them about Scripture…Listen, it’s your job as parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, friend, whatever…It is your responsibility to normalize talking about Scripture, and not just when people are “in trouble”, right…I also want to welcome those of you that are online who have chosen to join us in worship this morning.

Whether you are here live with us, or joining us later on one of the podcast platforms, we are grateful that you have chosen to be a part of our extended spiritual family today.

Now, I have to tell you all something…I am SOOOOOO excited about what we are about to move into.

We have been growing as a church and I truly believe that God has some great things in store for us this year.

I can’t tell you about everything yet, mostly because I have no idea…but I am so confident in God’s desire to use this church in this region that I know some pretty cool things are gonna be happening this year.

You know, its pretty cool because there are a couple of things that God has put in my mind over the years, but I have had no clue in how to accomplish them, but like I just know that God is big enough to make them happen.

Then there’s other stuff that God just blindsides me with, ya know…have you ever felt that way?

Like, you are living your life and you just get hit with a “WOW God”, what did you just do!

Sometimes its an amazing blessing, other times maybe its a wake up call to the way you are living your life...

I know Im not the only one that has experienced this type of thing.

Like, God calls you to something and sometimes you are just floored.

Honestly, I was pretty floored 5.5 years ago when I finally relented to God telling me that he wanted me to lead a church and then 4.5 years ago when LRBC asked me to move to Illinois.

Here’s the thing to…I know this to be true, God has something amazing in store for us here at LRBC.

I don’t know all of the answers, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is going to be some really cool things…Things that will require all of us to step up and follow God’s direction and God’s leadership, and might even be a bit uncomfortable from time to time

Well, this morning we are starting a brand new series called Abram and in this series we are going to take a journey with a guy who had some pretty amazing things laid out for him.

A guy that God led to some amazing things and God actually told him ahead of time what he was going to do.

Well, we are going to look at how sometimes those things were done in an amazing way, and other times Abram had to have a little of a wake up call.

So, this morning join me as we learn a little more about

Abram

The first thing we really need to do is meet Abram.

Now, Abram will eventually have his name changed to Abraham, but for now, he is known as Abram.

We see that Abram came on the scene back in Ch.11, so lets take a quick look at that passage, so that we can reconnect all the way back from Noah’s Ark.

You see, Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

The sone we are going to focus in on is Shem, becuase Shem was the father of the people called the “Semites”, which actually lead down to Abram.

After we leaver the Tower of Babel where God confused the language of all the people, we are able to see that there is a family line that brings us a man named Terah, who became the father of Abram.

Let’s just take a quick look at this genealogy.

Genesis 11:27–32 (ESV)

Now these are the generations of Terah.

Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah.

Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.

The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

Now, all of that was just to give us a little background and remind us of where we have been.

So, the bottom line is that we have Terah, who is a descendant of Shem, who is Noah’s son.

Now, Terah is the father of Abram, the grandfather of Lot, who is Abram’s nephew.

So....are we all together now…Now we know who Abram actually is and how he ties into every single story of Genesis so far…But, what we are going to see in ch.12 is pretty awesome as Abram has an encounter with God, and God makes a promise to Abram…Lets take a look at...

God’s Promise

Now, in order to see God’s promise we need to get moving on ch. 12, so open your Bible’s with me to

Genesis 12:1–9 (ESV)

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, 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 seventy-five 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.

When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at 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.

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.

And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

OK, so there are some pretty important pieces of God’s promise that I want us to briefly look at this morning.

First there is a promise of land.

In the very first verse God tells Abram to leave his land and go to the land that God will show him.

Through this statement God is telling Abram that there will be a land that he will settle on.

The land he is leaving is the land of his fathers, but the land he will go to is the land that God gives to him.

Second there is a promise of descendants.

In this promise God is telling Abram that his family will grow into a nation...not just a large family, a nation.

Ok, so this particular promise is a bit hard to hear for Abram.

You see, Abram could acquire land, however, he is 75 and his wife Sarai has not had any children yet.

There is no way that Abram can provide for himself the children that it will take to become a nation…Only God can do that.

This is a promise that will truly require him to rely on God.

In addition to the promise of these descendants, God has promised to make his name great.

What is really interesting is that this is a direct reversal of the Tower of Babel.

If you remember when the people gathered together to build this tower, they said that they did this so that they could make their name great.

However, now that God is speaking with Abram and making this promise to Abram, God says, I will make your name great.

I find that really interesting... Third there is a promise of blessing.

Through these passages we see both that God will bless Abram, and not only that, but God will bless those who bless Abram, as well as curse those who curse him.

Now, this blessing is really interesting, because there are really a couple of parts of this blessing promise.

First of all God is saying that he will literally bless Abram, however, God is also saying that through Abram, all nations of the world would be blessed.

We see that later when the Apostle Paul writes a letter to a church in a place called Galatia.

Take a look at

Galatians 3:8 (ESV)

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

You see, Paul is attributing this promise that God made to Abram as a promise that God made to the world that there would be a day that Jesus would come and all nations would experience the blessing of salvation through the birth, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

Now, while parts of these promises to Abram, and others will be conditional to their obedience…later God will guarantee these promises by making a covenant with Abram that will last to the very end when Jesus returns, and this promise of land, seed, and blessing will be finally realized as complete.

So from here we see that Abram obeys.

I mean he picks up and he brings his wife, and his nephew comes with him.

Along the way God reveals to Abram that his offspring will be given a specific piece of land, but that is only a passthrough for Abram.

Abram continues his journey in stages, to the Negev.

Now, you should know the Negev, simply means south…Abram is traveling south right now.

So if we had a map, we would see that Abram has left the place of his family, which would be southern Turkey area, and is traveling down through Israel, the place given by God to his descendants, towards Egypt…and this is where things take a bit of a turn for Abram.

Let’s take a look at

Abram’s Plan

Now, God has made a promise to Abram, however, to Abram that didn’t seem like enough.

I mean, maybe Abram is still trying to figure out what it means to trust God, although he is in his upper 70’s now you would think he would have learned some things by now.

So, let’s take a look at what Abram does when Abram gets a little nervous…or really downright scared…maybe this will feel a little familiar to some of you.

Genesis 12:10–20 (ESV)

Now there was a famine in the land.

So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’

Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.