The Gospel in Genesis: God’s Blessed Calling

Introduction

We have now completed the first part of Genesis, the primeval history of humanity.

Now, as we come off the Tower of Babel, we see that the earth is now divided into many families and nations, and now Scripture will be highlighting and focusing on just one of those many families that have come out of the Tower of Babel.

As we have already noted, there is a focus on the descendants of Shem, and now we are going to focus even more on one of those descendants, the family and son of Terah, the man named Abram.

Read Genesis 11:27-12:9

Genesis 11:27–12:9 (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 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.

Why is Abram Important to Us?

What is Abram’s, AKA Abraham’s significance for us? If we are not descended from him, why should we care about his story?

Scripture Places Importance in Abraham

We have spent the last 11 chapters on the first couple thousand years of human history.

Now Scripture is going to spend the next 14 chapters on this one man and his family. The fact that Scripture slows down to focus on Abraham shows us the importance God places on the life of this man.

The rest of the Old Testament will even focus on the descendants of this one man. The rest of the 39 books will deal with the physical family of this man whom we know as Abraham.

Jesus Comes From Abraham

But why should Scripture spend so much time on this man and his family?

Because from Genesis 3, we have been waiting for God to fulfill His promise to bring the seed of the woman to crush the head of the snake that led us into rebellion and death.

God is going to use the family of this man named Abram and his wife Sarai to fulfill the promise of the seed. While he is not the seed himself, it will be through his family that God will bring fulfillment to this promise.

The seed, who is Jesus, will come from Abraham’s line and is the fulfillment of all God’s promises to Abraham and to his descendants.

So, knowing his story should be very important for anyone who wants to know how God has chosen to save humanity from sin.

Anyone in Christ finds their heritage in Abraham

And last, because Jesus is the promised seed who has come from Abraham’s line, all those who place their faith in Christ share in the family heritage of Abraham.

Galatians 3:29 (ESV)

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

While God has chosen the line of Abraham, the Jewish line to bring the promise of salvation to the world, all those in Christ get to become part of Abraham’s offspring and are partakers of this promise.

So Abraham’s story, the story of Israel, has now become our story because of Christ. We ought to care about the story of Israel, because as Paul says in Romans 11, we as Gentiles have been grafted into the family of Israel.

We should honor what God has done through Abraham and Israel and seek to pray for their salvation knowing that we are in Christ because of what God has done through them. Abraham’s story is our story too.

God Always Initiates the Call

God initiates a relationship through His Word, not our righteousness

The first thing we need to see in this account is that God is initiating the relationship with Abram, not Abram initiating a relationship with God by seeking Him out.

A Family of Pagan Moon Worshipers

Terah and his children were part of a pagan cult that worshipped the moon.

Of course, we can ask, where do we get this? There’s nothing here that suggests this.

First, Joshua after the time of Moses makes mention of Abraham’s origins.

Joshua 24:2 (ESV)

And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

Before God called Abram, he was content in serving other false gods.

But we can also look at the names of some of these individuals.

Terah’s name is related to the word yareah “moon” and yerah, “lunar month.”

Sarai is the equivalent to the Akkadian sarratu meaning “queen” and was the name of the wife of the moon god Sin.

Milcah is the same as the goddess Malkatu, a title of Ishtar, daughter of the moon god.

The city of Ur - was the leading city of lunar religion.

The city was dominated by a massive, three staged ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu during the beginning of the second millenium B.C. The top level of this tower would have a silver one-roomed shrine to Nanna, the moon-god. Abram would have worshiped atop this tower offering his obedience and sacrifice to this moon god.

No One Seeks for God

Abram and his family were not searching for God because they already had their gods that they served.

As Paul quoted the Psalmist,

Romans 3:10–12 (ESV)

as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

None of us are righteous and deserving of God’s love and grace.

In fact, that’s why its called “grace” is because any kindness God shows is completely undeserved.

And yet God loves to show undeserved grace to people.

Romans 5:8 (ESV)

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God initiated His relationship with Abram, just like He initiates His relationship with all of us.

God First Spoke to Abram

So, how did God initiate this relationship?

By speaking to him.

Genesis 12:1 (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.

It is God’s Word that came to Abram that opened the eyes of Abram’s heart and led him to faith.

Again, this is true for all of us who are in Christ. If we have been saved by Christ, it is because God’s Word first came to us and opened up our hearts.

How do we know God loves us and sent His Son for us? His Word.

How do we know that Christ died for our sin? His Word.

How do we know that we are to respond in faith? His Word.

Romans 10:17 (ESV)

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

It is God’s Word that ignites faith in our hearts.

God Called to Us Before We Deserved It

Here’s the thing for us, just like Abram could not initiate a relationship with God, so no matter what we do, we cannot initiate a relationship with God on our own merits. No matter how hard we search, our sinful hearts never search in the right areas.

We Cannot Make Ourselves Clean Enough to Come to God

Sometimes we think, if we can just clean up our acts a bit then maybe God will accept us. Some people refuse to come to church because they feel they need to get things right with God first as if they need to take the first step towards God before He will even acknowledge them.

But God has already taken the first step towards us by sending His Word and by sending His Son. You cannot do anything to earn the love of God because God already loves you with an infinite love.

What we need is simply to hear the Word that God has spoken. Where do we hear His Word? In Scripture.

Whether it is a friend sharing the truth of God’s Word with you, a passage of Scripture that has been shared online, a preacher or teacher expounding God’s Word, or you simply being led to open God’s Word yourself, God is using Scripture to call to you and to initiate that relationship!

Do not harden your heart to the ways God is sharing His Word with you and seeking to grab your attention.

We are responsible to respond to God in faith that leads to obedience

Now, just because God initiates the relationship does not mean there is not anything for us to do.

While we do not earn God’s love and grace, we are called to respond to God’s Word by faith.

We see Abram’s faith beginning in verse 4 as Abram followed in obedience to God’s Word. God told Abram to go, to leave his father’s household and to go to a new land.

This would have been a dangerous journey and a leaving behind everything he knew and everything that gave him security.

It also meant leaving behind his sinful lifestyle to take on a new life of faith and worship of the Lord God Yahweh.

But not everyone responded in faith.

While this call seems to have come after they left Ur and came to Haran, the call actually came before they left Ur in chapter 11.

Genesis 15:7 (ESV)

And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

Nehemiah 9:7 (ESV)

You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham.

Even Stephen, the first martyr, spoke of how God called Abram from the land of Ur in Acts 7:2-4

Acts 7:2–4 (ESV)

And Stephen said:

“Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’ Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.

So what happened? If God called Abram in the land of Ur, it might explain why Terah also left Ur along with Abram, Sarai, and Lot. Abram might have passed God’s Word on to the rest of the family so they started out together.

But then they stopped in Haran. Did Terah give up? It is possible to receive God’s Word and not follow through in faith.

So we have one response of faith and obedience and one response of quitting too soon.

While Abram responded in faith by going all the way to the land God had called him, Terah failed to respond in following God when they got to Haran, which is another center of moon worship. Terah was unwilling to leave the life he had always known.

God’s Word is required to produce faith in our hearts, but it is also possible to hear God’s Word and to fail to respond in faith.

It is possible to come week after week and hear God’s Word preached and fail to respond in faith.

It is possible to read God’s Word day after day and fail to respond in faith.

It is possible to know and memorize God’s Word and fail to respond in faith.

God initiates the call, but we are responsible for responding to the call. And we all respond one way or another. We either respond by trusting what God has said, or we harden our hearts to His Word and reject what He has spoken to us.

God Calls One so He Can Bless Others

God called Abram to bless him. In fact, look at how God blesses Abram.

He is going to make him a great nation (remember his wife Sarai, who is barren?) Quite a promise.

But God is also going to give him a great name. What the people at Babel tried to earn for themselves is what God is freely giving to Abram as he receives it by faith.

God’s call should never terminate on ourselves

But these promises are not simply for Abram’s sake or even for his descendants’ sake.

This promise is to bless Abram so through Abram God would bless all the families of the earth.

Abram’s name was made great and he was made a great nation because of who came from his line.

Again, as we have already talked about, Jesus is the fulfillment of this promise. God is giving Abram the promise of the gospel and the good news.

Through Abram, God is bringing salvation.

God’s call is meant to be a blessing and an invitation to others

But this blessing is not simply meant for Abram and his family’s sake. God was not simply blessing Abram to keep salvation within his own family and line.

God was bringing Jesus through Abram to bless Abram and so that blessing would go forth from Abram and bless all the families of the earth.

In the same way, if we are here this morning having received the salvation of God in Christ, it is not a gift that is meant to be kept with ourselves. It is a blessing that is meant to flow through us and to be passed on to others.

We are blessed to be able to share the good news with others.

If God’s Word is used to bring about faith, God wants to use His people to share His Word to those around us.

Romans 10:11–17 ESV

For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Do not keep the blessing God has given you to yourself. The best way to miss out on that blessing is by not sharing what we have!