God's Faithfulness to a Family

God’s people are called to faithfully worship Him alone to receive spiritual blessing.

People

Abram

Abram shows throughout these passages that He trusts God.

-Why is it important that Abram believes “by faith”. Because his receiving of the promises that God gives is not based on his ability to take it for himself but that he believes God will give it to him outside of his actions.

-Abram can’t do anything to enter into this promise, all He can do is trust in the Lord to give it to Him.

Melchizedek

Abram meets him after his defeat of the kings

He is “king of Salem”. “Salem” is “Jerusalem”. Salem means peace. Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”

This king is also a “priest” of the “God most high”. Is this the same God that Abram worships? Yes.

What does he offer Abram? Bread and Wine. Where have you heard that before?

Psalm 110 “A psalm of David. This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion. Rule over your surrounding enemies. Your people will volunteer on your day of battle. In holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn, the dew of your youth belongs to you. The Lord has sworn an oath and will not take it back: “You are a priest forever according to the pattern of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his anger. He will judge the nations, heaping up corpses; he will crush leaders over the entire world. He will drink from the brook by the road; therefore, he will lift up his head.”

Hebrews 5:1–10 “For every high priest taken from among men is appointed in matters pertaining to God for the people, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he is also clothed with weakness. Because of this, he must make an offering for his own sins as well as for the people. No one takes this honor on himself; instead, a person is called by God, just as Aaron was. In the same way, Christ did not exalt himself to become a high priest, but God who said to him, You are my Son; today I have become your Father, also says in another place, You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered. After he was perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who…”

Hebrews 7:1–4 “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, met Abraham and blessed him as he returned from defeating the kings, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, his name means king of righteousness, then also, king of Salem, meaning king of peace. Without father, mother, or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. Now consider how great this man was: even Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the plunder to him.”

Hebrews 7:22–26 “Because of this oath, Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now many have become Levitical priests, since they are prevented by death from remaining in office. But because he remains forever, he holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them. For this is the kind of high priest we need: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.”

This shows us that he is a type of christ.

King of Sodom

Ruled over a wicked city.

Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael

Sarai is old, free, and barren

-She blames God for her being barren for 10 years. “yet it would be another 15 years till she would give birth after this”.

-Sarai then blames God and Abram for the contempt she feels towards Hagar, she feels embarrassment. She never claims Ishmael as her son either.

-As a result of her choice she acts prideful, she blames others for her own choices, and he shows a hatred for justice

Hagar is a young slave women, but fertile

-Hagar was most likely given to Abram as a slave from the Pharoah from Egypt because of Abram’s sin of lying to him!

-Their struggle against each other will anticipate the Egyptian affliction. It says Sarai treated Hagar “harshly”. This will be used in Exodus about the people of Israel in Egypt.

-But God would bless her son as the offspring of Abram, God gives promises to her but gives her the command to obey Abram and remain with him.

-It would be Ishmaelites that will send Joseph into slavery in Egypt

-Ishmael means “God hears my affliction”

The actions Abram takes are the same as Adam’s in the Garden. He listens to his wife, she “took” Hagar and “gave” her to her husband.

-And what happens afterwards? Her desire was for her husband after she had allowed him to lay with Hagar.

Place

God confirms to Abram that the land will be a “permanent possession” but that he would have to wait 400 years.

Promise

In rejecting the offer from the King of Sodom and instead giving an offering to the Lord through Melchizedek, Abram showed he trusted the Lord to give him blessing rather than having to take it himself.

How do we know if a blessing is from God or not?

-What is the motive of the one offering us blessing?

-What reputation will receive from accepting this blessing?

-Who will get glory from this blessing?

We should ask the question “can we explain this thing we have received as only from God or as something we have received on our own?”

-Sometimes we we will be offered things that feel like our “right” to take. That doesn’t mean we should take it.

-The danger wasn’t in Abram winning the battle but in the subtle benefits afterwards that he could have sought to receive. To rob God of the credit and to give it to ourselves.

-Notice that in chapter 15 God says that HE will give Abram his reward

Faith means we are ready “to accept what God promises”.

-Righteous means “conforming to God’s standard

-Chapter 15 makes us ask the question. “Can we trust?” And also “Can God actually be trusted?”

-This question will be answered throughout the book of Genesis and throughout the whole Bible. Genesis ends with them living in Egypt where the people have to ask the question “will God bring them out like He said He would”.

Galatians 3:1–6 CSB

You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing—if in fact it was for nothing? So then, does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law? Or is it by believing what you heard—just like Abraham who believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness?

Romans 4:9–25 CSB

Is this blessing only for the circumcised, then? Or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say, Faith was credited to Abraham for righteousness. In what way, then, was it credited—while he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? It was not while he was circumcised, but uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while still uncircumcised. This was to make him the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, so that righteousness may be credited to them also. And he became the father of the circumcised, who are not only circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had while he was still uncircumcised. For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise nullified, because the law produces wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. This is why the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, to guarantee it to all the descendants—not only to the one who is of the law but also to the one who is of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all. As it is written: I have made you the father of many nations— in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do. Therefore, it was credited to him for righteousness. Now it was credited to him was not written for Abraham alone, but also for us. It will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

God’s promise to us isn’t based on us fulfilling the law but based on God’s promise. Only God goes through the covenant sacrifice

-We are called to put our trust in God and our hope in His promises

-The law is just a mirror of our hearts, do we trust God or not?

We can ask the same question that Abram does, “how do I know your promises will come true?” We have the same sign that Abram does. A sacrifice. But not of an animal but of God’s own Son.

-Darkness descendent during Jesus death just like in this covenant ceremony.

Also notice that God tells Abram that his descendents will be enslaved for 400 years, but that they “will go out with many possessions.” And God will lead them out with “smoke and fire”

Why circumcision?

Application

Faith means we trust God when doubts creep in

-Abram asks a question in v. 8. “how can I know that I will possess it?” God’s answer is the covenant He makes with Abram. God gives assurance through our doubts. Our assurance is in Jesus.

God gives Abram many signs of confidence. His promises, the sign of circumcision that he gives.

-Circumcision was an act of saying you are removing your old ways and holding yourself to a new covenant.

Faith means we wait even when the reward seems far away

Abram gets impatient in v. 3 because God had not given Him an offspring yet. He has also not “received” the land God has promised Him yet, in fact God says it will be 400 years till it is fully received.

But having faith means we wait and trust that God will do what He says.

Why was God waiting to give the promise to Abram? ”the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” - V. 16

-God will bring His people back to deal with the sin of the nations in Canaan. It is God’s patience towards these nations, and that God brings judgment against those who deserve it and God is willing to wait till it is necessary. God will not tolerate wickedness forever.

Sarai was also impatient, and in attempting her own means of receiving the promise complications were created. It started a cause and effect of many consequences that started with Abram when he lied in Egypt!

Hagar went back to the challenging situation with Abram and Sarai because she trusted God’s promise to her.

Often in our own anxieties we make plans and we try to come up with solutions to our problems rather than going to God and asking Him for His help.

-Have you ever told someone you can do something even though you knew you had a conflict in your schedule?

-Maybe you didn’t study for a test and you find yourself trying to cheat because you were doing something else while you should have been studying

Faith means we trust God at His Word.

-In v. 1 and v. 4 God says “The Word of the Lord came to Him”. This is the only time in Genesis that this phrase is used, although it is found many other times in the OT when God is giving a prophecy to a prophet.

-When God speaks we should listen, and when God speaks we can believe what He says.

Often we can seek to take God at our own Word rather than God’s Word. That is what happens in Chapter 16 when they decide to have a child not through Sarah but through Hagar. We trust God’s Word over our own Word.

-In the Garden, the snake convinces Eve to not trust God at His Word, but to twist His Word.

God tells Abraham to “walk before me and be blameless”

-This means that Abraham places all his trust and guidance to God.

-Like a shepherd that is behind his sheep guiding them.