903 Biblical Characters - Abraham & Sarah Pt.1 (Gen.11.24 - 12.9
Exploring Biblical Characters • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 3 viewsNotes
Transcript
- The people of the world wanted to make a name for themselves
- Well they did – the name was Babel
- Babel has become not a name of fame, but a name of shame
- Babel is the word meaning confusion & it was God’s way of spreading mankind over the face of the earth & stopping them from furthering their mischievous plans of wanting to be their Creators equal
----------------------
- Babel or Babylon (same name) is seen as the notorious embodiment of man’s pride & his desire for self-determination & independence from God
- Isaiah captures this well as he describes the heart of the King of Babylon
13 “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 “Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit.
- Likewise the book of Revelation – Babylon becomes an Epitaph of evil
9 “And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning, 10 standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’
- Possibly referring here to the city of Rome
- But in the use of the name Babylon (Babel) we get the message that this is a God rejecting place in contrast with the New Jerusalem which is the home of those who receive Jesus Christ
- The call in Revelation is for the people to come out of her
- Which means, don’t be like her - don’t participate in her activities
4 I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; 5 for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
------------------
- This is why God spread Mankind over all the earth – to stop man’s desire for self-determination & independence from God – that is, the aspirations for equality with God
- God “babelled” the one language & made one another speak what seemed to each other as babel
-------------------
- There were 3 sons born to Noah – Shem, Ham & Japheth
- If you remember, Shem & Japheth took care & covered their father’s nakedness with the sheet
- Yet Ham saw him & didn’t turn away but went outside & seems to have mockingly told his brothers
-------------
- Noah was very unhappy about Ham’s behaviour & cursed his line through his son Canaan
- It appears to me that we are seeing a sort of “prophetic-curse”
- Canaan is the father of the Canaanites that settled in Palestine
- Note these names – esp. the Amorite
15 Canaan became the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth 16 and the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite 17 and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite 18 and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite; and afterward the families of the Canaanite were spread abroad.
--------------------
- I want you to recall what God said to Abraham
13 God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. 14 “But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. 16 “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
- God would judge the line of Canaan four generations from Abraham – not yet He says, because the sin of the Amorite (a Canaanite) is not yet complete
- In other words, they are not bad enough yet to warrant a judgement of destruction where they would be driven out of Palestine
- That time will come when Israel has her exodus from Egypt & enters the promised land
- The Canaanite sin will be of full measure & Israel receives the command of God to drive out the Canaanites – which will be just judgement because of their sin
1. Abram’s Call
1. Abram’s Call
- It seems that Mankind separated over the earth and, as far as we can tell, were not in a good place with God
- God promised that He would not destroy the world in spite of the fact that the intent of man’s heart was only evil from his youth
- The world would live on with their evil & not be judged by God
- Remember what Jesus said
44 “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
- They will know the blessing of life & God’s riches in spite of the evil they have in their heart even from their youth
-----------------
Q. Was there any hope?
Q. There were those who walked with God – where are they now?
Q. Are we destined to live with the evil that is in our hearts, even from our youth?
Q. Have you ever been in a position of hopelessness?
- People seemed to be in a hopeless situation with God
- There seems to be only one way mankind, in general, seems to be going
- It’s not going up in their relationship with God, but down
-------------------
- Yet there is hope– our God in spite of the corrupt heart of man, even from his youth, has a plan to make things right, better
- Do you remember right back there in the Garden of Eden, God said...
15 And 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.”
- The Proto-evangelium – the first Gospel as it has been called
- It gives hope that God has a plan whereby He will put an end to the God-rejecting serpent & his God-rejecting offspring
- We see this hope start to take traction with the call of Abram
- God has a plan & He is instigating this plan through a man named Abram
-----------------------
- Abram comes from a polytheistic society – one where they were worshipping many gods
- Yet for Abram & his family, there was only one God
- Abraham was living in the Ur of the Chaldeans when God called him
7 And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.”
- The beginning of Gen. 12 seems to suggest that God called Abram in Haran
- The point this seems to be making, however, is that Abram left everyone behind to do what God had told him to do
- Abram said goodbye to his inheritance as it remained in the family there in Haran
-----------------------
Q. What was this call & what was it to?
- The call was to believe/trust that what God said He would do for Abram, He would indeed do
- It required Abram to act in obedience
- God said that he would make Abram into a great nation – he would have offspring
- He would possess a land for the nation of people that comes from him
- God would make him famous – God would make the name of Abram/Abraham great – a big contrast with those of Babel who aspired to make themselves famous
- Ancient monarchs aspired to the very things that Abram is gifted
-----------------
- This gift to Abram means that he is to be a blessing
- God says to “Go leave your country” – he can’t “Be a blessing” if he doesn’t follow the first command to “go”
- Those who bless Abram, God will bless, those who curse him, God will curse – God is truly on Abram’s side
- The result of Abram’s going & him being a blessing is that ALL the families/clans of the earth will be blessed – even the sinister ones
2. Abram’s Faith & Obedience
2. Abram’s Faith & Obedience
8 By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
- Abram is the extreme exemplar of faith – of what it means to trust God
- As such God considered that response as righteousness
6 Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
----------------------
- At our homegroup this week, I mentioned this verse & what it means
- The status of righteousness defines the type of relationship you have with someone
- Some of the opposite types of relationships are classified differently in various parts of the Bible
- The fool is the one who says in his heart, “there is no God”
- The wicked are those who are not walking in God’s ways
49 “So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous,
- When you consider the word righteous or righteousness for that matter, you have the connotation of some moral quality
- This is certainly so when the opposite is the “wicked” which is the lack of moral quality
----------------------
- But here, God considers Abram’s response of belief to be the essence of an acceptable relationship with Him – to me it does make sense
- If you agree with God’s ways & His thoughts, you are already heading in the right direction
- For your relationship with God to be considered one of righteousness, then you can be sure that God is not holding anything against you
------------------
- You may wonder, though. How is Abram cleansed of his sin
- To the point that He enjoys a “righteousness status” with God?
- Because God decreed it so
- God considered his response of total trust as “righteousness”
- In other words, God holds nothing against the person who He considers to be in a right relationship with Himself
- The big picture in all this is the response of faith
- As James Dunn has said...
“to be “righteous” is to be not so much acceptable to God as accepted by God” — James Dunn
---------------------
- This faith was not a “once saved, always saved” type of faith that thinks it only has to believe once & can even swap over to unbelief & still claim the promise – good luck with that
- Faith is not of that type
- Most of us, if we were told by God to go, would want details, wouldn’t we, so we could prepare & organise – that’s how it would be for me (pls let me know terms & conditions)
- But we see that Abram never got specifics
-------------
- He is told to go to the land, God says, I will show you
- When he was tested regarding sacrificing Isaac, he is told to go to the mountain of which, God says, I will tell you
- Go first & the details will follow – Abram acts in obedience
- It was not a blind faith because he received a word from God
- It was not a gut hunch nor an echo in his ears
----------------------
- Victor Hamilton says…
“the promise to give the land to Abram (v. 7) follows the promise to show the land to Abram (v. 1), and “show” becomes “give” only when Abram makes his move.” -- Victor P. Hamilton1
“...[he is] going out to undertake a march without a map; on a progress without a program, but going with God" – G. Campbell Morgan2
----------------
- Now, most of you who know me, know that I have a problem with some aspects of the reformation
- Especially, those aspects that separate faith from doing, so much so that a person’s faith could be quite hidden from everyone
- Abram-Abraham is a good illustration of no separation between faith & doing
--------------------
- God tells him to leave 3 things & in this He starts from the least dearest to the most dearest (building up to a crescendo): He is to leave his country, his relatives, his father’s house (family)
- Abram would become a nomad living in a tent – he’s no grey-nomad living in these luxurious Campervans travelling around on sealed roads
- He leaves the conveniences of the city; the comforts of the same language; the friends he knew; the security of relatives around you & especially of your immediate family, to venture to a place he was later to be shown
-----------------------
- Later, Abram’s faith is tested when he is told to take the promised son, on whom rested all the promises, and kill him
- Again, this word to him rises to a crescendo
1 Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
- God tells him to do 3 things: take your son; your only son whom you love; then names him – Isaac
- It starts with your son, grows to only son whom you love, then specifies his name, Isaac
- What kind of request is this???
- You might say that Isaac was not Abraham’s only son, since Ishmael was born first to him
- Yet, Isaac was the only son of the promise
------------------------
- This promise is most important – because the blessing to the world was not going to come through Ishmael – only through Isaac
- The promise is found in the first verses of chp 12
2 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; 3 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.”
- This is a great promise & Abram accepts it by faith
- The Lord then seals this promise with a covenant
7 “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. 8 “I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
- But, of course, Abraham wants his firstborn to be the one that the promise comes through
- God says no, it will be through Isaac – a miracle at that, since Abraham is now pushing 100 yrs old & Sarah is 90 yrs old
- But this birth is not only a miracle, but a testimony to the fact that this promise is arranged not by man, but by God
----------------------
- God reverses the process – Ishmael was a natural birth through ordinary means & was the firstborn who, normally, possessed the right of blessing & prominence
- It is supernatural that a 90 yr old woman & a hundred year old man could achieve such a thing as a child
- You have Ishmael & then Isaac, but the promise comes through the 2nd born
18 And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before You!” 19 But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
- The covenant & the promise that would bless the world will come through Isaac
----------------------
- The same has happened with Isaac’s offspring – Jacob & Esau
- Esau is the firstborn & the one who, humanly speaking, would be the recipient of the promise – but this is not a “humanly speaking” promise
23 The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.”
- When Isaac was getting really old, he realised he had to confer the blessing on his oldest son to carry on the promise & blessing that was given to Abraham
- But God had other ideas & through Jacob’s deception (aided by his mother), received the blessing & commission instead
- Being old & of poor sight, Isaac thinks he is blessing his firstborn Esau but, in fact, it is Jacob he is blessing
28 Now may God give you of the dew of heaven, And of the fatness of the earth, And an abundance of grain and new wine; 29 May peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you; Be master of your brothers, And may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be those who curse you, And blessed be those who bless you.”
- Later Esau came in after making some tasty food for Isaac his father & asked for his blessing
31 Then he also made savory food, and brought it to his father; and he said to his father, “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.” 32 Isaac his father said to him, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.” 33 Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, “Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.”
- The promise of blessing to the world is not man’s invention or of man’s workings, but it is of God
- Jacob acted deceitfully & stole the blessing but it is God who is behind all human activity to bring about His will & purposes
- It was Judas who was foreordained to betray Christ & create the situation where Jesus would become a sacrifice for sin
- Judas did the evil, but God had a bigger plan, in the salvation of the world – that salvation being the fulfilment of this promise to Abraham – where all nations will be blessed
3. Abram’s Seed
3. Abram’s Seed
- Abraham was going to be the father of a great nation & we know that nation to be the Jewish nation – currently known as Israel - he is the father of the Jews
- Their mission should they chose to accept it was to bless the world
2 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; 3 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.”
Q. Were they a blessing to the world?
- It seems to me that Israel had a purpose in revealing God to the world
- They made His law & will known among the nations
- They were known as the sons of God
- God says to Pharaoh, “Let My son go that he may serve Me” (Israelites in Egypt)
-------------------
- But as we come to the NT, it is revealed that the ultimate recipient of the promises to Abraham is God’s Son, Jesus
- Wow, is it so that this plan of God had Jesus as its goal? Yes
- In Hosea, God says, “Out of Egypt, I called My Son” but they kept ignoring God’s call through His prophets & they kept going after the baals – false gods – Hos. 11:1-2
- Yet as we come to the NT, Matthew brings out a richer layer to that passage
15 He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”
--------------------
- One of the big perplexing problems is why the Jews did not accept Jesus
- If the Jews are the blessing to the world, why did they not receive Jesus? Has God failed? Has His word of promise failed?
- We know some did receive Jesus, but the vast majority did not
-----------------
- Paul answers this question in the book of Romans & you need to take special note of this
6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. 9 For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.”
- Paul is saying that this promise is of divine origin & man’s attempts to control or shape it are futile because God directs the promise
- It is a divine promise with a divinely intended target
- This promise is all about the offspring of the woman who bruises the head of the serpent with a fatal blow that renders him powerless
- The recipient of this promise & blessing is God’s Son Jesus Christ
----------------------
- Now it is those who are “in Christ” who also participate in this promise & blessings
- The only way to obtain entry into this blessing is to be “in” the recipient of this promise – you need to be “in Christ” to participate
- Here, Paul lays it out clearly in Gal. 3:27-29
27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
- This is a remarkable statement
Q. Do you realise that being in Christ makes you a descendant of Abraham? Not according to the flesh – if it were, you’d be Jewish – but, according to the divine promise that transcends ethnicity
--------------------
- I want to close with this one thought
Q. Is it right to contend that Israel, in the flesh, are today the people of God?
- From an OT perspective you can, but not now, that Christ has come
- Because now we know that Jesus is truly the recipient of God’s promise to Abraham & Christians, both Jew & Gentile are part of that promise if they are "in” Christ
- We need to hold fast to that truth, otherwise, we are missing God’s plan & purposes
-------------------
- Abraham may have been a significant figure to the Jews, but Jesus put Abraham in perspective as it relates to his true offspring
56 “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” 57 So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”
Jesus is saying the in that promise of God he saw Jesus - as the fulfilment of that promise - in stark contrast to the way the Jews are seeing Him
- If we maintain that the Jews are still the people of God, we have diminished Jesus in a significant way
- If they are the people of God now, then there would be no need to evangelise them – Paul wouldn’t have & neither would the groups that, even today, are trying to reach the Jews for Christ
-----------------------
- The fact is – the whole world can only be saved through Christ & can only become the children of God through Christ
- Only Christians are the true descendants of Abraham because we are in Christ, the true recipient of God’s promise to Abraham
“And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed”
- Jesus is the fulfilment whereby all the families of the earth will be blessed
1 Victor P. Hamilton, Genesis, 371.
2. Campbell Morgan, The Triumphs of Faith (London: Pickering and Inglis Ltd., 19..) 55.
David McAllan, Abraham’s Faith - Belief, Obedience or Both,.