1 Genesis 12: preaching/Teaching

The Blessings of God

God wants to bless your life. His plan for you is bigger than you have ever imagined or ever could imagine.

I was reminded of this during our Men’s Bible study this week.

Jeremiah 29:11 NASB95

‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

God wants to bless more than we ever know.

But this is not what I believed or experienced growing up.

There is the image in my head of going to church. I thought I had to be in church to make God happy, I was looking at my watch my whole time. The last ting that was on my head was that God wanted to bless me. me and my brother were messing around, hitting each other during the service. We did our time for the next couple of weeks.

My thought about God was not that he wanted to bless me but that I had to earn my favor from him. That he was like this cop who was never going to be happy with me.

Then I became a Christian and I experience first hand what Jesus said in John 10:10 ““The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Do you believe that God wants to bless you?

What is keeping your from living and experiencing the blessings of God on a daily basis?

This God that we have been reading about in the Bible wants to bless us even when we are not deserving of his blessing.

Today I want us to help us unlock the blessings of God in our life.

The first KEY to unlocking God’s blessing is we must:

1. Read the invitation (1).

From the beginning of the Bible God has wanted to bless us: Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.””

But man has done a great job.

Genesis 12:1 NASB95

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;

What do we know about this invitation.

1. God initiates the invitation.

Have we not seen this theme throughout all of scripture.

We respond to God because he has first reached out to us.

Genesis 1-God initiated creation. Adam and Even to be in relationship with him and to be fruitful and multiply and be his image bearers

Genesis 2-God initiated the rules to live, do whatever you want except do not eat fro this tree.

Genesis 4-After Adam and Eve sinned God initiated to them and clothed mankind.

In the New Testament we see this theme over and but I love Romans five.

In Romans 5: the Bible tells us that while we were still sinner Jesus died for us, as a matter of fact it gets more serious when we were enemies with God he died for us.

But somehow someway we treat God like he is on our terms.

God gives Abraham an invitation but I do not know if this is the kind of invitation someone would want by just looking at the beginning.

What do we know about this invitation.

2. God is clear on the invitation.

On any good birthday invitation we are going to know the time, the date, the location, the theme about the party.

God initiates with Abram and asks something big for him:

Leave your household

Leave your relatives

Leave your father’s household

Go to where I will show you.

It goes from hard to unthinkable. Leave your country ending in leaving your .

Faithlife Study Bible Chapter 12

The list increases in intimacy and importance.

This is a good invitation, but it is a hard one as well.

He is not safe, he is good.

Application:

It is not enough to have an invitation on your table phone. The way you really experience the event is by saying yes to it. In the same way we have to respond to God’s invitation.

Inviting you into Salvation.

John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Inviting you into his mission

Matthew 4:19 “And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.””

The next KEY to unlocking God’s blessing is we must:

2. see that they are eternally satisfying (2-3).

Say with me Abrahaic Covenant. Big word but one of the most important verses in the Bible.

These next verses may are some of the most important verse in the Bible. Highlight these verses and memorize them.

We are about to see a switch up to this point. Before this God was primarily

Genesis 12:2–3 NASB95

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; 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.”

7 Elements of this promise

1. I will make you a great nation.

Now think of this Abraham is an old man at this time. Too old for child bearing and God promises to make him a great nation.

Can you picture you are Abraham and God promises you this.

2. I will bless you-

God wants to bless us more than we will ever know. God wants to be for us. God wants to bless the socks off of you.

My wife loves to bless people through gifts. When we were first dating I had like 4 shirts and a pair of pink khakis. The reason they were pink is because I washed them with a red shirt but I still wore them. She almost denied me a date because my dressing was so bad. So she took me to TJ Max when we were visiting Houston, we lived in Arkansas at the time. I remember it like it was yesterday we spend 246 dollars on a new wardrobe for me. I almost had a heart attack.

Now that we are married, trust me I have plenty of clothes, because she wants to blessed me with clothes.

God is not trying to bless us with clothes, but he is trying to bless us especially with his presence. The fact that we can know and were created to know him intimately.

The Bible also tells us that he blesses us through forgiveness.

Romans 4:7-8 ““Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, And whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.””

He offers us forgiveness.

3. I will make your name great

Last week we saw a group of people who were trying to make their name great. They were living for their own glory instead of the glory of God.

God was going to make Abraham’s name great.

Are your trying to make your own name great or do want God to make it great?

4. You shall be a blessing-

God’s blessing was not supposed to stop with you.

Many people have the Christian Cold.

Fake sneeze-

Its all about me.

We were blessed to be a blessing and that is no less true today.

5. I will bless those who bless you.

These next two elements just remind us that God has our back. Would it not be awesome.

Would you not want to be friends with Abraham.

6. I will curse those who curse you

Notice as good as it is to be a friend of Abraham I would sure not want to be his enemy.

7. All families of the earth will be blessed through you.

The reasons I said this verse is so important is because it literally has it’s fulfillment in Jesus.

If you open the gospel of Matthew there is a genealogy. Guess who the very person it starts with.

ABRAHAM

Jesus Christ would come from this very verse. The man who was too old to have a baby would be the very line that God would use to bring about the messiah.

The last certainty of the blessings of God:

we must experience them.

The next KEY to unlocking God’s blessing is we must:

3. experience them (4-9).

How do we experience God’s blessing?

We walk by faith!

How does someone get to heaven?

He walks by faith.

How does someone receive forgiveness?

He walks by faith.

Genesis 12:4–6 NASB95

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land.

“Any promise God gives must be appropriated by faith.”

He had an invitation and he cashed it in.

Notice he did this later in life, so it’s not like change is easier when you get older but he was willing to put his faith in GOd.

No matter where you are today God wants us to walk by faith and it is never too late.

Genesis 12:7 NASB95

The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.

Faith turned a conditional promise into a unconditional promise (7a)

To this point God just said here is what I am going to do.

Once Abraham walked by faith here is what God said.

How do we experience God’s blessing?

We worship

Notice he is building an altar and calling on the name of the lord.

The very purpose that we were created for is what Abraham is doing as he responds to God.

We were created to worship God not just when it is convenient

Ryrie Study Bible Expanded Edition: New American Standard Bible, 1995 Update Genesis 12

This promise was fulfilled in Abraham’s temporal blessings (13:2; 24:35), spiritual blessings (21:22), and fame (23:6; Isa. 41:8). so you shall be a blessing. Lit., be a blessing, a certain consequence of God’s blessing upon Abraham.