-One of the amazing things about having kids is realizing that they are born sinners! It’s not something I teach them, apart from my own sinful struggles! And you start to see the way they each have their own unique temptations from a young age.

-For example, my twins are currently learning how to disobey at 16 months! It’s been slowly building up in them, but as of now, Thomas is GREAT at throwing fits when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, and what he wanted all weekend was to be downstairs where I’m still trying to finish it, so if the downstairs door closed with him on the other side of it he went ballistic! Throwing himself on the floor, screaming, crying.

-Charlie is our adventurous twin who loves climbing up on everything, the problem is he also often falls down from where he climbed, or gets stuck between two things (like the chair and the table) because he can’t think further ahead than right now. Where it gets hard is when we repeatedly tell him NO and he continues doing whatever he wants! All of this means that in addition to learning how to disobey, they’re also starting to learn Newton’s third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction! Climbing means you may get stuck, disobeying means there will be discipline.

-And the hard thing to communicate to children is that it continues even for adults! There are consequences to everything we do, some of the consequences are positive while others are negative. Each decision brings us either closer to the Lord or further away from Him. Today’s text demonstrates for us the means by which God saves His people: by taking all the negative consequences on Himself.

READ/PRAY

-If you haven’t been here for this series, here’s what we’ve learned of Abram so far:

-Grew up as an idol worshipper, yet was called out by God to begin a new people, which started with Abram leaving his friends, family, and lands, and going to a new place

-God promises to bless Abram with land, seed, and blessing, and that through Abram the entire world would be blessed. So far we’ve seen the land become barren, his wife is barren, and the blessing is supposed to come through seed.

-Last week was Abram’s Aragorn moment: let’s go hunt some giants! Rescued Lot and his family from destruction, is blessed by Melchizedek (Christ-like figure)

1. The Reward of the Lord (1-6)

-After these events: doesn’t say how long after, we know from Gen. 12 that Abram was 75 when the first call came, then in 17:4 he’s 99, so these events are occurring sometime over a 24-year period. 

-Friends, have you ever wavered in your faith or confidence in God over the last 24 years? 24 years ago I was living in ND, unaware that I’d be moving to MN in a year and have my entire life upended! (I was 12, so it didn’t take much to upend my life) But I say that to keep in mind that we’re seeing decades of life over the course of just a couple chapters here, it’s good to see the ups and downs of his life, but don’t jump to judging him (at least too quickly, next week is a pretty dark moment in his life)

-The word of the Lord came: this becomes a theme in the rest of the OT, Abram is the first in the line of prophets who receive words from the Lord Himself! This is pointing to one of the ways we’re supposed to see themes emerging as we read Scripture where God gives His people glimpses or pictures of what’s to come. Jesus comes and fills the 3 roles necessary to approach God: prophet to speak on His behalf, priest mediate the way between God and humanity, and king to rule over God’s kingdom. Here we’re seeing Abram in the line of the priests, but we’ll also see God promise to have kings come from him, and Abram’s priestly role in just a couple chapters where the Lord tells a pagan king that Abram can interceded on behalf of this king.

-But what God says is emphasizing that God is giving Abram Himself, in light of the deliverance from the kings of last chapter (who may be tempted to come back again, which would be normal at this time!) 

-That’s why God begins with shield. God will protect and preserve Abram from even future invading forces. Abram doesn’t need to be afraid if God is on his side

-But there’s still some doubt in Abram’s mind. How would he receive a reward if he has no children?

-One thing to note is that Abram isn’t chastised for these questions. In some cases when people question God it’s called out as a negative thing, a demonstration of a lack of faith. But that’s not this case. One of the best prayers recorded in the Bible is in Mark 9:24. A father brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus and says “If you can do anything, please help us!” Jesus replies, “If you can? Everything in possible for one who believes.” The father replies: 

-Friends, what areas of your life are you struggling to believe that God is good and wants good for you in? Where do you need to cry out to the Lord and ask for Him to help your unbelief? There’s a reason God meets here with Abram to remind Him of His promises, and many times God will meet someone at whatever their deepest hurt or perceived need is.

-Abram here is worried about being childless, that’s a major issue in the 2^ndmillennia BC. No nursing homes, no social security to depend on, who’s going to take care of Abram and Sarai in their old age? It was the custom to choose an heir, in response to them caring for you, they would receive your inheritance after they died, which is what they had done! How does God respond?

-Nope! That’s not what I said! “One who comes from your own body.”

-Some debate about how many covenants are in the Bible, what events should be included, who did God make a covenant with? Adam, Noah, Abram, Moses, David. But as careful readers of the text, this language will come up again:

–2 Sam. 7:12 “come from your body,” aligning David’s covenant with Abram’s covenant, they all keep building on each other! What this tells us is God always keeps His promises. God is a covenant making, and a covenant keeping God. Whatever God says He will do! So trust Him!

-To demonstrate just how expansive his generosity to Abram will be, God invites Abram outside and tells him to count the stars.

-Last week was trying to count dust, has anyone ever tried to count stars? Quick Google search tells me that the most you can see on a dark night would be about 2,000 stars, but we so often can’t see the stars because of light pollution, but if you’ve even gone up north you’ll see some incredible views! Here’s one I took at Shamineau this Fall. If we took enough time we could count them, but that’s not what God is saying, He’s saying His plans are far greater than Abram could even imagine, and the promise to Abram even continues down to us today! We’re included in that numbering. See Abram’s only thinking about 1 generation, WAY too small! Instead he should be thinking of hundreds of generations that would come after him!

-But he believes, and I would assume asks God for help with his unbelief. And this verse becomes a key theme for the argument Paul makes in the book of Romans. Paul is working to answer the question: if we’re all sinners, how are we justified (made right) before a holy God? It can’t be through our works, because we could never do enough good works to achieve salvation. Instead it has to come from outside of us, an alien righteousness that is given to us, or as this text says “credited to him.” The means by which this righteousness is given is through belief. That’s the only way to be credited as righteous, it comes through faith, that is belief in God alone. 

-And Paul uses this example in Abram to tell us that this promise is as true for us today as it was for Abram 5,000 years ago. Being in right standing before God hasn’t ever changed, the means by which you are able to approach Him has always been by faith. All the sacrifices and rules of the OT are meant to demonstrate that no one can perfectly obey God through their own works, it demands someone else obeying perfectly for us, then taking the penalty for our inability to obey on Himself so that His righteousness could be given to us. But there is a hinge point: faith. 

-I never want to assume that everyone in here has taken that step and put their faith in Jesus, AND this gospel message is just as needed for those who believe as those who don’t yet believe. For those who don’t yet believe, what are you waiting for? This text is showing us the way to become righteous, the way to find comfort and peace in a broken and chaotic world, take that step! And for those who believe, Paul tells us this truth in Gal. 3:

-And this is something I’ve been praying for us: to realize that we can do nothing to save ourselves or keep ourselves saved. We begin and end by the grace of God. Even our spiritual disciplines won’t by themselves change us, the Spirit is the one who grows us. Now, as I shared a couple weeks ago, we’re commanded to work out our own salvation, but recognize that it is God who wills and works in you.

-Friends: pray daily that you would believe and that God would help your unbelief! That’s how you can be counted among the righteous.

-Because the Lord is kind and gracious, He goes on to solidify this promise with Abram:

• The Evidence of Things Unseen (7-21)

-As careful readers of the Bible, this first phrase should have special significance for us, can you think of another place where the Lord says something eerily similar? After delivering His people out from Egypt in Ex. 20. Abram is serving as the prototype of what’s to come for God’s people, we’re seeing glimpses of a divine design, an intent behind all the events that take place in this story. Because of the divine author of this text, we should expect to find repetition, glimpses of the story coming together throughout it, themes emerging, and we do! But at times I worry that we miss the bigger story for the individual little stories, we become far too granular in our approach, which is why I always try to show us where we see God’s story unfolding in the text.

-While the nation of Israel is in physical slavery, Abram was in spiritual slavery: worshipping false gods, then God saves Abram and delivers him out of bondage. Similarly for us, we were once slaves to sin, but through faith we can become slaves to righteousness (which is the way to find life). This isn’t a story about being a better person, or a list of 5 ways to grow your faith, it’s a story about God’s good plan to redeem a people for Himself and then using those people as His ambassadors of reconciliation – healing in a broken and divided world.

-And just as Abram was unconvinced about the promise to provide an heir, he’s also unconvinced by this promise to possess the land. So he asks the Lord how he’ll know. And the Lord accommodates Himself to something Abram would understand.

-This whole thing sounds like a bloody spectacle to us. Why is Abram cutting all these animals in half? What’s the point of any of it? When’s the last time you even saw an animal butchered? For me it was when I was about 10, and that was enough to last me the rest of my life.

-Number of ANE documents that talk about it, but this idea comes up again in Jer. 34:18. The way covenants would be enacted is you make a verbal agreement, then cut apart animals and both parties walk through the bloody middle of the carcasses, as a symbol of the curse you’re calling up on yourself if you break the covenant. Essentially, it’s saying that you’re agreeing to follow through on everything you’ve agreed to, or else you forfeit your right to life. This feels so foreign to us because we have ways of breaking out of everything! The closest parallel we have is marriage, but even in marriage with the rise of no-fault divorce that doesn’t come close to the way covenants were held to here!

-And I think the accommodation piece is something we miss: God could have just told Abram what He tells Moses “I am who I am” that’s sufficient for people to trust in Him, but He doesn’t. He uses the typical method people used to make a covenant, a promise with each other. He meets Abram just where he is instead of forcing him to adopt to something completely new, which is what God does for all of us! He meets us where we’re at, but doesn’t leave us there. He moves us (often far more slowly than we want) closer to Him, step by step. 

-After Abram takes care of the animals, he has to ensure they’re not eaten! Birds of prey are used throughout the rest of the OT to refer to other foreign nations, potentially signifying the way God would protect Israel in the future. A deep sleep descends.

-This has been used previously in Genesis, back when God created Eve for Adam and then brings them together in the covenant of marriage. This time the covenant is between Abram and the Lord, but the idea of marriage permeates the rest of the OT as God is pursuing His people, His bride. 

-Something unique about this experience with the Lord, because it’s the first time Abram is seen as being scared to be in the presence of God. Adam was scared, Jacob gets scared, Moses gets scared, the nation of Israel is scared, but Abram hadn’t been until now. Doesn’t say why, but it could be connected to what God proceeds to say:

-The land will most certainly belong to Abram’s descendants, but it’s going to take a while. A few things to note:

-Resident aliens where they will be slaves. This is setting us up for the Exodus account, where this book will end with Israel in Egypt, just like Abram’s journey. And just as Abram came out wealthy, they too will come out wealthy.

-But this doesn’t apply to Abram: he’ll have a long and healthy life. And why this time of waiting? Because the sin of the Amorites. They’re the people who are currently living in Canaan. And this verse is incredibly important! Because there’s all sorts of accusations today that God is genocidal! The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel destroying all the inhabitants of the promised land. And this verse tells us exactly why: they were a sinful people! Which means the destruction is just. It’s not like they were completely innocent bystanders who get stuck in crossfire, these are a brutal people! On my trip this summer, I got to go to the British Museum, here’s a glimpse of the Assyrians victory: the slaughter of children. And they put these on the gates to “welcome” people in. Amorites would have done the same thing! It’s a brutal world! So when we read about the conquest of Israel, these are the kind of people they’re defeating.

-And as Abram continues sleeping deeply, a theophany (appearance of God) walks through the divided animals, but not with Abram. That is incredibly important! This is why we spent so much time on the faith part at the beginning.

-A covenant is an agreement between 2 people that says if they break it they will be just like the animals, but if God made a covenant with Abram (or any human) it would never work. We’re sinners all the way down so we would never be able to uphold our end of the deal, and God knows that! So he makes the covenant by Himself, and tells Abram the length of his promised land, but the point is the covenant is dependent only on God keeping His word.

-Just as we’ve seen in many previous weeks, the author of Hebrews picks up on this idea in Heb. 6. Who else could God make a covenant with? No one else has more power, no one else will completely obey every component, no one else will do except God Himself.

-Which means when the consequences of breaking this covenant are inflected, God Himself will be torn apart like the carcasses. Do we see that happen anywhere in Scripture? When Jesus’ body was ripped apart and hung on a cross. If you didn’t know, this year is the 1700^th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, a statement of what all Christians throughout history have believed, and I love the way they summarized what Jesus did:

-Friends, Jesus bore the consequences for humanity’s repeated breaking of God’s covenant. But because of Jesus, we now have hope, which the author of Hebrews goes on to summarize:

-Friends, our freedom from sin is as guaranteed as the tomb is empty. Jesus is right now in heaven interceding for us, preparing a place for us, and the means by which we access it is faith. Either saving faith, or continual faith that prays “I believe, help my unbelief.”

-Aesop’s fables, one of the ones that stood out to me growing up was the boy who cried wolf. Shepherd boy is a big jokester, and thinks it’s hilarious to alarm the town that a wolf is coming after the sheep and each time they come running they find this boy laughing at them. After repeatedly being warned to not do it, he continues until one day a wolf actually does come! But because of what had happened in the past, no one comes to help, and the boy is eaten by the wolf too.

-As an adult, it’s alarming just how many of Aesop’s fables end up with children being eaten! But the point remains: the consequences of lying are terrible!

-Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that with God! God always keeps His word, will never trick someone or lie, the question is how do we respond to a God who is always faithful? Do we obey His word or not?

READ/PRAY

1. Promise (1-3)

-Remember last week: people, place, possession (land, seed, blessing)

-God’s design is for His people to be living in a specific land, to receive His promised blessing, that’s going to be a running theme throughout Abram’s life, and how frequently all those promises are threatened.

-Requirement is: go! Leave everything behind. If Abram obeys, then the blessings from God come. Doesn’t say where, just says to go.

-Think about how difficult that would be, and keep in mind what I said last week about this world where violence was the norm. The way you had protection was through aligning yourself in a family/clan unit, so if you leave your family you run the risk of almost certain death. What God calls Abram to is leaving his earthly family to align himself to the family of God, and that invitation continues down to us today. Think of what Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3: in order to be saved you must be born again, which Nicodemus thinks is a weird phrase, how could he enter into his mother’s womb as an adult? He needs to be born into a new family, which is the message for us today! Are you a part of the family of God, or are you a part of the family of the serpent?

-There are 2 sections to this call from the Lord – 1 call to Abram (which we just looked at), and a second section on the consequences that come from God.

-Consequences are plentiful, but begins with “great nation,” but how is that possible when what we know about Abram so far is that his wife was barren? Remember that from last week? This already sounds impossible to Abraham, if you look down a few verses you’ll see how old Abraham is here: 75. So the first thing the Lord promises to Abram is that he will be a great nation, but that requires children, so we’re already in a difficult place with this first consequence, God’s going to need to do something miraculous in Abram’s life to make this first one happen.

-But then it’s a blessing and a great name. Contrast this language with the tower of Babel(on). God had just prevented a people from creating a great name for themselves, but here we see Him promising to bestow a great name on Abram, but Abram didn’t seek it out, it comes from being obedient to the Lord.

-Friends, how much of our world is focused on following the ways of Babylon in trying to build a name for yourself? “Influencer,” building a platform, curating a following, or even the attempts to keep up with the Joneses in the neighborhood: 

-The pressure of trying to have the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect yard. What we see in this text is an intentional contrast with the ways of the world (/serpent) How much posturing do we see taking place around us because we’re trying to build a name for ourselves instead of being obedient to the Lord and finding our greatness only in Him? 

-One of the things I wish that all of you could come to understand is that God loves you. God loves you today, not some future version of you. When you understand that He loves you it changes the way you see yourself. You start to worry less about what other people think of you, you find freedom and joy! But it’s only possible when you lose yourself.

-Think of what Paul says in 1 Cor. 1. God saves through foolishness, God saves through weakness. God’s story repeatedly has surprises: the younger child is chosen, the smallest clan is blessed, the least impressive one is called out by God. God’s standards don’t look impressive to us, because we’re too trained to think worldly.

-All peoples blessed through you

-What does that mean? How will ALL peoples be blessed?

-Think back to last week, as we traced the seed of the women vs. the seed of the serpent, this is continuing to trace the seed of the woman down through the line of Abram, where the gospel message that has been proclaimed to Abram will find its’ fulfilment in Abram’s later son Jesus through whom the serpent’s head is crushed. And in response to this promise from God:

• Obedience (4-9)

-We had some friends who shared with us when we became parents: “Delayed obedience is disobedience.” Abram doesn’t pursue “delayed obedience” the text says:

-So Abram went…

-Came to Haran with his father Terah, Lot is his nephew (who will play a pivotal role in the ongoing story)

-Here’s the route Abram took

-Wasn’t until Abram arrived in the land that the Lord appears to Abram. This chapter begins with the Lord speaking to him, this time it says the Lord appears to Abram.

-Regular theophanies throughout Genesis: God appearing to someone. All sorts of discussion/debate about: is it a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus? Does God appear as an angelic being? Does He appear as a human? Does He appear as a voice? Text doesn’t say, so don’t speculate beyond what the Bible say, the point remains: God appears to Abram (and He’ll appear again later)

-How does Abram respond after meeting the Lord?

-Built an altar, a way to remember where the Lord meets with Him

-Pattern throughout Genesis – meet with God, move to build an altar there as a way to denote where you meet with the Lord. I think some of what we need to recover today is a way to commemorate God’s work when He moves in our lives, we live with the tyranny of the urgent today, without enough rootedness tethering us to the past 

-I got to attend a breakout session this past week on the early heresy of Gnosticism, argues that there is a separation between the physical and spiritual, and friends, we can’t divide ourselves like that. We are embodied creatures, God intended it that way, if the Lord tarries and we’re separated from our bodies is referred to as an unnatural state. As he often does, CS Lewis summarizes this well: God likes matter, he invented it. Matter matters to God, and we would do well to view matter as Christians who are tasked with caring for the matter God made.

-And then as he continues, he builds an altar to the Lord to continue worshipping Him, and the journey continues.

• Disobedience (10-20)

-Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end on a high note.

-Think back briefly to last week as we enter this, remember that one of the things we see is God meeting with people, calling them to Himself, and then the disobedience of the people. And it all goes back to Gen. 3: did God REALLY say? The difficulty is that humans so often don’t actually trust God, or take Him at His Word, we don’t live as if what God has told us is true.

-At this point in the story, we’ve seen the failure of humanity over and over and over again. Each time we think that this might be the right seed, they fail. Abram here has met with the Lord, built an altar to Him, continued worshiping Him, and now we’re at a place where the land God has promised to Abram is barren (maybe similar to the way Abram has been promised to have many descendants but all we know of his wife is that she is barren), the question we should be asking is: will Abram trust that God will provide for Abram and His family no matter what else is going on? Because this theme will come up again, Abram is forced to face the question: do you trust God?

-And friends, how often is that true of us, too? Do you trust in God, or yourself? And I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s what God calls us to do. I got to listen to one of my favorite professors from seminary this past week, and one of the things he regularly pointed out in our class, and again this week, is one of the biggest theological questions we have to wrestle with is the chasm between God and us. God, hard line, us.  How do you fix that hard line, do you build a ladder to climb up, or does God need to come down? There’s some irony to us being in Genesis as I share that idea, because there’s some funny wordplay in the tower of Babel story in Gen. 11. Remember the previous verse we saw the people saying they were going to build a tower up into the heavens (literal), the plan was to enter the realm of the gods, and what does God need to do to see it?

-I’ve been spending the last 6ish months contemplating the way we talk about sanctification (growing in holiness), and how much of our spiritual growth is viewed through a Pelagian lens. (5^th century monk who argued that you could achieve salvation without God’s grace being given to us). Friends, there is NOTHING you can do to earn salvation, and your growth must begin outside yourself (Holy Spirit). There are practices that can help, but it’s completely dependent on God to work in you, which feels like a tension, but this is exactly what Paul says in Phil. 2:

-Work out your own salvation, that’s on you! You need to do something (like Abraham had to obey), but who is the who does it? God! Both to WILL and to WORK, it all comes about only by God, our job is to obey and keep in step with the Spirit, and the consequences of obedience is God’s blessing.

-Abram’s initial obedience falls apart in this section, he begins by leaving the land God had given to him. Text doesn’t explicitly say that this was wrong or bad, so don’t go too far with this, but I would argue that the first problem was Abram didn’t trust and obey God, he didn’t actually believe that God would provide for him. But more importantly (and this is in the text) the barrenness is spreading. The seed is already in doubt because Sarai is barren, but now the land has become barren so only 33% of the promise seems to remain. How can God expect Abram to be the fulfilment of these promises if all the promises continue becoming barren? The Bible doesn’t say whether this was bad or good, but it does denote the severity of the famine. But then the story gets even worse:

-“My life will be spared on your account.” How do you think this makes Sarai feel? Once again, don’t forget that these are real people! Abram’s role as the husband is to love and honor his wife, and here he is hiding behind her.

-Just like his first father: Gen. 3: Adam’s role was to raise others to join with him in extending God’s rule over the earth, but instead of working with his wife he stands idly by and lets her be tempted by the serpent. Abram is taking the same pattern as his first father and stands idly by as his wife is offered up to the seed of the serpent.

-The drift of the human heart is toward sin and selfishness, trying to be served by others instead of looking to serve, but that’s not the way of God. God’s call is to serve others, not to be served, so even Father Abraham, who eventually is lauded for his faith in Heb. 11 begins his journey by being selfish, and it seems as if God’s entire plan is in doubt.

-One thing I want you to notice in this section is the shift that has taken place. In the previous section Abram is continuing to travel and build altars to the Lord, He’s working to continue being obedient to God, but suddenly now the focus has slightly shifted from the Lord’s guidance to Abram, who no longer has the Lord appearing to him, is no longer building altars to the Lord, can we suspect that maybe his faith is waning? How do you respond when it seems as if the Lord isn’t near?

-One of the things I love about the biblical stories is they’re not sanitized or safe. They recount the ups and downs of real life! 

-Again, I don’t want to go too far into speculation here, but Abram is trading 1 bad situation for another: fleeing the famine, but running to a depraved people, and sacrificing his marriage for the sake of himself. One of the themes throughout Scripture is the way God’s people are supposed to be marked by care for the sojourner and stranger, God’s people are supposed to be hospitable. Yet Abram is worried that as a stranger and sojourner this godless people won’t care for him.

-The one redeeming thing about this is he at least admits that his wife is beautiful, because unfortunately this isn’t the only time Abram does this exact same thing, but the next time he doesn’t even say she’s beautiful. 

-So they continue on down to Egypt and things go exactly as Abram feared, Sarai is so beautiful that she’s taken into Pharoah’s household. And what’s the outcome for Abram?

-Abram becomes wealthy: flocks and herds, donkeys, slaves, and camels. One of the aspects of this story that is a bit of a spoiler alert is that this becomes a picture of the Exodus account, which becomes a theme for the rest of Scripture, and points to Jesus who also flees to Egypt. And one of the biggest themes in the Exodus is the plagues that God sends against the Egyptians (if you’ve seen The Prince of Egypt you’ve seen a beautiful musical montage of these plagues!) 

-Severe plague descends upon the house of Pharoah, and in this case the man who is supposed to be righteous, the man who is supposed to be representative of God on earth fails to be honest, and the godless idol worshiper reads the situation better than Abram.

-I’m going to cheat a little bit here and go into next week’s text, because I think it concludes the story, but the outcome of this story is the provision of God, despite the lack of faith from Abram. And the section concludes with Abram calling up on the name of the Lord. 

-So what do we do with a text like this? What should our takeaway be? I’ve got 2 things:

-First is that God always keeps His promises. Despite Abram’s lack of faith in Him, God never wavered in His commitment to Abram. So if or when you’re going through a season where it feels like God isn’t answering you or responding in the way you would like, remember that God will always keep His word.

-Second is the reminder that obedience is always better than disobedience. Even if your life feels barren, even if following God doesn’t seem to make sense to you, continue being obedient, remember that it is God who both wills and works in you according to His purposes. Continue being obedient to Him.