-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.