Good morning, it is a joy to worship God together. This morning we’ll be looking at the passage that we had read for us from the book of Genesis, Genesis 12. Let me reread for us, we’ll be focusing on verses one to three, Genesis 12, one to three.

Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and in him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Let’s pray. Lord, we praise you and thank you that you promise us great blessings. that you have given us your word to teach us and to show us the promises that you have made, the ways that you have kept them, that you would speak to us through it. And so we ask, Father, would you speak through this passage? Would we hear from you and know your presence? Lord, may we hear your words of rebuke and correction, your words of loving teaching and kind care, and be trained in righteousness to live out your righteousness freely given to us by Christ. We love you, Lord, and we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Have you ever been asked to share a fun fact about yourself? You know, it’s quite often a sort of icebreaker thing when you’re in a group of new people. The leader may say, share your name, where you’re from, and a fun fact about yourself. I’m an introvert, and social situations like that sometimes terrify me, so I make sure to have my fun fact prepared in advance. And my fun fact about myself is that I lived in 20 houses before I turned 20. Now, most people, when they hear that, are like, was your dad in the military? Why’d you move so much? And my dad wasn’t in the military. He was actually a PCA pastor and took different churches around America. And that move, we would go to a new place, maybe live for a few months in a rental before we found somewhere more permanent to stay. But it averaged out to about two and a half years in a location. And that number represents living in six different U.S. states and one year in the Czech Republic. And that’s a lot of moving, no matter how you look at it. And I talked with my sister about this a while back, and she remembers how our parents would sit us down before a big move and read Genesis 12, 1 to 3. We would look at God’s call on Abram to go and leave his home and go out in faith. I don’t remember that happening, but perhaps that’s why this passage from Genesis 12 is so encouraging to me, because it reminds me that God wants me to trust in him completely as he provides and directs towards blessing.

So the fun fact about yourself may be a bit different. Maybe it’s a little more lighthearted and unrelated to a life-defining event, but we can all think of times in our lives where we face challenges, things that made us question where we find our comfort and peace. You know, maybe a choice about where to go to school or what to do for a career. Should you start a relationship? Should you end a relationship? What about your family? How should it be? You know, we face sickness, death in our families. All these things may make us ask and question, where are we putting our trust? What am I trusting in? And as we look at Genesis 12, one to three, that’s a key question that comes to mind. What am I trusting in? And the passage teaches us that we are to trust God. God wants all of us to trust in him completely as he provides and directs us toward blessing. It’s the main point this morning that God wants all of us to trust in him completely as he provides and directs us toward blessing.

Now, how does that work? We’ll look at it in three different ways this morning. First, we’ll look at what God has done. Next, we’ll look at what God is doing. And finally, what God will do. exploring God’s past, present, and future actions will help us consider how and why we trust God.

What God has Done

So first, what God has done. You know, the first thing God says in this passage is, go. Go from your country, from your family, and from your father’s house. Does that sound like an extreme command to you? Get up and leave everything. God commands Abram to go to Go from the country, the environment that he knew. Leave behind the favorite shops and restaurants. Leave behind what he was comfortable with, the environment he knew, and his family, his father’s house. Leave behind the sense of security, the social status and community that he’d built up. God’s calling Abram to make a huge sacrifice in that first verse. And so how could God ask such a thing from Abram? Take a step back and ask yourself, How do you respond when someone tells you what to do? We’ve all had someone tell us what to do at some point, where if you’re at work, your boss may tell you to send those emails, interact with that customer or client, or some other task. In families, you may have your husband or wife tell you what to do from time to time. You need to pick the kids up from school, or you need to take the garbage out. And kids, I bet all of you feel like your parents are always telling you what to do, aren’t they? Wash the dishes, do your chores, eat your food, get up, go to bed. We’re all told at different times to do something. And so what makes us willing to do what we’re told? Why do we do what we’re told? Well, a lot of it depends on who’s the one telling us. Depends on our relationship with that person. And if you have a good relationship with the person, you’ll be willing to do what you’re told. You may even do what you’re told with joy and gladness and be excited about it. But if you don’t know the person, or you know them but you don’t trust them and you don’t like them, you’ll obey maybe just to avoid pain or a bigger problem. You may see that there’s some serious consequence and so you say, well, I better do what I’m told. You may feel controlled or put upon. If you don’t trust the person at all, you maybe, you don’t know the person at all, you may feel safe to just say, I don’t need to do that and blow it off and ignore it. How we hear and respond to a command or direction has a lot to do with our relationship with the one person giving that command or direction. So we have that in mind, we come to this passage and how would you respond to God telling you to go? Well, we start by remembering what God has done. How has God built a relationship with us? Who is God? Who is God that he can give this command? You know, when we look at who God is and our relationship with him, sometimes I think we face the temptation to just narrow in on one aspect of God’s character. We may think of God as king, as a just king. He is just, he gives commands, he expects obedience. Or maybe instead of thinking of that, we think of God as love. We focus on his amazing kindness and forgiveness. So what happens if we only focus on one of these aspects of God’s character? Think about God as his kingly justice for a second. We see God’s justice when we read the Bible and see how God gives commandments and punishes sin. He sets rules for life and makes sure that they’re kept, and that’s a good thing. But it also grates on us a little bit, doesn’t it? We hear and see God’s holiness, his greatness, his desire and requirement of obedience, and we know that we’re not perfect. We know that we can’t live up to that holy standard. And sometimes we start to hear God’s justice as him just being sort of severe or a dictator, telling us what to do all the time. And we read this passage and it sounds like you had better go or else. And if you only see God as a just king, we’ll find a passage like this is just another rule to follow. But on the flip side, sometimes we limit our thinking to only God’s love. And we know that God is love. 1 John tells us quite plainly, God is love. And so what do we mean when we say God is love? You know, I think sometimes we define God’s love as his giving us what we want or what we think is best, what we need in the moment. And we want comfort. We want peace. We want easy life. And we may think if this is how God loves us, then everything’s easily forgiven. It doesn’t matter that we’re not perfect. We’re good. We can just expect God to be at work for our good. And we read Genesis 12, and we focus on the latter verses about blessing, and it sounds great. But we’re missing that first call to go and the sacrifice being required from God. There’s difficulties in our lives, and it’s difficult to obey God. And what about the reality of pain and brokenness in the world? Doesn’t that go against our definition of love? Is God really loving? Well, have we limited our view of God? Have we misdefined something here? We need to go back to the Bible and see how does the Bible describe that? How does God describe himself through his revelation to us? You know, in the previous 11 chapters of Genesis give us a great introduction to who God is. As it tells us the creation narrative, we get this picture of God and how he created the world, who he is, and how he wants to be known. The very first words of the Bible in Genesis 1.1 tell us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God is the one who was before all things, the one who created all things. And he spoke all things into being. And do you remember what God said when he created something? He looked at what he made and he called it good. God called all that he made good. God is the one who created all things, looked at what he made, declares it good. And Genesis 1 shows us how God gives shape to what is good and right. God created all things in utter perfection, calling all of his creation good, and then he makes man. God made man to reflect his nature, to live out that perfect goodness and greatness of God. Calls him to be fruitful and multiply. Then he looks at all of creation, including man, and he calls it very good. The Bible defines God’s love as that eternal pursuit of what is good. Love is pursuing what is good. And God’s love is working all things toward the ultimate good through relationship with his creation. He made the world to be a perfect paradise. He gave humanity the whole world, told them to be fruitful, to multiply. And that was what was good for man, to fill the world, to do those things. He gave great freedom as well as safe boundaries. You know, when we come to chapter two in Genesis, we see God setting boundaries for the good of mankind. The whole world was given for man’s enjoyment, except one tree. And that one tree, God warned that eating from it would result in death. There’s justice. There’s this requirement for obedience, as well as the provision for everything humanity needed. And in love, God warns them he doesn’t want them to die. He sees that it’s good for humanity to flourish, and so he warns them not to eat from the tree. And so we have this promised justice given in love. We know the story, though. Man sinned against God and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. Temptation and testing came, and the first humans, they wanted to be gods themselves. And so they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to define what was good for themselves. And so they sinned. And yet when they sinned, God didn’t immediately give them the justice they deserved. Instead, God loved his creation and acted in mercy. As the holy and just God, God set death as the punishment for sin. And he brings that about. Yet God makes a promise to do it through bringing a Redeemer, bringing forgiveness and grace. love, God postponed his ultimate divine justice by promising to send a Redeemer, one to take the penalty in place of humanity. This is what God has done. He has acted in love, promoting the ultimate good by promising to bring real justice for sin while showing amazing grace and mercy. We see examples of this throughout the Bible. We keep reading through Genesis and you can Look at Cain and Abel and God’s relationship with them, how he seeks the promotion of life. Read the story of Noah and the flood and God’s faithful preservation of life there. There’s justice, there’s consequences for sin, but God is working for the good of humanity. We see that God is the perfect creator who rules over all in love and justice. God has acted and proven himself to be amazingly loving while fully just. So this is the God who tells Abram to go. The God who chose to remain in a relationship, a friendship with his creation, despite their rebellion. And when God speaks to Abram in Genesis 12, he is continuing this relationship with humanity, this plan to bring redemption. So this is the context behind God’s call to Abram to go. And this is the context behind God’s call in your own life. Have you ever stopped to think about that, that God’s love and justice apply just as much to you and to me as it did to the people in the Bible, to Adam and Eve, to Abram and Sarah? And just as God invites Abram to a close friendship, wanting Abram to trust in his provision, God calls each of us to have a close friendship with him. God invites us to trust him. And we trust him because of what he has done, the promise he has made. The promise we see God keeping as he loves his creation, pursuing what is good. And so we start to trust God for what he has done, for the promise made.

What God is Doing

But we may ask, what is God doing? These are the promises in the past, but is he still at work for our good? That takes us to our second point, what God is doing. God’s past action gives us that hope that we can trust him completely. But is God still at work for our good? Now, when we read Genesis 12, one to three, we can’t escape how God works for Abram’s good. God is at work by making and keeping extravagant promises. Look at verse two again. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. God promises greatness and blessing. He promises good for Abram. And in Abram’s cultural context, a large family, a stable nation, these were signs of the good life. These were good things. But you remember, this is exactly what God had just told Abram to leave behind. Abram was to leave the security and community he had in Haran. The way we would expect to grow a great nation through settling down and become a leader in the community, God has told Abram to leave that behind. And that goes against our expectation, doesn’t it? We expect him to stay there, to grow and flourish. And if God’s promising blessing, we have an expectation of what that might look like. And yet this passage started with that call to go. God promises Abram that his descendants will become a strong and leading nation. Those desires for a large family, a stable nation, they weren’t bad things. That was what God was promising. But it was God’s gift, not something Abram built for himself. That’s where we so often struggle, isn’t it? We want the promised blessings of God in a way that we can control and that we can enjoy right now. But God calls us instead to trust that he’s at work keeping that promise, even if we may not see how that’s happening. And what’s interesting is more than just calling us to trust him, God also invites us into participation and participating in how he’s going to keep that promise. But it means, you know, breaking some of those expectations. The way God keeps his promises, you know, it leads to blessings that we can’t imagine better than we can imagine. But God also keeps his promises in ways we would never imagine. And that’s the struggle of faith, trusting that God is at work even when we don’t see how things are gonna work out. And so God calls us to live by faith, faith that confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see. Obeying and following God may seem to go against how the world tells us we’ll be blessed, how the world tells us to do things. But trusting God leads to true and lasting blessing. And the Bible tells that story reading through the Old Testament, we can see God keeping his promise, developing Abram’s descendants into the nation of Israel, that promised great nation. We see the ups and downs over the book of Genesis, Exodus, and so forth, and we can read about, you know, judges, the struggles that Israel had, But the nation keeps growing. God’s promises are being kept. And you can get to read about King Solomon and his reign. And you see there, there’s wealth, there’s prosperity, there’s stability. Israel is a leading nation. And we get a picture of fulfillment, of God’s blessing. But if you keep reading or you know Israel’s history, you know it didn’t last. They eventually were taken off into exile because of their sin. Ultimately, the people didn’t trust God. They didn’t live in that close relationship with God. And instead, they started trusting kings and armies and false gods. And so God gave them opportunities to repent, to return to him. There was love, there was mercy, but there were also consequences and justice. And we may look at that and see, okay, that promise wasn’t fulfilled. It looks like that promise didn’t quite make it, but we know that God’s promises don’t fail. God promises Abram that there will come a kingdom where God’s perfect creation will be restored, a great nation that will lead the world. And this kingdom will come through God’s relationship with man. And Israel was a taste of God’s blessing, a foreshadowing of how God is keeping that promise. And God is still at work keeping that promise. That’s what he is doing. In the New Testament, this promised great nation is referred to as the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. It’s a repeated theme throughout the New Testament. And it started with Abram. God is at work keeping this promise. What Abram was promised finds its fulfillment in Jesus. Do you remember what Jesus preached? Both Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s gospel, early on in the early chapters, they give us a summary statement of what Jesus was preaching when he went around in his public ministry. Mark 1, 14, and 15 tell us, Jesus came proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. Jesus brings fulfillment to the promise of the kingdom, and he invites us in. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is here. This is what God is doing. We come in through repentance and faith. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, the perfect demonstration of God’s love and justice. Jesus is that son of man, that descendant of Abram, who lived in a perfect life and perfect relationship with God, the one who is fully deserving of all God’s blessings. But then he died the death of a sinner. And Jesus took the punishment of our sins. He took the delayed justice of God for us. Jesus suffered the justice that the sins of all humanity deserve, from Adam to Abram to you and to me. And Jesus did more than take away the guilt of our sin. Jesus rose from the dead, conquering the curse of death, of that separation from God. And Jesus gives us resurrection, a new life, life with him in his father’s kingdom. The blessing through Jesus is that union, that communion, restored relationship with a triune God. This is the gospel that we believe. And this is what God is doing in this passage. He’s promising this blessing and then working and taking steps to keep this promise. He’s promising the greatness of his kingdom and the blessing of his presence, a promise made to Abram and a promise made to you and to me. And so God acted and acts, keeping his promise as we live by faith. Think about what that looks like in your life. Do you hear God’s promise made to you in this passage? Where do you see God’s presence in your life? Following him won’t always be easy, because it means letting go of our control and repenting of our failures. God is present, though. He’s present in our lives as we follow his call, even though it may sometimes be uncomfortable. But God promises to walk with us through whatever changes need to take place. And he invites us to begin living in his kingdom now. He promises to bring us deeper into a peace-filled, loving relationship. And he’s already borne the worst, the justice of God, so that we could be with him. And so will you receive God’s gift and his blessing, his presence in your life?

What God Will Do

And as God works, keeping his promises to you, will you follow him? Will you follow him? You know, answering that question might be a bit scary. If God’s done all this for me, then, and he invites me to follow him, what will he do? What will he ask of me? Genesis 12, verse three, the final verse in this call to Abram begins to answer that question. And we see what God will do. God says, I will bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you, I will curse. And you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed. What God will do is continue to fulfill his promise. What God will do is be with us and walk alongside us. As we just saw, Jesus is that ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram. Jesus is the perfect blessing, the provision for the real spiritual needs of all humanity. And God’s goal is to have a close personal relationship with us. close personal relationship that starts at the individual level. Start with Abram, have it with ourselves, with God. But we also say that extends to the whole community, that all the peoples of the earth will share the joy of God’s blessing. God promises that he would not only provide for Abram, but would provide through Abram for the whole world. And God’s goal was to bless the world through Abram as Abram trusted, obeyed, and enjoyed God’s blessing. Because we see that Abram had access to God. He talked with God. He heard from God, and he lived out his relationship with God. He interacted with other nations. You can read in the Book of Genesis about how he goes to Egypt, how he interacts with the Canaanites and these other people groups. And through all these interactions, we see that God provides. And Abram then is a model for us, a model for the nations as well, of the blessing of living in relationship with God. Now, I really like Abram’s model because it’s not a perfect model. He doesn’t get it quite right all the time. We can follow his example and we have access to God as well. We can pray and we can talk to God. We can hear from him. Then we look at Abram’s life and we see that he didn’t actually trust God all the time. Genesis 12, Abram takes that first step of faith. He begins going to where God has called him to go. And we read up to verse 9, and in verse 9, you know, he had gotten there, and God had said, this is the land, but he’s still traveling. And we may want to say, hey, Abram, you can stop now. You’ve reached it. But he keeps traveling around a bit. In the next few chapters, he sees God’s promised blessing of a nation, and that means children, and he sees that Sarah can’t have children, and so he tries to take matters into his own hands. Instead of trusting God, he takes it into his own hands, and that leads to a lot of problems. You then read about him going and meeting other nations. Again, God’s promised blessing that the nations would see God’s blessing through Abram, and Abram goes to Egypt, And instead of trusting God, he gets scared for his life that the Egyptians will see the beauty of his wife, Sarah, and kill him so that they could have her. And so he lies, and that causes more problems. Yet God is keeping his promises in all these places. There were rebukes for Abram. He had to repent and believe in God. He had to be called back to trust God. God continued building his relationship with Abram, showing him mercy, extending grace, forgiving him, and fulfilling his promises. You know, we hear about faith and repentance is the way we enter the kingdom. We see Abram having to live that out. And what God will do for Abram is to be present in his life, even when Abram fails. And what God will do for us is work through us, perfecting our imperfect steps of faith. For Abram, living by faith meant leaving his homeland and trusting God’s provision. What God calls each of us to do is also step out in faith, to leave our comfort zone or our self-generated security. We may not be called to literally physically relocate, but God does call each of us to trust in him as we make decisions about our life, decisions that affect our stability or our security or our identity even. God calls us to follow and obey him with how we make our living, how we treat our family, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, how we interact in our community. And while trusting those things to God at first may seem scary, it will bring greater peace and joy. And that should be noticeable to our neighbors. You know, share God’s work in your life with your neighbors, in the city and the nation and the world around you. As you live by faith, as you follow God, His blessing will overflow through you to those around you. And some God calls to proclaim, to preach and teach and to evangelize boldly. All of us, He calls to live out our relationship with God in such a way that those around us will be drawn in to ask why. Why are you making those choices? And one author put it beautifully, he said, gifted evangelistic leaders should be training their congregations to speak about Jesus conversationally when questioned about how they deal with suffering, or why they spend their vacation serving the poor, why they’ve opened their home to refugees, or why they’re fasting during Lent, or why they’ve made a career choice that allows them to contribute to the greater social good. God desires that all the families of the earth, every tribe, language, and people group will know His blessing to you and will know His blessing through you. God has promised His presence in our lives, and He works to bring us into His kingdom. And God will work through you and me to build His kingdom. So let me encourage you to take time this week. Take time today or later this week to ask yourself a few questions. How has God already been at work in your life? Where did I see God’s presence in my life today? Many people take time at the end of the day just to answer that question and journal about it. And I would encourage that practice to you. It helps you see God at work in your life. And as you see God at work in your life, what is God calling you to do as he loves and cares for you? Is there someone you need to talk to? Is there a neighbor you just should ask how they’re doing? What will it look like to live by faith? What will God do through you?

Let’s pray. God, we praise you and thank you for your rich blessings and kind promises. You are with us. You have given us your word to read, and you hear our prayers, and we thank you, God. Help us, God, to understand your word, to apply it to our lives. Help us to live by faith, to think through our lives and how you call us to live. And so may we come to you to learn what living out our faith will look like. Teach us through the example of Jesus. Help us to love the world the way that Jesus loved the world. May we turn from our sin and rebellion, the brokenness and pain we have, and help us instead to speak your truths in love, that your glory and blessing may be known. Pray this in the name of Jesus, amen.