The God of All Blessing

Scripture Text: Genesis 11:10 - 12:9  

Main Idea: The sovereign God of history promises blessings to those who worship Him with faith that obeys

·         This passage serves as a critical turning point in the book of Genesis from a focus on humanity in general to a focus on one family, the chosen line of Abraham, in specific.
·         Here the theme of Genesis begins to be spelled out with more clarity: “we can trust that God is the God of all Creation and that He will fulfill His promises to call a people to Himself, bring them to the promised land and one day redeem all of Creation through them”
·         This passage is a parallel passage to the genealogy in chapter five.

1. God is Sovereign over humanity

·         The original reader would conclude from this account that the history of Israel was not the result of random chance, but this was the execution of plans that were predetermined from the beginning by God's will and were foreshadowed from the very outset in the events that befell Abram/Abraham.
·         This was a critical point for the people of Israel to understand, because they had just left Egypt and they were beginning their trek to Canaan through the wilderness.
·         Even the very symmetry of the verses as compared to the genealogy in chapter five, (10 generations in each account) attested to divine planning from the time of Adam onwards.
·         This is meant to show that there is nothing random or accidental in the birth of men. God is not dependent on accidental births or even people traveling from one place to another  - all of human history is ordered by God's divine providence.
·         Later in Deuteronomy, we see a beautiful picture of how God Sovereignly cared for His people:

Deuteronomy 32:10-13  "He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.  ¹¹ Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions,  ¹² the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him.  ¹³ He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.

·     What a beautiful picture this is of God’s Sovereign, Fatherly care and this is how God continues to sovereignly care for His children today.

·         The absence of the repetition of the words “and he died” in this genealogy  perhaps indicates that Moses and God want the reader to understand that God is about the process of redeeming mankind and He will bring life through fallen humanity and this life will come about through his chosen man in Abram.

·     Although in the verses right before this passage, we read the account of how evil reigned in Babylon, immediately on the heels of that story Moses is demonstrating that God’s plans were not thwarted or hindered.

·     God raised up generation after generation, even despite man’s evil and idolatrous worship of false gods.

·     God is the One who elects and calls Abram. Abram was a pagan idol-worshipper from a family of pagans but God’s word came to him and changed him and his whole life was different afterwards.

·     The very roots of the nation of Israel and for us as God’s people today are in the divine choosing and calling of God.

·     And just like Israel was meant to find comfort and confidence in God, we are meant to find comfort and confidence in the Sovereign God who makes sense of all human history.

·     Even though we might not understand our particular piece of history at present, we can be confident that the Sovereign God of all is who has called by name everyone who believes in Him. He is able to keep us and bring about His plans no matter what the obstacle.

·     No matter what, in the darkest times; in the midst of wicked and perverse generations – on the heels of Babylon itself - God is Sovereignly bringing about His purposes, even when we can’t see what He is doing.

·     And because of this, we can have hope even in our darkest hour in the God of all light, who has called us out of darkness and into His glorious light.

·     We can use encouragement in God’s Sovereignty as we head into uncharted territories in our lives too – into uncharted relationships, perhaps seemingly mountainous financial troubles, or uncharted career futures, or the painful loss of loved ones or even the death of a child.

·     God, who is Sovereign over humanity, can be trusted.

2. God is faithful to His promises

·         God is not like our own fathers when they failed and He is not like us – God never fails and He is always faithful to His promises.

·         God was faithful and allowed man to be fruitful and multiply, even though man chose to follow their own desires and leave God.

·         God is faithful to bring about His plans to call and redeem a people to Himself.

·         God dispersed mankind at Babylon out of divine mercy, to keep mankind from thinking that they could attain greatness apart from God and to show them their need for God.

·         Then, God calls Abram, a moon-worshipper from a family of moon worshippers, in the city of Ur, which was known for its cult of moon worship so much so that they actually constructed a ziggurat to the moon God.

Joshua 24:2-3  ² And Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.  ³ Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan.

·         God calls Abram out of utter darkness. Ur and Abram’s people were no better than those who built Babylon but God chose Abram and called him because God is faithful to His promises to mankind.

·         God was the one who took Abram from the land of idol worshippers and God led him through all the land of Canaan – God was the one who initiated and God is the One who led because God is faithful to His promises.

·         And we know from Ephesians 2:4-9, that even the faith that Abram had to obey God, was a gift from God

·         After God spoke to Abram and told him that He would show Abram the place he should go, in 12:7, God is faithful to His promise and He appears in person to confirm that this is the place that He will give to Abram.

·         God is the faithful, covenant-keeping God who calls a people to Himself and seeks out a people to bless and cause to be a blessing.

·         Sometimes we doubt that I will be able to withstand temptation and at other times we can get discouraged when we see a lack of progress in putting to death sin and we can feel like we’re not growing in being more like Him.

·         We can lose perspective and we can lose faith because we don’t see growth or we see circumstances and situations that seem like too much and we don’t see what is going on.

·         But it builds faith to remember that God is indeed sovereign and He really is faithful to His promises as well.

·         And lest we think otherwise, God gave us the next set of verses in our passage to show us that He does not desire to curse, He desires to richly bless all those who have faith in Him.

3. God blesses faith that obeys without sight

·         Abram had never heard God’s voice and he knew nothing about God. 

·         When God spoke to Abram, He didn’t give him any details. In fact, the Lord only said, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

·         God called Abram to leave everything that he knew.

·         The LORD, the covenant making God, seeks out Abram and calls him to obediently follow His commands.

·         Abram was called to obey with no real details given. He would have to leave the land that he grew up in, his hometown and all that was familiar to him. He would have to leave all of his relatives and friends behind.

·         And then hardest of all –he would have to leave his aging father and his close family that he held most dear, and move to where the LORD told him to go – most likely never seeing them again.

·         The Lord calls him to obey in unqualified devotion, without even glimpsing God yet.

·         This was no small test – especially in those ancient times, when doing so would have meant the loss of safety, almost certain peril, hardship, exposure to hostile people who wanted to and could take everything from you and possible death for you and your family.
·         This was no small thing and yet, Abram passed the test and followed God.

·         This would have been a critical lesson for the children of Israel who were wondering in the wilderness to learn. They didn’t have any definite instructions from God except to go to the promised land.

·         They didn’t know how they would take the land or when but they were called to trust and step out in faith, believing the promises of God.

·         And this is an important lesson for us to hear today as well.

“This call to forsake all is very much like the call of the gospel. Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me”  (Matthew 10:37a), and “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). The gospel calls us to rest all our hope on the word of Christ, and nothing else!

When Jesus calls us, he does not guarantee the future or even tell us what it will be like. He does promise that he will take us to be with him — which is the ultimate land! He does promise forgiveness and inner peace. He does promise that he will be with us through thick and thin. He does promise our ultimate good. But Jesus does not say that it will be smooth here on earth. He does not say that your problems will be solved. Nor does he promise a life of peace and ease. If you are looking for these kinds of up-front promises before turning to Christ, you will never get them. And if you persist in your requirements, you will never come to Christ. He calls you to trust his word alone. ” -R. Kent Hughes, Genesis, Beginning & Blessing.

·         We don’t just trust God’s Word once– we are called to live a life of continual faith in God.

·         The good news is that just like God blessed Abram, God desires to bless all of His children.

·         In these verses we can see that God is the initiator and God is the One who seeks out Abram to bless him.
·         In every case, God is the source of seeking and blessing and it is the same way with us as well.

·         Abram didn’t earn God’s blessing – God asked Him to obey and sought to bless Him.

·         We don’t earn God’s blessing – God seeks us and God blesses us because of who God is and not because of who we are.

·         The first blessing is that God said “I will make of you a great nation”

·         This would have seemed impossible, because Sarai was barren and Abram was old.

·         Then God says “I will bless you”

·         God will give Abram His favor, His unmerited grace. He will protect him from all evil and bestow all good.

·         Then, God says “I will make your name great”
·         A person’s name in ancient times was identified with their personality itself and God is saying that He would make Abram great.

·         Man cannot really make his own name great – God is the only one who is the giver of true greatness and no true greatness is found apart from God.

·         Then God says He will do all of these things “So that you will be a blessing”

·         Not only will God bless Abram, but He will make Abram an example of blessing to others as well.

·         Next God tells Abram “I will bless those who bless you”

·         God is vowing to give His blessing to whoever shows friendship to Abram, so that everyone who is friends with him is blessed by God because of him.

·         The God tells Abram “And him who curses you I will curse”

·         God is promising to protect and care for Abram – to be his Defender.

·         If people are opposed to Abram, they are really opposing the mission that God gave to him and rightly deserve punishment.

·         And lastly, God says that “in you will be blessed all the families of the earth.”

·         It is not only the people of Israel, but all of humanity will be blessed in you – in the seed that comes from Abram – the seed promised right after the fall.
·         God will bring His blessing to all the families – to every tongue and tribe and nation through the seed of Abraham.

·         Our God is a wildly generous God and we can trust He has no ill-intentions or hidden motives in blessing us – He chooses to bless us simply because this is who He is.

·         Abraham had faith in God that obeyed without seeing and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Romans 4:3-5 "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness."  ⁴ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.  ⁵ And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” 

·         And the promise of blessing that Abram received is for us today as well – God promises to give us life in Christ and make us joint heirs with Christ.

Romans 4:13, “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.  ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void… ⁶ That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring- not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,

Hebrews 11:8-10  ⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.  ⁹ By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.  ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

·         Faith in the promises of God is demonstrated in obedience to God’s call.

·         In the end, Abraham and even the people of Israel who initially read the first 5 books of the Bible never saw the culmination of the blessing of all the families of the earth through Abraham’s seed.

·         In Galatians 3:7 we see that is through Jesus Christ that all the nations are blessed.

Galatians 3:7-9  Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.  ⁸ And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."  ⁹ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

·         This gospel – the good news of God’s promised One, Jesus Christ which was preached to Abraham is now ours to preach as well.

·         Abram was ultimately looking forward to a city whose builder is God. He was not tied to the things of this world and ultimately he lived his life by faith, even though he stumbled at times and failed a few times.

·         Abram lived a life obedient to God, trusting in God’s Word, believing in God’s promises – he was a man on a journey of living by faith in God, even when he didn’t see clearly or know fully.

·        This is how we are called to live – trusting in Jesus, the Promised One and believing in the truth of His Word alone.

·        Our goal is not to set up a perfect utopia here on earth – we are strangers, we are aliens in a foreign land and we look to a city whose builder and maker is God.

·        God desires to bless faith that believes without earthly sight.

John 20:29-31  Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."  ³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;  ³¹ but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

4. God’s people proclaim their faith with worship
·         Everywhere Abram went, he worshipped God. His life went from worshipping false gods to worshipping God with his whole life.

·         Abram’s response to God was to proclaim his faith through worship and we see in verses 7 & 8 that he set up altars to God and he worshipped God.

·         He built altars to God as a public declaration of what God had told him and he publicly proclaimed the name of the Lord in the midst of the pagan land of Canaan.

Potential Application Questions:

1.       Looking back, where can you now see the Sovereignty of God in your life or circumstances, when you didn’t see how He was working at the time?
2.       How does this build faith for the future and any difficult circumstances that you may be in the midst of currently?
3.       Often we can wrongly feel as if God’s Sovereignty is unloving, cold or distant. Read Deuteronomy 32:10-13. How does this affect your view of God’s Sovereignty as caring and gentle?
4.       Where are you currently tempted to trust your own feelings or perspective instead of trusting God’s faithfulness to His promises?
5.       Where is God calling you to step out and trust His Word without sight?
6.       Where do you tend to make decisions based on what you think is best instead of what God says is best?
7.       Is there anything you are holding onto in your life that is keeping you from following God’s Word? (possessions, family, relationships, friends, comfort, etc.)
8.       How does seeing that God is a God who actively seeks to bless His people affect your view of God?
9.       How is God calling you to proclaim your faith by worshipping Him?