God's Promises to Unworthy People

We're reading from Genesis 11 starting at verse 26. When Terah had lived seventy years, he fathered Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in the presence of his father, Terah, in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abraham's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife, Milkah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milkah and Ishkah. Now Sarai was barren, and she had no child. Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran. Now the Lord said to Abram, go forth 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 him who dishonours you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks, Joanne, for reading that for us. We're gonna be particularly looking at verses 1 to 3 of chapter 12 this morning, but I thought those previous verses give us a bit of context to Abram.

So picture this. You're at home one day doing some jobs around the house. You've finished vacuuming the lounge room. You've swept the floor. You're about to head outside and mow the lawns, and all of a sudden, you receive a call from God instructing you to leave Australia, leave your community, your relatives, your friends, and your household behind to go to a land that He will show you.

You don't know where it is. You don't know how far you'll have to travel or how hostile the occupants of that land will be, but God promises you that the land will be yours. In fact, He'll make you a great nation. He'll give you a great name. He even promises that you will be blessed and a blessing to all of the earth.

As you're processing the news, your family arrives home, and you're contemplating how on earth am I gonna let them know what has just happened? How am I gonna share with them? How am I gonna tell them about the uncertainty, the sacrifice, the cost that awaits them? How will you tell them that they might not see their relatives or friends again? How will you tell your kids it's time to start packing your bags and say goodbye?

What a day that would be. Mowing the lawns wouldn't seem quite as important anymore, would it? Your world has been turned upside down. And that's essentially the call Abram receives. In verse 1, the Lord unexpectedly comes to Abram and commands him, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

While the details of Abram's call are especially unique to him, anyone who is called by God must contemplate the cost of following Him. But equally, we must ponder the profound promises that God gives to Abram. And that is what we're gonna be exploring this morning in this passage. Two things: God's costly call and God's profound promises. So let's begin by looking at God's costly call.

And the first thing we see in this passage is that the Lord initiates the call. In the first 11 chapters of Genesis, humanity has stubbornly turned its back on God and proven the depths of its sinful nature. Before the flood, God says that the wickedness of man was great, and that every intention of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually. After the flood, we still see that this ugliness of sin remains. In the previous chapter, we observe the sinful nature of humanity as they come together at the Tower of Babel and God disperses them.

Yet as a new section of Genesis and human history begins, God calls a man, Abram, from obscurity. Prior to this event, we have no indication that Abram or any of his family worshipped the Lord. In fact, Scripture suggests that they served other gods. Centuries later, when Israel is finally occupying the promised land, Joshua says these words to them. Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates.

Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods. He goes on to say that the Lord took your father, Abraham, from that situation. Abraham didn't warrant God's call. There's nothing special or particularly admirable about him that induced God to call him. Rather, the Lord's decision rests entirely on His sovereign grace to call whoever He is pleased to call.

And God chose to call Abraham and establish His covenant with him. And this is good news. This is good news for people like you and me, right? That God would be willing to bestow His grace upon us, sinners, to call people whose minds are not occupied by God, whose actions are against God, that He would call us.

This is God's unconditional election, and it teaches us two brief things. Firstly, we are not called by God because we warrant His affection. We are not called by God because we warrant His affection. But secondly, it also teaches us that no one is ever too far gone, too far away from God for Him to call them and redeem them. Abram's life of faith, like every other life of faith, begins with God's call in their life.

So the next thing we see in this passage is that God's call is costly. God's call to Abraham begins with a threefold command that increases in extremity. Verse 1 says, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house. The first cost required of Abraham is to leave his country. And this word translated as country is the same word translated as land later in the verse.

This word indicates a particular place inhabited by a particular people. It's where they've established themselves, built a livelihood, connected with a community, and made it their homeland. But the second cost progresses. It requires Abram to leave his kindred. This word describes his relatives and broader family who often functioned as a close knit support network.

They would have regularly worked together, eaten together, provided for each other, and they were probably neighbours with each other. The third and final cost increases again, and it requires Abram to leave his father's house. This is the closest of the three units. It is where religious allegiances are determined, and in many faiths, changing religions equated to dishonoring your father. Perhaps this is a reason why Abram is called to leave his father's house who are serving other gods.

But it also means that Abram, he's going to be leaving behind any future inheritance. God's call to Abram is costly. The triple use of the possessive pronoun your, your country, your kindred, your father's house emphasises the personal cost. And on top of all this, God doesn't even tell Abraham where he's going. God simply calls him to go from that land to the land that God will show him.

And God's call on our life is also costly. While God doesn't call all believers to leave their homeland and separate from their families, Jesus does say these words to His disciples. If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Jesus even says, if anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Now this is not a call to literally hate these people, but it is calling us to allow nothing else, not even our family, to disrupt our allegiance to God.

If we have developed the idea in our minds that following Christ comes with no cost, then we've misunderstood what it means to follow Christ. We follow a crucified Saviour, right? A Christ who suffered. And at the very core of His gospel message is a call to repentance.

Repentance literally means turning from one direction and going in the opposite. The gospel requires costly change in our lives. It may involve leaving your career or family and friends leaving you. It will require lifestyle changes, financial alterations, and personal transformation. And are we prepared for this?

Young people, are you prepared to count the cost of following Christ? There are big life costs involved, but there are also daily costs, right? Jesus says, take up your cross and follow Me daily. This means God must come first in our family, in our career, in our study, in who we choose to date or marry, our friendships, our hobbies, our screen time, our money, God must come first.

Are we prepared to count the cost of following Christ? The cost is great, but it is worth every sacrifice. Jesus says to His disciples, truly, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. The call to follow God is costly. But the most remarkable aspect of this passage is not God's call on Abraham's life, but the profound promises God makes to Abraham. And that is the second thing we see: God's profound promises.

Seven times in this passage, God proclaims, I will. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I'm going to examine these promises from three perspectives. Firstly, from Abram's perspective; secondly, from the church's perspective; and then thirdly, from the world's perspective.

So most obviously, these promises are for Abram, right? God calls Abram, and He gives him these promises. And we can summarise these promises under three headings: place, people, and provisions. Firstly, the Lord promises Abram a place, a land of his own.

And in the following verses, the verses that come from this passage, we see that this land is gonna be the land of Canaan. But secondly, the Lord promises Abram a people to fill this place. More specifically, God promises to make Abram a great nation, a people who will subdue the land and have dominion over it. And finally, the Lord promises to provide Abram and the people in this place with many blessings.

These blessings would include wealth such as abundant livestock, fruitful harvest, gold, silver, many resources, but it would also include making Abram's name great. All of these promises to Abram are quite spectacular. Imagine God promising you these things out of nowhere. But they are even more spectacular when we consider some of the obstacles in the way. This land is occupied by a wicked and powerful people, the Canaanites.

Abram's wife, Sarai, was barren. She had no children. How is a great people going to come from Abram? And Abram is a nobody with no name, and he must leave his land, his inheritance, his provisions all behind. But time and time again throughout history, God calls people to trust His profound promises even when the obstacles look insurmountable.

Abram's life was filled with challenges, where at times he trusted and at times he doubted God's promises, but God remained faithful. When Abram died at the good old age of 175, we can see that God had begun to fulfil all that He had promised Abram. But God had not fulfilled everything. Although Abram was buried in a cave that he purchased in the land, the Canaanites still occupied it.

Although Sarai had miraculously given birth to a child and Abram had begun to grow his family, he was still far from being a great nation. And although Abram had acquired livestock and wealth, his name was still largely unknown. That is because God's covenant promises were to be more fully fulfilled through his descendants. It would be through Isaac, Jacob, and the nation of Israel where the Canaanites would be conquered and the promised land would be attained by Israel. They would become a great nation, a nation who was blessed, a nation who had a great name.

But ultimately, God's covenant promises were not fulfilled through Abraham's descendants either. Almost as quickly as they received these things, they were exiled out of the land, almost wiped out as a people, and their name was essentially forgotten. That is because these promises were a shadow of what Abram's descendant, singular, His singular descendant would accomplish. Ultimately, God's covenant promises of grace culminate in Christ and are received by Christ's church, His people. It is Christ who comes and declares that He will prepare a place for His people in His Father's house, the kingdom of heaven.

And it is Christ who redeems a people, His church for Himself. It is Christ who ransoms us, cleanses us, and preserves us until we enter into that kingdom. And it is Christ who provides everything we need in this life and abundantly more in the life to come. We're not promised like Abram our own block of land, our own nation here on earth, or abundant material possessions. And we're actually promised something far greater, something that lasts into eternity and cannot be taken away from us.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul begins with these words. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We might desire earthly blessings, a large property on the Gold Coast, a great name for ourselves, great riches on earth. But the spiritual blessings God promises are far, far greater. His covenant promises to cleanse us from our sin, to reconcile us back to our Lord and Saviour, to adopt us as His children, where we are loved by Him, cared for by Him, provided for by Him, where He hears our prayers, He guides us.

This is what God promises His church, you and I, His people. Yet just like Abraham, while we have received the first fruits of these promises, we will not receive their complete fulfilment in this life, which means we need to live by faith, trusting in these promises and not live by sight. We must take hold of God's promises and trust Him, especially when we have doubts and struggles. And so I encourage you, I urge you, take hold of God's promises this week. If you are downcast, the Lord promises to be near.

Psalm 34:18. If you are mourning, the Lord promises to comfort you. Matthew 5:4. If you are weak, the Lord promises that His grace is sufficient for you. Second Corinthians 12:9.

If you are tired, the Lord promises that He'll give you rest. Matthew 11:28. If you are a sinner, the Lord promises that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. First John 1:9. And if you doubt your eternal inheritance, the Lord promises in John 14:2.

He's preparing a place for us in His heavenly kingdom. God's promises will never disappoint us. Trust them. Take hold of them. Fix our eyes upon them this week so that we live by faith in them and not by sight in the things we see in this world.

God makes His promises to Abram. We receive them as His church. But the final thing we see in this passage is that God's promises are also for the world. While God chose to initiate His covenant promises to Abraham, His intention was always to bless the world. In the previous chapter, we witnessed the Lord disperse all the people of the earth from Babel.

And now He chooses one person, one family, which we could easily misinterpret as God neglecting all the other tribes, all the other families, but God has not forsaken them. God has not forgotten them. In verse 3, God declares, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. God has decided to bless the nations through Abram, beginning with Abram.

In Galatians chapter 3, verses 7 and 8, Paul quotes these exact words. When he says to the Gentile people, to the people of the nations, this is what he says. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abram saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. Paul is saying that salvation has always been based on faith in the promises of God.

Whether you are a Jew or Gentile, whatever nation you come from, the gospel promises that were proclaimed to Abraham and now to us are for anyone who believes. This was true back then for people who encountered Abraham, people like Melchizedek and Abimelech who saw the promises that God had given to Abraham, and they responded by blessing him. And it's true for people today who encounter Christ. Everyone's eternal destiny depends on their response to God's promises. Everyone who trusts them is blessed in Christ.

But equally, we see in verse 3 that everyone who dishonours God, everyone who neglects His promises he's cursed. And they're cursed because there is no forgiveness. There is no salvation. There is no hope for people who neglect the promises of God. Jesus says to His disciples, everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I will also acknowledge before My Father who is in heaven.

But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven. From the beginning of time, there has always been one Lord, one Saviour, one gospel message for all peoples. And God is a God for the nations. He wants to reach the nations with the gospel message. And so as God's church today, we must recognise that the call to follow Christ is intertwined with the call to be a witness to the world.

Just as the nations were to be blessed through Abraham, well, now the nations are to be blessed through God's church. Because we carry the promises of God, don't we? We possess the only source of salvation for perishing people. And so as I was preparing this sermon, I looked up some statistics from the Joshua Project website. And so I have a question for you.

Out of the 17,354 people groups in the world, how many do you think are unreached? The definition of unreached on the website includes this. It includes having less than 2% of the population identify as evangelical Christians, plus there being no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelise their own people. Out of the 17,354 people groups in the world, 7,249 are classified as unreached. That equates to 3,560,000,000 people unreached with the gospel.

The world talks about international refugee crisis, a global climate catastrophe, and impending world wars, but none of them are as significant and urgent as the need for all peoples throughout the world to hear the gospel. And so what would it mean for you as a church? What would it mean for us as a church to be reaching the thousands of unreached people groups, to be reaching the Ansari people in India, the Tajik people in Afghanistan, the Khmer people in Cambodia. These are real people, real tribes who have never heard the name of Jesus. And so could some of us here this morning be people who bring the gospel to unreached people groups for the very first time?

Could it be the words of Jesus Christ, the name of Jesus Christ on our lips that is heard by someone for the first time? Parents, what would it mean to take your family on the mission field? To leave your country, your kindred, and your father's house for the sake of the gospel? The cost would be enormous, wouldn't it? A huge sacrifice.

Adults, how will you spend your retirement? Could it be devoted to reaching the unreached somehow? Kids, teenagers, when you grow up, have you ever considered becoming a missionary? But also, how can we be reaching the hundreds of unreached people groups who live in our streets? And, you know, our multicultural nation brings a great opportunity right to our doorstep.

I can remember studying at UQ about ten years ago and chatting to someone who had never heard the name of Jesus before. It shocked me at the time, but there are people in our neighbourhoods who have never heard the name of Jesus. As a church, how can we be supporting this urgent work of missions? And we can't do it all. We're not called to do it all, but we are called as a local church to be faithful to God's mission.

We are His church. We are entrusted with His promises that are not to be kept inside our four walls, but to go out to the world. And so brothers and sisters, as we close, let's set our hearts and our minds towards the day when God's profound covenant promises to Abraham will be completely fulfilled. The day when Christ returns and gathers all His people from all the nations of the earth to the place He is preparing for us. We're a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, tribe, people, and language who'll be standing before the throne of God, crying out together in unison.

Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne. On that day, all our spiritual blessings will be realised in Christ because God's dwelling place will be with His people. And on that day, every cost, every sacrifice will appear totally worthwhile. In God's kingdom, we will never regret anything that we gave up in this life to follow Him because we gained what we couldn't lose, a place with God, with His people, and all His blessings forevermore. Amen.

Let us pray. Well, our God and heavenly Father, we thank you that you are faithful to us. Although we were born in sin and our hearts were not inclined towards you, you have called us to be your people, called us to follow you. And, Lord, we recognise and help us to recognise that this call is costly on our lives. Help us to turn from the sins in our life, the things that ensnare us and distract us from the promises of God.

And whilst the call is costly, help us to realise the immensity of your profound promises to us, that we have a heavenly Father who has adopted us and delights in us, that we have a Saviour who cleanses us from our sins, who forgives us, and grants us all spiritual blessings through Christ. Help us to delight in this gospel message and the promises we have received that we may go out and proclaim it, share the good news with those around us. And we do pray, Lord, that through your people, you may reach the nations, that your Holy Spirit may work among us. Help us to be faithful with the gifts you have given us. And, Lord, help us to fix our eyes on the great day when you will come again, and we will all stand around your throne with people from every nation, tribe, and people group praising our one Lord and Saviour.

We thank you for your promises to us. Please encourage us this day through them. We pray this all in your name, Jesus. Amen.