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Sermon preached on Genesis 11:27-12:9 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 07/02/2023 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
We come now today to a significant shift in the book of Genesis. Chapters 1-11 speak in expansive terms of the origins of the world and all the nations on it. We find at the end of these 11 chapters, even after the flood, that the world has gone astray, and is yet in desperate need of redemption. But God’s plan and promise of redemption has not failed. Now, as we turn to the rest of Genesis, we’ll find the intriguing and surprising way, in which God will redeem the world through the line of Abraham. I think of an analogy here. I remember the Lord of the Rings book series. All the grand glory of so many major forces of good and evil, with so many powerful men, and elves, and wizards, and more. Yet, the story there turned to a seemingly insignificant hobbit that would save the world. But is that not at least somewhat of a fitting analogy here. We just read that table of so many powerful nations in Genesis 10. Abraham’s line didn’t even make the list. You have the grand fall of the nations at the Tower of Babel, with God’s great curse on the world. And then the book turns to talk about this one seemingly insignificant family according to the world’s eyes? But not according to God.
So then, the rest of Genesis will turn to consider Abraham and his family that ultimately results in the nation of Israel. Specifically, we’ll talk about four generations, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob who gets renamed to Israel, and then his twelve sons that make up the twelve tribes of Israel. As the rest of Genesis details these patriarchs of Israel, we’ll see God’s repeated covenantal promises of grace to them. We’ve already spoken in Genesis about God’s overarching covenant of grace, and that is exactly what God is expressing to these patriarchs. God’s covenanting with these fathers of the faith is continued outworking and administration of the overarching covenant of grace. In so doing, we realize how their story is our story. The New Testament so clearly identifies the Christian faith as the same faith that these patriarchs of Israel had. It is why the New Testaments says that we Christians are sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah, regardless of our physical genealogy. If you are a Christian, as we begin to study Abraham and his descendants, this is your spiritual genealogy.
Let us begin then with the genealogical records and God’s initial call to Abraham in 11:27-12:1. This record hones in on just a small section of genealogy but goes more horizontal than what we are used to because now Genesis will be delving more deeply into the historical narrative of this family at this point, so we need to be introduced into more of the characters of our story. Verse 27 then puts the focus on Terah. Terah, was of the line of Shem and Eber. Thus, Terah was both a Semite and a Hebrew. Terah gives birth to these key players in our narrative. We are told of three of his sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. We learn that Abram has a wife name Sarai, and that she was barren, in other words, not able to conceive a child. Let me stop here and acknowledge that likely most of my sermons on Abraham and Sarah I will be historically anachronistic by referring to them as Abraham and Sarah. But here, we see that their original names were actually Abram and Sarai. So then, we also learn here that Haran, Abraham’s brother, had a son named Lot, who will be an important character in the upcoming story. And Abraham’s other brother, Nahor, is someone we shouldn’t forget, though we won’t hear about him after this for many chapters. Some of Nahor’s descendants will marry some of Abraham’s descendants, namely, Rebekah to Isaac, and Leah and Rachel to Jacob. So keep Nahor in the back of your mind for now.
So then, we see that Terah and family originated in the land of Ur among the Chaldeans. This was likely somewhere near Babylon. Terah then relocates with the family to the city of Haran, which surely was named after his Son Haran that died before moving there. But Haran was north of the land of Canaan. As a family they settle and become established in Haran as their new home. But then we come to 12:1 and we see God calls Abram to leave that homeland to some new land. We know and see that God was having Abraham relocate to the land of Canaan. But at the initial call, God doesn’t tell Abraham where he is going to take him. He just calls Abraham to go to the land he will show him. So, Abraham and his wife along with his nephew Lot in faith leaven Haran and set off to follow God. Clearly there is faith and trust needed here. We would surely be right to think by analogy of how Jesus would later make a somewhat similar call to his disciples to “Follow me”. By application, we can remember that wherever God calls us in our following of him, we should be prepared to trust and obey.
Let us now turn to consider the promises God gives Abraham here. Let me say that what we find God promising Abraham here is what we ultimately refer to as the Abrahamic covenant, which is an administration of the covenant of grace as I’ve mentioned. However, as we go through Genesis, we’ll see that he repeats these promises to Abraham on several occasions, and some of them are much more explicitly covenantally stated than this specific occasion. Here they are put as promises, but we will continue to see in Genesis these promises developed as covenant we refer to as the Abrahamic covenant.
So then, here we can summarize God’s promises to Abraham as two things. God promises Abraham a people and a place. Think about the people first. In verse 2, God tells Abraham he will make Abraham into a great nation and his offspring are mentioned in verse 7. But remember, at this point he does not have any offspring and in fact his wife Sarah is not able to have children, as we were told. These people are so great that will come from Abraham that God says in verse 2 that they will be a great nation and also that Abraham’s name will likewise become great. Think of that in light of last week’s Tower of Babel passage. By their haughty efforts, the people tried to make a name for themselves, one that reached the heights of heaven. But here God unconditionally promises to exalt Abraham’s name. That’s called grace. And then from these people, there will be blessing and cursing attached. God says that if someone blesses Abraham and his seed, they will be blessed, and likewise if they curse Abraham and his seed, they will end up cursed. This was a truth in general, but Paul helps us to see in Galatians 3:16 that this ultimately looked to Jesus. If you receive Jesus and trust in him, you will be blessed with salvation. If your reject Jesus and revile his gospel offer, you will be cursed with eternal damnation.
I want to reiterate what I said before when we studied Genesis 10-11. This promise that blessing would come to all the families on the earth through Abraham’s offspring, is a reminder that God’s plan of redemption was never limited to just the ethnic descendants of Abraham. It is a simplisitic and thus incorrect application of Scripture to say that all of Abraham’s physical descendants are saved, and that all the other nations are not. Rather, what Scripture would teach us throughout, but especially in a passage like Romans 9, not all who are Abraham’s physical descendants receive the blessing of salvation, even as some Gentiles have received such blessing. God ultimately has and is forming one saved people of God through Abraham’s offspring of Jesus. All who trust in him, belong to the one united people of God, regardless of their physical genealogical origin. Yes, Jesus did come from Abraham’s line, and so we do trace God’s working through that line to ultimately bring forth Jesus, the savior of the world.
So then, God also promises a place to Abraham in verse 7. It’s as they enter the land belonging to Canaan that God promises their land to Abraham’s offspring. This is why for Israel, the land of Canaan, also became known as the Promised Land. Since God was going to make Abraham to be a great people, such a great nation would need a place to live. A people and a place go together. Elsewhere in Scripture, this land is also described as God’s inheritance to his people. That inheritance is taught in places like Hebrews 11 and 1 Peter 1 to be typological of a far greater heavenly and eternal inheritance God is preparing for us, one beyond any physical land in this world, but instead looking to the age to come. So then, at this point in redemptive history, they would experience a physical land on this earth, and that was a type of the eternal promised land that God’s people would enjoy in glory. God’s promise to Abraham then included a place for the people he would be raising up through Abraham.
That then leads us to our third point to consider how Abraham comes into this Promised Land, and yet for the time, had to be just sojourning in the land of Canaan. Verse 6 introduces us to this fact, that at that time, the land was possessed by the Canaanite tribes. God had led Abraham out of his homeland of Ur then Haran to this alien land. God did not bring them to some undiscovered country that they could claim for their own. He brought them to a land that belonged to someone else. While God here promises that he will one day give Abraham’s offspring that land, yet at that time he was just a sojourner and pilgrim.
Yet, notice how God promises this land to Abraham. He appears to Abraham here, verse 7. This is language of theophany. God somehow appears or manifests himself to Abraham there at Shechem. It won’t be the last time that God so appears to Abraham. But it is his appearing to Abraham that he makes this promise to give him the land one day. It might seem hard to imagine that Abraham would one day inherit this land when the Canaanites controlled it. But God’s blessed presence appearing to deliver this promise would certainly reinforce it and built up Abraham’s faith.
Realize, the reason God would take away this land from the Canaanites is because they would become so wicked. That is something God will make clear to Abraham later in Genesis. In other words, right now this land God promised to Abraham was a place of great wickedness including idolatry. Yet, while God has Abraham here merely as a sojourner, yet it already is beginning to have a sanctifying effect on the land. For we see that as Abraham is passing through he builds altars to God in the land. Already, this pagan land begins to experience the right worship of God. Already, there is a start to God consecrating the land to his own name.
I would note that in verse 8, the worship of God there is described as calling upon the name of the LORD. That should sound familiar to you, because is the description of how from the beginning with Seth from Adam, that the people began to call upon the LORD, Genesis 4:2. This is a wonderful little reminder about a really wonderful truth. The church of God has always existed on earth. We might mistakenly think that God’s people were first formed in Abraham, or with Moses, or in the New Testament with Christ. But, in actuality, there has been a continued line of God’s people worshipping God and calling upon his name down through the ages. Seth’s line called upon the name of the LORD. Abraham continues that practice. Often it is done amidst an unbelieving world. But God’s church continues even amidst such circumstances.
Let me notice two additional aspects from the text that reminds us that Abraham is content to just be sojourner at that time. First off, when Abraham sets out from Haran, it sounds like in verse 5 that they were fairly well off financially. Yet, we don’t see him buying a bunch of property and looking to settle in alongside the Canaanites. Second, we see him living in tents in verse 8 as he continues to move from the north to the south in the land of Canaan. In other words, his living in tents versus building a home shows he is not yet settled down. He is still living as a pilgrim and a sojourner. This shows he is still looking for God to provide a home for him. Indeed, this is the point that the book of Hebrews brings out for us. Hebrews 11:9-10, says, “By faith he [Abraham] 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. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” It goes on to say in verse 36, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”
This third point really helps drive home an important application for us today. Abraham had a pilgrim’s life. He and many generations to come of God’s promised people had to continue to live a pilgrim’s life. They had to wait patiently until one day God would take the land away from the evil Canaanites and give it to them. Then, they finally would settle down into the Promised Land as their own. Then, God’s people were in his prepared place for them. But they had to live in faith as sojourners and pilgrims amidst a pagan people in the meantime.
The application is that that we learn that such a time of pilgrimage and ultimate possession of the promised land was just a type and a shadow or more to come. In other words, right now, we are reliving that same experience again, but this time not to wait until a type and shadow but for the real thing. We await the eternal inheritance God has in store for his chosen people. God’s chosen people in Christ Jesus will live in eternity in an everlasting Promised Land. It will be wonderful. But we aren’t there yet. Instead, we live alongside a world full of unbelievers.
This presents many challenges to us. One challenge is we have to witness various forms of ungodly living. While there are many unbelievers who outwardly live a fairly respectable way of life, there are also many who advocate and live out morality that is at odds with God’s moral law. Like Lot, it can torment our soul to see the depraved conduct of the godless people living around us. Abortion is rampant. Shoplifting is far too common. Sexually immorality of various forms is celebrated. The list goes on and on of how common immorality is before our eyes and that should be hard for a Christian to watch.
A second challenge is that non-Christians sometimes persecute us for our faith. In ancient times, they were accused as atheists because they would not worship the false gods of society. Today, we face things like being called bigots because we teach that we humans are sinners and God calls us to repent of our sinful living and that we can find salvation only in Jesus. We can be ostracized — “cancelled” and ridiculed for our faith.
A third challenge is that though we have become saved, we ourselves still struggle with sin. Internally, it will be a challenge to live for Christ and we’ll be frustrated by all the ways we still fall short. That too will torment our soul. It’s hard for us to look at the pagans and see their sin. But how frustrating to know that we confess Christ, yet still too often fall back into doing something a pagan would do.
A fourth challenge is that we still live in a world cursed and frustrated by sin. Our daily callings are still difficult, plagued with pain and excessive toil. There are still natural disasters like earthquakes and famines. There are diseases that afflict our bodies. There are many problems in this sin-cursed world.
These ongoing challenges remind us that we are still pilgrims. We are journeying toward our eternal home, but aren’t there yet. But when we get there, there will be no more unrighteousness, either from ourselves or others. No one will persecute us, but we’ll be celebrated as children of God. And there will be no more curse in the new creation.
Let us then sojourn in this life by faith. God’s promise to Abraham will be fulfilled. Already its fulfillment has begun. It will culminate in all God’s elect being gathered to King Jesus who will usher in his eternal kingdom on the day of his return. What a glorious people and place we will be on that day!
Amen.
Copyright © 2022 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
