Amen, if you'll find a copy of God's Word, again, we're gonna turn back to Genesis chapter 11, starting in verse 10. It's a slightly longer passage, so we'll remain seated for the reading. It's page eight in the black hardback Bibles around you. Genesis 11, starting in verse 10. Give you a moment to find that. As I read, would you receive this as it is, God's holy word for you. These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshid two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshid 500 years and had other sons and daughters. When Arpachshid had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. And Arpachshid lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters. When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters. When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters. When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters. When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Seirug. And Reu lived after he fathered Seirug 207 years and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor, and Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters. When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters. When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran fathered Lot. Heron died in the presence of his father, Tara, in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife, Milca, the daughter of Heron, the father of Milca and Isca. Now Sarai was barren. She had no children. Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, and 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 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Chapter 12, 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 him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. and Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb. This is God's word for us. God, would you bless and add your understanding to the reading and now preaching of your holy word, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, well let me ask you a question, and if it applies to you, if you're willing to raise your hand, I just wanna get a visual on this. How many people have moved to another state at least once in your life? Okay, we're in the Northwest, most of us raised our hands. Two times you've moved, and it can count as like you moved and came back, right? Okay, three times. Four times. My hands are starting to go down. Five, six, seven, oh man. Okay, we'll keep going. Eight, and I wasn't seven by the way. Nine, okay, I think nine was our record baby over there. I was talking to my mother. My mother grew up in a Navy family. And I asked her, hey, I'm preaching this morning, how many times did you move? And she responded, she said, I moved seven times and went to four different elementary schools. She said they were in Illinois twice, Wisconsin twice, Florida, Ohio, and then Washington, where they are now, sort of multiple times. They kept sort of coming back to Washington and now live there. You know, if you've ever moved, you know the excitement of moving, but also the cost of moving. When you think of the family or the friends that you're leaving behind. So it's sort of this mix of emotion when you're getting ready to move. And what's interesting, as Christians, we have all experienced this, even if you haven't physically moved, if you've lived in the Virg Valley your whole life. As believers, we experience what we see Abram experiencing in our passage today. The idea that God always calls his people away from certain things, and he calls them toward something else, namely himself. And when this happens, think of Jesus in the gospels just walking by and saying, come, follow me, right? This practice of a rabbi at the time who had the prerogative to call their own disciples. And it's this call to follow him. As Christians, at some point, even if we can't name the day and the hour, perhaps it is when we were too young to even remember, but we heed the call. We heed the call to follow Christ. We're made able to do this by the Holy Spirit. But we need to remember, as Abram sees here in our passage, that there is a cost. There are things that we leave behind. There are comforts that we leave behind. But Christian, I want you to be reminded today that the cost is worth the call. It's worth following Christ wherever He goes, wherever He calls you to go, even if it costs you family, even if it costs you comfort. even if it costs you some of the things that we hold dear. Because in doing so, you will find that which is truly life. And so you'll see the title of the message this morning is to heed the Lord's call. To heed the Lord's call. If you're following along in your bulletin, there's an outline. We'll see to heed the Lord's call, number one, away from idolatry. Number two, heed the Lord's call despite impossibilities. And lastly, heed the Lord's call toward covenant blessing. Toward covenant blessing. So away from idolatry. Heed the call away from idolatry. We're reminded that the context, of course, leading up, we've most recently seen this flood. We've seen Noah and his sons spared through God's covenant goodness to them. And then we've seen Noah's three sons then, through them the earth is repopulated. And if you remember last, two weeks ago, we looked at the famous story of the Tower of Babel, and we saw this genealogy before that where we really have these three sons of Noah accounting for all the earth after this time. And if you remember what we said then, it focuses on the two sons, gives only a little bit of lip service to the son Shem back in chapter 10 verses 21 through 30. But far from giving Shem the short end of the stick, instead he actually picks back up in verse 10 here of what we just read. Verses 10 through 26 of chapter 11 is then this genealogy, a more detailed genealogy of Shem. And you'll notice even the format of it is a bit different than some of the others and sort of the detail here. But you see the descendants of Shem. And really, this is a continuation of a theme that we've seen and will continue to see throughout Genesis. You know, back in chapter five, we had the line of Seth, right? It's this godly line, and that leads all the way here to Shem. But even before that, we have Genesis 3.15 and the promise of an offspring of Eve who will one day crush the head of the serpent. Every generation from then on of the faithful is asking, is this the one? And Shem, then, is the line that will continue. And then you see the line of Terah, then, in verses 27-32. Just a few notes before we get there on Shem's line. You notice in verse 14, It says he fathered Eber. What's interesting is we believe that this is the etymology where we get the term Hebrews from. They're sons of Eber, Hebrews. Also, being sons of Shem is just linguistically where we get the term Semitic, even when we talk about Jewish people today. And so I learned something new as I studied this, so Eber and Shem there. But as you get to verse 27 through 32, then it says, now these are the generations of Terah. And if you'll remember, in the book of Genesis, this is a key word that marks off sections of the book of Genesis. The pattern is, these are the generations of, and then it names someone, but the next section is actually about their son or daughter, right? So these are the generations of Terah. We're thinking, great, it's a whole story about Terah, but it's actually about Abram, right? But these are the generations of Terah, and this really begins a section that will focus on Abram, soon to be Abraham, which is really, you know, chapters 12 through at least 23. Much of the first half of the book of Genesis now will be about Abraham. And so this is the generations of Terah. And you can see some of Abram's family line here, which we'll talk about. But in chapter 12, you see that Abram is about to be called away from family, from comfort, and ultimately from idolatry. Look at chapter 12, verse one. 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. This is such a pivotal moment in the story of redemption, which we share in. But think of the original Israelite hearers. They're right at the brink of the promised land as they're hearing Moses and others read out this text to them. And so imagine them hearing, and then they know, of course, of Abraham, but they're hearing the moment when God calls Abram and is about to lead them to the promised land. And now Israel is on the cusp of the promised land. Think about how comforting this would be to them. But this call echoes throughout the rest of the Bible as well, even to our call as Christians. But he's called away from family, you notice. Abraham's family, if we had to pick a word, maybe interesting, would be a good word for Abram's family. I have a family tree in front of me here. Your study Bible might have something similar. You have Terah, sort of the patriarch here. Fathers Haran, Nahor, and Abram. And you can see in our text here, verses 27 onward, Haran dies. His son Lot, the nephew of Abram, we think this is the moment when Lot is sort of adopted by Abram and becomes part of his more immediate family. Terah also has a daughter named Sarai through a different mother who's not mentioned here. We learn this later in the book of Genesis. So Abram marries his half-sister Sarai. Nahor marries Milca, who is his brother Heron's daughter. Interesting might be a good word for this family tree, right? What's interesting is that God knows interesting families. God is not surprised, and as we'll see even next week, not only interesting family tree, but starting next week we see Abram, though we know him as the man of faith, he faltered and even sinned. This was an imperfect family that God uses for his glory. But here God is literally calling Abram away from family, away from the comfort of his country. You'll notice it mentions in verse 28 that they lived in this place called Ur of the Chaldeans. or of the Chaldeans. It's somewhat debated where the location was. You can, if you picture in your mind the land of Canaan, which would be not exactly the same, but the modern land of Israel as well. You can picture the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the east of there heading down toward what would have eventually be Babylon, what would be modern day Iraq, for instance. and Ur of the Chaldeans. It's interesting, the word Chaldeans is later used of the Babylonian people who are not on the stage yet at this point. So this is likely a later author updating the language. This is a common practice in ancient histories where if the name of a place changes, you will update the name of it to what the current audience would know. Sometimes the author will note both of them and say, you know, it was called this, it's now called this. So it's sort of using terminology to say later this would be sort of the land of the Babylonians. But it's debated where exactly this is. There's historical evidence of an Ur in what would be southern Iraq today. And so potentially, Abram and his family are called to travel quite a far distance, up the two great rivers, up to Haran, and then all the way back down into Canaan. In many ways, this is the majority view of scholarship today. There's another view that says there's another Ur very close to Haran, actually, sort of to the north. And so some argue that this makes more sense, that they sort of headed toward Canaan and then stopped in Haran, and then eventually Abram is called to Canaan. Well, and there's a few scriptures that speak to this. Hebrews 11 that we read speaks of what happened here. And then in the book of Joshua, we'll see in a second as well. But either way, whichever Ur it is, they were actually both major cities. Either way, it's a major city, center of economics, center of law, center of religion of the time. Which is a good corrective, because in some ways, even my picture of Abram and his family, it's almost like they were already wanderers, sojourners, and then God just happened to sort of bring them toward a land. The picture is very different. The picture is that they were in the bustling city of the time. This was a center of pagan worship. There was a god named Sin, which just accidentally has an English connection, but maybe not accidentally. There was a moon god named Sin, a moon goddess named Ningal. There was a ziggurat built here. This was a center of pagan worship. And we hear in Joshua, Joshua 24, Joshua says to the people, long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. Isn't that interesting that Abram then is called not only from family, not only from the comforts of the city, but he's called away from this pagan idolatry to come and serve the one true and living God. Can you see how I meant that as Christians, in many ways, that's all of our story, right? To be called away from idolatry. Maybe you didn't worship at a ziggurat. I don't think you did, but we all, before Christ, allowed our heart to wrap around other things. Because we're made in God's image, we're made to worship God. But having not God in our lives, unable to seek Him out, we will find for other things. Some of them are good things or better things, some of them are deadly things, and we will grab hold of them. And yet the story of every Christian, 1 Thessalonians puts it this way. Paul speaking of the people there, for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. This is the story of every Christian. Some of you know the day and the hour. You know the day when you let, by the power of the Spirit, you let go of those idols and you turn toward God. Some of you don't know the day or the hour, and yet you know that you've turned to God. You turn away from these other idols. Abraham is called to do this here, and every Christian sense, every true believer sense has been called to do the same. And so, heed the Lord's call, certainly in the ultimate sense. If you've come this morning and you don't know if you've heeded the call, if you've said, no, I want my life to be about Christ, not about these other things, I pray that you would heed the call today. But perhaps you heeded the call in the ultimate sense many years ago. Heed the call today because idolatry always creeps its way back into our hearts. It will never dominate us like it once did because of Christ's grace. But there's always things we need to let go of and no longer wrap our hearts around. And so heed the call away from idolatry. Number two, heed the Lord's call despite impossibilities. Despite impossibilities, you might have noticed in chapter 11, verse 30, There's sort of a break in the narrative here. As it's describing the family, it introduces Sarai, and verse 30, now Sarai was barren. She had no child. What we're about to see in chapter 12 is a promise of offspring. And this is the first of many in scripture when scripture introduces a woman who is unable to have child, it's like a, It's like a signal, ringing out, saying God is about to do something incredible, right? We think all the way to the New Testament as Jesus' birth is announced, right? To a virgin. And this is the first echo of this, echoing all the way back to Genesis 3.15 of a child who will come. And so this is the first impossibility that Abram and his wife, and we'll see throughout the rest of the book, are called, and they falter here, but they're called here to embrace by faith this promise of a child despite barrenness. Our next impossibility is opposition. Let me read starting in the beginning of chapter 12, and I'll read through verse six again, and you'll see the opposition here. 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 him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." We'll look in a minute at some of those promises. Verse four, so Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the Oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land." Can you hear the ominous note in verse six, right? These promises of land and people have been given. He starts to travel to the land, and it says that the Canaanites were in the land at this time. Again, picture you're the Israelites hearing these words of Moses, and you're on the cusp of the promised land. Right? And you've already had a generation before you who saw the opposition and in fear dishonored God, and you've been wandering in the wilderness. And now, again, you're on the cusp of the promised land. And you're picturing Abram having this first encounter that even at that time, the people were in the land of Canaan. This is going to be an obstacle for God's people, really for the rest of their life as a people. And yet here it's a reason why the book of Hebrews says that Abram was traversing into the unknown, the unseen. God is promising certain things. You will have a child, but my wife's barren. You will have a people and a land, but that land is occupied. These are impossibilities from the perspective of Abram and his family. and they're all related to this impossibility of the unknown. Remember, in Hebrews it says he didn't know where he was going. I mean, he was given the destination, Canaan, but we're gonna see his travels. It's interesting as he makes his way south into the land of Canaan. You probably saw, coming to this place, the Oak of Moreh near Bethel, and we'll come back to Bethel many times. It's gonna be an important place. We'll see in the next text that he comes down into Egypt, and then he'll make his way back up, into Canaan. There's this sojourning that's happening. He knows the sort of final destination, yet he's taking hold of things by faith. God didn't simply just bring him into Canaan, push the people out, and then Abram and his family are established. This is a promise that is going to be fulfilled over many generations. And that's the exact kind of promise that's hard for us as humans to take hold of. When God promises things to us, that his kingdom is coming, when he promises to us that he is sanctifying us, he's making us more like Christ, that Christ will come again one day, these are good, glorious promises that are hard for us to take hold of, impossible to take hold of without faith, without the eyes of faith. Abram goes into the unknown. Right? Imagine any story where a hero is called on an adventure, and imagine how boring that story would be. If the mentor shows up and says, here's your destination, here's an exact map of the way that you will go, you will find no opposition. They've been taken care of. It will take exactly seven days to get there. And then when you get there, it's the end of the story, happily ever after. Would you go to that movie? And yet it's harder when it's our life, right? And imagine Abram and his family, 75 years old, these impossibilities before them, and yet this simple call of the Lord of Yahweh, come, follow me to this land that I will give you. Well, people of God, what impossibilities stand before you in walking into what God has for you in this season? Perhaps it is infertility. It can feel like such a barrier when you're praying and hoping and saying, Lord, I want to grow a family. Isn't that pleasing to you? and yet no child comes. We're reminded that God sees and hears. All throughout scripture are women unable to bear, who find God's promises. Or maybe it's just in this season, sort of an inability to cope, where God has called you maybe to a certain job, you're trying to serve your family, and just the daily grind of it just feels like, I can't do it. Or maybe there's interpersonal conflicts which feel like a barrier, whether within your family or in your work. Maybe there are doors that keep closing. You're praying, Lord, I want to follow your call in my life. I want to please you, but it feels like every door is closing in front of me. Or maybe you're in a season of retirement that you thought would lead to this fulfilling season, and yet it's been a season of unfulfillment. And you say, God, I've been looking forward to this, and now I feel like, what are you calling me to in this season? I want to be used by you. These could be impossibilities. We can't overcome these on our own, but we can lay them before the Lord. Picturing Abram, who is remembered then as the man of faith, even as he faced these things. And so we heed the Lord's call despite impossibilities. Lastly, and very briefly, we heed the Lord's call toward covenant blessing. We'll spend only a brief time here, only because this theme is gonna be really drawn out, especially as we look at chapter 15 of Genesis, chapter 17 of Genesis. God's covenant with Abraham is this key pivotal moment. This is the introduction of it, but it's gonna start to be spelled out in the rest of the book of Genesis. This is part of what we call the covenant of grace, this one covenant of grace that gets worked out through Noah, now through Abraham, through Moses, through David, all the way to the new covenant of Christ. And we'll see more about this, but even our confession puts it this way. If you asked, why would covenant be such a big deal in God's dealings with his people? Chapter seven says, the distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant. Do you see the biblical truth that's summarized there? God is God and we are not. So even Adam and Eve in the garden couldn't relate to him unless he voluntarily condescended and had relationship with them, established a covenant relationship with them. How much more so after Adam and Eve fall, not only weakness but sin separating us from God. It's only through this covenant of grace that we start to see here with Abraham that we have a relationship with God. One summary of definition of the covenant of grace is this, it's that gracious agreement between the offended God and the offending but elect sinner in which God promises salvation through faith in Christ, and the sinner accepts this believingly, promising a life of faith and obedience. We'll see in God's covenant dealings, there's always promises that God is making, Most notably, the promise, I will be your God and you will be my people. There are also requirements of the covenant people that respond in faith to live a certain way. And what's interesting is you only see one aspect of that here in chapter 12. The first thing we hear of this covenant of grace with Abram, it's look at all the I statements of God. He says, go to the land that I will show you and I will make 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 dishonors you, I will curse and you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. All these I statements, this is what God is promising to do. He has plucked Abram from a land of pagan idolatry and worship and said, you will now follow me. and I'm gonna make you a blessing, even unto the whole world. I will give you a people, I will give you a land, and I will bless you. There's five times the word blessing is used there. I will bless you. We'll see, there are requirements for Abram, and as we look at this covenant of Abraham, but I think intentionally, God first introduces us as he is the sovereign God who calls a people to himself, And he is the one who will fulfill the covenant. And we'll see so much more about this in the weeks ahead as we look at the rest of Genesis. But notice then that Abram is not only being called away from idolatry, he's being called despite impossibilities, but those impossibilities are being met with the promises of God. and he's being called toward covenant blessing. God doesn't simply call us away from certain things. He's not interested in us simply letting go of idols and living a more clean and proper life. He calls us away from idols to worship the living God and to be blessed by him, and that's exactly what Abram is called to do here, and that's exactly what every Christian is called to when Christ comes and says, come, follow me. And so Christian, even as you're called away from comfort, even if you've been called in some sense away from family or a relationship with family has been strained by your heeding the call, maybe you're facing impossibilities now and complications, know that you are armed with the promises of God. You are winged by faith. And so Christian, would you heed the call? Would you follow Christ even in this season? Whatever he has for you to please him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your Word, and we thank you that your Word is made effective by the power of the Spirit, even calling sinners to yourself. even calling Christian believers to come and follow Christ with their whole lives. I pray that we would be a people always willing to let go of those things which cling so closely, and instead to look to Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. Would you help us even now in this season, each of us, and as a church, to follow Christ's call? We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.