The word of the Lord this evening comes from Genesis chapter 12, the first three verses, verses one to three, Genesis chapter 12, verses one through three. Hear now this reading from the word of God. 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. That's the reading of God's word for this evening. Folks, we live in a day where there just seems to be quite a lot of divisions within our communities. In fact, there's constant strivings to try to bring various different peoples from various different backgrounds together. You can't help but to wonder and just contemplate, for example, the whole multi-ethnic diversity movement that we read about practically every single day that is going on within our communities, both secularly as well as in the context of the church. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone's wondering how we can get people from various different backgrounds to get together and to live in harmony. In the academic community, we see something similar going on. Within the past several decades, there has been a growth now in a new discipline referred to as the Abrahamic religions. You actually see chairs and departments now in secular universities dedicated by that banner, by that title. the department of the Abrahamic religions. And by the Abrahamic religions, more often than not, what they have in mind are really the three big world religions of Judaism, Islam, and of course, Christianity. I don't think I'm being terribly insightful when I say that during our lifetimes, we've seen enormous hostility and violence amongst these various different religious groups. The idea of the Abrahamic religions is to try to show that we have a common denominator, that is a common source of origins, that is in the figure of Abraham. And in fact, if you think of all three religions, they in fact can in fact trace to a certain degree much of their significant teachings to the figure of Abraham. So the suggestion is, is if we can see that we come from the same source, the same origins, then perhaps we can live at peace together. Now, in fact, there might in fact be some truth to all of this, that in fact it is in Abraham that the Lord promised that we would have a united people. But we can have a united people only first and foremost because we are first a redeemed people. We are a redeemed people because we believe in the work of a Redeemer, that is, Jesus Christ. Thus, it is primarily, and I would say exclusively, in our union with Christ that we can, in fact, truly see ourselves as a united people. And that is what I'd like to share with you tonight. The main message here then is to see that God's plan for the gospel has always had in mind a Gentile people group and that this was never to be isolated to one ethnic group of Israelites or Jews alone. The application that I hope that you'll gain from tonight is to see that the promises that God made to Abraham are rightfully not to be claimed just by ethnic Jews, but this is something that we all can claim for those who have been redeemed by the true son of Abraham, Jesus Christ. Three simple points here for tonight, folks. First, the people of God that was promised to Abraham. That's the first thing I'd like to discuss, the people that God promised to Abraham. Secondly, the identity of those people. And then thirdly, the faith of those people. That's it. The people that God promised, the identity of those people, and then the faith of those people. First, the people that God promised to Abraham. When you look here in Genesis chapter two, excuse me, Genesis chapter 12, the Lord really makes quite an amazing promise to Abraham here in verse two. He says that I will make you into a great nation. Now, this was a plan that God had in mind for Abraham all along. In fact, he needed him to leave his current homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans because God was going to make Abraham into a great nation in the land of Canaan. In fact, it is very significant to see that it is really just one promise that God is making to Abraham. It's really interesting that when you read commentators and you talk to different academics and even pastors, They seem to fluctuate on just the number of promises that God made. Some will say that God promised Abraham descendants and land. Others will say that God promised Abraham a nation and blessing. Still others, a nation and land, and then various different other permutations that kind of goes on and on and on. They don't even realize that they're not saying the same thing. What you see here in Genesis chapter 12, God made only one promise to Abraham. And the promise that he made is that he would become a great nation. But now if you stop and think about that for a moment, though, what does a nation need? A nation, in order to be a nation, requires various different component parts. First, a nation needs a citizenship. It needs people, lots of people, in order to make up its people group. Secondly, a nation needs a homeland. They need a land, they need a home, a place where they can call a place for their own dwelling. Number three, they need a constitution. They need a law. Anarchy, to do whatever you want, is not a blessing. To have law, to have governance, that is a blessing. And then finally, number four, they need good, godly leadership. For Abraham, that he'd be promised is that he would be promised kings, that kings would come from his line. Now, truthfully, each of those four different components of the one nation of Abraham we can discuss, and this really could be a four-part series of sermons. In fact, it could be an eight-part series of sermons that could be preached to you. But tonight, I'd just like to share with you one of those promises, the focus on the theme of the promise of people. and to meditate on the people that God promised to Abraham. One thing that you see here in the Old Testament, God promised Abraham lots and lots of people. In fact, when you read various different passages in the book of Genesis, you see that God promised Abraham lots of people, but he uses various different images to communicate the amount of people that God would bless him with. For example, Genesis chapter 13, you don't need to turn to these folks, just listen to this. Genesis 13, 16 says that I, that is God, will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can count the dust of the earth, so your offspring can also be counted as well. Folks, how much dust is in the earth? Well, there's lots and lots of dust. In fact, if you just come into my home, then I think you'll see that there is lots and lots of dust. Imagine trying to count the dust. You see, it's sort of a ridiculous picture, but that's the whole point. This is going to be the amount of descendants that God is going to give to Abraham. A second image that he uses here, Genesis 15 in verse five. God brought Abraham outside and he said to him, look toward the heaven and number the stars if you are able to count them. Then he said to them, so shall your offspring be. Look outside if you get a chance, that is if the weather clears up, and try counting the stars. I don't know if you ever tried that. I actually tried that once and what I end up finding happening is that I can't keep track of what star I counted and didn't because there are just so many. You see, that's the point. You can't count these stars because they are innumerable. So the blessings that God is going to give to Abraham, so your offspring shall be as well. Finally, he says, Genesis 22, verse 17, your descendants, he says, I will surely bless you, he says, I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. So he uses another imagery here that is sand by the seashore. You ever go to the beach? You see the amount of grains of sand that is on the beach? Try counting them. You see, you can't do it. That's the whole point. The descendants that God is going to give to Abraham cannot be counted because there are just too many. They are innumerable. They are going to be like the dust of the earth. They are going to be like the stars of the sky. They are going to be like the sand of the seashore. This is the amount of blessing people that God will give to Abraham. As we reflect on the people that God promised to Abraham, let's move on to talk about the identity of these people. Who exactly are we talking about? Now, if you think about the Old Testament for a moment, it looks like the great nation that God promised to Abraham is, in fact, Old Testament Israel, and that the innumerable people that God promised to Abraham are going to be the Old Testament Israelites. It also looks like that the blessings that God promised to Abraham are going to be limited just to that ethnic line of Israelites, and that therefore only those who are in that line of Abraham can truly receive that promise. In fact, some Christians out there in our day, now I know it's going to be kind of hard to believe, but some Christians really want to say that. that the promise that God made to Abraham is only for literally those ethnic Israelites, literally those who are descendants of Abraham, and only they can claim the promises that God made. Only they can claim the promise of this great nation, land, law, and king. But folks, that is just simply not true. And it's a good thing that it isn't. Praise God that it isn't. Because if it were true, then everything that God permits to Abraham has absolutely nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with us. But in fact, that is not true in that the promises that God gave to Abraham, the blessed people, the homeland, the constitutional law, the great king, the messianic king, all of that are blessings that we can rightfully claim as ours. by faith in the true son of Abraham, Jesus Christ. The first way that you can see that this is not limited just to a bloodline is in the Hebrew word nation here in the phrase great nation. I will make Abraham into a great nation. That Hebrew word nation is the Hebrew word goy. Now, whenever you see the word goy in the Old Testament for nation, it is almost always used in reference to the non-Israelite peoples that are out there, what we would refer to in the New Testament, really, as Gentiles. Whenever God wanted to refer to the covenant people of God, he would use a different Hebrew word, the word am, for people. But the word goy for nation is almost always in reference to the non-ethnic Israelites, the Gentile peoples that are out there in the ancient world. And so here God says that he will make Abraham into a great goy, a great nation, not a great om, a great people, which tells you right away that from the very beginning of God's covenant promise to Abraham, that the idea of salvation and redemption is not to be limited to just one ethnic group, and in fact you could say salvation was never meant to be limited to one ethnic group ever at all. The identity of the true people of God is going to transform outside of ethnic boundaries. It is going to include the Gentiles. And that you see embedded in the promise that God made to Abraham right here in Genesis chapter 12. In other words, folks, you don't need to wait for the Apostle Paul in the New Testament to see the ingathering of the nations, the Gentiles being brought into the tents of Shem, so to speak. You could see the blessings that God has for the Gentiles already in seed form here in Genesis chapter 12. This is the reason why, whenever you read the Old Testament, it is so important to see that there are non-Israelites. There are Gentiles who are being brought into the covenant community, even in the Old Testament. Think of Rahab in the book of Joshua. She was a Canaanite. not an Israelite, yet a Canaanite. But she is the one that saw Israel coming into the Canaanite land. She is the one who heard about what God did in Egypt and in the wilderness. And therefore, she knew that the God of Israel is the true God. And there she abandoned her upbringing, and she embraced this God by faith and welcomed into the Israelite community. Think of Ruth in the Book of Ruth. She is constantly referred to as Ruth the Moabitess. By being referred to as a Moabitess, you are constantly being told that she is not an Israelite, but she was willing to give up her own homeland. She was even willing to give up her own ethnic people group, the Moabites, in order to follow the Lord and embrace him and his covenant promises, thus also becoming a part of the covenant community of God. Think of Uriah in the book of Samuel. Uriah is referred to always as Uriah the Hittite. By calling him a Hittite, what are you told? That he is not an Israelite. And yet it is Uriah who was a faithful servant and general under David. He fought his wars. He was victorious in his battles. He was faithful in his service to the Lord by being faithful in his service to David. And of course, it's ironic that David is the one who stole his wife, impregnated her, covered up all of these sins, at least tried to, by premeditatively murdering Uriah. In fact, later when you read the prophets, the Isaiah to Malachi material, one thing that you see is that they have a vision of a new Israel in the new covenant, and that this new Israel is going to be composed of northern Israelites, southern Judeans, and also the Gentiles, and that what you see then as the new Israel in the new covenant is a supranational people, a new northern tribe of Israelites united with the southern tribe and a new united people of God, Israel, and brought into that now are going to be non-ethnic Israelites, that is, Gentiles, and this is going to make up the new Israel of God. This is one reason why the ministry of the suffering servant in Isaiah 42 is one who is appointed to be a covenant to the people, but then it says that he will be a light to the nations. One job of the suffering servant is to be a light to the nations, to bring in the Gentiles, you could say, into the covenant community of God. In other words, folks, when God promised that he would make Abraham into a great nation, he envisioned something by far greater than the blessings of one ethnic group. He envisioned all of the peoples of the world. God envisioned his people, he envisioned his people being made up of multinational peoples that'll be embracing, you could say, his one and only son, rejecting their rebellious ways and embracing Jesus Christ by faith. We have seen here then the promise that God made to Abraham is going to be an innumerable people. The promise that God made to Abraham is not going to be identified with one ethnic group, it is going to be transnational. But finally, the faith of these people. If in fact we are not made up of the people of Abraham, are not made up by birth or ethnicity, then how do we become part of this community? Praise God, folks, it is by faith. Faith in the one and only son, in the one true son of Abraham, that is in Jesus Christ. And this is the reason why whenever the New Testament mentions Abraham, he is seen as the great model of faith. That is faith in Christ. Look at Hebrews 11, verses eight and nine. I mean, don't look at it. You can just listen to my reading of it here. Hebrews 11, verses eight and nine refers to our passage here in Genesis 12, this call to leave his homeland and to go to a foreign territory. Here, the Hebrew writer says, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. He went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in a land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise." Recall what it is that God said to Abraham, remember, in Genesis chapter 12 and verse 1. God commands Abraham to leave your country and your kindred and your father's house and go to the land that I will show you." The Lord really gives Abraham quite an incredible task, quite a difficult task, really a risky task. He has abandoned everything that he is familiar with, his home, his family, he has abandoned all of that, and he has to move on to a new community. This is what Gerhard von Raad, the Old Testament, 20th century German scholar Gerhard von Raad referred to as a call to abandon all natural roots. abandoned his homeland, abandoned his people, implicitly suggesting that God will give to him a new homeland and a new people. I really have a lot of sympathy for Abraham when I meditate on this call that the Lord gave to him. It really was a little over 20 years ago that a very similar thing even happened to me. I had just graduated from seminary, And the one, in fact, ministry opportunity that opened up for me was to move my family from Southern California all the way to Baltimore, Maryland to start my pastoral ministry. I had to give up everything that I knew. I grew up in Southern California. I was very familiar with that area. My family was there. My friends were there. The church community I knew, that I was familiar with, was also there. To move all the way to Maryland, where I had no family, no friends, and was starting completely over again. It's quite a frightening idea to abandon all things and to act by faith, but that is exactly what Abraham does, and it's through this faith-based obedience that the Lord blesses him so that he would be a blessing to the entire world. I think also of Romans chapter four, verses 11 and 12, a passage that we read this evening and reflected on tonight, such an important passage. You could notice what it says here about Abraham in regards to his faith. Starting at verse 11, it says that he, that is Abraham, received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believed without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. And to make him the father of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised outwardly, but who also walks in the footsteps of the faith of their father Abraham, who had before, before he in fact was circumcised. This is an absolutely critical and important passage. It says that Abraham's circumcision was a sign of the righteousness that he received by faith, not by works, but by faith in Jesus Christ. And he had this righteousness by faith before he was circumcised. Now, For the Apostle Paul, the order there is extremely important. He received righteousness by faith, and then he was circumcised. And the reason why that order is so important is so that, first and foremost, he could see that righteousness did not come by circumcision, but secondly, so that those who are not circumcised, that is, Gentiles, can also receive that same righteousness that comes by faith. Not just the Gentiles, but even the Jews who were circumcised, that they are not going to trust in their circumcision as a way to receive righteousness, but they are going to receive righteousness the same way that their father Abraham did, that is by faith. In other words, the way that we become the true people of Abraham is by modeling the faith of Abraham, by believing as Abraham did in the one and only son of Abraham, not by circumcision. This is the reason why the New Testament makes Abraham a paradigmatic man of faith. He is the model of what it means to believe. And this, folks, is the reason why we can even have hope in our evangelism. This is why that we can even have the modicum of expectation of success in our evangelism. God said that he would bless the nations. and that he would bless the nations through Abraham. Because it is not by works that we are saved, nor is it by bloodline that we are saved. It is by faith in Jesus Christ that we are saved. It is by faith in Jesus Christ that we become members of the true sons of Abraham. We are made then the true children of Abraham again by faith in the true Son of Abraham, Jesus Christ. And this is what the Apostle Paul stresses over and over again. Galatians chapter 3, verses 28 and 29. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. There is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. You see, if you are in Christ, that means you are a true descendant and a true child of Abraham. The Apostle Paul then really redefines what it means to be an Abrahamite. It is not by blood, it is by faith. He redefines what it means to be a true Israelite. It isn't by blood, it isn't by ethnicity, it is by faith. He defines what it means to be a true Jew. It is not by ethnicity, it is by faith in the true son of Abraham. And because of that, we are united as one. Folks, there's an old children's song that really captures in a very nice way a summary of the passage that we read here tonight. A children's song that perhaps some of the children might know, and if you know it, you can sing it, but I definitely am not. It goes like this. Father Abraham had many sons. Had many sons did Father Abraham. And then it says, I am one of them, And so are you. So let's all praise the Lord. You see, folks, this is so true. In Christ, we are all made children of Abraham, and thus we are the true people of God. For that reason, we can claim the covenant promises as ours. We can be the true people of God, and therefore we can look forward to the true land that God promised to Abraham, not just some small, meager geographical territory that is carved out for us in the Middle East, the true land that God had promised for Abraham, that is the new heavens and the new earth. Folks, that is ours by faith in Christ. We will have the blessings of the new covenant. It won't be fragile like the old covenant that was breakable. This new covenant will have laws that we can obey by faith in the true son of Abraham. We will have a new king, not like the kings of old that failed and ultimately led God's people into exile, but the true messianic son, the true king in the line of David, the true king that God had in mind all along, who will rule perfectly and protect his people. We'll have all of these things because of Christ, the true Son of Abraham. May God bless us all. Let's bow in a word of prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we come before you this evening and we thank you, dear Lord, for Jesus Christ, our Savior. Thank you, dear God, that in Christ we are not random different people groups from various different backgrounds alone. In fact, Lord, we may come from various different histories and with different stories, but in Christ we are the one people of God. Thank you for that, dear Lord. And in Christ, we can look forward to the promises that were made to Abraham, for in Christ those promises are not just Abraham's, but they are ours. We look forward, Lord, to the new heavens and the new earth. a land, dear God, that will no longer perish, that will not be defiled, that will, in fact, last for eternity in Christ. We thank you, Lord, for the new covenant in which, Lord, the promises, the commandments of God are going to be, Lord, laws that we can obey and will obey by faith in Jesus Christ. We look forward, Lord, to the great king that was promised to Abraham, the true son of David, who will rule over, Lord, all of creation, Lord, sovereignly. with peace, with grace, and with strength. All of these things, Lord, and the promises we have read about are ours in Christ, and we thank you for it. And we thank you, Lord, that it is by faith that we can cling to these promises, not by works, not by blood descendants, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, dear Lord, and hear our prayers, for we pray all of these things in Jesus' name, amen.