Genesis chapter 12 Genesis chapter 12 And we'll read verses one through three. Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land, from your kin, from your father's house to the land which I will show you. It will make you a great nation. I will bless you. Make your name great, so you shall be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Today we begin a new chapter, chapter 12 of Genesis. Up until the flood, and a while after it, God has been dealing with the people of the world, mankind as a whole. Of course, as we've seen, wickedness was rampant until Yahweh God sent the great flood. He intervened in the course of the world, saving only Noah and his family. But it didn't take man long to rebel and they decided to build a tower, the Tower of Babel. And again, God intervened and thwarted their plan, confused the languages of men. And so the people of the world were scattered. Most of the resulting nations continued individually in their rebellion and fell into false worship. Of course, there were exceptions to that, and there were men like Melchizedek and Job, and they lived during that period of time who genuinely loved God and served Him, men like Shem, But it seems as though these were few and far between. From a human standpoint, it would seem as though that God would be soon forgotten. There would be nobody who would serve the true God of the Bible, no one who would serve Yahweh any longer. But yet we find that he's always got a people, always got a plan in place. Over in the book of Acts chapter 14, This sermon today. I just want to do an introduction to this chapter in this section of Genesis, but in in Acts chapter 14 and verse 17 Verses 16 and 17 it says in the generations gone by he permitted all the nations to go their own ways And yet he did not leave himself without witness in that he did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons filling your hearts with good and gladness and so So he will never he has never left himself out without a witness. There have been times in this world where the people of God have been in the great minority. There have been a few at times, but there have been some always. even when it dwindled down to just the eight on board the ark, Yahweh God still had a people. And even in the future, maybe not so distant future when the Lord comes back in the air at that time that we sometimes refer to as the rapture, there will be a short time when nobody on earth will know the Lord. There will be no one on the earth who will believe in Jesus Christ as their savior, but God will send his two witnesses down. He'll send angels. He will send those who will preach And then there will be several saved during that time of great tribulation. And the Bible tells us that their numbers will increase and there'll be the 144,000 Jewish men and so on and so forth. But that's the future. Right now we're looking at the past and in chapter 12 and going back to chapter 11. We learned that Tara had left her to go to Cain and then apparently Apparently Abram had gotten Had gone along with them There in earth Received the call to go there in fact Stephen in his message The book of Acts chapter 7 he kind of gives us a little bit more insight in Acts chapter 7 Versus 2 And three, and he said, hear me, brothers and fathers, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran and said to him, leave your country and your relatives and come into the land that I will show you. And so we find that Stephen gives that account there that in that time when he was in Heron, that area, that he received that call to go. And so what we read in Genesis chapter 12 We read of that call Now this call was not an easy one When Yahweh says to Abram go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land Which I will show you He didn't give him all the details of where he was going or what he would be doing or what it was like and all of those sorts of things. In fact, in Hebrews chapter 11, that great chapter of the roll call of faith, the writer of Hebrews says in verse 8, by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. We're all sons and daughters of Adam, descendants of Noah, no different than anybody else, and if we're told to go somewhere by anybody, we want to know the details. Our family's getting ready to go to North Carolina, and we know where we're going. But what are we doing? We're checking the weather. We're looking to see what the traffic's like. We want to know where we're staying. We want to know what we're going to do. We want to know the plans, when we're eating and who's fixing what and all of those sorts of things. We want to know something of what's going on. Can you imagine being told to go somewhere and not even knowing where? God says, Abram, you need to go. Not only go, but go away from your family, to go away from your father's house. Leaving out those details that we think are so important, but when God says to do something, even if we don't have all the details, we need to do it. God does not speak to us audibly the way that he did back in those days, but we have his word. We have the Bible. And sometimes we don't have all the details of what it is that we should be doing, but we ought to do it. We ought to obey. His Word, even when we don't know all the details. We know that we shouldn't be going here, or we should be doing this, we should be doing that. We don't know what all that entails or what it looks like, but obedience to God, obedience to Yahweh was good for Abram so many thousands of years ago, and it's still good for us today. By faith, Abraham being called obeyed God. That's what the writer of Hebrews tells us. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed. And faith and obedience go hand in hand. They can never be separated. James 2 and verse 18 says, but someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works. You say, I have faith and I love Jesus and I love God. And it's easy to stand in one place and say, well, or sit in church and say, I will do what he says to do. It's easy to sing the song, follow, follow. I will follow Jesus anywhere, everywhere. I will follow on. But do we, will we, are we truly following him? Not all of us will end up going to a far country or moving to another place in obedience to God, but do we follow him in our day-to-day lives? There was a man who did not know exactly where he was going or how he would get there. He didn't know who was there already, nor did he know how God would work all this out. Can you imagine the laughter of his friends, his family, when he said, I've got to go? And they said, where are you going? He said, I don't know. They said, where will you live when you get there? He says, I don't know. Well, who's going to be there when you get there? He said, I don't know. Someone might say to him, what is your plan if all this doesn't work out? He says, I ain't got one because I trust Yahweh. It's going to work. I just need to be obedient. You see, Abram gave up dependence on all visible things, but instead trusted in God. Abraham believed God and trusted in Yahweh and His promises. He went out once and for all without any intention of returning. Faith, mark it down, faith never questions, but it always follows. There's a cost to serving God. No matter how big or small it looks, service to Almighty God will cost. And it cost Abraham something. It cost him his family. It cost him his home. It cost him to follow Yahweh. You may lose friends. You may even lose family to serve the Lord. Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land. So he had to leave behind property. Go forth from your land, familiar territory, leave it. And from your kin, it cost him his relatives, familiar people. From your father's house to the land, I will show you. And the call of God to serve God is a separating Abram was separated from his old standing in state to a new one But this was necessary over in Joshua chapter 24 Joshua chapter 24 Verses two and three Joshua says to the tribes of Israel He says in Joshua said to all the people Thus says Yahweh the God of Israel from ancient times Your fathers lived beyond the river namely Tara the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor and they served other gods Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led them through all the land of Canaan and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac. You see, on the other side, back where Abraham was, at his father's house, Terah's house. It was familiar. It was home. It was a place that he grew up in, but, but Terah and those of his kin, they had fallen into worshiping other gods. And it was important for Abram to be separated from that. And Yahweh pulled him out of it. separating him from his family, even his father's house, calling him into separate special service. Did Abram love his family? Absolutely, I'm sure he did. Did he wish to honor mommy and daddy? Absolutely, I'm certain he did. But he needed to follow Yahweh. You say, well, that's a good story, a good thing to read about. That was Abram. But what's the application for us? How do we take an Old Testament account from so long ago and apply it to ourselves? Well, in Matthew chapter 19, Matthew chapter 19 and verse 27. Then Peter answered and said to him, speaking to Jesus, behold, we've left everything and followed you. What then will there be for us? Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you that you who have followed me in the regeneration, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you also shall sit upon 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for my name's sake will receive 100 times as much will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last in the last first. He says, he says. In this text, where I glean from this is that there are others besides Abram. Who have left? mother and father, brothers and sisters, family, children, land, farms, left those things for the sake of serving Christ. Over in Luke chapter 14, chapter 14 The inverse 25 Now many crowds were going along with him and Talking about Jesus. And he turned and said to them, 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, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build the tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Lest when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king? When he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. Therefore, salt is good, but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless, either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. There is cost to serving The Lord. There's cost to following Jesus. There's cost to following after Yahweh. Is it worth it in the end? Absolutely. There is. There is. He's not teaching us that we be hateful for the sake of being hateful. He's not teaching us that we be disrespectful. None of that. But what He is telling us is that we love our family, but our love for God must be stronger. We have a desire to be with our family. We have a desire to live with them and to be with them, but our desire to please our God must be more than even our desire to please our parents or our spouses. And this is what we find in the example of Abram. We'll go ahead and stop there, but I trust that this has given us something to consider. Lord willing, next week we'll dive into the text. And we'll begin to really expound the text here and consider what the scripture has to say about this important man, Abram, and why Yahweh is calling him out for this purpose.