When I say children of Abraham, most of us think of the Jews, the nation of Israel. But the Lord Jesus Christ would not agree with our thinking in John chapter 8. Jesus was disputing with some of the Jews, and in verse 39, the Jews claimed, Abraham is our father. And Jesus replied, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. Jesus lays down a principle here. Abraham's children are not those who have his genes, they are those who follow his example. And the Apostle Paul follows up this comment of Jesus in the book of Romans by citing Abraham as the example of saving faith. In Romans chapter 4, Paul calls Abraham the father of all who believe that righteousness might be imputed to them. In the next verse, he calls Abraham the father of those who walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had. Paul makes a similar point in Galatians chapter 3. There he teaches that, quote, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. So believers, okay, we often say that word so quickly, It's just kind of a part of our evangelical parlance. Believers. But I want to kind of make us pause here. Believers are the sons of Abraham, Paul teaches us. We possess the spiritual DNA of Abraham. And so we do well to study the example of our spiritual father Abraham, his faith, his obedience, and his faith begins here in Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 through 3, the passage that we've been studying together during this Christmas season. So let's read it one last time, Genesis 12 beginning in verse 1. Now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now, we view these three verses through three lenses, if you will. We've looked at the passage, first of all, through the perspective of kingdom. We observed how God placed two very different kingdoms in Genesis chapters 10 through 12, the kingdom of Babel, King Nimrod, versus the kingdom that he promised to Abraham, which eventually came to be under the Messiah, under Jesus, who is king to this very day. Then last Sunday, we looked at this passage in terms of covenant, what I call the Christmas covenant, and we found that the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant promises that God made to Abraham is found in Jesus, the Messiah. If we have the promised seed, if we have Jesus, then we have the promises. And we also notice that even those involved in the Christmas story, Mary, Zacharias, they understood this concept. They understood that that newborn baby, Jesus, was somehow going to fulfill the promises made to Abraham. This morning, then, we will look at these verses from a third perspective. We'll look at the personal example of Abraham, our father in the faith, and see what we can learn from him on a personal level as an example of the faith and the obedience that is the divining mark of every believer. Now, the text here. divides itself very neatly at the end of verse 1. In verse 1, we have the call to Abraham. And then in verses 2 and 3, we have the sevenfold promise to Abraham. Call and promise define this life-changing event for Abraham. And I debate in my heart whether this is Abraham's conversion. I tend to think that it is. In any case, call and promise often define life-changing moments in our lives. And so let's look at what this passage has to say about call and promise. We first turn our attention to the call of Abraham. First of all, notice that God's call often involves our heart of hearts. God's call often involves our heart of hearts. The way verse 1 is phrased is very interesting. Each phrase takes us closer and closer to Abraham's heart. Get away from your country. Then away from your family, that is your extended family, your clan. And then finally, get away from your father's house, from your immediate family. And there's an interesting parallel in the final call to Abraham found in Genesis chapter 22. So keep your finger here in Genesis 12 and flip over a few pages to Genesis chapter 22 with me. And notice verse 2. Then God said, ìTake now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.î We see the same progression. Take your Son, your only Son, the Son whom you love, and sacrifice Him to me. With each phrase, it seems like God plunges the knife deeper and deeper and deeper into Abraham's heart, as it were. Understand that when God deals with us in life-changing moments, and make no mistake, this was a life changing moment in Abraham's life. When God deals with us in such moments, He goes right for the heart. He wants to know that we have given Him our hearts. His call His demand will amount to Him saying, My son, give Me thine heart. My daughter, give Me thine heart. You see, from time to time, God will test us to see whether we're willing to obey the greatest commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. And it's only when we're willing to do that that we will experience the life-changing promises of God. Now, I don't say that God constantly asks for this kind of sacrifice, but I think He asks it often enough to know our hearts. From time to time, He asks if we will give Him what is in our hand and whether we will give Him what is in our heart. As a teenager, I literally, literally dreamed about being a medical doctor. I dreamed of studying medicine at Penn State University, following my brothers, and at a life-changing moment, at a fireside challenge, Scroon Lake, New York, Word of Life Island. I gave my heart to the Lord. And I've never been the same. God changed my life. At other times, God has taken something not as dear to my heart. Well, maybe. I've loved golf since I was an early teenager. I was born when my dad was more than 40 years old, and he didn't play anything at that point except golf. He didn't even hunt anymore. My older brothers hunted with him, fished with him. I fished with him a little bit, but primarily at that point in his life my dad played golf. And so I learned to love golf real early. But there have been times in my adult life where God seemed to say to me, you need to lay that aside right now. God goes for the heart. My son, my daughter, give me thine heart. You know, as we face the new year, many of us think about making resolutions. I would encourage you to think this year in a different way. I would encourage you to think about what God's call on your life is. Have you given your heart to the Lord? He doesn't just want your year. He doesn't just want my year. He wants our hearts. And then in a similar way, God often, His call often involves what is most attractive to the world. God's call often involves what is most attractive to the world. The context at the end of chapter 11 tells us that the place that God told Abraham to leave was Ur of the Chaldeans. When he said to Abraham, get out of your country, Ur was the country to which he referred. Now that doesn't mean much to most of us today. We can easily imagine that Abraham's life before this call and Abraham's life after this call, they were probably pretty much the same. Ur was probably some little outpost where shepherds dwelt. And if we think that way, we are 100% wrong. Ur was a city-state with a long and glorious history. The site of Ur was discovered and excavated in the 1800s. Some of the most stunning archaeological finds from ancient times were unearthed there. For more centuries than this country has existed, let me repeat that. For more centuries than our country has existed, Ur was the center of government in that area. It was a center of trade and commerce, a center of religion and law. I heard someone put it like this. It was the New York City of that day. Everything that the world had to offer in that day was found in Ur of the Chaldeans. Now, I can easily imagine that if Abraham lived there, his life was just as good as everybody else's. He seemed to be a prosperous man. But his life after he left Ur was very different. It was the life of a Bedouin. It was the life of a herdsman, lived in tents. God often calls his people away from the best that the world has to offer. Why? Well, the reason relates to the point that I just made a moment ago. Our hearts are so easily bound up with the good things of life, with the best that the world has to offer. And often, if God is going to do something with us, if God is really going to change our lives, He either has to get that situation out of our hearts or He has to get us out of that situation. It's then that he can begin to work out his promises in our lives. Our lives cannot really change until the bonds to this world are cut. Now I'm not saying he takes all of those things away from us, but if our hearts are wrapped up in them, then God often does surgery. He often calls us away from those things if we want to know His life-changing promises. Now, I've implied the next point, but I believe I need to make it explicit because this observation may be the most important one that I make. And that's simply that God's call precedes His promise. God's call precedes His promise. The order here in verses 1 through 3 is very important. God's call to obedience, to risk, to sacrifice, to faith precedes His promises and the fulfillment of His promises. Now that doesn't sound like a huge theological point, but you know oftentimes a lot of people get that backwards. I mean, take the promise of salvation. If we're to be saved, we must repent and believe. Now, in our quote-unquote Christian country, post-Christian, except maybe down here in the South, people don't have any problem believing. But there are a lot of people, they want that promise of heaven. They want to know that their sins have been forgiven. They want peace and joy and happiness. They want the blessing of God, but they want to do that without repenting. They want to do that without turning from sin, without turning from their own way, without putting Jesus on the throne of their heart. The old Puritan used to put it this way, they want to take Christ by halves. Have you ever heard that? They want Jesus as Savior, but they don't want Jesus as Lord. Happy to have Jesus as my Savior, but putting Jesus on the throne of my heart? No, I'm not interested in that. That's not the way God's economy works. We cannot take Christ by halves. If we want his promises, then we have to step out and obey his call. And this principle applies not just to that great promise of salvation, but to many of God's life-changing promises. Many of God's promises have conditions. And if we're not willing to meet those conditions, then we will not enjoy those promises. If we're not willing to give God our hearts, if we're not willing to leave the world behind. And then one final observation regarding God's call to Abraham and what it has to teach us. God's call reveals enough to obey, but not enough to preclude risk and faith. God's call reveals enough so that we can obey, but not enough that we can do it without risk, without trust. Another way to say this is that God usually reveals only one step at a time. I mean, did you notice that God told Abraham at the end of verse 1 that he was to set out for a land that God would show him? He said, Abraham, I want you to leave everything. And I'll show you where you're going. I want you to leave everything. Can you imagine? He asked Abraham to sacrifice it all, to risk it all on the barest promise. And get this, Abraham never saw that promise, not in its fulfillment. We'll talk about this more in a minute. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 8 states it this way, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going. So often in the Christian life, we can obey only when we truly trust God and His promises. Only when we truly put faith in God's character, in who He is. To use the lyrics of the old hymn, we must trust and obey. We can only obey when we trust. And so as you and I look out through the new year, God does not map out all 365 days. Wouldn't that be great? Here, I have a calendar for you. Here's what's going to happen. All 12 months, 2024, God doesn't work that way. God shows us the next step. And he expects us to take it in faith. And once we take that step in faith, then he'll show us the next step. That's what it means to live by faith and not by sight. Now, as I have indicated to you, God's call, this call to sacrifice, to risk, to obedience was the doorway to his promises. And in Abraham's case, it was a sevenfold promise. Now, we've explored these promises to some degree in the past couple of weeks. We've seen that concealed in them is the promise of a kingdom, a covenant relationship with God. But this morning, in the time we have remaining, I want us to look at these promises from the simplest perspective, what they meant to Abraham personally as our example. So God first of all promised to make of Abraham a nation, a nation, a great nation. Now God's promises here entail more than just descendants. I think most of us expect to have descendants. My sister-in-law has made a hobby of working out the genealogy of her family. She's paid a membership to, I don't know what the website is, and she can go and look up the known genealogy for anybody. She can enter what she might know or have discovered about that genealogy. And she entered my name and birth date into that website, and then she clicked a link that listed famous people from which I am descended. And there were a couple of presidents there. I'm like the 12th cousin, 26 times removed. It's that kind of thing. I was even related to Queen Elizabeth of England somehow. I'm royalty. So we all hope to have descendants, right? But God's promise to Abraham goes beyond having descendants. God promises to make of him a nation. In a couple of weeks, I indicated to you the word translated nation here is the word in the Old Testament that's used for the Gentile nations. It's not normally the word that was used to describe Israel. And so it has the idea, I'm going to make of you a real nation. A nation with a land and with a government and with a king. And here's what I want you to notice. This first promise compensated Abraham directly for the sacrifice to which God's call entailed. What God's call entailed. God demanded that Abraham leave his nation, and his clan, and his family. And then God immediately turns right around and says, but I'll give you a family, I'll give you descendants, I'll give you a nation. Now remember, Abraham never saw any of that. He had 12 sons. but not nearly a nation. And think of it, the Lord Jesus makes similar promises to us when we sacrifice, when we leave things behind. Listen to this promise in Matthew 19. And everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life." We never really sacrifice anything to obey God's call. There is no way to out give God. Next, God promises Abraham blessing. Blessing. Now, when God promises blessing in the general sense, the idea is that God will make certain that all goes well with him. God will crown his efforts with achievement and success. I've known people in life who just never seemed to get a break. You know people like that? Whatever they set their hands to, it seems to break or fall apart or bite them. How many of you remember the old Owlcap comic strip, Lil Abner? How many of you remember? There was a character in that comic strip called Joe You can't really pronounce his last name. You weren't intended to. It was all consonants. And there were always perpetual rain clouds over his head. There could be sunshine everywhere else, but directly over Joe, there was always thunder and lightning. Have you known people like that? The idea in this promise is precisely exactly the opposite. Now, we see the fulfillment of this promise, I think, most directly in those circumstances in which Abraham, by his own actions, did not deserve success and blessing. I mean, you think about this. He went down to Egypt, lied to Pharaoh. I mean, that's like lying to the CIA, you know? lied to Pharaoh, said, she's my sister. She gets taken into Pharaoh's harem. Pharaoh finds out that she's really Abraham's wife. At that point, what would you have expected a guy like Pharaoh to do? And then, he did it again. and the kingdom of Gerar with King Abimelech. And if King Abimelech had a CIA, he must have known that this is the second time it happened. It happened down in Egypt. And here's the record of Abraham's interaction with Abimelech and how it ends. Here's what it says in Genesis chapter 20. Then Abimelech took sheep, oxen, male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham. And he restored Sarah, his wife, to him. And Abimelech said, see, my land is before you. Dwell where it pleases you. This is not what I would expect. Then to Sarah, he said, Behold, I have given your brother, meaning Abraham, a thousand pieces of silver. Indeed, this vindicates you before all who are with you and before everybody. Wow. And then there's the time he rescued Lot. You remember that? So you have these four kings. These four kings of city-states, and they obliterate the army of five kings. Think about that. Let that sink in. The army of the four obliterate the army of the five. They take Lot and all of his stuff, and Abraham goes after them with 318 employees from his farm. Again, what would you expect to happen? And Abraham conquered them and brought back all of the loot, the booty. Wow! God says, I will bless you. In the third place, God promised Abraham I will make your name great. He promised him a name. And I want you to think about that. To this day, to this day, Abraham has a name. Three great world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all revere the name of Abraham. Although their beliefs vary widely, they revere the name of Abraham. That is a direct fulfillment of this promise. I think I told you a couple of weeks ago, when it talks about a name here, it's not talking about fame in the sense that we think of fame today. You know, winning the Heisman Trophy. Somebody's going to win the Heisman Trophy here. They'll be famous forevermore. Winner of the Heisman Trophy. Although I don't know who won the Heisman Trophy in 1948. 1956, when I was born. This was normally used of the idea of a king. It's royal language. And I think I told you that before Abraham died, those around him called him a prince. They called him a king. Even during his lifetime, he had this kind of a name. And then the most interesting, perhaps, of the promises is the fourth promise. Remember, there are seven promises, so the fourth is the one in the middle. It's central. Three and three on either side of this fourth promise. And our English versions hide the fact that this promise actually has a different grammar. This promise is actually a command. We could translate it and be a blessing. You shall be a blessing because I command you to be a blessing. Promise always entails responsibility. I've been talking about the fact this morning that That if we're willing to respond to God's call, then God will pour out His blessings on us. But when God pours out those blessings on us, those promised blessings, we're not supposed to hoard them. We're not supposed to use them up for ourselves alone. We are in turn to be a blessing to others. It's not an option. God's blessing always entails responsibility. And then the fifth and sixth blessings are interesting. I will bless those who bless you and curse him who curses you. These promises are interesting from a couple of perspectives. First, that first couplet, the first half of the couplet is plural. The last half is singular. And there seems to be an indication there that the cursing then would be unusual. It would be exceptional. Many more would bless than they would curse. But the biggest point here is that the blessedness of others is bound up in their response to Abraham and his descendants. And we've seen that, haven't we? We certainly saw it in Nazi Germany. If anyone ever cursed the Jews, it was Hitler. And God cursed him and his armies and his government and his mind. And today there seems to be this movement here in our land to move away from blessing Israel. Nothing would be more dangerous for our government or our nation. But the biggest reason that those who bless Abraham are blessed is because of the descendant of Abraham, the son of Abraham, because of Jesus. Remember, God identified with Abraham. It kind of, You know, we talk about David being a man after God's own heart. The scripture says that God called Abraham his friend. God identified with Abraham. And so those who are willing to identify with Abraham know blessing, and particularly those who are willing to identify with the son of Abraham. with Jesus. And Jesus takes this promise and He kind of turns it inside out. Jesus said that if we identify with Him, what can we expect? He says if we identify with Him, we can expect to be cursed. We can expect to be persecuted. But then He also says, if you're willing to do that, If you're willing to identify with me before men, then I will identify with you before my father who is in heaven. And you will know the ultimate blessing. And so when we're willing to identify with the son of Abraham, we ultimately will know eternal blessing. And then the final promise extends beyond Abraham. Universal blessing. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Of course, this final promise is the promise of the Messiah. The promise that God, from the very first in his dealings with Abraham, didn't just have the Israelites in mind. God had in mind to bless all mankind through Abraham, through his lineage, through the son of Abraham, through the Messiah, Jesus. Through his death, through his resurrection comes the universal offer of salvation to all men. So as I close, I close with a simple question. What is God's call on your life As we begin 2024, what is God calling you to leave behind? What is God calling you to sacrifice? What is God calling you to risk? What is God calling you to in 2024?