If you'd open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 11. For those of you visiting today, we're going straight through this book, which means we start at chapter 1, verse 1, and go right straight through it, which means we don't jump over anything, including genealogies and lineage lists. And you've joined us today as we've come to one of them, but I think you'll find it's very important and perhaps interesting. We'll try to make it so as we go through it today. And before we do, though, let's look to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for the Word. And for those who are here to partake of it today, we pray that your spirit will make a great application of this unique passage to us. You've inspired this in your word, and I pray that you would allow your spirit to inspire us with the truth of it. And for that, we'll thank you in Jesus' name, amen. There's really no book in the Bible more useful to us than Genesis. It's not really a book that gives us a bunch of boring facts or details. It's an amazing story of the work of God. There are stories of births, and there are stories of weddings, and there are stories of funerals. When you go through this book of Genesis, there are stories of love and war, success and failure, laughter and tears. But of course, Genesis is more than just a storybook. It's a book from God. And as you go down through this book of Genesis, there are many key individuals who seem to show up through the book. Adam, of course, was a critical individual that showed up in the early chapters of the book. You have Noah, we just came through an awful lot of information about him. Then Lot will show up, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, they all show up. But there's only one in this book who is called the friend of God, and that was Abraham. Other than the person of Jesus Christ, there's no other person in all of the Bible, both in the Old or the New Testament, who's more important to the Bible than Abraham. There are things that are said and written about him that are very unique, and they leave him as being a gigantic hero to anyone who would have a proper understanding of the Scriptures. For example, in Hebrews chapter 11, you get this list of people who did incredible things by faith. By virtue of the number of verses devoted to Abraham, 12 verses, that is the most devoted to anyone, he becomes the greatest example of a man of faith. When you read through the book of Romans, Paul decides to use one man to illustrate the important doctrine of justification. One man believed God and it was imputed to him as righteousness. It was counted to him as righteousness. The man he chooses to use is Abraham. There is also, in all of Israel's future promises, Abraham is mentioned. You have the Palestinian covenant to the nation Israel, you have the Davidic covenant, you have the new covenants, and they all hinge upon one man's name. His name is Abraham. Abraham is the one man who biblically has both a physical and spiritual family. If you are born Jewish, you're physically related to Abraham. If you are born again by faith in Jesus Christ, you're spiritually related to Abraham. Abraham is the one man in the Bible who actually has his own eternal abode named after him. It's called Abraham's bosom. When someone apparently died in the Old Testament economy, they went to this place that was given his name. And he is a man whose story dominates the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. His name dominates concepts in the rest of all of scripture. So of all of the characters that show up in scripture, none are more important than Abraham. And the beginning of his story is right here in Genesis 11. As we'll actually see, the story actually starts in Genesis chapter 5, and it really began before that in the eternal plan of God, but a lot of critical data shows up in chapter 11. Now as we look at the information here, we discover that Abraham, through no choice of his own, happened to wind up in the right lineage, and through no choice of his own, he happened to wind up living in the wrong country, and then through no choice of his own, he happened to receive a message of divine revelation. In fact, when you look at this amazing story that's connected to him, you discover that this was an amazing God who was working out His sovereign plan, and He simply chose Abraham. And we can be sure that when God chose Abraham, he made the right choice. But we certainly are going to learn even today that when God made this choice of Abraham, there was certainly nothing about him that you would look at that was worth choosing. He was living in the wrong country. He was surrounded by and was even participating in idolatrous religion. And yet Abraham was God's choice. He was God's man and God selected him. Now the historical background of his selection of Abram is a very interesting one. The world was a mess. We saw last time that God had to split the nations in their languages because these nations were becoming totally united in their evil rebellion. They decided instead of dividing up and going out to various parts of the world, which is what God wanted them to do, they were going to band together and form their own system of religion and their own corporate unity, their own world government. And God said, no, that's not acceptable to me. So God divided their tongues at Babel. And he had a plan that would eventually bring his own son into the world as the Redeemer. And this plan required that he have a lineage line of people through whom his son could come. And that's what you're seeing right here. The sovereign God chooses to call out and bless those whom he will, regardless of their background. Dr. S. Lewis Johnson, former professor of theology at Dallas Seminary, said of this text, the call of Abram gives hope for the world. in the most out-of-the-way places God calls and blesses. From the cloister of the papal church, from the bosom of the Sanhedrin, from the organizations of apostate Protestant churches. God calls his Luthers, his Pauls, his Whitefields. He knows where they are to be found, and he calls them for his purposes of good. And there's no question that we learn a lot about the life of Abram, but you're going to learn a lot more about the sovereign work of God. He chooses to call and bless those whom He will regardless of background. This is encouraging because no matter what your past has been, no matter what your failures have been, no matter what your family background is, no matter what your family has done, no matter what your own personal sin has been, you can be mightily used and blessed of God. Your background has nothing to do with the calling of God. In fact, as Paul says, where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. Now, in examining this text today, I would like to systematize it under two main sovereign headings. For alliteration purposes, both begin with the word that starts with the letter L. First of all, you have the lineage of Abram in verses 10 to 26. Now in this particular section of scripture you get the specific lineage of Abram. Verse 10 makes it clear that we're tracing this line through Shem, Noah's son, and chapter 5 makes it clear that Shem's lineage began to be traced through Seth, Adam's son. Moses was interested in both lineage lists of chapter 5 and chapter 10 of tracing the line to Abram and this of course is very meaningful for the children of Israel because this is where they came from and this is very meaningful for the future because this is the line through whom Christ would come. Now, if you compare the two lineage lists in chapter 5 and chapter 10, there are 10 generations. From Adam to Shem and from Shem to Abram, you total 20 generations. In chapter 5, Abram begets Seth, Seth begets Enosh, Enosh begets Canaan, Canaan, Mahalalel, Mahalalel begot Jared, Jared begot Enoch, Enoch begot Methuselah, Methuselah begot Lamech, Lamech begot Noah, Noah begot Shem. Then you pick it up in chapter 11. Shem begot Arpachshad, Arpachshad begot Shelak, Shelak begot Hiber, Hiber begot Peleg, Peleg begot Rehub, Rehub begot Sarug, Sarug begot Nechor, Nechor begot Terok, and Terok begot Abram. So what you have, ladies and gentlemen, between these two chapters, 5 and 10, is you have the complete line of Abram developed. Adam, Seth, Enoch, Canaan, Mahalolel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, then Arpach, Shad, Shelach, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Sarug, Nechor, Terah, Abram. Now I want you to notice how verse 10 begins. These are the records of the generations of Shem. I want you to know how chapter 5 begins. Chapter 5 begins, this is the book of the generations of Adam. So you get into one of those generations of sections, but then after you get into the generations of section, you quickly get into the became the father of section or the begot section. This one became the father of this one. This one became the father of this one. You go through an immediate switch from these are the generations of to this became the father of. And this is very important. Because as we've already seen in our study of Genesis, the generations of or the sons of formula tends to look back to the ancestor. but the became the father of, or the begot formula, tends to look forward to the progress of the development of the lineage. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is critical to what is happening here. Because Abram is comparing a line which stems from Adam, which was a sinful line, but he's developing this so that people can see what's going to take place into the future. He's looking forward to Abram and forward to the Messiah. And when you look at the lineage list in chapter 5 and then again in chapter 10, there are three main differences and they're important. The first one is in chapter 5, it tabulates the total years of life. And he lived to such and such an age and he died. But when you look at chapter 11, they do not tabulate the total years of life. The list in chapter 10 is interested in developing how old the man was when he died and when he had his firstborn, whereas chapter 5 is interested in communicating how old he was when he died. Secondly, the lineage list in chapter 5 ends with, and he died. But you'll notice when you read chapter 11 that the lineage list does not end, and he died. The emphasis is on there's going to be life. There's going to be expansion. There's some hope in chapter 11. There was no hope in chapter 5. They're all dying. And thirdly, the lineage list of Chapter 5 features longer lifespans, whereas the lineage list of Chapter 11 features shorter lifespans. Man's sin did diminish his longevity. However, there does seem to be some optimism in Chapter 11, because the emphasis on Chapter 11 is not on, and he died. The emphasis is on Chapter 11, and he was producing sons. Now when you take these differences into consideration, realizing that both of these lines are interested in getting us to Abram, we can see now in the program of God there seems to be a major shift of focus. From the line of Adam, the focus was on the curse of death. But now that you start with Shem's line, and you're going to track this all the way to Abram, the focus seems to be on the promise of blessing and the blessing of life. In other words, one lineage list is stressing death. That's the line of Adam. But the line of Abram is stressing life. That's the lineage after the flood. And even though people are not living as long, the emphasis now switches to life and not death. And the reason for that is now this lineage line is on the process of producing God's own son. These two lineages not only give us a full picture of the line of Abram, but a full picture of the program of God. And as we look back on the two generations of accounts, we can clearly see that Adam's account stresses cursing and death, but Shem's stresses blessing and life. Adam's life is one of unbelief, disobedience, failure and cursing, whereas Abram's life is one of belief and obedience and success and blessing. Now, as we examine the lineage list of chapter 11, there are two observations that I want to make. First of all, most of those that are in the lineage line, we know nothing about. Most of the names who show up in chapter 11, we don't have a hill of beans where they lived or who they were. Dr. Alan Ross, who's a professor of Hebrew said, it doesn't matter if you know Hebrew, it makes no difference. You can't learn too much about any of these people. Oh, there are a couple that show up that you learn something about. For example, you have a park shot. He shows up there and there's some guessing that perhaps he moved to the Armenia area because there's a man with a spelling very similar to his that shows up a little bit later. But that's about all. And what that tells us, ladies and gentlemen, is that God uses people who do not have to come from famous lineages, and he uses these people as powerful people in this world. And even though these people may not appear to be too prominent in this world, these people are very important to the program of God. And what this also shows us, ladies and gentlemen, is that a person does not have to have an impressive pedigree to mean much in the world of God, because many of these people you don't know much about, except they were important and significant to the mind of God. And I think there's a wonderful encouraging truth that comes out of this. It doesn't matter what your family background has been, you can be significant for God. Now the other thing that I want you to see, and we kept seeing this as we were reading the text this morning, is that all in this line had other sons and daughters. That is stressed in verse 11. Other sons and daughters, again in verse 13. Other sons and daughters, verse 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, and 25. It just keeps repeating, and they had other sons and daughters. That is an important point because it becomes evident that God is only interested in this key group of people that He has selected. In other words, even though these people had other sons and daughters, They're not even named because they're not in the holy lineage of God. Even though they may have been spanning out in the world and they may have been successful in what they were doing, the fact remains they're not even named here. And may I draw an analogy, ladies and gentlemen, to you and me. If a person is not in the family line of God, In all reality, they're a nameless nobody no matter what they're accomplishing in this world. To be called by God and to be part of His family is one of the greatest privileges of all. Not all people in the same physical family have this privilege, but those who are named here were truly blessed because those who are named here were in the family of God. They were called into His family. They were called into the line that would ultimately produce Jesus Christ. One does not have to be a somebody to be in God's family. But anybody who's in God's family is certainly a somebody. And according to the Word of God, brothers and sisters are important in the family of God. And some of them are called out of bizarre situations, but they're in the right line. Now, it needs to be stressed that this lineage list is a choice of God. And those who are in this lineage list are in it because they were selected by God to be in it. The various children who were born to these forefathers had no say whatsoever in this process. You didn't know you were a baby going to be born and named in this line. This was totally the work of the Lord. Babies are not in a position to choose who their parents are going to be. God chose to place some of them in his special line and others he did not choose to do that same thing with. And as we will see in just a moment, those choices were not based on the faithfulness of the person because Terok, Abraham's father, was an idolater. Now if you are here today and you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, I want you to understand something. You are a very privileged individual. Because you, from the masses of humanity, have been selected by God to be in His family. And according to the writer Paul in Ephesians, you were chosen by God before the foundations of the world. In His grace, He picked you to be in His eternal family. And you may have family members and friends who have a lot more than you do, but they do not have a relationship with God. You're the one who's rich. You're the one that's in the right family line. You're the one who's been touched by Almighty God. But if you are in attendance today and you have never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, may I suggest to you, if you sense a need to do so, you do that and you do it quickly. Because ladies and gentlemen, that is the key line that really matters, to be in the family of God. So the first thing that you get is the lineage of Abram. The second sovereign heading is the life of Abram, verses 27 to 32, and we really want to go to work on these verses this morning for you. Now in coming to this text of scripture, we come to the father of Abram. And there are four critical facts that surround the life of Abram that we want to see and learn from these verses. First of all, we learn about his family. Verse 27 says, Now these are the records of the generations of Terach. Terach became the father of Abram, Nacor and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot. Abram was the son of Terah. He had two brothers. His two brothers were Nechor and Haran. His brother Haran died. But before he died, we learn right here, he had a son and he named him Lot. And we'll learn, pardon this, a lot more about him a little bit down the road. We learned that Abram had a typical, relatively family background. He had some brothers. There's nothing extra special about him here. He knew what it was like to have brothers. He knew what it was like to experience death because one of his brothers died. There doesn't seem to be, at least at this point, anything spectacular in this family. The second fact we learn is we learn about Abram's homeland, verse 28. Haran died in the presence of his father Terok in the land of his birth and Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram lived in a city of Ur. This was the capital city of Sumer, which was an area controlled by the Chaldeans. It was a place, as we saw in Joshua this morning, in chapter 24 and verse 2, which was known to be a place that served other gods. It was known to be a place that was idolatrous. Now this was Abram's homeland. This was the city. This verse would seem to suggest that this is the place where Haran was born, implying that that was not necessarily the place where Terak was originally from. Ur is located in southern Mesopotamia. The New Testament land is the land of Shinar. It is the area that we know today, somewhere around the Persian Gulf, just north of the Persian Gulf. And it was this place where Abram would ultimately receive his call. God would call Abram when he was in this dark area, living his life in this land of Babylonianism. And this particular place where Abram lived was known for idolatry and immorality. In fact, Terak will eventually move his family out of this area, and he certainly was not necessarily doing it because of his moral stand, because Joshua 24 tells us that he himself was an idolater. Now ladies and gentlemen, if ever there were a person who's coming from the wrong side of the tracts from a locational standpoint, it's Abram. This is the last guy in the world you'd expect to turn out to be a giant of the faith. He's raised in an idolatrous land. He's raised in an idolatrous home. He's living in an area that does not really concern itself with being right with the God of the Bible. Being raised in this land and home, he doesn't come from a great background, nor does he have a solid, great theological perspective of who God is. But this is the guy God said, I'm picking him. You may come from some wild, heathen background. You may have had a background that was caught up in some wild, bizarre religious systems. You can become a great person, mightily used of God. That certainly is the story in the case of Abram. God's glory can eventually shine through you, just like it shined through him, no matter where you come from. That's Abram's story. The third fact is we learn something about his wife, verse 29 and 30. Abram and Nicor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nicor's wife was Milcock, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcock and Ishka. Sarai was barren, she had no children. Now, verse 29 is a very important verse to the development of the following biblical account that pertains to Abram. from the context we've already seen that Heron, before Heron died, he obviously had married and produced a son, and his son's name was Lot. This particular verse informs us that Heron had other children as well, including his daughter Milcock, who married Nicor, Abram's brother. Milcock would give birth to many children. I want you to flip over to chapter 22. This becomes important to the narrative. Chapter 22. Notice verse 20. chapter 22 and verse 20 we read now it came about after these things that it was told Abraham saying behold Milcock has born children to your brother Necor Utes his firstborn and Butes his brother and Kemuel the father of Aram and Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlop, and Bethuel. Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. These eight, Milcock, Borden, and Korah, Abraham's brother. I mean, Milcock looks to be one who is really productive and fruitful. I mean, she's giving birth to all kinds of children, and things seem to be going great, but then you read this phrase in verse 30 about Sarai. She was barren and had no child. It's not working that way for her. Now Abram had married Sarai, who was the daughter of Terok, but not by the same mother. I need you to go over to Genesis chapter 20. Genesis chapter 20. Abram is talking to Abimelech here. And in verse 12, you learn something about the pedigree of Sarai. The text says, besides, she actually is my sister. He had lied saying she was his sister. She actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife. So Sarai was the daughter of Terok, who's Abraham's dad, but they didn't have the same mother. Obviously, when you're living in a land that promotes idolatry and immorality and you have a lot of unusual things coming on and different partners are getting together, you've got some unusual occurrences and you've got one right here. But the text is very clear to point out that Sarai could not produce children. This is a point that will become very critical to what God is going to do in the life of Abram. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you analyze this from a situational perspective, Sarai seems to look like she's the one who has cursed. She's the one who's missed the boat. I mean, if you look at Sarai, you'd say, boy, that's just too bad about how her life turned out. She certainly does not come from the ideal family background situation. She does not have any children at all. From a physical standpoint, she's a beautiful, gorgeous woman. That text, that'll be brought up in the next couple of weeks. This woman was just gorgeous. But from a theological perspective, you look at her and you would say, well, she certainly doesn't seem to be receiving the blessings of God. And yet this is the woman that God will single out to do some things with the likes of which he does not do with too many. Her link to Abram was something that was going to profit her in many, many ways. Her link to him would bring her the blessings of God. I have seen this before in people's lives. Some of the most powerful work God does with people are with people who seem to come from the wrong side of the tracks. You look into the stories of their lives or their backgrounds or their pedigree and you say, this seems to be some tangled up mess. But then you look at the person that God's using and you're going, wow, there's power in that person's life. Wow, they reflect the grace and glory of God in an amazing way. That's the story. Which brings us to the fourth fact we learned about his relocation, verses 31 and 32. Terok took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan. And they went as far as Haran and settled there. The days of Terok were 205 years, and Terok died in Haran. Terak seemed to instigate the move out of the Mesopotamian area and you'll notice in verse 28, Haran died in the presence of his father Terak in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeas. Josephus says that it was the death of his son Haran that prompted him to want to move out of the land. In other words, he's not being prompted because he's seeking the will of God. You don't have Abraham's dad saying, well, now I wonder what God would want us to do now. It's that he was probably emotionally shot over the fact that his son had died in the land and he just said, I want a new start. I want to get away. And so he did. He took Abram, he took his grandson Lot to Haran, which is a city located north of Canaan. It's possible he had some relatives there. Haran was a place where Turok moved his family, located about 600 miles to the northwest of Ur of the Chaldeans. And this is the place where ultimately he died. And it was not a godly place. It certainly was not a place where he's leaving his family that really wants to worship God. And what you see here, ladies and gentlemen, is the sovereign hand of God. He is sovereignly calling those whom he wants and he's moving people where he wants them to move. And you see in this plan of God, these people that are in this line, many of whom we know very little about are not just numbers, they're people, they're important. This is a movement of God in which he's working in the line and in the heart and in the minds of people. And he's causing things to happen even in people's lives who come from bizarre backgrounds. Now perhaps you're here today and you think, I can't ever do much of anything for God. Perhaps you think, you know, my past history is so corrupt. The things I've done, the choices I've made are so bizarre. I cannot ever be mightily used by the Lord. Well, may I invite you to read the story of Augustine? Read the story of C.I. Schofield? Read the story of Mel Trotter? whose mission is named after him in Grand Rapids, Michigan, read the accounts of Abram. Because these are people who came from low positions, from bizarre backgrounds, from some horrendous sins, but God called them, he transformed them, and he used them for his glory. And he can do the same with you. Because this line of people, was all about bringing Jesus Christ into the world. The reason why he's separating this group is he's saying I'm going to provide a lineage through whom my son can come and I'm gonna take those people who've been broken and bruised and they've been taken low in sin and I'm gonna allow him to take that sin on him and then I'm going to make them raised up high in his righteousness. And if you will believe on him, you too are part of Abram's story. You too are connected to him. Abram believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness, regardless of background. May we pray. If you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, I don't know of a better text I could take you to, to show you that God can do great things with you regardless of your past. Some of the names in this list had bizarre backgrounds and paths, but they were in the right line. And you can get in the right line today simply by faith in Christ. So if you've never trusted him, you pray something like this, God, I know I'm a sinner. I thank you that Christ died for me. And right now I believe on him to be my savior. Father, when we look down through a text like this, we see a mirror of ourselves. There's not one person here today who, if you would crawl into the background of everything they've ever done, said, or thought, would not have some bizarre background of sin and corruption. We're all from the same Adamic nature, and we've all fallen far short of thy glory. We are so grateful for your amazing grace, that allowed a people to be alive through whom you could bring your son. And we are so grateful for sovereign elective choices that allow us the privilege of being in the rich family of God. For anything that you've done here today, we thank you and praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.