Abram's Call

0:00Good morning. Hi. Yes, thank you. Thank you for that. The welcomes are getting better and better every week, so I thank you for that. Open your Bibles to the book of Genesis. We're going to be in chapter 11, starting in verse 27, but we're not actually going to read that. We're just going to reference it in just a little bit. We're going to actually read starting in chapter 12, going through verse 9 of chapter 12. So, yeah, we're not going to read that whole section, but again, I will be referencing some material throughout that. It's no surprise or coincidence that this next narrative that we get in the book of Genesis after the dispersion that we talked about last week at Babel is the counter. So this week is the counter to the sin and disobedience that we saw last week. When you read the story from last week, that's the Tower of Babel, together with the story from this week, this is the call of Abram, you see a picture unfolding of what disobedience looks like and the judgment it receives, and what obedience looks like and the blessing that it receives. I'm sure I've mentioned this recently. I'm fairly certain I didn't, as something we've talked about, this is something that we talked about at that conference that a few of us went to a few months ago. But Christians today have this somewhat strange idea that now, because of the work of Christ, God no longer blesses those who obey Him, and He no longer judges those who don't. In light of our time through the book of Ecclesiastes, I suspect that when we look out into the world and we see some evil prospering, which it does, and we see some obedient people going through difficult times, which they certainly do, we tend to throw our hands up and concede that it's all vanity. So the church should just only focus on spiritual matters only. Because if we can't see the correlation between obedience and blessing and disobedience with judgment, we just assume that there isn't one. We assume that it's much safer to keep things in this spiritual ether that churches often do, so we don't have to deal with difficult truths and seeming contradictions. Because dealing with those truths actually has implications on us. And that does at times make us uncomfortable. But to take such a position is to wholly ignore large portions of the Old Testament. If the God who wrote the Old Testament does not change and cannot change, then I think it would do us a lot of good to get to know this God who does not change and cannot change, which is the true God. And the reason why that is important is because it hits directly on God's command to man and his call on our lives. What is he calling us to do? What is he calling Christians to do? In an ever-increasing materialistic and consumer-driven society, we latch onto verses like 1 Thessalonians 4, 11. Quote, to live, to aspire to live quietly and to mind our own affairs and to work with our hands as we have instructed you. That's a good verse. But we go to Hobby Lobby, we buy it on an XL canvas, we put it up in our homes, and we assume that the Bible is teaching us to just worry about ourselves only. And that makes us so much, it makes us feel so much better about the towers that we build and the names that we try to make for ourselves. No offense if you have that on your wall, like I think I have that on my fridge. I don't think it's on the fridge anymore, but it used to be. It's a good verse. It's a true verse. It's God's word, right? But what if there's more than just that one verse? What if there's more to that one verse than just that? What if there's 10,000 other verses that we also have to deal with? What if there is still so much to learn from these Old Testament stories as I hope we do today? I hope it pleases the Lord to bring us some clarity to these questions and others to us this morning. And by the end of it, I hope to give you another verse other than just that one to hang on your wall. Uh put it beside 1 Thessalonians 4, 11. So I'm going to ask you to stand with me once more as we read Genesis chapter 12, starting in verse 1, and we're just going to read those nine verses. 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, and I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in all your and all sorry, and in your 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 for Haran, and Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot's brother, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran Haran. Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreah. 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 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 on toward Negeb. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray once more. Lord, we thank you again for your word. And it's easy for us to principalize this text here. It's easy for us to principalize all the texts, but specifically here, and draw conclusions or take from it imperatives that are not what the text is trying to communicate. Okay, one of those is a very literal reading, which would say that God calls us to abandon everything for Him, right? That obedience to God looks like leaving your home, leaving your comforts, and going away blindly and just trusting that God will lead you. Okay, Abraham did. And surely that means I should too, right? This is the David Platt radical movement, and I'm not sure if he still subscribes to that, but he did at one time. And no, this is not what the text is saying to us. Just because God called Abram to something doesn't mean that he's calling you to that exact same thing, right? In the exact same way. That's not how we read the scriptures. We have to look deeper at what he is actually called to do, and then bring that call into our present lives and our present context. The other way we go wrong is to just spiritualize this. If God is not calling us to physically leave our homes and our families, then he must be only talking about a spiritual leaving, right? We must spiritually leave our old life behind us and our old home behind us and journey to a new home and a new family when we're talking spiritually. This stance would deny any physical or practical takeaway from Scripture and teach that the word is only addressing spiritual matters. And we know that can't be true because we have a whole section of the Bible called wisdom literature. We just went through the entire book of Ecclesiastes, and in it we're told how to live, right? Specifically how to live and how not to live. Do this and don't do this. These are practical implications. So we can't take things so literally that a husband and a wife with two young kids signs up to go on mission in the most dangerous part of the world because, you know, Abram. Or takes things so spiritually that our answer to everything is, yeah, let me just pray about it. The balanced approach is pretty simple. Don't be foolish, pray about it, and then be about it. So let's look a little deeper into the text, kind of with that in mind, I guess. The first truth I want us to see is the truth that God does not give up, nor will he ever give up on his plan. Abram is uh from Ur of the Chaldeans, which is almost directly on the spot from where God scattered the people at Babel, which is what we discussed last week. So the world was corrupt, right? And God started over again with Noah. That was two weeks ago. The world slowly became corrupt again and tried to disobey God and make a name for themselves. So, right, God scattered them again and said, No, that's not how things are going to be. And that scattering clearly didn't take, right? Because on the same land from which they were scattered is a pagan place worshiping other gods. We learn from Joshua that Abram and his brother Nahor were worshiping false gods. They were pagans. So over and over again, God is having to redirect his people to keep them on the path that he will have them to go in order to show us that he is a God who doesn't give up on his people. And he will keep his promises. And to do that, he calls the pagan Abram out from his idolatry and says, Get out of this place. I'm going to show you something. To the pagan Abram, living amongst a pagan people, worshiping false gods, the true God bends down to him and says, You're mine. Come here. I have something to show you. And some promises to give to you. And seven promises, in fact, that God gives to Abram that we read, and those seven promises again are as follows: I will make a great nation for you. Or I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. That's two. 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. Those are the seven promises that he makes to him. And even more, what we see in those seven promises are five specific blessings. And those blessings are the antidote to the five curses that were given in Adam. As a new life to counter the death of the fall, a new name to counter the corrupted name after the fall, a new land to counter the wandering we now experience outside of the garden, blessings to counter the curses of the fall, and finally an inheritance to counter the exile given to us in the fall. And I hope you see it. That in only uh it's only 10 to 12 chapters for us, right? Reading through the book of Genesis. But this is covering thousands of years of human history. And in that thousand years, thousands of years, we're only just now starting to see the plan of God really taking shape. Remember back when Cain was born, and it seemed to imply that Eve thought maybe this is the man, Cain. This is the man to break the curse. Right? And consider all that the world has gone through since then, through these ten chapters, and here we are now. God is making more promises to sinners, that despite our sin and our rebellion, He has a plan. He has a plan. And this plan involves calling and justifying sinners, pagan sinners. His plan involves calling and justifying sinners by faith, and then through that faith making promises to them, and then bringing those promises to fulfillment through them. I hope and pray that you begin to see that not only not only that God doesn't give up on his plan, and not only that God makes and keeps his promises, but God also, he knows how to keep his promises. He doesn't make and keep promises in a spiritual vacuum, right? He doesn't make and keep his promises in a spiritual vacuum. He makes them to his creation and keeps them through his creation. And that's important. I'll explain it like this. Would Christ have been born if Noah didn't build the ark? Would Christ have been born if Noah didn't build the ark? Like I don't necessarily want the nuanced answer here. I think the correct answer is no. If Noah refused to build the ark, humanity would have been annihilated and the promises and purposes of God would have failed. This is Hebrews 11, 7. By faith, Noah, by faith, Noah being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. So the faith of Noah, in his obedience and building the ark, was a necessary part of God's plan. I think that's what the word shows us. And far be it for me to give anyone credit but God, I will not and never will, obviously. He could have done it any other way. Any other way he could have done it. But in his infinite plan and wisdom, he chose to work through his creation. They're his promises, right? According to his preparations, to his glory working through you, his creation. And this has to be true. Because why else would God use the womb of a woman to bring forth the Lamb of God? Is it not the Spirit of God alone working in the heart of man that brings them to faith and salvation? I'll ask that question again. Is it not the Spirit of God alone working in the heart of man that brings them to faith and salvation? We would say yes and amen. Is it not according to the sovereign will of God alone that men call upon the name of the Lord and are saved? Is that not according to his sovereign will alone? To that I would say, and I hope we would all say yes and amen. But how then will they call on him and whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him and whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. So God is not giving up on his plans. He's not giving up on us. But he is in fact using Noah and Abram and David and many others to bring forth Christ. And Christ having finished his work, Christ having claimed all authority in heaven on earth, is commissioning you now to continue his mission to rescue souls and reclaim the earth from the evil one. So what exactly did Abram do when he was called? What did he do? And how does this apply to us? And how does that connect to my introduction and the things that I've talked about so far? Well, first he was obedient to the Lord. Abram was obedient to the Lord and journeyed to the land of Canaan, right? To the place where God led him and to the land that God promised him. And when he gets there, the only thing that the text tells us that he does is to build altars to the Lord in various places. He builds altars. And what's an altar? In ancient times it was the place where they made sacrifices to God, right? For us in the New Testament, it's the place where we keep the weekly elements, right, of the Lord's Supper. In either case, it's connected to the place of sacrificial worship to God. Bless you. So, in one sense, Abram is establishing places of sacrifice and worship to God, but the meaning is perhaps even deeper than that. Remember the command given to Adam and Eve, and the command given again to Noah, which was to multiply and subdue the earth. Up to this point, how has that command been working out? They got the multiplying thing down, right? But the subduing part is very much lacking. So what I believe is being communicated is not just that Abram is setting up places of worship, which he is, but rather he is reclaiming places in the name of God. And that's not an original idea of mine. Here are the words of John Calvin on this text. Quote, Abram endeavored as much as in him lay to dedicate to God every part of the land to which he had access and perfume it with the odor of his faith. End quote. Abram is going out by faith, right? Understand. Abram is going out by faith, that's important, in the name of God, and perfuming every place he finds, declaring that this land belongs to the one true God. Abram is doing what God commanded, which is taking back what is God's. And what God has promised to Abram. We fully understand this in times of war, right? When the enemy stronghold is captured, the flag of the victor is planted in the ground, right? Or the flag is run up the flagpole declaring that this place now belongs to us, the victor. And in times of war, we understand how important such victories are, right? It pushes the enemy back. It takes more of his territory, it makes him weaker. But we aren't in a war, so I guess it doesn't apply, right? Look around for five minutes, and unless you have blinders on, you will see how ruthless this war really is. The enemy is coming after our kids, our family, our culture, our morals, and everything else in between. And our call is to perfume every place we can access with the odor of our faith. To reclaim in the name of God. It is to build an altar everywhere we stop so that all who pass by know that this place belongs to God. I think at least one time in our lives we've been in a bathroom stall where when we were younger, I mean maybe you're you're doing this now, I don't know, it's weird, but uh With a marker or the sharp end of a compass is what I think I always used. Wrote the wrote the letters CK was with a Z here. Have you done this? It's a silly thing to do. Silly thing to do. But the reality is that everyone who showed up after me, after CK was here, they could see for themselves that CK was here. Was here. The question is, are we building altars that establish and communicate to everyone that shows up after us that God was here? That was also a Z, by the way. Have we become so obsessed with materialism and tower building that we forget that we have been given a mission here on earth? Do we claim, to perfume what is truly God's? As Calvin put it, are we leaving the scent of God behind everywhere we go? This is the call from God that I don't want us to miss because perhaps it is the most important and pressing command given to man. If all of these Old Testament stories point to Christ, which they do, and point to the work that he was to do, right? Old Testament pointing to the work that Christ was to do, and the work that he completed himself on the cross, right? And even time itself was filling in anticipation of Christ, then what Christ says to us after his work is finished, those words should be important to us, right? If we understand that the entirety of the New Testament is leading up to Christ and what Christ has done and what Christ finished, and then what Christ says to us after that should be very important. And what does Christ say to us? Make disciples, baptize them, teach them to obey me. And I want you to see that the Great Commission is the same command given to Abram, given to Noah, given to Adam even before, that this command is now expanded further under Christ. We are to still multiply over the earth, but now it's not only a physical multiplication in the first birth, but we are also to be involved in a spiritual multiplication through the new birth, a rebirth, a second birth, and the confession of Christ as Lord and in baptism. The command remains, but in Christ it's deepened and widened. And Christ has a habit of doing that to us, right? He does. We are not only to subdue the earth physically, but we are to be active as far as the Lord wills in bringing the people of the earth in obedient submission to our God, as far as he wills. Again, I want to stress that this is all the work of Christ. All the work of Christ through the Spirit. It's his work, and he will receive all of the glory for this work. But the ordained means by which he is working is us, the church, you. You, by his grace, get to be the hands and feet of our God to bring forth souls onto this earth, to save those souls through the proclamation of the gospel, and to subdue the earth. What a tremendous honor that is, right? This has been a very practical sermon, I suppose. Uh, and in keeping with that theme, I want to give us a few ways in which we can engage in this idea. What does this mean, this idea of Abrahamic altar building? Like, what does that even mean? Uh and I don't want this to become a lengthy exposition on Kuiperionism. It won't be, but just know that everything I'm about to articulate, it's not my original thoughts. These are biblical concepts that have been worked out over many years by many, many smart people. Uh and if you've never heard the term Kyperionism before, uh it's uh it's a mouthful, but Google it when you get home. Uh it might just cause you to rebuild everything that you've been building upon, but that's neither here nor there. Perhaps the most famous quote from Abraham Kuyper sums up this idea when he says, quote, there is not one thumbs width in the whole domain of human life which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine. While R. C. Sproull said that there is not one rogue molecule in the whole of the universe that exists outside of the sovereign control and will of God, Kuiper would expand that to say that that necessarily includes all of the things that those molecules make, namely everything, is under Christ. But Christians, you are to first build an altar in your home. To build an altar in our homes. The scent of God should be thick in our homes. Men. The scent of God should be thick in our homes. We should honor God in our home. Worship God in our home. Obey God in our home. And display God in our home. Our homes should be small churches, really. Where we fellowship. We pray, we eat, we worship, and we honor God. Everything in our homes and done from our homes should honor the God we serve. This necessarily includes all of our business and business dealings, our professions, our time, our money, our education of our kids, everything. It must all be in obedience to Christ, and nothing can be excluded. Men, you may not be a pastor, but you are the priest of your home. And we need to build an altar to our God in our homes. A second place is obviously the church. We build altars here in corporate worship. They must include how we worship, why we worship, the things that we teach, the songs that we sing. They must extend outward in our service to one another, our community through charity and prayer. It must extend even further, going on missions, right? And sending of missionaries. The church must touch every need and reach into every place it can with the gospel of Christ and the hope that is offered to all of those who call upon his name. Finally, we must build altars in the state. Perhaps an unpopular thing to say, but all of our politics and governments should eventually bend a knee to Christ, and they will eventually bend in need of Christ. So maybe we should start now. This is because we know that Christ-centered states are the best for people. They are. Christ-centered politics make policy that is best for people. Loving your neighbor then includes perfuming the state with truth, beauty, and goodness that can only come from the one true God. We need Christians running for states, institutions. We need Christians making policies that honor God and serve people best. And I'm not going to get into political theology, and there's a lot more I could say about that, but I will save that for another time. I told you at the beginning that I would give you another verse to put up on your wall. One that I'm not sure I've ever seen hanging on someone's wall. One that I think sums up the intent behind the call of Abram and a reminder to us all what Christ is calling each of us to do. And we read it from our text today, and it will be my final word in closing. And it is this. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for Christ. I thank you for the sacrifice that he made for us, Lord. I thank you for the freedom that we now have in Christ, Lord, to serve you with everything that we have, Lord. Not out of compulsion or fear of judgment, Lord. But out of a willing heart that says, Lord, we want to serve you. We desire to perfume the world with your scent, Lord. We desire to glorify you, to build altars for you and for your name, to proclaim you on the mountaintops, Lord. So that everyone we meet, everyone we contact, everyone we reach, Lord, knows and hears the name of the one true God proclaimed. Lord, help us to do that, Lord. As difficult as that is at times, Lord, peel back the layers of our heart where we need to confess, Lord. May we serve you. That's all that we want to do, Lord. That's all that I want to do is serve you faithfully. We thank you so very much that you have given us that opportunity. And that you are calling us and working through us. It is perplexing still, Lord, why you've chosen to use such humble vessels for your work. But we thank you. And it is a privilege and an honor to serve you and work for you. Ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.