Hope: When Promises Received Produce Euphoria
June 25, 2023
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Genesis 12:2-3
2 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. 3 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.”
This morning is the third of what will be thirteen sermons on the life of the man named Abram who became Abraham. The Lord takes him on a wild adventure. We’ve been having children draw pictures during church. You can draw anything we bring up in the sermon. But here’s one idea. Perhaps you could draw yourself doing something you enjoy and something God has made you good at.
Let’s pray as we begin. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Last year we had a series of town hall meetings about our upcoming church plant. When we talked about the church plant at those town hall meetings, we also talked about different church planting setbacks we’ve had over the last six years, including the setback that was the Covid era. At the meetings, I asked us to consider why our church, generally speaking, had more health than other churches as we came out of Covid.
Now, I clarified that I didn’t think we were the only healthy church because we’re not. And I made it very clear that we were not the most healthy church because I’m sure we’re not that. But I did ask the question of why. Why did we come out of Covid with the blessings of people and dollars and gospel preaching and outreach and discipleship and an increased desire to make Jesus known and loved? Why did that happen?
Was it because we were smarter than other churches? Or was our church leadership more wise and godly? Did your leaders figure out the right balance of masks and no masks, vaccines and no vaccines? Did we have clearer insights into the political scene, and did we know how better to navigate the tensions around race that flared up across the country and even in our city?
Or maybe our church membership was more wise and godly. Maybe our membership was more generous and more kind and more faithful and more courageous and more pursuing unity than other congregations. Maybe we were more willing to look not to our own interests but the interests of others—and that’s why we came out of Covid with a measure of church health.
I’m not sure we were all those things—that we were more faithful and wise and godly and pursuing of unity. I do think of you as a generous and faithful congregation. But if that was all true or even partly true, even if we were godly and wise and committed to truth and unity in the gospel, that still doesn’t answer the deeper question of why we were those things. I’ll ask it another way. For what purpose has God blessed us with church health?
At the town hall meetings, I gave an answer to that question. It’s the same answer to the question of why you have eyes and can see, ears and can hear, legs and can walk and run, the same reason you have money and jobs and friends and education and a church family. And, I believe, it’s the same answer God gives in this passage for why Abram was blessed.
We’ll need to study in more detail to see the answer, but I’ll give it to you right up front. Christians have been blessed to be blessings to others. To whatever extent God has blessed us as a church and you as an individual Christian, it is not merely for our own sake—for our own health—but rather so that we can be blessings to others. That’s what this passage is about. Rather than hoarding God’s blessings, we are to share them.
But before we see what we are to do with God’s blessings, we need to see how this passage shows us just how blessed we are by God. God gives what we could never earn.
The blessings we receive
Consider how Abram’s story begins. Two weeks ago, we saw that God chose a man to follow him named Abram and that God chose him when Abram was still far from God, we might say very far. Abram, like his father and his wife and the people in the cities around him, worships the moon. Let that sink in. The great Jewish patriarch who became Abraham was himself at first thoroughly pagan. Until he wasn’t. We saw this at the end of chapter 11.
Then, last week, we saw in Genesis 12:1 that God saved Abram and called Abram to follow him. Let me read v. 1 again.
12 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.”
As Pastor Ben pointed out last week, this was no small command. All Abram once held dear, he had to count as loss for the sake of following God. The protection of his father’s house, and the monetary security that came with his father’s protection, he was told to leave. And God commanded him to leave the country he knew, the place he was born, the friends he had made. The obedience required no small sacrifice from Abram.
But I want to point out that God only had to say “Go,” and Abram should have gone. If God says, “Go,” we should go. Think back to the beginning of Genesis. When God says to the light, “You go over here,” the light goes over there. When he says to each star by its name, “You go over here” and “You go over there,” and when he says to the water to “start here” and “stop there” and to the land to “start here” and “stop there,” what happens? They all obey. God says, “Go,” and they go. When the God who created everything and owns everything says, “Go,” that’s the end of the debate. Or it should be the end of the debate. God is God, and when he says “Go,” we should go.
I bring this up to highlight the grace of God in the promises that follow. Yes, Abram should just go. But poor guy. He hardly knows this God. And he’s probably worried what will happened to him if he goes. He’s not even given all the information to go somewhere. He has to trust the whole way, going to the land God will show him, not the land God has already shown him.
I know we’re going through these early passages very slowly, perhaps too slowly. But we need to go slow enough to see this. God does not merely tell us to go and follow him. He could do that. But God says more. God promises so much to his people. God tells us that he will bless us in ways we can hardly imagine. Look what God tells Abram in vv. 2–3.
2 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. 3 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.”
It’s difficult to even tease apart the various blessings because they all layer on top of each other. In fact, the word blessing is used five times in these short verses. Yes, God told him to go, but he said so much more. So many blessings. And it’s all of grace.
Consider these lines about making Abram’s name great. Remember, this comes after Genesis 11. It’s the story of the tower of Babel. I read all of that story a few weeks ago, but let me just read v. 4. The people say, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Consider all the effort, all the labor, all the general contractors and change orders and earth moving and foundation digging, and all the architecture and fundraising and scaffolding and material collection that went into building a tower in the heavens. But the irony of v. 5 is that after all that effort, the God who is in heaven has to come down to see the tower because it’s so small. They were trying in vain to build a name for themselves. Maybe you know this exhaustion of trying to make a name for yourself. You’re working hard, and it’s just not working.
The tower of Babel and the promise to Abram function as reminders to Christians that God gives us what we could never earn. Do you think Abram would have ever imagined that 4,000 years after he had lived and died, a church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, would be talking about him? There is nothing Abram could have done by himself that would have caused him to become so great. Abram could not have made Abram great like God made Abram great, especially when you consider his pagan background.
People often wrongly think of the grace of God as something that first shows up in the New Testament. That’s not true. To know God truly, whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament, is to know grace and unmerited favor. And I know this isn’t said exactly in this passage, but I want to say something based on the rest of what the Bible does say about Christians. Dear Christians, 4,000 years from now, you have no idea how great the promises God has made to you will be fulfilled. To use the words of Paul from Ephesian, he’ll be doing more than we could even imagine.
Consider another layer of blessing to Abram, the promise of protection. I’ll read v. 3 again: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse,” God says. That would have been pretty important to Abram. Put yourself in his sandals. If you’re going to walk 800 miles from Ur to Haran. And if you’re going to walk 600 miles from Haran to the land of Canaan, and you’re going to do all of that through desert and dangers, then you’re going to need God to protect you.
I know you don’t know this geography well. But I’ll put it like this. Later this summer, the youth is going on a mission trip to Miami. We are going to go in high-quality vans with capable drivers. But imagine if we just said, “Actually, we’re going to let the youth walk to Miami.” You’d say, “That’s crazy, not only for the distance but also the danger.”
Church, aren’t these promises of protection similar to what God promises us who are in Christ? Two weeks ago, when we closed the service Matt read from Romans 8, which says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure,” writes Paul, “that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 37–39).
Think how these promises would have filled Abram with wonder and awe. Again, God could have just said, “Go,” and Abram should have gone. But God gives what could never be earned. That would have filled Abram with joy, as it should also fill us.
For some of you who have walked with God for many years, I wonder if you’ve lost your joy. Maybe you didn’t even mean for it to happen, but it did.
Last week we had child dedication. Five families came up on stage with young children. They stood here wearing their Sunday best. Now, part of child dedication is serious and weighty. But let’s be honest, child dedications are full of joy, even sometimes goofy, like when a child grabs a microphone or pokes one of the parents. You can see the joy on the faces of the parents during deductions.
Probably, though, you’ve heard older parents say a certain line to younger parents. Maybe you’ve said it. “Enjoy them while they are young because they turn into teenagers.” Why do we say this? Serious question. Why do we feel the need to look at parents who are full of joy and excitement and promise and opportunity, who have a horizon widening out in front of them, and feel the need to throw a wet blanket over their joy? We don’t just do it with parents of young kids.
Why do we look at new Christians, who are overjoyed at the salvation that God has worked in their life, how God has saved them from sin and death, and now the attributes of God’s holiness and love and his justice and sovereign power are riveting to new Christians, new Christians who delight to get up in the morning and read their Bibles because the stories are so real and so fresh, and we look at them as say, “Yeah, it will get harder.”
I know the reason. You know the reason. We get older. Life gets harder. We see more of the grind and less of the glory. We see the worst parts of people and sometimes the worst parts of pastors. We can become cynical and bitter, tired and callous.
But consider this: who is really seeing reality more clearly? Is it the bright-eyed, newly awakened believer who is full of joy in Christ, or the “mature” and cranky believer? Who sees reality better? Somehow, in Christ, there must be a way to mature in our faith without losing our joy, without losing sight of the blessings we’ve received in Christ.
At this point in the story, Abram felt the blessings and the joy and the wind of God’s Spirit blowing him along. Yes, he’ll have to do hard things. And yes, he’ll mature over the years, but it will be this moment, and these very promises that God has to call him back to when he loses his way. In fact, it’s when Abram forgets these good news promises that cause him to lose his way. We’ll see that in week’s passage.
The blessing we should be
This brings us to the last point. What are these blessings for? Was the greatness of Abram’s name meant to be merely for the greatness of Abram’s name? Is our connection to God through the person and work of Jesus meant to be for our good alone? And to be very concrete, are the blessings we still have after Covid meant merely for us? No. Look again at vv. 2–3.
2 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. 3 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.”
The answer to our question of what are blessings for is right there on the page. “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,” God says. “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
One pastor preaching this passage looked out and asked his church and asked, “What blessings do you have that you are not using for others?” He wanted his congregation, as I want ours, to consider this. What would have happened if, instead, Abram hoarded God’s blessings rather than sharing them? Would we be talking about him today?
Fifteen years ago, my family lived in another part of the country, and we had a neighbor who, it sure seemed, was a hoarder of more and more stuff—or, at least, she was becoming a hoarder. You could see stuff piling up in the front room and just inside the door. You could see her car getting fuller until I often wondered if it was even safe to drive because of all the visibility issues. Now, I’m not smart enough to know all the physiological reasons this might happen. But I do know that’s not what God intends for his people. Hoarding the blessing of God does not lead to spiritual health.
Look at what happens in the rest of this section of Genesis 12:4–9. What God promised, he is beginning to give.
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 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 had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
Notice something about these cities. God is fulfilling the promise to show Abram the land. Remember in v. 1 that God tells him to go to the land he would show him. Well, he’s now traveled to Shechem, which is 40 miles north of Jerusalem. Then he travels further south to another place. Then he travels south again to what is called the Negeb. The Negeb is the southern border of the promised land. Again, that geography is foreign to most of us. But the point is that God keeps his promises.
And what happens as Abram sees the land? Abram is blessed with wealth and animals and property and people. In v. 5 we don’t know whether those people he acquired in Haran were slaves or whether they were people who worked for him. Some Hebrew scholars, because of the way the Hebrew reads, think that the people he acquired were converts that Abram won to the Lord as he traveled from one pagan city to the next.
Regardless, Abram was certainly living his faith out in very public ways. He is a blessing to others. In these verses, we see him building two altars, one in v. 7 in the city of Shechem and another altar later in v. 8 in a city near Bethel. In two chapters we learn that Abram has over three hundred trained men who work for him (14:14). We don’t know if Abram has that many warriors with him at this point back in chapter 12 or not. Probably he has less. But my point is that for Abram, the promises of God lead him to go and to build public altars and call out to God publicly in the midst of pagan cities and pagan people. And he invites them into true worship. His altars and devotions were not hidden, private affairs. You don’t show up to town as an outsider with wealth and warriors and build an altar without that becoming a public statement.
Some of you might need to take the blessings God has given you and build public altars. Oh, not an altar to sacrifice animals. You know what I mean. I mean, you need to make your faith more public than it is. You don’t need to hide your faith at work or from your extended family or from your classmates or your teammates. They need to know how good God has been to you and how much he’s blessed you.
Conclusion
As we close, I want to prepare our hearts for communion. If there ever where an example of someone who was blessed to be a blessing for others, it was Jesus. In fact, Jesus is even hinted at in this passage. We read the promise that in Abram, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Which is to say, Abram would have many children, and one of those children would be a very special child. A child through whom the whole world would be blessed, if they want to receive him. If we want to receive him.
I’ll invite the music team forward so we can have a time of response through communion and singing. A time when we can celebrate the one through whom the world is blessed.
Communion at our church is open to anyone, like Abram, who knows they could not earn blessings from God, but knows that they have them because of Jesus. If you’d rather not take communion this morning for whatever reason, no one will think any less of that and you can sit and reflect while others come forward down the center aisle.
As you come forward, those serving communion will drop a piece of bread in your hand and you can grab a cup. Hang onto the elements until we have all been served, so we can participate together.
Communion is always a serious time, but sometimes it’s also a sober time where we think about our sin. But communion should be a happy, joyful time. How could it not be? Jesus has lived and died and rose and promised to come again. And this meal reminds us of every blessing we have in him, blessings we can barely imagine how good they will be some day.
Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
Sermon Discussion Questions
In what ways does Genesis 12:1–3 become more significant because it follows all of chapter 11 (cf. Babel and Abram’s family)?
What hard things do you feel God is calling you to do this season?
What promises from God do you have as a Christian that could help you remain faithful during a season of challenging obedience?
How has God blessed you? How are you using these blessings to bless others?
