Today in our series on Genesis we come to the life of a man named Abraham.  Abraham is probably one of the most important figures in the Bible.  He is called  the father of the faithful. Rom 4:16 says, “For this reason [it is] by faith, in order that [it may be] in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,”

So as we are studying Genesis to learn the fundamentals, the foundations of our faith, it is imperative then that we look at the life of Abraham, because under the Old Covenant they were saved by the same faith as Abraham, and under the New Covenant we are saved by the same faith as Abraham, so that he is not just the father of Israel, but he is the father of us all, that is those of the faith.

Now Abraham’s life covers many chapters in the scriptures, and I do not plan on preaching through them all verse by verse.  But let’s begin at chapter 11, and then we will look at selected scriptures up to the point of the conception of Sarah.  And we will look at that, and the birth of Isaac, next week.

The story of Abraham begins actually in chapter 11:27, stating that Abraham was born of Terah, in the Ur of the Chaldeans. His name was Abram at that time, which means exalted father.  And yet he was married to Sarai, who was barren, and had no child. It was ironic, that a man called the exalted father was childless.  At that point, he had no idea if he was sterile, or his wife was.  But he had to bear the ignominy of his name in a society that prized may children, that considered having many children and having an heir to be one of life’s greatest blessings. 

Chapter 11 tells us that Terah 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.”  Terah eventually died in Haran.  

Then we see in chapter 12 vs 1 that the Lord said to Abram.  We don’t know this explicitly, but it would seem that this is not to be understood as a linear timeframe.  God seems to have spoken to Abram when he was still in Ur of the Chaldeans.  We know that because Stephen in his great final sermon spoke of it that way.  Acts 7:2  And Stephen said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,  and said to him, ‘LEAVE YOUR COUNTRY AND YOUR RELATIVES, AND COME INTO THE LAND THAT I WILL SHOW YOU.’  “Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, [God] had him move to this country in which you are now living. 

Some people have made a big deal out of the fact that Abram seems to have only partially obeyed God.  God said leave Ur and go to Canaan, and yet Abram went only as far as Haran. But that’s not really clear, and it’s not clear how long he was in Haran, and whether or not that was necessitated by his father dying.  God doesn’t seem to condemn Abraham for the delay, and so perhaps we should not either.

Hebrews tells us simply  that Abram obeyed. Heb 11:8 says,  “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.”

So let’s look at the initial call as recorded in chapter 12. Vs1-3 “Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;  And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;  And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

We are going to accept Stephen’s testimony that this call was given when Abram was in Ur.  From what another OT patriarch had to say, that being Joshua, we are told that Terah worshipped idols. Ur of the Chaldeans was a pagan country, and idol worship was common. We don’t know if Abram at that point had been a believer in God or not. But irregardless, he would have had a very rudimentary faith at best.

But when Abram heard the word of the Lord, he believed God. That is faith.  Hebrews 11:1 says,  “Now faith is the assurance of [things] hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  For by it the men of old gained approval.”  Faith then is believing what God says, things which are not seen, but hoped for with conviction of it being so. And the men of old, that is the early patriarchs, gained approval with God through their faith.  That same kind of faith, faith in things not seen, is the way we gain approval with God as well.

I believe Abram must have had some prior understanding of who God was and what He had done. I think he would have known about creation, he would have known about the flood.  And he may have even known about the promise God made that from the seed of the woman Satan’s head would be crushed. In fact, my math should not be trusted too much, but the way I read the text in chapter 11, it was likely that Shem, one of the sons of Noah, was still alive when Abram was born. But I am not going to be dogmatic about that.  But I say that to make the point that Abram was not born in a spiritual vacuum.  I don’t think that the idolatry of his land had necessarily wiped out all belief in God.

But what we do know is that God spoke to Abram a command; “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you.”  And Abram obeyed God and packed up everything and left the country of his birth.  

That same call of God is given to us today to come out from the world. 2 Cor.  6:16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.  “Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.  “And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.

But most importantly, notice that in addition to giving Abram a command, He gave Him a promise.  In fact, God gave him many promises.  The first is that He would give him land, of which he’s not even told what or where it is. Just get out of Ur and start walking, and I will give you a land.

Then signficantly, God promised that He would make Abram a nation. This is a man that is childless. As far as he knows he can’t have children. And yet God promises that not only will he have children, but he will be the father of a nation.

Then God promised to bless Abram and to make his name great. There is probably no more honored name in history than the name of Abram, who is considered the father not only of the Jews but of Christians from all the nations. Gal 3:7-9 “Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, [saying,] “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”

God also promised He would bless those who bless you and to curse him who curses you. This is a promise of protection for the children of God.  Not only was Abram promised blessing, but God also promised to make him a blessing, even to the point where all the families of the earth would be blessed in Abram. This amazing promise was fulfilled in the Messiah that came from Abram’s lineage.  This is an extrapolation of the promise given made by God in the garden of Eden, that from the seed of a woman would come One who would crush Satan’s head.  That obscure reference in the garden to the future Messiah is here given more definition.  But more is still to come.

Vs 4  “So Abram went forth as the LORD had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.  Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan.”

Now once again there are commentators who would like to diminish the obedience of Abraham by saying that he shouldn’t have taken Lot with him, since God had said leave your relatives and your father’s house. But in the case of his father’s house, he did leave it.  He took his father Terah, but there was no prohibition against that.  We are to honor our father and mother, and when they reach old age, it is commanded that we take care of them. I think the reference to leaving his relatives and his father’s house refers to his tribe, his land that his father owned, his inheritance, and his relatives I’m sure, encompassed a whole tribe of people who lived in that land, not just his nephew, whom we might argue he had some responsibility for.

But what is important to see is that even if Abram wasn’t perfect, he obeyed the word of the Lord.  He had faith in God which was accompanied by obedience.  James says, faith without works is dead. Abram believed God and obeyed by going out to a place that God told him to go.  He left his worldly inheritance and security and blessing that he enjoyed in Ur, and went to a place that he didn’t know anything about, other than that God said He would bless him there.

I would also like to point out that faith is always founded on the promises of God. God may ask us to do something that we haven’t seen before, or believe something that there is no evidence for, but God will always give us a promise, and a promise that must be true because God is true. So faith is not believing whatever we may conjure up, or faith in wishful thinking, or faith in positive thinking, but faith is  believing the promises of God.  God keeps His promises and the scriptures are full of the fulfilled promises of God, so that we might have assurance of our faith.

I would also like to point out that Abraham’s faith was walking faith.  The text says that he set out, then he passed through, then he journeyed on. Abraham’s faith was a walking faith.  As he obeyed, the Lord gave him more understanding, more revelation.  We need to understand that faith is growing, moving in obedience.  It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s practical exercise. We are called to walk in faith.  Remember what Genesis said about Noah?  He walked with God.  Faith is stepping out, believing and doing what God says.

So Abram came to Canaan and found out that there were other people living there who probably didn’t believe that God was going to give the land to him.  In fact, maybe Abram began to wonder when he finally gets to Canaan only to find out that it’s not an empty flourishing land that he might have imagined, but instead there are hostile, pagan, idol worshipping people already living there.

But notice that when he gets to Canaan, God appears to him there.  Previously, God spoke.  We aren’t told that Abram saw anyone. But now God appears to him. And God speaks. VS 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him.

Theologians call this a Theophany. A visible manifestation of God.  And we believe that this is a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As we are obedient in faith to the revelation that we have been given, then God gives us greater revelation. 

And the Lord gives him another promise, or an elaboration on His initial promise.  He said, To your descendants I will give this land. Abram never owned any of this land except the burial plot he bought (Genesis 23:14-20). But he is promised this land, and furthermore, he is promised descendants who will occupy this land.  Once again, this is a 75 year old man who has been unable to have children.

But then notice what Abraham does.  He builds an altar to the Lord. He worships the Lord. How did Abram know to build an altar?  I suggest that this was a tradition passed down from Noah to those who believed in God.  But no matter how he knew, he knew that he needed to worship the Lord.  And the altar was a place to meet with God, to offer sacrifice for sin, to show submission to God, and to worship God.  Worship is always associated in the Bible with sacrifice.

As Christians, we are to worship God at an altar, where we lay down our lives so that we might live for Him.  Romans 12 says we offer to God our bodies as a living sacrifice. And ultimately, we remember the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf, that we might receive the blessing of God.

There are a lot of other things that happen in Abraham’s life in these next few chapters that we are not going to try to go in detail about this morning.  But suffice it to say that the walk of faith is not without challenges and trials.  A famine comes upon the land of Canaan, and Abram goes to Egypt where he could find food in the famine.  However, it’s not clear if God told Abram to go to Egypt.  I believe that God would have provided for them in Canaan in the midst of the famine.  But Abram took matters in his own hands, which resulted in him treating his wife in a disrespectful way, and he hurt his testimony among the Egyptians.  But irregardless, God took care of him, though it seems as though Abram acted according to his own wisdom, and the consequences of that were not good.

After being rebuked by Pharaoh, Abram returned to Canaan, to the place he had been previously.  Unfortunately, the walk of faith is sometimes one step forward and two steps backwards.  But it’s important that we recognize when we err, and repent, that God will restore us.  Chapter 14 says, Abram went back to the altar that he had made, and there he called upon the Lord.  That’s where we need to go when we sin against God. Back to the altar and call upon the Lord to forgive us, and to cleanse us and renew us. As David cried, renew a right spirit within me.  That’s our cry as well as Abram’s. 

Then Abram and Lot separated and went their separate ways because the land could not sustain them both together.  They had gotten rich in their wanderings, and their servants were fighting among themselves.  Lot chose the well watered plains of Jordan, and Abram went to Canaan. Lot is another story altogether that we won’t deal with today.  But Abram shows by his choice that he is once again trusting in the Lord to keep His promises and to provide and protect him, and so he allows Lot to take the more fruitful looking land.

And once again God speaks to Abram.  God repeats His previous promise, but adds some more detail. This illustrates the principle of progressive revelation.  As we walk in faith, in obedience to what we are given, then God will give us more revelation.

Vs14,  The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward;  for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you.”  Then Abram moved his tent and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.”

So God gives Abram more detail concerning the land and the nation that will come from him, and says his descendants will be like the dust of the earth. Abram still has no child yet, still owns no land, he’s still living in a tent.  But he believes God, and he responds by building another altar. He worships the Lord, believing in promises of God.

Then in chapter 14 you can read about this great battle that takes place in the region that Lot was living.  Four kings and their armies fought five kings and their armies.  And the winning army took the people of Sodom captive as the spoils of war, and Lot and his family was taken captive with them.  

Abraham hears of it, and he gets his men together, 318 of them, and  goes to deliver his nephew from captivity.  Abram divides his army and when night comes he attacks and ends up delivering Lot and all the plunder that had been taken. 

But afterwards he meets another king, who is described as the King of Salem, whose name is Melchizedek. He is described in Genesis as a priest of the most High God. I think this happens to be a real person, a real king of a neighboring region called Salem that was somehow involved in the war.  But many commentators think this could be another pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.  I don’t think so.  But Hebrews makes it clear that Melchizedek is a type of Christ, in that Christ was a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. That is, He did not come from the Levitical priesthood.

But for our purposes today, I just will mention that the priest Melchizedek blessed Abram, and blessed God, and Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth, that is a tithe, of all.  I suppose that to mean a tithe of the plunder.  Now I don’t want to give a sermon on Melchizedek. I want to focus on the word that God gave Abram, and Abram’s response to God’s word. I would say though that Melchizedek encouraged Abram in his faith, to continue to walk with God by faith.

And so in chapter 15, vs 1 we read, “After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great. Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”  Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

This time, the Lord appeared in a vision and spoke to Abram. Once again, God promises protection. He promises a great reward for his faith. And Abram said what will you give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my hose is Eliezer of Damascus?  Eliezer was Abram’s head servant.  God still had not give him a child, and it was apparent by now that there wasn’t any chance of a child by natural means.  Sarah and Abraham are getting too old for children. And yet he remembered God’s previous promises of his descendants being more in number than the dust of the earth.  I think He was genuinely confused, and maybe a little discouraged.

But once again the Lord promised him a descendent, and more clearly than ever before He says he will come from your own body, and he will be your heir. That’s so important for Abram to understand.  Because down the road, when God tests him by asking him to sacrifice his son, Abram will remember this promise of the son of his body that will be his heir, and that promise will fuel the faith that he needs to be able to be obedient to God’s command.

But the most important statement that we need to focus on is the last one, “Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Abram was saved in the same way all men are saved in every generation, in every dispensation.  We are saved by faith.  Righteousness is imputed, or credited to those who have faith.  This phrase is quoted four times in the New Testament to explain salvation. Paul quotes it three times in Romans 4. 

Rom 4:3  For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Vs 9 Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.”  

Vs 20 “yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God,  and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.  Therefore IT WAS ALSO CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

And finally Gal 3:6-7 Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.

Salvation is just that simple. I didn’t say that it was easy.  Abram showed by his life that faith is not easy, and sometimes you may struggle between the flesh and faith.  But faith is simple.  Turn to God, lean not on your own understanding but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.  But faith is the only way we can achieve righteousness.  We can’t work it out through our flesh, or by our own wisdom, but we are given righteousness as a gift of God, when we turn to Him in faith.  And only in HIs righteousness are we able to be approved by God. And only by faith are we made the children of God.