Genesis 12:1-9, “The Cost of Discipleship”

Ken MacLeod

Joint Services • Sermon • Submitted 5 months ago • Presented 5 months ago

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This year we are getting back to the fundamentals. Our mission is to love God, love others, and make disciples of Jesus. We’ve spent time over the last five years together on those first two. This year, we’ll focus more on making disciples of Jesus. As Pastor Ruben told us several months ago, making disciples starts with prayer,

Matthew 9:37–38 (ESV)

Then [Jesus] said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

We pray that God will send workers into this plentiful harvest with the gospel of Jesus Christ to rescue them from the domain of darkness to be remade, to live fruitful lives in the kingdom of His beloved Son. And in the very next verse, Jesus calls twelve disciples, and they find out they were the answer to their own prayer. Jesus gives them his authority, and then

Matthew 10:5 (ESV)

These twelve Jesus sent out

Jesus sends his disciples out into the harvest. Sometimes we call this the Great Commission.

Matthew 28:18–20 (ESV)

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Whether it’s harvesting souls or fishing for men or any other analogy Jesus used to describe being sent to make disciples, it’s hard work that comes at a cost. There is a threefold cost: your comfort, allegiances that compete with Jesus, and your own greatness. But there is also a great blessing. We are making disciples of Jesus, and they will receive eternal life and experience the fullness of joy in Christ as they believe in the gospel.

There is a harvest being brought in around the world right now. The gospel is bearing fruit everywhere in disciple making movements. But not in America. What’s wrong? The gospel is still the power of God for salvation. Some have said that the problem is the church in America is not willing to bear the cost of disciple making.

Whether or not this is true for you or for us, it’s a question to consider as we learn the passage today. I hope God’s call of Abram in Genesis 12 will give us a fresh perspective on our calling as Jesus’ disciple-making disciples. God calls Abram to go from his land, his people, and his father’s house and God would make him a blessing to all nations. There is a direct line from Abram to anyone following Jesus into the harvest.

If you read the Bible for just a few pages, you’ll see God is always sending people places. He sends Abram to Canaan. He sends Moses to Pharaoh. He sends Samuel all over Israel. He sends Jonah to Nineveh. He sent Jesus to our world. Jesus sent his disciples out to preach the gospel and heal. Jesus sends us into the harvest. And here is one simple truth, you can’t be sent if you stay home. If you are going into the harvest to make disciples of Jesus,

Cost #1: Comfort

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

I believe many Americans are like hobbits. Happy to stay comfortably in their hole underground, making tea and sitting by the fire, while the bigger events of life happen somewhere else. And we have had that luxury for quite some time, thanks to the sacrifices of previous generations. But as followers of Jesus, He has sent us out. There is a bigger adventure to be lived. Eternal destinies are at stake.

When God called Abram, he said,

Genesis 12:1 (ESV)

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.

The word there for “country” is the word for land. It is the place of comfort and security. Here is Abram, at 75 years old. God is sending him out from all the comforts of home, everything he knows, to a place God only knows where. Abram can only experience the blessing of God if he leaves his place of comfort. And by the end of the passage, he’s still travelling.

Genesis 12:9 (ESV)

“And Abram journeyed on…”

God never lets him get comfortable again. God will make Abram a blessing to too many people to let him stay home. For the rest of his life, he is a pilgrim. He practices hospitality from a tent. God blessed him with prosperity so that he could carry out his ministry. But he never gets too comfortable in one place. God promises that one day Abram’s offspring would inherit the land,

Genesis 12:7 (ESV)

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.

But Abram himself would not.

The great saints have all learned these truths,

Psalm 24:1 (ESV)

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,

Psalm 90:1 (ESV)

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

We don’t need a land of our own. God is your home. If you are a believer in Jesus, you are God’s child, and as His child, the whole world belongs to you.

Jesus knew this, and embraced homelessness for the sake of being with His Father wherever He was working. He was at home in the Temple and in a fisherman’s stall, at the table of a tax collector and a pharisee. You can go anywhere and find people who need the good news that God loves them and has provided forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus. You don’t have to go far, but you can’t stay in your comfort zone, your “home country”. Christian coffee house vs. Dunkin’. I believe that many Christians have sacrificed the disciple-making mission of Jesus on the altar to the idol of comfort. That’s exactly the opposite of our calling.

The next cost for Abram was leaving his people.

Genesis 12:1 (ESV)

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.”

Cost #2: Competing Allegiances

There are many people and priorities that demand your allegiance and promise to give you meaning and purpose if you will identify as one of them, be in the “kindred”. Abram’s kindred are his people group, his ethnicity, his tribe. Ethnic groups demand allegiance through certain identity markers. Some are good. For example, Abram came from a people group that were known for their hospitality. His whole life was defined by that trait, and God used it to make him a blessing to many people.

Genesis 12:1 (ESV)

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.”

But his people were also known for their idolatry, the worship of the gods of the river, the sun, and the moon. That allegiance would have to go. God promises Abram

Genesis 12:2–3 (ESV)

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. 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.”

We all have a “kindred”, a tribe. It might be your family or ethnicity as it was for Abram. Or it might have nothing to do with that. It could be a brotherhood formed in school, in a fraternity, a line of work, in the military, or a hobby. These days, everything from political parties to sports teams to products demand your allegiance. You can’t vote Republican and Democrat on one ballot any more than you can route for the Celtics and the Lakers or drink both Red Bull and Monster. Hard lines are being drawn by every interest group, and you have to pick your allegiance.

When Jesus called His disciples to follow Him, He drew the hardest line of all,

Luke 14:26 (ESV)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

That sounds rather harsh. But what Jesus means is that you need to put your allegiances in the right order. The reality is, if you love Jesus, and are willing to follow wherever He may send you, if your very identity is in Him alone, if He is your ultimate allegiance, He will give you the supernatural ability to love everyone else as you should. If you get your allegiances out of order, for instance put your love for your family above your love for Him, loving your family will be much harder and you will never get around to loving and following Jesus.

If you are a Christian, your identity is in Christ. He gives you meaning and purpose. He told His disciples, “I will make you fishers of men.” Your purpose is found in being sent into the harvest to bless every nation by making disciples of Jesus.

The last cost we see in Abram’s call is to his own greatness.

Cost #3: Your Greatness

God calls Abram to leave his “father’s house”.

Genesis 12:1 (ESV)

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.”

For our culture, this is no big deal. Most of us can’t wait to leave our dad’s house when we turn 18. But this isn’t Abram’s world. The father’s house, in Hebrew called the Beth Av, was the center of gravity for your world. People didn’t go to college or into the military or find work in other parts of the country. You didn’t choose your own path in life. Everything was determined by your father. You received your name from your father, your reputation, your honor. You also received your vocation. Your calling in life was to do whatever work your father did. Your inheritance was your father’s property and the family business.

For Abram to leave his father’s house, he would lose all honor in his society. God is calling him to trust that He will grant him a greater honor than he could inherit from his earthly father. God would grant him his inheritance.

Genesis 12:2 (ESV)

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.

When Abram leaves his Beth Av, God starts a new Beth Av with Abram. Verse 5 tells us,

Genesis 12:5 (ESV)

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.

The phrase for “the people they had acquired” is literally, “the souls they had made.” Abram and Sarai are making disciples as they go. They are teaching their entire household how to follow God in faith. God blesses Abram when Abram leaves his Beth Av.

This is the same thing Jesus tells his disciples, as we saw earlier. Peter, speaking for the disciples, I’m sure, says,

Matthew 19:27–30 (ESV)

Then Peter said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”

Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Right after he says this, Jesus tells a parable to them about workers harvesting a vineyard receiving their wages. To be truly great, sacrifice your own greatness to follow Jesus into the harvest. And He will grant you your inheritance, your place in the kingdom, everything you could desire.

If you are a disciple of Jesus, He has sent you into the harvest field of this world to make disciples of Jesus Christ. He has granted to us the gospel of salvation in Christ alone, His death for our sins, His resurrection from the dead, and the promise that anyone can be remade in Him. What will it cost you to follow Jesus in this calling? Your comfort, your other allegiances, and your own greatness. But the promise is that, just like Abram, God will bless you and make something of you that you cannot make of yourself, and He will bless the world through you. You bring the world a message that Jesus has paid a cost none of us could bear in order to fulfill the promise to Abraham to bless us all.

Galatians 3:13–14 (ESV)

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— s

o that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.