The Call
Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
woolworth store
Woolworth’s discount stores in the US closed for good in 1997, so many of us have never heard of the company. But the story of Woolworth’s is a fascinating tale of hard work, workaholism, and inheritance.
Frank Woolworth was the son of a war veteran turned farmer. He was born in 1852 and his brother Charles was born four years later in 1856. He was intelligent, though a little distracted by day dreaming, according to his teachers. After working at a dry good store for a few years, Frank had the idea of a discount store where everything in it only cost 5 or 10 cents. Frank started his first store and was able to pay back his investors. He started a 2nd store with his brother. A third store with a cousin, and another store with a friend. Frank’s 5 and 10 cent stores were so popular that frank was able to continue expanding even through the first world war. He built the tallest building in the world as his headquarters in New York, and even helped to jump-start mass manufacturing in American factories when the war prevented importing from Europe.
For a time Frank was the richest man in the world. But he his family suffered for it.
There was a dark side to Frank’s success. Before her death, Frank’s wife, Jennie, told friends that she had been happier when they didn’t have a dime than when they had millions.
Frank had three daughters, Edna, Helena and Jessie. When they came of age, Frank worked hard to get them married off to high society husbands. Edna married a financier named Franklyn Hutton, and they had a daughter, Barbara. Four years after her birth, Barbara, found her mother dead in her room from self inflicted injuries. Many blamed it on her absentee father and an abusive husband.
Barbara Hutton
Young Barbara was the heiress of her grandmother’s and her mother’s shares of Woolworth’s, as well as a trust from her financier father. When she turned 21 in 1933, Barbara was one of the wealthiest women in the world with a modern-day equivalent of over a billion dollars in her trust fund.
Inheritance
Inheritance
There’s something about the idea of an inheritance that seems a little unfair—you get something that someone else worked for.
Keep in mind that the entire plan of salvation is based on an inheritance promise.
Title slide
We’re in the sixth episode of our Genesis series where we’ve been talking about origins. We talked about the origin of matter and life, of good and evil, and of judgment and redemption. Today we’re going to talk about the origins of the promised people and the promised land and the call that God places on the lives of all His children.
The story meanders through some 20 chapters of Genesis, but we’re going to focus on just 4 chapters — Genesis 12-15 — where God makes several key promises to Abram.
The Great Nation Promise
The Great Nation Promise
everlasting covenant
In the last episode of this sermon series we discussed the covenant promises of God. Some of those promises were made to Adam and Eve, more were made to Noah and his family. Every one of these promises are part of what God told Noah was his Everlasting Covenant.
We noted that God’s covenant is based on HIS promises and sealed with HIS signs. For Noah the sign that God would keep his promises was the Rainbow, and later in the New Testament we found that Paul says God’s sign that He will keep His covenant with the Christians is the Holy Spirit working in our hearts.
One more thing to keep in mind is that when we talk about the everlasting covenant there are two components: God’s promise, and our response. The Old Covenant is an “I’ll do it my way” kind of response, and the New Covenant is an “I’ll trust you, and follow you” kind of response.
abraham’s journey map
Let’s turn in our Bibles to Genesis 11 where we’ll pick up at the point where the Bible lists a bunch more descendants. One of the reasons the Bible has so many lists of parents and children is because God’s promises are based on inheritance. He told Adam and Eve that one of their children would be the messiah and would fight the snake and crush his head. If you read through all the places that list the names of fathers and sons—the begats, as some call them—you’ll find these lists all end up pointing to Jesus—the messiah.
In Genesis 11, Noah’s Descendants, following the line of Noah’s son, Shem, lead us to a man named Terah.
Abram’s story begins with his father, Terah, who began a journey from the land of the Chaldeans where the plane of Shinar hosted the famed city of Babel. That was the city where the people didn’t trust God and built a tower to escape any future floods. God had promised Noah that he would not destroy the earth with a flood, and then called Noah’s family to fill the earth. But the people of the city of Babel didn’t trust God, and they decided to do their own thing.
But Terah had faith in God. For a time he had lived in the city of Ur, but Terah believed God’s promisss and so he packed up his family and headed northwest toward the land of Canaan.
Terah’s family ended up settling in a city called Haran. But God had plans for Abram. When Terah died at the age of 205, God told Abram,
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. 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.”
Notice the repeated pattern of God’s covenant. It’s stated in terms that make sense to Abram—that connect with his life and his history—but it’s the same context and structure as God’s other covenants.
He told Abram, “I will make of you a great nation.” This is a bold promise. Genesis 11:30 says that Abram’s wife,
Sarai was unable to have children.
And this isn’t a point of question. When God made this promise to Abram he was 75 years old. This was a settled fact—Sarai was barren.
Not only did God make a promise that was very specific to Abram’s situation, but he included His bigger promise to save mankind—to send the Messiah—when he said, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:3)
But, true to form, these promises come with responsibility. In Noah’s case it was a responsibility to fill the earth. For Abram, the responsibility was to “go... to the land that I will show you.”
Abram believed God, and stepped out in faith. He took his wife and his nephew and his family business and hit the road—never again to live in a settled home.
Genesis 12:4 says it very simply: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”
Imagine this scene with me.
Abram’s family has already traveled some 600 miles from Ur to live in Haran, a city roughly 400 miles north of the place that God would eventually bring Abram.
They packed their belongings on camels and donkeys. They herded their sheep and cows ahead of them. They carried their sleeping mats on their backs, with a sheep’s bladder filled with water hanging from their shoulders.
From the time they had left Ur they had been traveling on common trade routes that followed the Euphrates river north and west to Haran. Now they would continue follow the trade routes that went south and west towards Egypt—a route that stayed near the Mediterranean sea and followed river beds and fertile valleys. Today this area is known as the fertile crescent, and in Abram’s day it would have been the only safe way to travel from the planes of Chaldea in the east to Egypt and Europe in the West. The more direct route lay directly through the desert of Arabia—a treacherous route with little available to eat or drink.
Abram and his family had been traveling for weeks before they finally got to the boarders of the land of Canaan.
Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. 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 had appeared to him.
Shechem was a town in a valley between two mountains that were a gateway to the hills and valleys west of the Jordan River. From the mountains of Shechem you could see a large portion of the territory, and it was here that God repeated his promise that Abram would have a nation of children, AND that they would inherit this land.
At this junction you have to ask yourself the question, “why would God give Abram someone else’s land?”
There are several answers to that question, but the first lies in the “in you all families of the earth will be blessed” promise. The land between Egypt and Arabia, and the Mediterranean and the Jordan was the most well traveled area in the world at that time. God wanted Abram to have that land because God wanted to bless the world through Abram’s family—and specifically through the Messiah that would one day come.
Abram, the Liar
Abram, the Liar
Genesis 12:10 tells us “there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt...”
The bible doesn’t tell us that God told Abram to go to Egypt, it just says that’s what he did. While there he was afraid that he would be put to death because his wife was beautiful and he thought the monarch there would want her for himself. So, they conspired to deceive the pharaoh and tell him that Sarai was Abram’s sister.
Be sure your sins will find you out.
Sarai was taken by Pharaoh and Abram was given wealth in exchange for her.
Can you believe this?! This is the man who was promised that he would be the father of many nations, and that promise surely included Sarai. But to save his own neck, he let his wife of promise go, and willingly received wealth in exchange.
This kind of deceit and disbelief is the kind of thing that would disqualify Abram from being worthy of God’s inheritance of people and lands.
But that’s not how God’s promises work. God made promises to Abram based on God’s goodness, not Abram’s. So when Abram bungled things, God stepped in to keep things on track. He afflicted Pharaoh’s house with a plague and Pharaoh sent Sarai back to Abram and gave him orders to leave Egypt.
Notice, that even though Abram bungled things and acted in disbelief, He still willingly followed God when God told him to go somewhere. Abram wasn’t in rebellion against God, He just made a stupid mistake.
Because of God’s intervention, Abram went back to the valley of the Negeb on the south end of the Jordan River near the Dead Sea.
If you’ve read this story before, you’ll remember that this is where Abram and his nephew Lot had land disputes and Abram asked Lot to pick a place where he would settle so that Abram could go somewhere else and they would maintain peace.
And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other.
And again, God gave Abram the promise of an inheritance—a people and a land:
The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”
Rescuing Lot
Rescuing Lot
Lot’s desire for luxury and pleasure led him to move from the Jordan Valley right into the city of Sodom. So, when the city was attacked and defeated by other city-states around the Fertile Crescent, Lot and his family were taken captive.
When Abram heard of the attack, he mustered his men of war—a crew of only 318 fighting men. They were trained, according to Genesis 14:14, but what could 318 do against the forces of several cities? Miraculously they were able to defeat the enemy forces and recapture the goods and people of Sodom and the cities of the Jordan Valley.
It appears that Abram had learned a lesson from Pharaoh, because he refused to take the spoils of war. And notice Abram’s theology:
But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’
Abram had begun to understand that God owns the earth. This is a huge leap of faith for Abram—trusting God to provide an inheritance rather than seeking out his own possessions from his own hard work.
In our world, hard work is prized while people who have family wealth are scorned by the people. But in the plan of salvation, there are no self-made men or women—we are all trust fund babies.
Abram’s theology about God’s ownership of everything leads us to another answer to the question, why would God give Abram land that someone else is living on?
God is able to give Abram someone else’s land because all the land belongs to God and He can give it to whomever He wishes.
There’s one more important thing that happened when Abram brought back all the people and posessions of the cities of the plain: he paid tithe.
Tithe has always been the practice of faithful people—they give God a tithe of all their profit. Abram must have learned this from his father Terah who must have learned it from his ancestors all the way back to Noah and maybe even back to Adam. So, when Abram met a priest of the Most High God named Melchizedek, the king of Salem, he gave him a tenth of all of the spoils of war, and then he returned the rest to the people of the plain.
Part of being a trust-fund Christian is that we consistently recognize where all our gifts come from by giving a portion of it back to God. This is an act of FAITH—praising God for what he has provided, and submitting ourselves to Him to continue to provide for us in the future.
Blood Covenant
Blood Covenant
abraham covenant
After Abram rescued Lot God gave Abram a vision. You can read about it in Genesis 15, and it starts out with a beautiful statement about the kind of God Abram was putting his trust in:
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
Abram was just like you and me—he struggled with doubt. At this point Abram was probably around 85 years old and Sarai was still barren. So, he asked God, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless…? Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” (Gen 15:2-3)
God is so patient. Listen to how he responds to Abram in Genesis 15:4:
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
And Abram believed God. And God recognized his belief as righteousness.
We should have a whole sermon series on Faith and Righteousness, but lets just stop and recognize this very important point: our inheritance of life and salvation is a gift of God’s grace and we receive it by faith—by trusting that God’s promises are true.
Peter put it this way
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
It is our trust in God’s precious and very great promises that makes us righteous. Let me say that again: His promises make us righteous if we believe and trust our life to Him. This is what Ellen White calls righteousness by faith.
Jeremiah described it this way:
In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’
This is not a side theme in the story of salvation—it is the theme. God, in His goodness and grace, has provided a way for our salvation, and that way—the only way—is Jesus Christ, our rightensooness, our substitute, and our savior. The only way to be saved, to be fulfilled, to experience true life like God designed it to be, is by trusting in HIS work of redemption.
But there’s more to this promise in Genesis 15, and more to the story of righteousness by faith.
In Gen 15:7 God reminds Abram that He is the God who brought him out of Ur with his father Terah, and He brought him from Haran to possess the land of Canaan. And to that statement, Abram expressed another question.
“How am I to know that I shall possess it?” (Gen 15:8)
In response God doesn’t just say “trust me, I promise.” No, he adds a sign. And just like with Noah’s covenant and the rainbow sign, this sign to Abram was a sign that God made, and that only God could fulfill.
Remember, in Bible religion God is the one who makes the promises and God is the one who performs the signs. If man is making the promises and performing the signs, then its not Bible religion and its not faith.
For this sign, God asked Abram to cut some animals in half—a cow, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. He told him to cut all but the birds in half and lay one half opposite the other with a walkway in the middle.
He did that, and stayed around to scare off the vultures and other animals who wanted something to eat.
As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a dreadful and great darkness fell on him. And then God spoke.
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
Notice the promise again, God is going to give Abram lots of children. He adds to his previous promise some more detail about how this will happen. Four hundred years would go by where Abram’s children would be in an oppressive country as slaves, but God would deliver them and punish that country. Afterwards they would come back and possess the land of promise.
“for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
This is another reason that God would give Abram’s children land that had belonged to others—judgment on the wickedness of the people of Canaan.
“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.
Isn’t God amazing? He’s got a problem with a group of people who are becoming so wicked that in His love God will have to bring judgment on them—just like the people before the flood. But just like the people before the flood, God gives them time… lots of time. Four hundred years before they would be defeated in battle in that long day that Joshua asked God to stop the sun from setting.
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After the sun had gone down in Abram’s story back in Genesis 15, it was dark, and Abram saw something amazing:
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
To understand what’s going on here you have to have a little historical background. In Abram’s day the major form of government was a city-state. Each city, or group of cities, had a governor or king. They would fight each other to annex more territory into their control, and they would make treaties to support and defend each other. A common treaty was a suzerain treaty or a suzerain covenant. In ancient texts and tablets when we read about these treaties one ruler will be called the “father” or “King” or “greater king”—this is the Suzerain. The other king will be called the “son” or “prince” or “lesser king.” The Suzerain king would require promises from the lesser king including taxes and mutual defense agreements in exchange for the Suzerain refraining from attacking and killing the lesser king. And the lesser king would agree to the details of the treaty by walking between the severed halves of animals indicating that if he didn’t accomplish with his side of the agreement, he would subject himself to be cut in half like the animals.
Now, notice how in God’s covenant with Abram, God is clearly the Father or Suzerain and Abram is the Son or lesser king. Yet God is the one who makes the promises—”I will give you this land from Egypt to the Euphrates, I will give you children as numerous as the stars...”
And usually the lesser king would walk through the divided animals, but in God’s covenant, He is the one who passes through the animal carcases in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. In other words, God is telling Abram that if HE doesn’t fulfill his own promises, that HE will be cut in half and die.
cross
And wasn’t God torn in half when, at the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and then shortly after that He died? But in a twist in this covenant, God wasn’t promising that if he DIDN’T fulfill his promise He would die, but that IN ORDER TO fulfill his promise he would die.
How can you truly receive an inheritance unless the one who has promised it has died? And so, God himself dies so that we can inherit his promises.
Conclusion — The Call
Conclusion — The Call
Barbara Hutton, the granddaughter of an industry titan, inherited a huge sum of money on her 21st birthday. Her Grandmother, Grandfather, and mother all died so that she could inherit that money. It was a gift that was given, not because she deserved it, but because someone had set it aside in a trust.
But Barbara squandered her money and died nearly penniless in 1979—wasting her money on expensive clothes, gifts for her family and friends, expensive Jewelry and 7 failed marriages along with several affairs and a whole lot of mismanagement.
Since we started the book of Genesis we’ve uncovered a super basic idea—God has put himself in charge of saving us, and all he asks of us is to trust him and wholeheartedly follow His leading.
Each person that received a promise was given a responsibility—a path for them to follow.
God has given you and me a promise too:
second coming
In Revelation 21:16 and 20 Jesus said, “I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright and morning star. Surely I am coming soon.”
That’s the promise. To a world in turmoil—with slavery and abuse and famine and disease and lawlessness and evil of all kinds—Jesus said, I am coming soon.
make disciples
And the responsibility is clearly articulated in Matthew 28:18-20
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.”
Go, make disciples. That’s the call of God for you and me today. At one point Jesus passed a field of grain that was ready to harvest and he turned to his disciple,
And he said to them, “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.
The promise is clear, and the call is clear too.
blank
How is God calling you into his harvest?
In the next few weeks we’re going to be going out to visit roughly 60 Bible study interests that have signed up to receive Bible studies. Is God asking you to step out in faith and join the team doing those visits?
As God’s harvest workers we need to have a vibrant and active prayer life. Is God calling you to a prayer ministry that will undergird the discipling and outreach efforts of our church family?
Over the next several months there will be a team assessing and evaluating the facility needs of our church for mission and for growth. Is God calling you to invest your skills and/or your finances in moving this church into a situation that will allow us to be more effective in reaching this county for Jesus?
Has God put a burden on your heart for the poor? Maybe he’s calling you to join in the homeless ministry.
Has He given you an interest in helping people physically? Maybe he’s calling you to assist in our health ministry.
Is there a passion that you have that no one has thought of yet? Maybe God is calling you to start a new ministry to youth or to the elderly or to the rich or to the atheist or to the Mennonites…
Do you see a need for spiritual growth in the church and in your own life? Maybe God is calling you to step up to disciple someone, or to start a discipling focused small group.
God has promised you an inheritance—really he’s already given it to you because you’re already a part of God’s kingdom. He’s already blessing you with life and peace and joy and all kinds of other good things. So, how are you responding to God’s promises and his call?
Do you believe God’s promises are for you?
If not, what’s holding you back from faith? Are you so caught up in your own metaphorical city of Ur that you aren’t willing to leave it to embrace the path God has called you to? Have you settled into the your life so fully that God can’t move you to change your course? If so, then please, reconsider your life. You don’t need to die a spiritually poor person. God has given you an inheritance and a call to be responsible with it. I guarantee you that you will never be fulfilled and joyful in the life you create for yourself. Only God’s path will bring peace and joy and happiness.
If you believe God’s promises, then I invite you to step forward in faith to follow God’s path. Keep his law of love, embrace his call to be a missionary and then see miracle after miracle as God fulfills his promises in your life.
I’d like you to stand with me and sing a song that you’ve heard before. It’s called “By Our Love.” As we sing this song we are extending to each other the call of God to go into our world with the gospel. And this is really how it should be—not the pastor egging you on, but each of us as church family drawing out the talents and skills of our fellow believers. Encouraging, challenging, training, and growing each other as we answer the call of God.