Genesis 12.4-9
glorious day (chorus)
Call to worship:
OT:
pastor Zachary Mcguire
Psalm 105.1-11
NT:
pastor bobby owens
Luke 1.46-55
song:
Christ our hope in life & death
historical reading:
Pastor shan sluka
apostles’ creed
song:
grace greater than all our sin
Confession & Pardon:
dr. brett eckel
song:
pastor andrew Loginow
prayer over tithes & offering
song:
see the destined day arise
Sermon:
dr. al loginow
Genesis 12.4-9
Introduction
I just finished reading a great book by Michael J. Fox entitled Future Boy, which is his memoir about the 3-month period where he simultaneously worked on Family Ties during the day and shot Back to the Future at night. Michael J talks about the challenge of playing Alex P. Keaton all day and moonlighting as Marty McFly. There are some similarities between the two, but they are vastly different – Alex P. Keaton is a type-A, briefcase toting, Ronald Regan loving future CEO. Marty, on the other hand, is an often tardy, skateboarding, aspiring rockstar who lacks self-confidence. Two completely different people and Michael J was iconic as both.
I suspect we’re going to feel a similar way about Father Abraham these next few weeks. Our passage this morning lauds Abraham for his obedience, faith, and worship. But next week Abraham is ready to give his wife away to save his own skin. What are we to think? Is Abraham a good guy or a bad guy? Is he a saint or a sinner?
Obedience
The pericope this morning seems to present Father Abraham as a saint. So Abram went as yhwh had told him…Abraham obeyed God. Last week Pastor Kevin led us through the first 3 verses of Genesis 12 where yhwh called Abraham out of idolatry – out of darkness into light: out of worshipping the moon into worshipping the maker of the moon. God initiated the salvation of Abraham – this pattern is clear in Scripture: God is always the initiator of salvation, of faith, of relationship with him. Scripture is unapologetic: regeneration precedes faith.
It is only after God initiates that Abraham obeys, but Abraham does obey. Abraham left everything behind believing yhwh. And it’s not as if there weren’t any obstacles to Abraham’s trust in and obedience to the Lord: (1) Abraham was 75 years old. Bruce Waltke opines, “10 years past modern retirement age Abraham sets out on his journey.” Don’t forget that Isaac won’t come along for another 25 years. And while it’s true that nomadic lifestyle was common during this Mesopotamian era, or the early Bronze Age, Abraham, who was clearly wealthy was elderly and settled, but God called him to pack up and go to a land he hadn’t been.
Not only that, but also the land wasn’t Abraham’s. (2) The land belonged to the Canaanites. God promised Abraham a land that was already inhabited! Notice how the land and seed motifs that we’ve noted since Genesis 3 persist in the redemptive narrative. Both were cursed in Eden and in the covenant with Abraham, both will be restored.
In Abraham’s obedience we must receive from the Word admiration and aspiration. Abraham is not the hero of the story, but that doesn’t mean Abraham never did anything heroic. It is right for us to admire Abraham’s faith and obedience and to aspire to the same. Not to earn God’s favor, but because, through faith in Christ, we already have God’s favor.
Just like in the days of Father Abraham, obedience to God’s Law doesn’t always appear to be rational or responsible. To ancient Mesopotamians Abraham’s sojourn must’ve seemed ludicrous. “This old man says some god told him that his 65-year-old wife is gonna have a baby and that he gets all the Canaanites’ land.” By the standard of the ancient world Abraham’s obedience was neither rational nor responsible.
We can feel the same pressure or disapproval from the world about our obedience to God. Let’s be honest, we feel pressure or disapproval from our own flesh. There are times when obeying God feels irresponsible or irrational, financially, or socially. This is why we must cultivate fear of the Lord over fear of man; we must continually cultivate our love for Jesus, our faith in the gospel. Practically, the most important way we do this is here, now, it is through the gathered worship of the local church.
Worship
That’s exactly what Father Abraham did. As he journeyed into an unknown land with an unknown future, Abraham worshipped the God who called him. At each stop – Shechem, Bethel/Ai – Abraham built an altar, worshipped the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. Abraham didn’t begrudgingly or ignorantly obey God, but worshipped God as God commanded.
Abraham worshipped according to the Law of God that had been revealed at that point in redemptive history. After Adam’s fall, God made the 1st animal blood sacrifice to cover Adam’s sin and shame. Adam taught sacrificial worship to his sons, Cain and Able. The liturgical ritual was passed down through the generations. We saw Noah do the same thing when he exited the ark. And now Father Abraham builds altars to offer God’s prescribed sacrificial worship.
Scripture calls us to the same thing, though not in the same way. We live on the other side of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, so our sacrificial worship doesn’t point forward to Christ, like Adam, Noah, and Abraham, but our sacrificial worship points backward to Christ – our worship is spiritual and sacramental. The New Testament reveals the manner of worship God requires of his new covenant people. Theologians refer to this as the regulative principle. We worship God rightly as the church gathers around the Word and sacraments, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, praying, and publicly reading Scripture.
The nature of Christian worship is a funny thing in our culture, isn’t it? Some are averse to structured communal worship and emphasize personal worship – they don’t need the church; they can read the Bible and pray and worship God on their own out in nature. Others are drawn to the history and tradition of gathered worship. Recently there has been a resurgence in the popularity of high church liturgy (RCC, Eastern, Anglican) because of its transcendent nature.
As is often the case, the truth is in the middle of the extremes. Worship is personal. We are personally elected, regenerated, given gift of faith and repentance, justified, sanctified, loved, disciplined. Worship is personal in the sense that we as individual understand and believe what we’re doing while we worship. When we sing the words of a hymn, or recite the creed together, or pray together, or actively listen and receive the preaching of the Word, or eat the bread, or drink the wine, we understand what we’re doing, and we believe the good news to be true.
Bur worship is not merely personal; no honest reading of the New Testament would allow such understanding. Worship is by nature communal. We worship God as members of the church catholic and the church local. God has not merely called individuals but has called a body. Jesus died for the elect; Christ came for his bride. The Kingdom of Christ is the church.
Some of you need to feel challenged in this right now. Some of you need a gospel kick in the britches. How important is the church to you? Is it something you’ll do on Sunday if it’s not too inconvenient or if you have nothing else going on, or is the church the air you breathe? Is it your heart, your lifeblood? Is the church the center of your life?
Because if not, you need to be corrected. You need to grow. The church is the one thing in the world for which Jesus died. That’s how much Jesus loves these people. That’s how important these people are to Jesus. How important are they to you?
Promise
Because that promise, the promise of Jesus is what binds us together and it is the same promise Father Abraham believed. In verse 7 God reminds Abraham of this promise once again:
Then yhwh appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
This promise that stems all the way back to the beginning – the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent (Gen 3.15). And this is the same promise we believe; the promise that was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. The 2nd person of the Holy Trinity, the only begotten Son of God, the true and better Abraham called by God to journey to a far country when he was conceived by the Spirit and born of the virgin. The one who sojourned in the wilderness for 40 days and was tempted by the devil, yet without sin.
The Lord Jesus who, through his vicarious death and victorious resurrection, secures God’s blessing for all the sons and daughters of Abraham who outnumber the stars in the sky and the sand of the seashore. The seed of Abraham, who is the seed of the woman, whose heel was bruised on Good Friday, and whose bruised heel walked out of the tomb to crush the serpent’s head on Easter Sunday. Abraham was looking forward. We are looking back, but we’re both looking at Jesus.
And like Father Abraham, the Word of the Lord summons us to faith in the promise. Church, our faith originates with the knowledge of this good news – that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. But we don’t merely know this good news, we assent to it – we confess it and do not deny it. And finally, the key component of our faith is trust – we trust Jesus alone for the forgiveness of our sins and the hope of the resurrection.
And how do we live out our faith? First and foremost, we live out our faith through repentance. Faith is always accompanied by repentance. Repentance means practicing humility. Repentance means confessing our sin. Repentance means turning from our sin to Christ. Being a Christian means breathing in faith in Jesus and breathing out repentance.
Conclusion
If the story of Father Abraham ended here, we would know nothing but his obedience, faith, and worship. Abraham appears to be our protagonist; he’s the good guy – a saint! But next week he seems a completely different character – eager to give his own wife away to save his skin. That’s because, like Michael J. Fox in early 1985, Father Abraham is playing 2 different characters – the saint and the sinner.
It’s the dual part we all play because there is only 1 hero of this story. He is the seed of Abraham. The true and better Abraham who left his father’s home to sojourn in a far country to bless the nations. He is the one who holds the future in his hands and for him it is not too heavy.