Genesis 12:1-9 | A New Hope

If you have a Bible, go and grab it and turn it to the book of Genesis, to the book of Genesis. We've been going through the book of Genesis. We went through chapter 1 and 11, and then we took a brief detour through the first three chapters of John. Now we are back into Genesis with Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12. So again, Genesis is the first book in your Bible. If you don't have a Bible, you can use a pew Bible in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, if you don't have a Bible and you'd like to have one, please feel free to take that Bible home with you. We would love for you to have a copy of God's Word that you can read for yourself and have. So again, we'll be looking at the first book of the Bible, Genesis 12. We'll be reading from verses 1-9. Genesis 12:1-9. And God's Word says this:

The Lord said to Abram:Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to the Lord there, and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev. — Genesis 12:1-9 (CSB)

Let's pray. Lord, just as Abram heard your voice and went and obeyed you, we want to do the same. So as you speak to us this morning, we ask, Lord, that you would encourage us, help us to see your glory, to trust your promises, and to obey your commands. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

As a recap, the book of Genesis operates in cycles, just like the whole book. You may remember our overview sermon on Genesis in a nutshell. Really, Genesis kind of follows the same pattern: you learn where you come from, and then those patterns ripple throughout the rest of the book and really throughout the rest of the Bible. We come from God, we come from sin, and we come from hope. We saw that example when it came to Adam and his creation and his fall, and the promise of a redemption with a seed. We see that happen as well at a worldwide level, at a cosmic scale, as we see the world fall into sin. And most recently, where we left off in the book of Genesis, we see this happen throughout the whole world at the Tower of Babel, where people fall into sin. They disobey God's commands. And as a result, God scatters them. He gives them all different languages so that they all have to spread. And we see different generations go throughout the whole earth. And yet, they are still sinful. They're still rotten to their core, and they're still without hope. Generation after generation, birth, then death, birth, then death. And now, in Genesis 12, we get to see what God does in the face of chaos once again. And what he does is he calls people to follow him. He does that with Abram, and he does the same with you and I this morning. The main idea this morning is for us to follow the Lord's call. There are two things that God wants us to do in light of this passage. First, he wants us to believe God's promise. And second, to obey God's commands.

Really, think of this split between a time where we understand how God operates and what he's trying to do with Abram and, by extension, the rest of the Bible. In the second half, we'll take some time to meditate and think about what God wants us to do in light of his promises.

Believing God's Promises

Chapter 12 introduces us to Abram, who will later be renamed Abraham throughout the book. You may be more familiar with that name, but this actually isn't the first time that Abram shows up in your Bible in the book of Genesis. He actually shows up in the previous chapter, in Genesis 11, in the genealogy. So, read with me if you're willing to go back to chapter 11 and look at verse 27. Genesis 11:27 says:

These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans, during his father Terah’s lifetime. Abram and Nahor took wives: Abram’s wife was named Sarai, and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Sarai was unable to conceive; she did not have a child. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran. — Genesis 11:27-32 (CSB)

You see, in the book of Genesis, the first person to get up and try to go to the land of Canaan actually isn't Abram. It's his father, Terah. Terah had three kids: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran passes away and gives his land to his son, Lot. And when Terah heads out to go towards Canaan, he makes a pit stop in the land of one of his sons, in Haran. He spends the rest of his life with his grandson, Lot, and ends up dying in the land of Haran before he could step foot into the land of Canaan.

Terah's plans are interrupted. Before he could make a claim on land and establish himself, he stops by Haran and he settles in. After all, moving is a ton of work. All of us know the pain of having to pack a U-Haul and move things from point A to point B, unpacking boxes. It is a ton of effort. It's hard, especially once you're comfortable. You can imagine Terah wanting to go visit his son and spend some time there, maybe play with his cute grandson, Lot, and you blink, and then next thing you know, decades of life go by, and you're nowhere that you actually wanted to be. See, if you forget where you're going, don't be surprised if you end up nowhere.

There's a reason why there isn't a territory in the Bible named after Terah. The reason is because he didn't obtain any land. He ends up utterly insignificant, a footnote in this story. But the focus of the story isn't on Terah. It's on his son named Abram. And Abram, based on this description, seems to be taken right after his father, Terah. He and his wife are unable to have children. They don't have any kids. And it's especially ironic given that Abram's name means