When God Calls You - Genesis - June 28th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

All right, if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and open up to Genesis chapter 12. Or you can follow along with the handout, the sermon handout within the bulletin that you got on the way in.

This morning, we're going to be looking at the life of one of the most influential people in human history. Without a doubt, Jesus wins that prize as it should be.

There's nobody more influential than him, but his ancestor Abraham is really often overlooked for the impact that he has made on the world.

So Genesis 12 really begins the story of the life of Abraham, and it continues, I believe, all the way to Genesis 25.

So we're going to be talking about Abraham for quite a while, and the beginning of the story is extraordinarily significant in so many different ways.

When it comes to his impact, maybe you can think about it like this, three of the biggest religions in the world claim Abraham is one of their founding fathers. That's Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, so-called Abrahamic religions.

You might also note that in the Book of Genesis, Abraham is at the very heart of the book. The Book of Genesis has a very precise literary structure, where there are these 11 Toledotes is the word in Hebrew, but it's in English.

Every time you see the phrase, these are the generations of, it's marking like a new section or a new chapter in the Book of Genesis. So we saw that with Adam and Eve and then with Cain and then with Noah and so on.

And there are exactly five sections before Abraham and then five sections after Abraham, meaning that his story is the literary centerpiece of the Book of Genesis.

And this morning will be in verses 1 through 9 of Chapter 12, and it's the call of Abram, but it's the same guy, same guy as Abraham.

God just later changes his name from Abram to Abraham, and I'll probably go back and forth between Abram and Abraham without even realizing it throughout the sermon, so I just don't want you to get confused. We'll get that out of the way. Same guy.

And we have this historic moment in our text where it is the first appearance of God to Abraham.

God calls him and promises to bless him, and then the rest of the Book of Genesis, in so many ways, the rest of the Book of Genesis is simply unfolding or tracing the unfolding of God's promises that are made to Abraham in our passage this morning.

So God promises to make him a great nation, and to give him a land, and to bless the world through him. Those are the three main promises we're going to be looking at.

And then Genesis, the rest of the Book of Genesis is just unpacking that and showing how that is coming true. And you could even make the case that that's true for the rest of the Old Testament or even the rest of the Bible.

That like all of it is just unpacking these promises made to Abraham. And here's the most interesting part. The same God who calls Abraham is the same God who calls us today.

If you've been called by God, that is if you're a Christian, if God has come into your life and called you to follow him, it's the same God and he requires the same faith and obedience that characterized Abraham's life.

The faith and obedience, the famous, remarkable, commendable faith and obedience of Abraham that we see in our passage this morning, that's the very same kind of faith and obedience that God is calling us to.

And then you look at the promises that God made to Abraham. And some of the same promises are the promises that we have inherited in Christ.

4:29

God Calls Abram

Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us. It's Genesis 12 verses 1 through 9.

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. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, 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. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Mora. 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. From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us. Father, I pray that you would guide us this morning by your spirit to rightly understand your word and rightly respond to your word.

We know, God, that your word is living and active, that it is powerful, that it is sharp and penetrating and revealing.

And I pray that you would use the truth of your word this morning to reach deep into our hearts and show us what you want us to see, to reveal what you want to reveal, to guide us and direct us, to challenge us and encourage us, God.

We are trusting in you, Lord, to be our help this morning. We are trusting in you to show us the way, and I pray that as we see, you would also give us the power to obey. We pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

7:06

Abrahamʼs Radical Obedience

Well, all throughout the Bible, Abraham is respected and revered and known for his faith. I think of John Chapter 8, where Jesus has this epic showdown with the Pharisees that he's always battling with throughout the Gospels.

And all through Chapter 8, they're battling mostly about Abraham and who's like the true children of Abraham. And they're like, no, we're the real children of Abraham. And Jesus says, no, your father's the devil.

And eventually he just declares before Abraham was, I am, both in what he does there is he's applying the divine name, the sacred divine name of God to himself.

And he's saying that he was even greater than Abraham, which to them was just unthinkable that anybody could be greater than Abraham.

And Abraham is just the whole point is that Abraham is just this, this central figure throughout the scriptures, remarkable, revered, known for his faith. And you can see why, just look at verse one.

Looking at verse one and what God is calling him to do. He tells him to leave his country, to leave his people, and to leave his father's house. And where is he going?

Well, God doesn't even tell him where he's going. Can you imagine that? Leave America, leave the United States, leave everything you've ever known, and which country are you going to?

You'll find out when you get there. That's a lot of options, isn't it? Many of them are not that great.

God just tells him to leave and go to the land that he'll show him later, and Abraham obeys. And Abraham obeys. That's what's so crazy about this, that he actually does it.

I love the way that Alistair Begg describes this.

He describes God calling Abraham to let go of what he could see and cling to what he couldn't see, which is such a beautiful description of how faith plays out in our lives so many times, to let go of what we can see and to hold tightly to what we

can't see. That's faith. It's not irrational. It's not opposed to evidence, but it is a matter of trust.

It's not blind. It's not a blind leap into the dark. Remember, God appeared to Abraham and then told him to go.

So Abraham had a reason to go. He had just seen God. Isn't that evidence?

Isn't that reason? It wasn't irrational for him to listen to God, but it was hard. It was difficult.

And I want to remind you, like I was saying earlier, that if you're a Christian, the same God who called Abraham has called you, and God never changes.

So if you want to understand God and how he works in your life, maybe God called you many years ago. Maybe God is calling you right now. Maybe you've been a Christian for 40 years and you're doing your best to just follow God day by day.

Maybe you're still not sure if you're a Christian and you're wondering if God is reaching into your life or grab ahold of you. If you want to understand God and how he works in people's lives, look at this passage.

If you want to understand what it means to trust and obey, which is what God asks from us to trust and obey, then you need to pay close attention to Abraham and what happens here in Genesis 12.

It's really helpful to look back and investigate Abraham's life up into this point. Abraham did not know where God wanted him to go, but he certainly knew what God was calling him to let go of.

In verse 4, it says that Abraham was 75 years old at this time. Abraham at this point, when God called him, was 75 years old.

And when you look at the average lifespans in the book of Genesis, starting with Abram's father, Terah, and going to the end of the book of Genesis, the average lifespan for that group of people was 144.3 years.

So that puts Abraham roughly smack dab in the middle of his life. Roughly halfway through, he's decidedly middle-aged at this point.

And I say that because we might look at the book of Genesis and see, okay, Abram's 75 years old and God's calling him to leave everything he's ever known, well, in the book of Genesis, being 75 years old, that's like being a kid, you know?

Not that big of a deal. He's resilient. He's not leaving much behind.

He's just, compared to Adam, Adam lived to be 900 plus, so at 75, Abraham was just a boy. But things changed after the flood. The lifespan's shortened dramatically, and so the point that I'm making is Abraham was not just a boy.

He was middle-aged. He was settled. He was probably quite comfortable.

Verse five, we learn that he had a wife, so he wasn't some young single guy with nothing to lose. He had a wife. Verse five also indicates that he had considerable possessions, a number of servants under his care.

So he was middle-aged, settled, and prosperous. Probably very comfortable. Probably felt like he was in control of his life.

He had things figured out. He had things pretty well dialed in. And then God calls him to leave everything.

To leave everything. Look again at verse one. Go from your country.

Like leave your country. In Genesis 11, we learn that Abraham was originally from Ur, from the land of Ur. And Ur was a major city in that region.

A lot of money, a lot of activity, a lot of culture. And at some point, his family moved from Ur to Huron, but Huron was also a major city.

So this was not some like poor young kid from South Dakota, the middle of nowhere, and he's just itching to get out and see the world. No, he was in the world. He was in the place that most people wanted to be, and he was doing quite well.

But then God calls him to leave that place and go to a place that he doesn't know of.

And God calls him to leave his kindred and to leave his father's house, meaning that he's leaving his culture, he's leaving his family, his friends, everything that gave him security and peace and opportunity.

I think that's what it all boils down to, and I think that's the main lesson that I want to communicate today.

God is calling Abraham to leave all the things that he had been counting on his whole life for security, for peace, for comfort and stability, and opportunity, and affirmation, and identity.

Everything that he was counting on for those fundamental needs of the human soul, God was calling him to give all that up. And why does God want Abraham to give all that up? Because it's an illusion.

Because it's not real. It's not reality. His money, his family, his city, they may have made him feel secure, but they weren't actually secure.

They may have made him feel confident in the future, but they could not guarantee his future. You see, only God can guarantee your future. Only God can give you true security and peace and identity.

So when God calls Abraham, when God calls us, he calls us to give up our illusions, to give up our illusions about reality and how it actually works. We'll come back to this point again, but this is the ultimate truth about life.

All good things come from God. All good things come from God. But we are always convincing ourselves that we are responsible for the good things in our lives.

Either that we are responsible or some other human is responsible or some institution is responsible.

We look at the good things in our lives, the things that we are really counting on and banking on and we give ourselves credit, or we give our parents credit, or we give our businesses credit, or we give the stock market credit, or we give the

American Constitution credit. We give anybody and everybody credit, except for God. We trust in anybody and everybody and everything, except we don't trust in God. That's what it means to not be a Christian, is your trust.

Everybody trusts in something. Everybody worships something. Everybody's banking on something and hoping in something.

It's just not God.

16:45

True Faith Defined

When God calls a person, he calls them to let go of their illusions and see reality for what it really is. He is reality. He is truth.

And he wants our complete trust and obedience because he is the only thing that is worthy of our trust and obedience. He's the only thing that is worthy of our worship.

God, in this passage, is calling Abraham to let go of his illusions and to give him his trust and obedience and allegiance and his worship. Growing up, Abraham probably would have been a worshipper of the moon god, Nanna, or Sin.

Last week, we talked about the ziggurats that archaeologists have discovered throughout the Middle East. The ziggurats are these ancient Middle Eastern temples. And there are ziggurats, both in Ur and in Huron, the two places where Abraham had lived.

The one in Huron is mostly rebel at this point, but the one in Ur is remarkably well preserved.

I think it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and I looked it up this week, and you can just see it right there, this giant mud brick temple that was the center of life in Ur. That's where Abraham would have worshiped.

And you can see a picture of it, and it's just crazy looking at it.

I know there's stuff like this all over the Middle East, especially around Jerusalem, but it was really tripping me out this week, just looking at the picture of this temple, knowing that's where Abraham went. That's where his family went.

That's where they worshiped this idol, this false god.

And I found this description of what their religion was like at the time, and we don't know for sure, I have to clarify, we don't know for certain that Abraham and his family worshiped this god, Inanna, or sin, but it is extremely likely.

I think it's a pretty safe assumption. Inanna, I'm just gonna read this description, was viewed as the lord of destiny, the keeper of time, and the protector of the city.

Their entire economy, government, and daily rhythm of life would have revolved around the massive ziggurats, this towering, stepped mud brick pyramid that dominated the skyline in their city.

The temple sat at the very top of the pyramid, acting as the literal gateway between like heaven and earth, where priests interacted with this deity. They all made sacrifices to this god.

They all tried to appease him and please him and gain his favor and blessing. Like, if I offer the right sacrifices, this god will make sure that my life goes well. That's probably what Abraham believed.

That's what he was trusting in and hoping in. But in the middle of his life, surrounded by the worship of this false god, Abraham had an encounter with the true god. And he trusted and obeyed.

So, verse four, so Abraham went as the Lord had told him. He trusted and obeyed. Verse seven, Abraham built an altar to the Lord.

He worshiped God. Verse eight, Abraham called upon the name of the Lord. I believe it was John Calvin who, in translating this passage, translated that he preached the name of the Lord.

There in verse eight. And it's maybe not the most accurate way to translate the Hebrew text, but it's not far off. Abraham became a proclamer of the name of the one true God.

So you can see how radically his life has changed. He repented, turned away from his false worship, from his idolatry. He believed God.

He trusted God in the promises that God had made. He obeyed God. That's faith.

And that is what God is calling you to. For many people, this is a radical shift in the idea of how they understand faith. How do people understand faith today?

Think of like baseball players and other, you know, professional athletes after they win the game. Sometimes those who are Christians will talk about their faith and you know, just how important it is to them.

Maybe give a shout out to God or to Jesus. And then, but it just like, it's hard to understand exactly what they're saying when they talk about their faith.

And people talk about the value of faith and the importance of faith, and it kind of doesn't matter in our world which faith it is, as long as you have some kind of faith, right? That's how people generally think about it. But really, what is faith?

It's not something that we just decide and make up on our own. It's a real thing that we should seek to have an accurate understanding of. And Genesis 12 is giving us an accurate understanding of faith.

It's like, it drives me nuts. Because I like, see the way people talk about faith, and they talk about religion, and everybody thinks they can have their own version of Christianity, whatever works for them.

And it's like saying everybody gets to have their own version of two plus two. And whatever answer works for them is fine, as long as they like it. And it's like, no.

All the answers are wrong except for one. Two plus two equals four. We don't get to pick our own version.

We don't get to pick our own answer. Or like George Washington was the first president of the United States of America.

And somebody else says, well, you know, personally, for me, Abraham Lincoln was the first president of the United States of America. Well, I don't matter. I don't care.

It doesn't matter what your personal feelings are about the presidents. It's there's a fact of the matter. There's truth.

Well, there's a fact of the matter about faith and God and what God is calling us to do and what that looks like in a person's life. There's truth. There's a right answer.

And this is it right here. It's trusting God. It's obeying him.

It's worshiping him. And in many ways, it's so different from what people normally think of it as. And there's a really deep and profound element to this that a lot of Christians never even scratched the surface of.

I've been talking about how Abraham trusted in all of these things for his security and his peace and his comfort and all the real deep needs of the human hearts. And God called him to leave all of it behind. Well, God does that for everybody.

God does that for everybody. That is an essential part of what it means to be a Christian. It's not just having the correct doctrine and believing the right things.

It's not just going to church and praying and being nice and doing the right religious things. It's this. It's trusting in God for the things that only God can provide.

24:20

The Call to Jesus

Let me give you another example from the Gospels. In Mark 10, verse 17, Jesus encounters a wealthy young man. The man asks Jesus what he has to do in order to inherit eternal life.

So Jesus tells him what he already believes. Obey the commandments. And the guy says that he does obey the commandments.

So in his mind, he's a pretty good person. He does the good religious stuff, but then something very profound happens. Verse 21, in Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, you lack one thing.

Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. Dishartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

You see, if you want to inherit eternal life, if you want to be a follower of Jesus, find that thing in your life that you love more than anything. For this young man, it was his money.

You find that thing in your life that you love more than anything, you identify the deep things in your heart that you're trusting in to give you a sense of security and peace and comfort and confidence, and you surrender all those things to Jesus.

You surrender all those things to Jesus. You, by God's grace, through prayer, put yourself in that place where you can confidently say, I don't need it, I just need you. I don't need it, I just need you.

You can have it all, my empire of dirt. It's a hard thing to get to that place because for some people, it's their wife and their kids, and this beautiful family that they have, that gives them a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

And if they didn't have that, life wouldn't be worth living anymore.

For some people, it's like success, and money, and achievement, and accolades, and things like that, where it's like they've given everything to achieve success, and to earn the money, and receive the accolades.

And if they didn't have that, they would just crumble into nothing. For it changes from person to person, but so many people, all of us apart from Christ, are trusting in something, valuing something more than we value Jesus.

And if Jesus were to ask us to give it up, we would say no and walk away disheartened, like the rich young ruler. And the point is, you have to be willing to give it up. You have to be willing to let it go.

Notice how that man did nothing in this passage in the Gospel of Mark. Notice how he did nothing to earn the love of Jesus. I think that's such an important part of the story to remember.

He did absolutely nothing to earn the love of Jesus, it says that Jesus looked at him, loved him, and then he called him, called him to follow Jesus. And then back in Genesis 12, notice how Abram did nothing to earn the favor and promises of God.

But in verse one, God looked at him, loved him, and called him. Now I want you to think about your life. What did you do in order to prove to God that you were good enough?

What did you do to earn his favor? Nothing. None of us have.

But God looked at you, loved you, and called you. If you hear this, if you understand this, then God has called you to follow him.

God has offered you the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord, that is offered to every single person in this room. And some of you may have accepted that free gift and surrendered your life to Jesus, and some of you may have not.

But if you're hearing the offer, that is the call of God. For Abram, it was like a literal appearance of God, and God told him to leave his family, his country, his kindred.

But for us in the New Testament era, post Jesus, the call of God is the gospel being preached. Whenever anybody hears the gospel, God is calling them. And the gospel is the good news of what Jesus did for us.

The gift of eternal life that we receive by grace, through faith, in Jesus. And what is that? What do you have to do?

What do you have to know? What do you have to believe? It's not complicated.

It's just you have to recognize, I'm a sinner, but Jesus saves sinners. Do you get that? Are you willing to admit that?

Is that what you're hoping in? I'm a sinner, a broken, messed up sinner, and I've done a lot of bad things. I haven't just made a lot of mistakes.

I've done a lot of bad things. I've hurt a lot of people. I've committed sin against a holy and righteous God.

I'm a sinner, and I don't sin by accident, by mistake on occasion. I sin because I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner, but Jesus saves sinners.

So turn to Jesus and be saved. Repent, turn from your sin, trust in Jesus, and follow him. That means that you obey him, that you read the Bible, and you do whatever the Bible is commanding you to do.

If you trust in Jesus, that means you trust him so much that you'll do whatever he tells you to do. And so many people misunderstand what Jesus wants us to do. The rich young ruler thought that Jesus was just gonna give him some more rules to follow.

Obey the commandments. Okay, he knows the 10 commandments. He's been obeying the 10 commandments all of his life.

Okay, here's Jesus, this new rabbi in town that everybody's talking about. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna ask him, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus is gonna say, well, obey the commandments, and then do these two as well, and follow me, and you're good. But Jesus doesn't tell him that. Jesus gets to the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter was this. That young man was trusting in his money for security and satisfaction and peace and comfort. That's what Jesus does.

He gets to the things that we're really trusting, we're really loving, we're really worshiping, and he says, trust me, love me, and worship me instead. Just like Abraham.

Abraham had a home, he had a life, he had money, he had a family, and God called him to leave all those things behind and trust him instead.

Those were the things that gave him an identity, security, opportunity, prosperity, comfort, satisfaction, and peace. All the things that all humans really want deep down inside. All those things are meant to be found in God and God alone.

As St. Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

And if your heart is resting in something else, that is your God. That is what you truly worship. So I want you to think about your life.

When it comes to all these deep needs of the human heart, identity, security, and so on, think about your life. Who are you? What is your identity?

Is that determined by your parents? By the family that you came from? Or is it determined by Christ?

What gives you security and comfort and peace? Is it your family, knowing that no matter what, they'll always have you back? Or is it God?

Or is it your bank account? No matter what happens, I'll be okay. My money is secure, and I'll be able to handle whatever problems come my way.

Is that what you're trusting in? To relieve your stress and anxiety and give you peace. People trust, it's just amazing.

Jesus talks about how you can't serve God and money. You can't love God and money. And I've always been struck by that and somewhat confused by that.

But it occurred to me a few months ago that money really does take the place of God for people. And in so many ways, it's like the perfect substitute. So instead of trusting in God to make us feel secure, we can just trust in our money.

So money replaces God. Instead of trusting God to give us comfort, like meditating on Psalm 23 and trusting that the Lord is my shepherd. Therefore, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down by green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. Instead of finding comfort in those truths about God, I can just find comfort in the fact that I've got money in the bank.

Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll be fine. Or instead of finding comfort in the fact that God loves me, he loves me, he approves of me, because I'm clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He cares about me.

He enjoys me. Instead of finding approval in that, what do people do? They use their money to buy nice stuff to impress other people so that other people approve of them and like them, right?

They use money to replace God. In some ways, the question comes down to this. What makes you happy?

Is it having a lot of money or is it food and friends and having nice things or is it traveling? What makes you happy? Have you experienced the truth of Psalm 16 11?

In Psalm 16 11, the psalmist writes, You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Do you know what that means? To find pleasure and joy in God. Do you know what that means?

Have you experienced that? Now listen to Jesus here in Matthew 10, verses 37 through 39. He says, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it.

And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Abraham gave up everything in his life to follow God. And Jesus, in his incredible kindness and grace, does not ask many of us to do the same thing.

He only asks that we be willing to do the same thing if it came down to it. Are you willing to give up everything to follow Jesus? If you're not, then you need to go home.

If you're not, don't bother coming to church. Don't bother pretending to be a Christian. Jesus says, if you're not willing to give up everything for him, then you're not worthy of him.

Jesus doesn't do half-hearted religion. You're either all in or you're all out. God says, give up everything and leave and follow me.

And you either do it or you don't. That's the call. That's the call of Abraham.

That's the call of Christ.

37:14

Godʼs Enduring Promises

Now let's talk about the promises, the blessings. God makes these incredible promises to Abraham. And we'll just spend a few minutes here and then we'll be done.

But let's start looking at the promises, reading in verse 2. 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. That first promise is that he will make of Abraham a great nation. And at that point, Abraham didn't have any kids.

Some of you are very familiar with this, but some of you may not be as familiar with this story. So it's important to point out that God makes this promise to 75-year-old Abraham, middle-aged Abraham.

I will make of you a great nation, but he didn't have any kids, and he couldn't have any kids because his wife was barren. So it took a lot of trust.

Like God is showing up and calling him to leave everything behind, and he's gonna make of him a great nation. As in, his descendants are gonna be multiplied. As at one point in the Book of Genesis, God says, as many as the stars in the sky.

That's how many descendants you're gonna have. And yet, Abraham couldn't have kids. So it took a lot of trust for him to believe and obey.

And by God's grace, 25 years later, he finally has a son, Isaac. 25 years later, you can't miss that part.

We'll talk more about this, but it's just a reminder that God sometimes takes a lot longer than we would expect to fulfill his promises in our lives. 25 years later, that promise finally started. And that was just one kid.

God still had to make of him a great nation. There were still a long ways to go, but the promise didn't even get started for 25 years. But Abraham continued to trust and obey.

And I will say his trust and obedience was far from perfect. He makes a lot of mistakes along the way, and we'll make a lot of mistakes along the way.

But on this point, I just want to remind everybody and tell you if you don't know yet, that when you commit your life to following Jesus, there will be a lot of promises, a lot of things that you read in the Bible, where it seems like it's not coming

true, it's not happening, it's not working, and it's really easy to get discouraged and to give up. Don't give up. It often takes much longer than you think it would. God doesn't live on our timelines, right?

His life is not limited to 100 years. He's been around for 100 million years. So, he works a lot slower than you might think.

We see that in Abraham's life 25 years later. He finally has his first kid, but then Isaac has twins named Jacob and Esau, and then things really get going with Jacob.

He has 12 sons, and then God renames Jacob Israel, and his 12 sons become the 12 tribes of Israel, which becomes the nation of Israel, the great nation of Israel that came from Abraham, exactly as God promised. God blessed Abraham.

God made him great, and he was a blessing to others. As it says in verse three, in him and through his descendants, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

41:12

Universal Blessing in Christ

Now, how does that work? How have all the families of the earth been blessed through the descendants of Abraham, the nation of Israel?

Well, we see this confirmed, we see this explained in the New Testament at many points, but I want to highlight for you Galatians chapter three, Paul's explanation in Galatians three, verses 13 and 14.

He says, 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.

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

So all the families of the earth are blessed through the descendants of Abraham because Jesus was a descendant of Abraham and he has brought salvation to the whole world, to anybody who puts their trust in Jesus. Amen?

That's how these promises play out. In Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles.

When Jesus became a curse for us, when he paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, when we receive the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus, we are receiving that blessing from a descendant of Abraham.

So in Christ Jesus, the blessing is made available to every tongue and tribe and nation.

Whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, white or black, rich or poor, doesn't matter if you're a descendant of Abraham or if you're part of the nation of Israel anymore. None of those things matter. The color of your skin doesn't matter.

Your ethnicity doesn't matter. Your status doesn't matter. Your wealth doesn't matter.

Your background doesn't matter. Your history doesn't matter. All those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.

And there's no greater blessing than that.