By Grace – part 1 (Genesis 11:10 – 12:2)
By Grace (part 1)
Genesis 11:10 – 12:2 (12:1-3)
February 16, 2014
I told you last week that we were
Entering a new section in the book of Genesis.
And as we enter this section we are also introduced to a new character.
We started with Adam,
With Adam we learned about the destructive reality of sin.
From there we moved on to Noah,
With Noah we learned about the inevitable wrath that follows sin.
Well now we move on to the man named Abraham.
Now most people will quickly ASSUME that when we talk about Abraham
We are going to learn about faith.
Now in part that is true.
Abraham is often referred to as “The Father of Faith”
But Abraham’s mention in the book of Genesis
Is not just about faith, in reality it is about salvation.
We don’t just learn about faith from Abraham,
We learn about JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH from Abraham.
Genesis 15:6 “Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
Abraham’s life teaches us about salvation.
And of course faith is a vitally important part of that.
So you can easily see that up until now Moses has been
Laying a basic theological foundation for the children of Israel.
We’ve learned about SIN, we’ve learned about the CURSE, we’ve learned about JUDGMENT, we’ve learned about MERCY, and we’ve learned about GRACE.
Now it is time for Moses to carry you a little deeper.
Having laid a basic foundation of theology,
Now Moses is about to give you his soteriology (doctrine of salvation)
And this is so valuable to us because salvation has always been the same
There are those who assume that salvation somehow changed
From the Old Testament to the New Testament.
That you were saved one way in the Old Testament
And a different way in the New Testament.
That is not true.
Salvation has always occurred the same way.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Today salvation is by grace through faith.
And that was true for Abraham and every other Old Testament person.
THE DIFFERENCE?
We look back to the sacrifice of Christ as atonement.
They looked forward to it.
What did Jesus say?
John 8:56 “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”
Listen to the faith chapter:
Hebrews 11:1-2 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.”
The point being that salvation has not changed.
It has always been by grace through faith.
Well as we begin studying the life of Abraham
We will eventually get to the “through faith” part.
But for now we are studying the “by grace” part.
When we get to chapter 15 you will finally see
Abraham give the faith that is required for justification.
Until that point, there is only one way to describe Abraham’s life,
And that is GRACE.
It is the message of salvation, and it is worth understanding.
This is “The Gospel According to Moses”
He is carrying the children of Israel on a journey to the Promised Land,
And he is desperately trying to show them that
What God did for ABRAHAM is precisely what God is doing for them.
He’ll go on to show that what God did for ISAAC, JACOB, and JOSEPH, He will do for them.
And that reality passes throughout the generations, even to you.
Today we begin a study of salvation, and it all starts “BY GRACE”
There are three main points here, but we won’t get through them all
#1 THE PEDIGREE OF BLESSING
Genesis 11:10-32
(don’t read it all yet)
You will notice that verse 10 begins with the statement, “These are the records of the generations of Shem”
Why is that important?
Because we saw last week that God had chosen to bless Shem.
Remember the story?
• Noah planted a vineyard, Noah harvested grapes, Noah made wine, Noah got drunk, Noah uncovered himself inside his tent.
• When Ham saw it, instead of covering for his father, Ham exposed his father.
• It was Shem and Japheth who came in and covered their father.
• And when Noah awoke, he learned what Ham had done to him and Noah pronounced a curse on Ham.
• Noah then placed a blessing on Shem, and even provided that Japheth would share in Shem’s blessing.
Genesis 9:26 “He also said, “Blessed be the LORD, The God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant.”
Noah blessed Shem, and that blessing proved to be prophetic.
God was blessing the line of Shem.
And that blessing is seen right away in Genesis 11
As we examine Shem’s line.
Let’s read it and see if you pick up on what I am talking about.
(READ 10-26)
Now this isn’t the first time we have seen a lineage spelled out.
But this one takes on a much different feel.
Remember the famous lineage of Genesis 5?
It was Adam to Noah, and do you remember how it read?
Genesis 5:5 “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.”
Genesis 5:8 “So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.”
And on and on and on “and he died”
That lineage focused on the curse.
But did you notice how this lineage is different?
(11) “Shem lived five hundred years”
(12) “Arpachshad lived thirty-five years”
(13) “Arpachshad lived four hundred and three years”
And on and on and on.
In fact the word “lived” is used 16 times in this chapter
See the lineage of chapter 5 was focusing on the curse, and so it continually mentioned death.
But the lineage of chapter 11 is focusing on the blessing, and so it continually mentions life.
The curse is no longer in view, we are talking about the blessing.
And so you see this blessed pedigree
All the way from Shem down to a man named Terah.
But lets take a look at this Terah and his sons
And see if we can deduce why God chose to bless them.
(READ 27-32)
Now you see where Shem’s line went.
It left the place of the ark, and eventually the descendants of Shem settled in the land of “Ur of the Chaldeans.”
And that is important.
Shem’s descendants were not faithful,
Shem’s descendants were PAGAN.
Joshua 24:2 “Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River, namely, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods.”
You have to understand then that this Abraham that God is about to choose was NOT a righteous man.
He wasn’t even a good man, he was a pagan worshiper.
He gave the glory of the God of creation to a false man-made god
Who did not deserve it.
Terah and Abraham would have been
described like this in the New Testament:
Romans 1:20-23 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.”
That is precisely the type of men that Terah and Abram were.
• They ignored the testimony of creation.
• They did not honor God as God, nor did they give thanks.
• They were futile in their speculations and they exchanged the glory of God
for a manmade image.
THEY WERE PAGAN.
God DID NOT choose some man who was first choosing Him.
God DID NOT select some man who was first seeking Him.
God was choosing to bless a man
Who had offended Him in every possible way.
Abram was a pagan idol worshiper.
Abram was NOT what we would call a FAVORABLE CANDIDATE.
Now I’ll show you another thing about this Abram that God is about to choose.
Not only was he pagan, but he was BARREN
(30) “Sarai was barren; she had no child.”
Why is that significant?
Because it reminds you that God did not choose a person
Who might have succeeded on his own anyway.
God was about to choose a man and make a great nation out of him… One would think God would at least choose a man
Who was capable of reproducing.
That is not at all the type of person that God chose.
He chose a pagan worshiper
With no ability to accomplish this dream on his own.
Even later in Genesis, Abram will bring this problem up to God.
Genesis 15:2-3 “Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, ” Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”
So not only was Abraham not a favorable candidate,
He wasn’t even a QUALIFIED CANDIDATE.
I mean at the very least start with a man who is open to worshiping you and who has a lot of kids he can teach to do the same…
But that wasn’t Abraham.
So he was pagan, he was barren, and he had AMBITION
What do I mean?
(31) “Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there.”
Now it may surprise you that entering Canaan was not Abram’s idea.
It was Terah’s idea.
Terah was the one who decided to make a move to Canaan.
• And so they traveled north along the Euphrates to a place called “Haran” (Syria)
• And the Scripture says they “settled there”
But that really doesn’t tell us a whole lot
Why did they move to Haran?
What were they looking for?
It certainly wasn’t God (they were pagan remember)
Chapter 12 yields some insight as to what they might have been seeking:
Genesis 12:5 “Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan.”
So what exactly did Abram do while he was in Haran?
He was chasing the almighty dollar.
• He got rich.
• He accumulated possessions
• He bought slaves
• He acquired the world
Abram was the kind of man James warned about.
James 4:13-17 “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
The point I am making is that Abram was NOT searching for God.
He was searching for gold.
And incidentally Abraham is not alone in this.
Romans 3:11 “THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;”
No one is seeking for God, God is seeking for them.
• Consider the disciples – “You did not choose Me, but I chose You”
• Consider Paul – he wasn’t looking for Jesus
• And it is the same for all genuine salvation – God does it.
Abram was seeking the world, not God.
Does it surprise you to see what kind of man Abraham was?
• A pagan worshiper who had denied creation and worshiped false gods…
• A man incapable of reproducing…
• And yet a man consumed with the world, even owning slaves…
I know a good word to use to describe Abraham – DEPRAVITY
John Calvin actually referred to it in his doctrines of grace
As TOTAL DEPRAVITY
John MacArthur called it ABSOLUTE INABILITY
In other words, there was nothing in Abraham that was good,
And nothing Abraham could do to change that.
He was not a FAVORABLE candidate, he was not a PRIME candidate,
He wasn’t even a GOOD candidate.
So why exactly did God choose such a man?
GRACE
That is always why God chooses people.
• He purposely chooses the hard cases.
• He purposely chooses the vile, the weak, the sinful…
Because when He does His work in them,
It is all the more glorifying to Him.
Moses said it like this:
Deuteronomy 7:7-8 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
TURN TO: EZEKIEL 16:1-14
There again we see God choosing the most unlikely candidate.
And incidentally this hasn’t changed.
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”
It’s amazing to hear people argue against God’s sovereign election.
I always wonder what they do with that passage.
I mean, apart from election, that passage doesn’t even make sense.
The whole point is that God chose those who
Weren’t smart enough or strong enough or noble enough to choose Him
And He did it to make a point.
Namely that He gets all the glory.
So Abram may not have been a prime candidate for glory,
But he was a prime candidate for grace.
• He was totally depraved
• He was absolutely unable to become what God envisioned on his own
• He was a pagan slave owner with a barren wife.
The only word for that is grace.
“By grace are you saved…”
The Pedigree of Blessing
#2 THE PROMISE OF BLESSING
Genesis 12:1-9
Oh please don’t miss that first line in chapter 12
“Now the LORD said to Abram…”
THAT IS HUGE!
• Abram wasn’t crying out to God, God was crying out to Abram
• Abram wasn’t choosing God, God was choosing Abram
And God was choosing him despite what he was.
The doctrines of grace would call this UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
That is to say that there was no reason for God to choose anyone He chose, except for grace.
And that was true for Abram
Joshua 24:2-3 “Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River, namely, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. ‘Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac.”
But that is also true for salvation today.
• Who here deserved to have God draw them to Himself?
• Who here deserved to be saved?
• Who here met the prerequisites of being called?
No one.
God chose you and God called you, despite who you were.
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Titus 3:4-7 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
God’s election is unconditional, it was for Abraham, it is for you.
God is demonstrating grace
But let’s look a little closer here to these 9 verses.
• This is in fact the moment when God began to cry out to Abraham.
• This is the moment when God began to reveal salvation to him
• This is when God began to make His will known
It merits looking at a little closer,
As it most definitely reveals what true salvation is.
1) THE REQUIREMENT (1)
“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;”
God’s selection is in fact unconditional
There was no criteria that made Abram more appealing to God
But just because the offer of the blessing is unconditional,
That does not mean that receiving the blessing is unconditional.
Grace always comes with an expectation.
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
And the expectation for Abram is obvious.
“Go” (leave)
“from your country”
“from your relatives”
“from your father’s house”
Sound familiar?
Matthew 16:24 “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”
Luke 9:61-62 “Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke 14:25-26 “Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, “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.”
Psalms 45:10-11 “Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father’s house; Then the King will desire your beauty. Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him.”
And we could go on.
Salvation hasn’t changed any
The call to follow God is a call to forsake the world.
It always has been, it always will be.
This is the requirement.
Blessing is there, but there is a cost to receive it.
We are on a journey for a better place,
But to get to the better place we must leave the old one behind.
Hebrews 11:14-16 “For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
That is what God was requiring of Abraham,
And that is what He still requires.
Abram had to leave and go “to the land which I will show you;”
So Abraham left without even knowing where he was going.
It was a place he had never seen.
Sounds like the narrow gate and the narrow road wouldn’t you say?
Leave it behind, and travel a road with poor visibility.
That was the requirement Abram faced.
God is gracious in that He calls unworthy sinners
Into a life of unmerited blessing.
But you must receive that blessing by doing what God asks.
How true this also was for the children of Israel.
• God had a land of promise waiting for them.
• God was leading them to a land flowing with milk and honey
• But they had to go there, they had to enter it, they had to take it
In fact, it was their refusal to do this that cost them the blessing.
They didn’t enter the land because of unbelief.
Abram is required to respond to God’s grace.
The Requirement
2) THE REALITY (2a)
“And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great;”
And that is great news.
God may be asking you to leave your life behind,
But don’t ever get the idea that He is stingy.
In fact it only appears like you are losing your life.
In reality, you are gaining it.
Matthew 16:25 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
God always rewards those who follow Him.
Perhaps the greatest illustration of this in the New Testament
Was the day when the Rich Young Ruler walked away.
He chose the world and rejected Jesus.
It got the disciples wondering of they had made the right choice.
And they point blank asked Jesus what His plans for them were.
Matthew 19:27-29 “Then Peter said to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon 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 farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.”
They asked a direct question and Jesus gave a direct answer.
And the point is that it is worth it.
God was asking Abram to leave, but He wasn’t stealing from Him.
God had something better in store.
And this was true for Israel.
God was asking them to leave Egypt (a life of slavery)
So that they could enter Canaan (a life of blessing)
How tragic that so much of the time the children of Israel
Wanted to return to Egypt.
AND THIS REALITY IS TRUE OF SALVATION FOR YOU.
You also were totally depraved, unworthy of salvation.
• A pagan who did not give God the glory He deserved.
• A man or woman incapable of fulfilling on your own all God planned for you.
• A person consumed with the world and indifferent to the things of God.
BUT…
God reached down into your life, chose you anyway,
And issued a call to you that you did not deserve.
Ephesians 2:1-9 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
The only requirement is that you respond to that call of grace,
Leave the world behind,
And receive the blessing that God has in store for you.
It is the grace of God’s salvation and it has never changed.
