Genesis 12 · Third Avenue Baptist Church

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I imagine most of you are at least a little bit familiar, even if you're not kind of aware of where it came from, but you're probably aware of the little poem from the mid-19th century called Invictus by William Ernest Henley. It has that immortal, memorable line at the end of it, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Well, my guess is also that even if you're familiar with the words of that poem, you probably are not very aware of the story behind it. So I want to tell you not just about the words of the poem, but how the thing came to be written in the first place. William Ernest Hindley wrote the poem at 16 years old, in the midst of a long battle with tuberculosis that had already led to the amputation of one of his legs, and was probably, at the time he wrote the poem, going to lead to the amputation of his other leg. So sitting in a hospital bed with one leg removed, one leg about to be removed in a life that was full of desperate pain and uncertainty, he wrote the poem that he

titled Invictus. He stared into the abyss and he said, out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. It's defiant, isn't it? It's the kind of thing that for a moment you can kind of wish you could say in the midst of difficulty. You stare down the cancer, you stare down the illness, you stare down the poverty, you stare down the hardship and you say, my unconquerable soul will not be bowed. I started looking into this story a little bit, though, and I started thinking about what William Ernest Henley wrote there and thinking about his life, and I thought, you know what? I bet, I bet if I dig into this story just a little bit on Google, I will find

that something deeply ironic happened to William Ernest Henley because the Lord tends to do things like that to people who say things like that. And guess what I found? It turns out that Henley was not the master of his fate at all. In 1902, when he was still a relatively young man, he actually accidentally fell off of a railway car, which gave him a good knock and actually ended up awakening this long dormant tuberculosis that was still living in his body. And in less than a year, He died of tuberculosis, precisely from the sickness that he had so boldly defied by saying, I'm the master of my fate.

You see the point? William Ernest Henley could puff out his chest all he wanted to. He could declare himself unbent, unbowed, and all the rest, all he wanted to. He could say, I will prevail, as long and as loud as you can imagine. but it turns out he was not the master he was not the captain after all you start to think about it a little bit and that turns out to be the thing about all human declarations of I will or I will not all those declarations that we want to make that we think ourselves capable of making they all turn out to be just more hopes and wishes than anything don't they they're not real proclamations they're not declarations they're not promises they're just hopes they're just wishes I hope I'm the master of my fate I hope I'm the captain of my soul but hope is about the best we as human beings can do when we say I will what we actually mean is I hope to but friends when God says

I will well that's a whole other thing all together we're starting a new series this morning in the book of Genesis, really picking up where we left off about a year ago. A year ago, we spent the entire fall from like this time until Christmas looking at the first 11 chapters of Genesis. This fall, we're going to look at the next 11 chapters going through Genesis 22. What we saw last time, if you remember, or maybe even if you weren't here, is that the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis tell the story of really the very earliest days of humanity. Some people call this primeval history, primordial history, whatever you want to call it. It is the very earliest days of humanity. So from Adam and Eve to Noah to the Tower of Babel, the main thrust of that whole story for the first 11 chapters of the book has just been one of encroaching tragedy.

It's like a flood that's rising a little bit at a time and threatening to wash humanity out all together. Humanity ends up in this spiral of sin and disaster, and it seems just completely incapable of stopping it. Even when God intervenes a couple of times in the midst of the story to sort of, you know, reset the typewriter, so to speak, everything within basically a few minutes returns to the fact that death still reigns and sin still has its claws in humanity's soul. So by the end of chapter 11, humanity's pride, his desire to be great, his desire to be like God, as Satan put it, has resulted in him being divided and dispersed all over the world, no longer united so that they could build a tower to God.

That's what happens in the first 11 chapters. Well, today we begin a brand new chapter, not just in the book of Genesis, but kind of in the grand structure of Genesis. This is a big breaking point in the book. It's another new beginning. As God, out of the midst of all this fallen humanity, chooses this random pagan named Abram and makes some absolutely spectacular promises to him. And then the story of how God keeps those promises, even through some crazy challenges, and even Abram's own lack of faith, that's going to be what unfolds over the next 11 chapters and ultimately the next, whatever it is, 1066 chapters or whatever of the whole rest of the Bible.

It is an extraordinary story. And the point of it is that God has determined, no matter what, to save us humans from our own sin and rebellion against him. So let's read Genesis chapter 12. That's where the story starts. That's where we're going to be today. Genesis chapter 12, verse 1. 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. 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 Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abraham 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 Abraham journeyed on, still going toward the Negev. Now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.

And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. So say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram. And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she's my sister so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here's your wife. Take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. Now, last fall, we took some time to look in detail at the first three verses of this passage.

So if you want sort of all the skinny on everything there is to say about Genesis 12, 1 to 3, well, maybe not everything, but, you know, a good hour's worth, you can go back and listen to that sermon. Today, we're going to look at those verses, we're going to look at them, but it's just going to be more briefly. But then also, we're going to be looking at the two episodes that follow it. So first, Abraham's arrival in Canaan there in verses 4 to 9. That becomes the setting for the whole rest of the story of the Bible. Canaan is the promised land. It's Israel. It's Palestine, right? That's where it all happens. And for the first time, Abraham comes there in this passage.

Then, in verses 10 to 20, we're going to look at this trip down to Egypt and all the different hijinks that happened there. And the main idea of both of these stories, they're looking at it in a kind of different way. each time the main thing that Moses, the author of this, is getting across to us, that the Holy Spirit is getting across to us, is this. God's unstoppable I will prevails over every obstacle. God's unstoppable I will prevails over every obstacle. Friends, what I mean by that is that When God makes a promise, when God says, I will do something, there is nothing in all the universe, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.

There is nothing that will be able to stop him from keeping that promise. That's what God wants to get across to you today. I want to look at this chapter in three points. Number one, looking at the first three verses more briefly than an entire sermon, but the promise made. That's what we're going to look at first. What are some of the main contours of the promise made? Number two, looking at the entrance into the promised land, verses 4 to 9, that's going to be the promise believed. And then number three, the promise threatened. That's the sojourn down to Egypt.

My prayer through all of this is that your faith in God, even through looking at these couple of stories, is going to deepen and strengthen as you see God's faithfulness to Abraham and even sometimes in spite of Abraham. That's what I hope you'll see today. So point number one, the promise made. The promise made. So by the end of chapter 11, you as a reader of Genesis, when you come to Genesis chapter 12 verse 1, you, if you're reading through Genesis, are supposed to be feeling a crushing sense of despair. Because so far the entire story, like from Genesis 3 all the way through the flood and Noah and then the Tower of Babylon spreading in the nations across the world, the whole thing has just been a series of episodes in which sin and sin's consequence, death, has been sinking their claws deeper and deeper into the soul of humanity. Violence and wickedness have been worsening with every generation. If you look back at chapter 5, the drumbeat of death just continues

unbroken as every single generation stumbles and falls into the grave. That's what's been happening for 11 chapters. And by the end of 11, humanity has been completely broken apart, shattered, and separated by God's curse on them at the Tower of Babel. And they're starting to spread over the earth with what seems like very little hope. It's just like a slime that's covering the entire earth as humanity sinks deeper and deeper into its wickedness. And you're supposed to feel all the weight of that slime as you come to genesis chapter 12 and then comes genesis 12 verse 1 and it's like a bolt of lightning in the dark the lord said to abraham and then he speaks you remember back in genesis 3 if you were with us when we preached about that last fall or maybe you've studied it on your own but you remember back in genesis 3 like right in the middle of God handing down curses on the man and the woman and the serpent. Right in the middle of all that

cataclysm, he gives them this little flash of hope. Genesis 3.15, it's this little promise that in the midst of all the destruction, all the junk, another king someday is going to come who's finally going to do what Adam should have done in the Garden of Eden, and that is crush the head of the serpent. It was entirely unexpected in Genesis 3. You're just not expecting it at all. Adam and Eve have rebelled against God. They've declared war on God, declared independence on him, thrown their lot in with Satan as their new master.

And God is handing down curse after thundering curse, and then, boom, this lightning bolt strikes that a great king is going to come who's going to set everything right. Totally unexpected. But God tells them, I'm going to save you from your rebellion against me. Well, the same thing is happening here in Genesis 12, verse 1. In the midst of all this slime, in the midst of all this muck and sin and rebellion, in the middle of the cataclysm, God just out of the blue speaks to this unknown pagan nomad named Abram and tells him that he's going to save the world through him.

Now, just a little side note here before we get too deep into this. If you're not familiar with this story, then you're not going to know yet that eventually in the story, Abram's name gets changed by God to Abraham, and Sarai, his wife's name, gets changed to Sarah. So there are going to be all kinds of times when I refer to Abraham and Sarah rather than Abram and Sarai, and you're just going to have to kind of put it together that, oh, he's talking about the same guy. Okay, so don't be confused when I start talking about this guy, Abraham, and you're not seeing him in the text. Same dude, same with Sarah and Sarai.

Okay, if you look at verses 1 through 3 of chapter 12, without a doubt, these three verses are some of the most famous little verses in the entire Old Testament. These words show up hundreds of times, sometimes in quotes, sometimes in allusions, but hundreds of times through the rest of the story. And in fact, they come to sort of encapsulate the whole hope of the entire nation of Israel to the point that you could say that the entire story of the Old Testament is being driven step after step after step by the question, when is God going to keep this promise?

That's the whole thing. It's promises to Abraham, I will do this for you, and I will do this, and I will do this. And the whole question of the Old Testament is, when? Is it here? Is it here? Is it here? When does the blessing happen? It drives the entire story of the Old Testament. Structurally, if you look at it, it's a tightly packed little package. Every word in verses 1 to 3 is full of meaning. And we talked about that in a lot more detail in the sermon a year ago or so. I do, though, want you to kind of take another look at the main structure of it.

Basically, this promise breaks down into two parts that are headed by an imperative verb. So a command, you get a command, and then three promises, and then a command, and three promises. That's the way the whole thing is structured. So basically, it's Abraham, do this, and then I will do this, I will do this, and I will do this. Abraham, you're going to do this, and then I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. Three times. So let me just show it to you. So look down at verse 1.

The Lord said to Abraham, here's the first command, go. See that? That's what Abraham has to do. That's the command, go. Verse 2, here come the I wills. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. So do you see those three things? I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, and I will make your name great. Second imperative, it's got a weird form, but it's still an imperative form, is you're going to be a blessing. The result of all of this, of me making you great, is going to be that you will be a blessing.

And then you get three more I wills. And then I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who dishonors you. And I will bless all the families of the earth in you. So you see that? Command, I will, I will, I will. Command, I will, I will, I will. Now, it's interesting because those two sections each have a kind of different thrust, right? Different thing that they're doing. The first one is all about what God is going to do for Abraham. I'm going to do this for you, and this for you, and this for you.

And the second is, I'm going to do this through you for everybody else. So this isn't just a promise to Abraham. This is a promise to the world. But it's going to happen through Abraham. And the main thrust of the whole thing, the thing that God is going to do for all the nations of the world through Abraham, is that he is going to fulfill his promise from Genesis 3.15. Through Abraham, he's going to create a king and a kingdom that will save the world.

That's how it works. Now, it might seem like a bit of a strange thing to say, that this promise is kind of the same thing, it's a continuation of Genesis 3. It might seem a little strange because it uses different language. You don't even see any language here, at least at first glance, about a king. There's no mention of anything in here that seems, at first glance, to be royal at all. But there are a couple of details in it that make it clear that that's what's going on. So, first of all, look at the third promise that God makes.

Verse 2, I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to bless you. And then look at that third one. I will make your name great. What does that mean? Does that just mean I'm going to make you famous? Is that what that means? I'm going to make you well-known. You're going to have people, you know, 4,000 years after you were dead and gone, still talking about you at 3rd Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Right? Is that what that means? You're just going to be famous? No, no, no. It's not just a generic kind of greatness or fame. See, in the ancient world, to have a name that was great was the singular and unique marker of royalty.

If you had a great name, you were royal. And if you were royal, that meant you had a great name. You can see it in various places throughout the scriptures. It's what God promises to David in 2 Samuel. I will make for you, King David, a great name. It's what the angel Mary said when he promised the birth of Jesus. We studied this just a couple of months ago. Jesus will be great, and I will give him the throne of his father, David. So for God to say here that he's going to make Abraham a great name doesn't just mean I'm going to make you famous, but you're going to be the father of kings.

When people hear the name Abraham, they're going to think of a great royal family. I'm going to make kings come from you. Another thing. Do you see there in verse 2 where God says that he's going to make of Abraham a great nation? what does that mean what nation is being talked about there now my guess is that most of you read that you say okay this is talking about abraham we know that abraham is sort of the patriarch of the the jews so when god says i will make of you a great nation we basically default to thinking that he's talking about israel right the sons of abraham that are descended from that that's what he's talking about what's interesting about that little word though is that it is not the word that is almost always, well, maybe even always used to describe the nation of Israel.

In fact, the word here is goy. It's an ugly word because in the Jewish mind it refers to ugly stuff. It refers to the gross, pagan, Gentile nations out there. So why does God say, I am going to make of you a great goy? Rather than like a great people or a great family, which is what the nation of Israel is usually called. Why goi?

Because it's not talking about national Israel. It's talking about Gentiles who will ultimately come together to create a new nation surrounded by the king. It's not talking about national Israel. It's talking about a new nation made up of all the goy of the world uniting around the faith of the king. That's what God is promising here. He's not promising just a great nation in terms of a lot of Israelites. He's talking about a new nation, which is what we are, by the way, as Christians.

You realize that, right? To be a Christian is not just to have this sort of siloed relationship with Jesus, right? Me, my Bible, and Jesus, right? And everybody else has got the same thing. And every once in a while, because we think it helps us out spiritually, we gather together and we sing some songs and we listen to these sermons. That's not what Christianity is. What the Lord Jesus is doing by calling out the elect from all the goy of the world is creating a new nation centered on him. That will stand against all the other powers of the world and ultimately conquer them.

So look, I'm speaking, I know, to all kinds of people in this room. I am talking to Chinese people and Vietnamese people and Canadians and UK people. I'm talking to all kinds of people with all kinds of ethnicities. And there is a good sense in which we identify with those nationalities. I am proud to be an American. Me, personally, I am proud to be an American. And if you're an American, I hope at some level you're proud to be an American too. But friend, you are not first and foremost an American.

You are first and foremost a citizen of the kingdom of God. You are first and foremost a citizen of the nation of Jesus Christ. Now, am I saying you shouldn't work for the good of America or the UK or Vietnam or whatever? No, of course not. You work hard for the good of those countries. But you understand deep down in your soul that America will not make it into eternity. there is one flag that will fly in eternity and it's the flag of the king don't ever don't ever put your nationality or your patriotism or your americanism above your identity as a christian you are a citizen of a new kingdom so this whole thing verses 1 to 3 is a royal promise you see it it's creating a nation that's coming together around a king it's a continuation of that promise in

genesis 3 15 so that so what that means is that by the time you get to genesis 12 the plan is moving forward and what i want you to see here you know having having nailed all that down is i want you to see what stands behind this promise i want you to see what guarantees that it will be fulfilled, without a doubt. It's that six-fold declaration in these three verses where God says, I will. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.

Friends, that's what underlies the promise. That's what drives it. That's what fuels it. That's what guarantees it. And ultimately, it's God's great I will that stands at the heart of our faith and our hope as Christians. Because what it tells us is that our salvation doesn't depend on us. It's backed up, it's guaranteed by the God of the universe and his promise. He's spoken his word and he's going to keep it. At that point, we're going to talk about it in more detail in a couple of weeks, a few weeks.

But that point's even more explicit in chapter 15 when this just kind of bare promise that God makes to Abraham becomes a formalized covenant. You know, that's part of the story of Genesis is how promise becomes covenant, gets a sign, and then is sworn by an oath a little bit later. So it's just like locking it down more and more throughout the story. But it's going to become really explicit in 15 when the time comes to sort of sign the covenant, right? And the only one who is required to sign the covenant, so to speak, is God.

Abraham just watches as God signs it. He signs his name to the bottom of it and says, I will keep this. Now, why, as a Christian, does that matter to you? Because this, friends, is the promise. This is right here, 12, 1 to 3. This is the promise that ultimately underlies your salvation. When God saved you through Jesus Christ, he did it in fulfillment of this self-sworn unilateral covenant.

He saved you, and then he looked over at Abraham and he said, see, I told you. That's what Paul means in Galatians 3. The scripture foreseeing that God, we read this a few minutes ago, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. Listen to this phrase. The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, this massive goy, the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham, saying, And you all the nations shall be blessed. So then those who are of faith, you, me, if you're Christians, are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Listen, that's good stuff for a Christian, to know that your salvation is not based on your wishy-washy morality or passion from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday, but it's based on the unbreakable promise of God. As long as Jesus Christ stands there in heaven, we sang about this in one of our songs, as long as he stands there in heaven, no tongue will bid you depart from the presence of God. They have no right. If you're not a Christian, well, you need to understand this also.

You need to understand this architecture of the gospel of Christianity. That salvation is not dependent on you. That there's not some series of things that you have to accomplish or avoid in order to win God's favor. And every other religion in the world, even some that call themselves Christians, say that that's what Christianity is all about. You have to do this, this, this, this, and this, and avoid that, that, that, that, that, and that. and then you'll win God's favor, and you'll be saved. That is not what the Christian gospel says. The Christian gospel says Jesus has already won God's favor for you.

Now go live like it. It's a very different architecture of salvation. Some of you have been trying so hard to win God's favor that you have worn yourself out, which is exactly what Paul says you're going to do if you try that sort of thing. Now what you need to do is come to Jesus, the one who has already earned God's favor, and just accept it as a gift from his hands and then go live your life in joy and obedience because of what he's done for you. That's how the gospel works.

The promise made. Here's number two, the promise believed. These next two sections, 4 to 9 and then 10 to 20, they move very quickly to show what happened in the wake of God's making this promise. And each one of them does something pretty distinct and really important. So let's look at 4 to 9 first. First and immediately on the heels of this promise, you get this very quick recounting of how Abraham just did what God said. He just did it. You see that in verse 4? So Abraham went as the Lord had told him.

It's just really that simple. And yet it's not simple at all, is it? Because to do what God called Abraham to do was really hard. And look how God describes it even. God knows it's hard. Look how he describes it in verse 1. Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I would show you. There's all kinds of hard stuff in there. Go from your country. I don't know if you know much about Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham came from. But in those days, it was this lush, beautiful, green place.

Lots of crops, lots of food, lots of animals. Not an easy place to leave. To leave your family and your father and your kindred was to leave behind all the generational wealth that they would have had. Everything that they had and go off to, okay, well that's another difficulty, go off to where? It's not like God says, I've got a deal for you. I'm going to take you to Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey where you've got to have two men carrying the grapes. He doesn't tell him that.

Look what he tells him. Verse 1, you're going to leave and go to somewhere. The land that I will show you. And so he sets off across the desert. It's just an incredible thing that he does here. And yet that's all he had to act on. Just leave everything. Leave it all. And act on the bare promise of God. I want you to see here that in that first command, Abraham is called to do exactly the same thing that we are called to do in coming to Jesus Christ.

He is called to trust the promises of God and to trust that they are good. I mean, I know it says go, right? But what I want you to see is that at its core, going was ultimately trusting. It wasn't just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other mindlessly and heartlessly. It was to trust God's promises. The going was kind of incidental. When Abraham set out from his own country, that was an act of profound trust in God to do what God said he was going to do.

And that's why Abraham is called, you know, a prime example in the Bible of a man of faith. It's why it's said of him in several different places. Abraham believed God, and that was credited to him as righteousness. It doesn't say it is righteousness. It says it was credited to him. When you think about it just a little bit, Christianity is really just like this. To be a Christian is to be called to do the same thing that Abraham did. It's Paul's whole point in saying that if we're Christians, we are children of Abraham if we have faith in Jesus.

Because it's the same thing. We embrace Jesus Christ and his promises in the same way that Abraham embraced God and his promises. And the result is this cascading blessing for all eternity. It's a little bit different, right? Because the command to Abraham was, trust me and go. To you and to me, it's trust me and come to Jesus. But it's the same thing. Come to me, Jesus said, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Don't let this day end without you doing that. Why on earth would you listen to this sermon? Why on earth would you listen to me talk about this in the Bible and lay out before you the promise that if you'll come to Jesus, you will be forgiven of your sins and saved? And why would you look at that and say, no, I think I'll keep trying to do it on my own? Why would you do that? Come to Jesus and be saved. So that's what Abraham does.

He gathers up everything he has. He sets out for wherever God would ultimately have him go. And eventually, he arrives there in Canaan, or the promised land, Israel, as it's called. Now, you look down through verses 4 to 9. At first glance, it looks like you just have a bunch of kind of uninteresting detail, right? But you've got to be a subtle reader when you're reading the Bible, especially these narrative passages, because they are just littered with stuff that the author kind of wants you to see, but not without some work, right? So there are patterns and there are Easter eggs and there's meaning here that you're only going to get the second or third or hundredth time that you read it.

And all of a sudden, look at that. I've seen that before. It just comes later in the story. There's all kinds of stuff like that. And that's the case here. Let me show you a couple of important ones. First of all, I want you to see that there are significant obstacles to Abraham's faith and obedience here. There are huge obstacles to his faith here. So from the moment he sets out to head toward the promised land, there are reasons, good reasons, for him to sort of think about it and go, I'm not sure God can keep these promises.

There are good reasons for that. I mean, for one thing, look at verse 4. The great promise is that God is going to give him offspring, children that ultimately fill the earth, and yet he's 75 years old. Now, you consider the long lifespans of people at this stage. They live a lot longer than we did, right? And that's not impossible. But you're still talking about the equivalent of a guy in like his late 50s. And he's childless and has been for decades.

And he's being told he's going to have a baby. That was a bit of a reason for Abraham to just go, oh, I don't know. I don't know. It seems like a tall order, even for God. Also, look at verse 6. It says there in verse 6 that Abraham passed through the place, or to the land, to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. And then you get this little aside. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Now, the mention of the oak of Moreh and the Canaanites doesn't do a whole lot to you and me, right?

It just doesn't. You know, we just don't know enough. We don't have enough background, typically, for that to have the effect on us that it's supposed to. But if you're an ancient Israelite who's reading this story, when you read about the Oak of Moreh and the Canaanites, it's supposed to hit you like a shivering foreshadowing in a horror movie. It's supposed to cause you to tremble. Why? Because the Canaanites were these hopeless, godless, demon-worshiping pagans who over and over and over basically destroyed the nation of Israel's faith in God.

And now Abraham is surrounded by them. The Canaanites are in the land. These demon-worshipping, baby-sacrificing nations are in the land surrounding Abraham. Worse, the first place that he comes to is this Oak of Moreh, which can actually be translated as Oak of Teaching. Oak of Teaching. So if that's right, then the first time Abraham sort of sits down in the land of Canaan, He shows up right at the place where all of these demonic teachings of these Canaanite religions are being handed down from generation to generation.

And the question that's got to be running through your mind is, oh my goodness, how much of this junk is Abraham going to drink in? How much is all of this junk going to undermine his faith in God? He's 75 years old. He's right in the middle of this pagan thing, and yet God is saying, I'm going to make you a great nation in this place. He faced obstacles. And friends, it's always like that when you're trying to trust God. There are always reasons to think, I don't think so.

God's not going to keep his promises. Always. Not a Christian in the world who doesn't face those kinds of questions and doubts sometimes. So what is it for you, even this morning? What little thought in the back of your head causes you to be tempted into thinking that God's not going to keep his promises to you? God says, I will forgive their transgressions and remember their sins no more. And your own heart says, I don't know how to believe that.

Because mine are so big. How can you not remember that, God? What I did to you. Friend, trust his promise. God says everyone who believes in him, everyone, whoever believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life. And your mind says, I'm just not sure. How can I know? Friend, trust the promises of God.

He never lies. He never falls short. he is strong and kind trust him God says nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus and you think but I will separate myself and then you remember no no no he said nothing in all of creation and you're part of that will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Nothing, nothing, no one in all of hell or heaven, on the earth or under the earth, including you, will ever snatch you out of the Savior's hand. Trust his promises. I want you to see something else here too, another detail. Look down in 4 to 9 at the three places that are mentioned that Abraham came to. You've got first Shechem and the Oak of Moreh, right? Then you've got this place in between Bethel and Ai. There's two different places, and it's sort of a valley in between Bethel and Ai.

And then you've got the Negev, which just translates to the south, the southern country. What's significant about those places? Think about it. The Shechem and the Oak of Moreh, in between Bethel and Ai, and then the south, the Negev. What's significant about them? Probably for like, you know, 99% of you, including me, before I studied this passage this week, nothing's coming to mind. right? Because it's subtle. But there are fascinating resonances in the Old Testament because these places show up again and again, many times with just enormous significance, even symbolic significance. So just let me just give you an example. This place that's between Bethel and Ai, these two cities, it turns out, Bethel and Ai, it turns out throughout the whole story of the Old Testament to be a place of decision. Again and again, the nation is brought to that place, sometimes deliberately, sometimes just by the providence of God, and they're brought to a place where they're trying to decide whether they're going to trust and obey God or not. It's a

place of decision which is incredibly symbolically fitting because Bethel translates to house of God and Ai translates to ruin. So again and again they find themselves between, caught on a knife's edge between the house of God and ruin, and they have to decide whether to trust him and obey him or not. That's an incredible thing, isn't it? I mean, how many times in your life do you find yourself right there in that valley between Bethel and Ai, between the house of God and ruin? How often do you sit there in that valley and you look over there and you look over there and how many times do you look at Ai and go, that looks good?

Everybody finds themselves, everyone finds themselves between Bethel and Ai. Maybe you're there right now. Maybe it's some sin that's dogging you and you're right there in that valley. some of you are in the eternal version of sitting between Bethel and Ai you're considering Christ but you haven't bowed your knee to him if that's you get out of the valley and don't pick Ai go to the house of God go with Jesus to the house of God and be saved don't stay in that valley there's something else about that these three places Shechem and then between Ai and Bethel and then finally the Negev.

It also turns out, as you read the story, that these are the same places that Jacob visits in order when he's returning from finding a wife. We'll talk about that in months future. And they're the exact same places that Joshua and the Israelites conquer when they conquer the land centuries later. Okay, now why is that important? So you've got Abraham going through them, then you've got Jacob going through them, then you've got the conquest going through them, right? with Joshua. Why is it important? Well, the Old Testament does this all the time.

That kind of repetition, that kind of retelling of a story happens again and again in the Old Testament. One story turns out to be a symbolic working out of a much later, bigger story. So Abraham going to these three places and then Jacob going to them again is a little conquest that foreshadows the big conquest that's going to happen later. I mean, for that matter, If you think about 10 through 20, those verses, Abraham going down into Egypt, and then plagues falling on Pharaoh, and then Abraham leaving Egypt rich, what does that sound like?

It's a little exodus that's foreshadowing the bigger exodus that's coming later. Now, why does God do this? Why does God do this repeating, recapitulation thing all the time? because he's showing us that his promises are not up for grabs. He's showing us that they are so certain, so unstoppable, that he acts them out symbolically before he brings them to pass historically. He kind of gives you the trailer before the movie. This is not in doubt.

Because that kind of repetition, that kind of symbolism is critical to the strength of our faith. It settles our souls and helps us to trust God. It reminds us God does not just make things up as he goes. He's not just a really good chess player who figures out the best move to make even though he didn't know it was going to happen before. He ordains everything. He's saying this is how it's all going to unfold even before it happens. And that repetition builds trust.

When you see God call in his shot, when you see him pre-playing his promises, you learn more and more surely that you can trust him. I mean, you do realize that week in and week out, you experience that kind of thing here at Third Avenue, right? In the two ordinances that the Lord Jesus has given us. That's exactly what baptism and the Lord's Supper are doing. They're little symbols of a greater reality that's going to happen later. They are God calling his shot. In a few minutes, we're going to baptize Kristen Hearn.

She's going to go down into the water as a symbol of death to sin. Then she's going to come out of the water as a symbol of resurrection. You know what? That's a symbol of the day when she's going to come out of the grave on the last day. It's a pre-playing of that promise. When we gather together next Sunday and we take the Lord's Supper, that's a symbolic feast of the kingdom of God gathered together. But it's not the reality. It's just pointing to the reality of the marriage supper of the Lamb on the last day. God does this all the time. And the point is that none of it is in doubt.

Here's the last thing. The promise threatened. We noted a bit ago the obstacles to Abraham's faith. His own age, really beyond the normal age of childbearing. And then the fact that he's surrounded by these pagan Canaanites. But in verses 10 to 20, we're told of this moment where the promise that God has made is threatened to the point that it's literally just like hanging by a thread. In fact, we tend to run over it too fast. But by the time you get to the climax of the story, the whole thing is gone.

And the reason is because Abraham loses faith and lets fear take him over. That's why it happens. Let's take a look at it. So from verse 10 on, we're looking at verses 10 to 20 now. And from the very first verse in that section, verse 10, the tone changes, right? Because in 49, you've got Abraham going into the land and the Lord appears to him and tells him, this is the land that I'm going to give your offspring. And he builds altars and he worships. And it's just a triumphant tone of obedience and faith. But the whole thing changes here. Because the first thing that's said there is, now there was a famine in the land.

So Abraham called on the name of the Lord and trusted God to give him food. That's just not what it says, right? It's totally different. This is not faith anymore. You're expecting that, but that's not what happens. His response to this challenge of the famine is that he went down to Egypt. Now, that's one of these little Easter eggs. If you're reading it for the first time, it doesn't even strike you. But if you've read the entire Bible, you know that that phrase, he went down to Egypt, is bad.

Because going down to Egypt is almost always the wrong thing to do unless God sometimes, once or twice, specifically commands it. But to go down to Egypt without God telling you to do it is essentially to put your trust in human strength and protection rather than in God. So Isaiah would say, woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses and trust in the multitude of their chariots, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek help from the Lord.

Going down to Egypt is the opposite of seeking help from the Lord. Also, it's even kind of worse than that, though, because look at what happened up in verse 7. God appeared, once he arrived in the promised land, God appeared to Abraham and told him, this is the place right here. This is the land that I'm going to give to your offspring. You have reached the goal. Now, he didn't know that when he set out. But when he got there, God says, this is the place. And so when Abraham decides to go to Egypt, he's abandoning the place that God has said is the goal.

And the result of the whole thing is that the promise is put in enormous danger. So that's really the point of this story about Sarai or Sarah. So it's an easy story. We read it a little bit ago. But essentially Abraham has this, you know, grand, you know, galaxy brain idea. And he thinks, look, if we go down to Egypt, they're going to see that you're beautiful. And they're going to want you. And they're going to kill me so that they can then take you. So here's what we'll do. We'll say that you are my sister. And what that will do is at least sort of buy a time because in a wedding, like if I were going to marry off my sister and I had authority over her, there would have to be this year-long negotiation about dowry and all this jazz.

And so Abraham thought, even if they want to take her, at least I'll have a year to sort of get things together and we can flee at the right time. The problem, though, that Abraham ran into and that backfired on him so spectacularly is that Pharaoh doesn't negotiate. Anybody else would have to negotiate with Abraham, the brother of Sarah, in order to get her hand in met not Pharaoh. He just, I mean, if you just look at it in verse 15, the very end of verse 15. The woman was taken into Pharaoh's house, and that is that.

So his plan just spectacularly backfires. Yeah, he gets rich through this royal dowry that Pharaoh pays him generously. But his wife, the one that the promise was going to be kept through, is all of a sudden not with him anymore and is now in the court of Pharaoh. He's rich in worldly stuff, but the only thing he'd be reminded of as he looks down at all his gold and camel and silvers and all the rest, is I lost my wife and therefore I lost the promise.

And here's a dire situation. Abraham has been promised a great name to be made a great nation. He's been promised land and he's been promised blessing to the entire world through his offspring. But now all of that's in jeopardy. He's not in the land anymore. He's lost his wife that could provide children and he's in serious danger of dying childless and forgotten. It is a bleak situation. but that is always in the bleakest of situations when God decides to act and that's exactly what happens here too he sends a series of plagues on Pharaoh there's that repetition again and Pharaoh rebukes Abraham for his deception and essentially exiles him from Egypt that's the story but you see the point of it you see why this story is being told here it's because at every turn in this story, Abraham does exactly the wrong thing. And yet God keeps his promise.

He goes down to Egypt instead of trusting the Lord. He convinces his wife to lie for him or at least tell a half-truth in order to save his own skin instead of trusting the Lord. He gets rebuked by a pagan Egyptian pharaoh? And yet, God is unstoppably determined to keep his promise. And when it came to God's promise to Abraham, there was no I will if you will. It was just I will.

And not even Abraham's failure of faith. Not even Abraham's sin of getting his wife to lie to him, not even, listen to this one, not even Abraham's abandonment of the land God had given him was going to stop it. Friends, that's just an extraordinary thing for us to remember as Christians. The gospel that saves us is built on unstoppable promises, not our own wishy-washy loyalty to God on Monday or our breakable morality on Tuesday. God has said to us, to you and me, I will do this, and that is an unshakable promise.

Friends, rest in that. Don't rest in how spiritual you're feeling today. Obey God. Do the things that someone who loves God does, but do not stake your eternity on how well you're doing those things. Stake your eternity on the unbreakable, unstoppable promises of Jesus Christ. You remember those words, right? I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. I mean, those are something else.

They're stirring. But they are tragically false. In the end, all it took for Henley was just, you know, falling off a train. Tuberculosis comes back and all of a sudden, fate was the master of him. Friends, that is the best your human, I will, will ever do. But not God's. You can imagine Abraham arguing with God.

But Lord, wait, I have all these doubts, Lord. I have all these doubts. What if I'm too old? I will bless you. What if I disobey you and go down to Egypt instead of trusting you? I will bless you. What if I abandon the land that you said you were going to give to me? I will bless you. What if the Canaanites are too strong? I will bless you. What if I fail, Lord? What if I blow it completely? I will bless you. Why, God, are you going to bless me in spite of all that, even when I don't deserve it?

Because of grace. Not because of your I will. but because of mine. That's what we rest in. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are the great God of great promises. And we thank you that in Jesus Christ, you have promised that everyone who comes to him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. Oh Lord, help us, we pray, to put these truths deep in our soul, to find rest and solidity in them so that we're not blown around by every tossing wave and every blowing wind.

Father, help our faith to be solidly in our Lord Jesus Christ and what he has earned for us. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.