I am Pastor Nathan and today we are going to be concluding the primeval era of biblical history,
the really old ancient times, and we're going to be moving into what's called the patriarchal
history of Genesis. You see, we've been going through this very long story of how everything
came to be, how the earth came to be, how the universe came to be, how humanity came to be,
and we've seen many significant moments, right? We've looked at the creation of all things.
We looked at the creation of man and woman. We've seen the fall of mankind where sin and
death were introduced. We looked at the flood where God, in a sense, started over but saved
one man and his family to repopulate the entire earth. And then we saw how mankind never changes.
We got to the Tower of Babel, again rejecting God and trying to pursue their own way. Now you
can imagine after the Tower of Babel where God confused the languages of all the people,
that just groups of people ended up scattering. That's what the Bible tells us. Those groups of
fighters or shepherds or craftsmen or whatever it may be just all set out for the boundaries of the
world going north, going south, going west, going east, and in all of that civilization developed,
commerce developed, conquest developed, and sadly sinful appetites also developed.
And really what they did is they all took their Babylonian hearts with them, those hearts that
were focused on self, self-pleasure, self-goals, self-desires, and the scattering really was mostly
a scattering of proud, arrogant, sinful pagans. Now although there were certainly exceptions
within that, God always has a remnant of believers in the situations. This group that likely still
worshiped the one true God, despite the fact that those people were there, the picture we get from
Babel was a universal apostasy. And the human race was again distanced from God, much like they were
before the flood. Well today we're going to look at the last and final primeval genealogy from Shem
to Abram, showing again the steps that God will take to save a people. We're going to see how he
preserves the line of Shem ultimately through one man, just like he preserved the line of Seth
ending up in Noah, one man. And again we're going to see how he preserves all of this and sets up
the ultimate salvation of mankind all through one man's faith, a man that is going to be known as
Abraham, just like he did through Noah, one man in his faith. We have to understand it's faith.
It's always faith that receives righteousness from God. It's not our works, it's not our effort,
it's simply believing that he is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, that he does
what he says he's going to do, and that his ways are always right, always true, always the best,
always perfect. It's faith that leads us to do what God tells us to do and to go where God tells
us to go. And it's through faith that God works in his people to save and to change the world.
That's what we're going to see today as we close out chapter 11, but first we're going to worship
God. And I encourage all of us to set aside whatever may be heavy on your heart, heavy on
your mind. God knows, and God wants to speak to you today about his will for you, about how to
come to peace and joy in the midst of difficulties and those things that trouble us, to really
encourage us to give to him everything that burdens us because he can handle it. And we
want to praise him for that. So let's pray. Father God, we love you so much. We thank you for our
salvation. We thank you God that you saved a sinful people. That's us. We are the sinful people.
And God, we thank you that it was through your love you did that, not because we deserve it,
not because we earned it, but simply because you love us. And God, thank you for then working
through us in your spirit. That God, you would do works through our lives that other people might
come to know you as well. God, we're so grateful that you change our hearts and give us a new heart,
that we would be able to live as people who worship you, to live as people who say,
God is my God and Jesus is his name. Father, I pray Lord today you would just encourage us and
challenge us. Lord, that you would cause us to draw closer to you. Just as these men we've been
reading about Noah and Abraham and others, as they've drawn close to you through their faith God.
And because of that you did great works in their life. Lord, we want you to speak through us to
this world as well. Encourage us today. But first Lord, we praise you. You are the God of glory.
You are God Almighty. You are our Savior. And it's in your name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
We are in Genesis chapter 11, chapter 11 this morning. And we're going to be looking at verses
10 through 32. Now as I said in the intro, you know, we're at this place where humanity has
descended again into depravity, right? And although humanity has done that again and really
came to the place of being a God rejecting people as we saw in the Tower of Babel,
God's promised blessing on the descendant of Shem is still in force, is still in force. So we have
the last genealogical record here of the primeval period of history. It's the last genealogy we get.
And Moses has really given us here the family line, the bridge if you will, to the one God would use
to save humanity. And so we're going to see that we're coming to the place of being introduced to
the person through whom which a people comes that will ultimately be the people that Jesus Christ is
born into the world through. Now this list is a counterpart to the line of Seth in chapter 5.
If you remember our study there, we looked at the list of Seth's generations, right? Seth was the son
that was born to replace Abel. And so we had his line in his generations there. And if you go back
to chapter 5 and count the generations, you'll notice that there's exactly 10 generations.
Well, as he went through Adam to Noah, that 10 generations is reflected here because in this
list as we go from Noah to Shem and then down to Abram, it's another 10 generations exactly.
And so what we have here is we're coming to the story of this man, Abram, who we will come to know
as Abraham is exactly 20 generations from Adam, the first man created on earth. And so read with me
here in verse 10 of chapter 11. These are the family records of Shem. Shem lived 100 years and
fathered Archbishop two years after the flood. After he fathered that guy, Shem lived 500 years
and fathered other sons and daughters. That guy lived 35 years and fathered Sheila. After he
fathered Sheila, that guy lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters. Sheila lived
30 years and fathered Eber. After he fathered Eber, Sheila lived 403 years and fathered other
sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and fathered Pelek. After he fathered Pelek, Eber
lived 430 years and fathered other sons and daughters. Pelek lived 30 years and fathered
119 years and fathered other sons and daughters.
Terah lived 70 years and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Now as we've talked with the other genealogies,
sometimes people look at these and they go,
okay, we're just gonna skip over that,
it's just a list of names, right?
And if you dig, there's meaning.
There's meaning that God wants us to learn from
because every single letter that's in the Bible
is God's word.
And God included it there for us to learn
something about him, something about his plan
and his character.
And so that's why we go through these types of scriptures.
Also, we go from Genesis to Revelation
and we cover every single verse in the Bible
because it's all God's counsel of wisdom, right?
So, when we look at this, you might notice
some similarities and differences
between Seth's genealogy and chapter five.
The most notable difference here is as we read
through this list of names and this record,
we did not have the refrain, and he died after each one.
If you remember back in chapter five,
when he had Seth's lineage, it would say,
this guy, fathered this guy,
and then he lived this many years, and then he died.
And it said that over and over and over
through that genealogy, but here, that is left out.
I believe it is that way because pre-flood,
the emphasis was that death prevailed in the human race
after the fall.
That was the story pre-flood, that God created perfection,
God created heaven, paradise,
man had a perfect sin-free life of fellowship with God,
then man sinned.
Sin entered into the heart of man,
man was now gonna be a sinful person,
death entered the world because of that.
Man would die, creation would die,
entropy came into the universe, right?
And so, as we saw humanity pre-flood degenerate
into this violent, wicked, evil race,
the genealogies were telling us that death reigned,
that the result of sin is death.
But here, the emphasis, as we're moving towards Abraham,
is a move towards the promise,
towards the hope, towards the salvation
that we're gonna ultimately find in the New Testament.
And so, here in this genealogy, they leave off and he died
because the emphasis isn't death, the emphasis is life.
The emphasis is hope that is coming through God's work.
The other difference here is that the life spans of humans
are shrinking rapidly.
You remember before the flood,
we'd have these life spans of people
and they would be like 700 to 900 years, right?
Long lives, and those were actually years.
It wasn't metaphorical.
The lifespan of humans was really huge pre-flood.
But post-flood, what we see here is Shem lived 600 years,
and then Arxifad, whatever his name is, lived 438 years.
That's a shrinkage of a third.
And then we have three more generations of people
living to 400 or so years,
and then we get to Peleg and it drops to half.
And then we have three more generations of that
and then we get to Nahor and it drops again.
And so we're seeing this reduction,
this dramatic reduction in the lifespan of man.
Part of that, I believe, is also the result of sin and death
and also something that God had happen to mankind
because we're sinful people.
We pursue sinful things.
And so we're gonna pursue more sinful things
in 500 years of life
than we probably would in 100 years of life.
And so it's a grace that the lifespan of mankind
shortened down.
But as the lifespans of mankind were shrinking and shrinking,
we have to understand that we're moving towards
the hope of eternal life and complete salvation
in the word of God.
Now in the midpoint of this genealogy,
we have reference to this man Peleg again.
He is actually the exact middle of the genealogy.
He's the fifth of 10 generations from Shem.
And then the first five generations,
as it says this guy gave birth to this guy
and so on and so forth,
it's simply a summarized restatement
of what we already looked at in chapter 10,
which is called the Table of Nations, right?
We saw this long list of how the initial 70 nations,
70 clans, tribes, whatever word you wanna use,
of mankind spread out from Noah after the flood.
And so here again we have the first five mentioned,
but it's strictly focusing on the line
that the Messiah's gonna come from.
And so the notable difference between these two
in chapter 10 when it got to this man Peleg,
it just says his dad gave birth to Peleg,
in his days the earth was divided.
And that was all it said.
And then it switched to his brother Joktan,
who had like 12 kids, right?
He was very busy.
And here, Joktan's not even mentioned,
it just gets to Peleg,
and then it mentions Peleg's offspring and moves forward.
And you go, well, why?
What's the point of the difference?
Well, Peleg, when he was mentioned in the other genealogy,
the point of that genealogy led us
to the story of the Tower of Babel, right?
And the story of Tower of Babel was simply
a true retelling of look where mankind got to again, right?
We did this before the flood,
God had to wipe it out,
started over with one man,
and here's where we ended up, Tower of Babel.
And so when it lists Joktan there and all of his offspring,
the whole idea is that Joktan's line,
although he was a Semitic people,
which became the Jews and the Arabs,
his line led to the fiasco at Babel,
whereas Peleg line here led to Abram,
which is gonna lead to the Messianic line.
And so the idea here is one line led to disgrace,
one line led to grace.
One line of Eber led to these people
who wanted to build a tower and build a city
and say, we can do it all, we don't need God.
And then his other line, Peleg, led to a people
who ultimately messed up themselves,
but were still the people God chose
to have the Messiah born through.
So now as I go through this study
and probably for the next handful of months,
I'm gonna use Abram and Abraham interchangeably.
It's the same dude, okay?
It's the same guy, Abram eventually becomes Abraham,
but I'm probably gonna go back and forth, okay,
and not hear it, so just understand
that if I say Abram or Abraham, it's the same guy, okay?
Now, throughout Genesis, we've talked about this
a couple times, that we see these number seven,
seven things and multiples of sevens throughout.
There was seven days of creation,
there was seven days in a week, and so on and so forth.
And that's one of the literary tools
that demonstrates to us completion, right?
Every time we see the seven,
it has to do with something that is completed,
something that is divinely perfected, that idea.
And again, in this genealogy, we see God's hand
being very intentional and very specific
in what he is doing through mankind.
Peleg's father was Eber, right?
It tells us here in the genealogy,
Eber is where the Hebrew people came from,
but Eber, who the Hebrew people came from,
is exactly 14th from Adam.
That's a multiple of seven, right, two times seven.
And then when we get to Abram, it's exactly 21 from Adam.
That's another multiple of seven.
And so these little tiny details,
although they're not necessarily theologically relevant,
they do apply to the theology that God is very precise
and specific in what he does and how he does it.
From the very beginning of creation,
God knew what was gonna happen,
and he had a plan from the very beginning.
God wasn't reacting to mankind.
God was letting mankind exercise its free will,
and he had a plan back before anything
to do something about it.
And what we've seen is God is very intentionally
moving through people despite the fact that they're sinners.
He is working through people to affect his promise
for the entire world.
Now, by verse 26, we finally get to this man named Abram.
He is only five generations from Babel.
Now I say that because in chapter 10,
when it said in Peleg's days, the earth was divided,
I believe that's referring to the scattering of the people
at Babel, and so assuming that is exactly what it is,
Abram is five generations from Babel.
Think about that.
That's not a whole lot of time.
Now, of course, in the days of their age and lifespans,
it's a lot of time, but many of us could go back
five generations in our families,
and we know who great, great, great,
and great, great, great grandma or grandpa was.
We may not have known them personally,
but it's not that hard to go five generations back
in your family, and so here in Abram's day,
it's very likely that the story of Babel
was still being told.
Maybe it was becoming folklore,
maybe it was becoming legend,
but the story was still there, the reality was still there.
Now, the listing here, 10 generations from Noah,
ends with Terah fathering three sons.
Well, what happened at the end of Seth's line?
Seth ended up with Noah fathering three sons.
So again, we're seeing this very specific intention by God
in the development of the line
that the Messiah's gonna come through,
but the point of all that is from the very beginning,
even before the fall, God, knowing mankind was gonna fall,
God is working to bring hope for mankind.
That's the point of these lines,
is despite what has happened with the flood,
despite what happened at Babel,
despite what happened before the flood,
God still had a people that he was working through,
generation to generation to generation,
to ultimately bring Jesus Christ into this world,
to have God, who Jesus Christ is,
be born into the flesh to be the savior of all mankind.
So as Moses is writing here,
he wants the people reading this to understand
that promise that God made to Eve in Genesis,
that your offspring will crush the head of the serpent,
that that promise is still in effect,
that that promise could not be stopped
because mankind is dumb.
Mankind could not prevent that from happening.
Even the confusion and the scattering of the people
could not stop God's plan to save mankind.
No matter what the nations did,
God would be merciful, God would be gracious
through Jesus Christ simply because he promised to.
And that's a big thing we have to remember.
God's promises are true.
If God said it, it's going to happen.
Sometimes we struggle with that.
Did God really say it, did he really mean it?
But we can't sway from the understanding
that God's word is true.
We're gonna see later that that has to do
with the obedience, it ties into faith,
and it ties into the life that God works through.
When God makes a promise, it's going to happen.
You can't thwart it, you can't stop it.
Satan has been trying from the very beginning
and he fails over and over again.
And so, verse 27, now we come in and focus on Terah.
Says these are the family records of Terah.
Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran,
and Haran fathered Lot.
Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans
during his father Terah's lifetime.
Abram and Nahor took wives.
Abram's wife was named Sarai,
and Nahor's wife was named Milka.
She was the daughter of Haran,
the father of both Milka and Iska.
Sarai was unable to conceive, she did not have a child.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, Haran's son,
and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abraham's wife,
and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans
to go to the land of Canaan.
But when they came to Haran, they settled there,
and then Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.
And that is the end of the primeval history
that Genesis gives us.
As we get to chapter 12, it's gonna be a massive shift now
of focusing on this one man.
But verse 27, when it starts there,
that is like the dividing line as we're shifting
from what came before and what came after.
Now the rest of the world that had scattered
in all the directions, it was still going on.
They were still developing, they were still being fruitful,
they were still multiplying and filling the earth.
Their history was continuing,
but God's word is now zooming in
from the grandeur of the universe, right?
We started with in the beginning God.
Infinite, to zh, universe and the earth, zh, to man,
to zh, zh, and we're coming all the way down
and zooming in to God's plan.
And this zooming in is gonna continue
through the Old Testament eventually to zoom
all the way in to a manger in Bethlehem,
where God is born into the world.
So, similar again to Noah's genealogy,
the antagonist to the story is,
or the antagonist to our protagonist
is presented right away.
If you remember back when I was like,
hey, Noah gave birth to Ham, Shem, and Japheth,
and then it goes, oh, Ham was the father of Canaan.
And then he goes on, start to talk about their lines,
and it's kind of a weird detail.
But the reason was is because Canaan
was the ultimate enemy of Israel.
And so as Moses was writing this down
so that they would understand where Canaan came from,
because Canaan was in the promised land
and they were gonna be dealing with these people.
Well, here we have the same thing.
Look, Terah fathered Abraham, Nahor, and Haran.
Oh, by the way, and Haran fathered Lot.
Why?
Because people might remember the story of Lot
and all the trouble he brought Abraham.
Lot is going to be the antagonist to Abraham's story.
He's gonna be the one that's gonna cause so much trouble
in Abraham's life moving forward.
And so as Moses is writing this,
tells us right away, hey, this is where this guy, Lot,
came from.
Now there are some details here
that might be concerning for our ears today.
Because as we read through this,
the end of the genealogy starts to get very specific
about who's wife, and who's this, and who's married to who.
And it says Nahor married Haran's daughter, Milka.
Well, Haran was Nahor's brother.
So what that means is Nahor married his niece.
And again, in today's ears, we go ew.
That's, he's a weirdo, he's a creeper.
But the answer to that is the same answer
as we dealt with back in Cain, right?
Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel,
and then Cain killed Abel, and then he went on
and he got cursed and he got sent out,
and then Cain had a wife.
And people always go, where did Cain get his wife?
And the answer was, it's his sister.
It just has to be, if there's two people that started
and then gave birth and gave birth, gave birth, right?
Now in today's world, people go ew.
But back then, in the very beginning,
it was a culturally normal thing.
Plus, I believe that close to the creation of man,
it wasn't a health issue.
There wouldn't be a genetic issue in birth defects
and stuff from that line.
Well here, we have a very similar thing that's going on.
That families are still close, clans are still close,
and to keep the clan and the family lines intact,
there was a co-mingling of close family lines
within those clans.
And then it wasn't weird, okay?
It was normal, it was acceptable,
and it was not genetically harmful.
So it tells us this, and we have to understand culturally
that Nahor's not a weirdo, okay?
But what's left out of this particular,
these particular verses, is something that would,
something that we're gonna see again
in chapter 20 of Genesis, right?
Chapter 20, we're gonna have a story where Abraham,
Abram reveals something about Sarai to a king,
and that king then gets mad at Abraham because of it.
What we learn later in scripture
that's not revealed here in Genesis 11
is that Sarai is the half-sister of Abram.
They're close as well.
Now it refers to her as Terah's daughter-in-law,
but that's because in those days when a daughter
got married, she was leaving the family
and starting her own family.
So Terah's daughter, when she married Abram,
became his daughter-in-law.
Same response as above if you think that's weird.
Now we do know that eventually God is gonna say
no more to that, right?
He's gonna put a stop to that in his law,
but here it's taking place.
So we're not told here that Sarai is his half-sister,
but what we are told here is that she was barren.
She was unable to conceive, and thus she had no children.
Now again, we have to understand culturally,
culturally in this time, really the main work,
the main function within the family that a woman had
was to bear children so that the family would prosper
and the family name would go on.
Today's culture, just women are being encouraged greatly,
oh you don't need to have kids,
doing that is gonna wreck your life,
that's just gonna lock you down,
you're not gonna be able to pursue your career,
you're not gonna be able to travel the world,
don't have kids, don't have kids, right?
And I think that push is because God's blessing
upon mankind was to have children,
and to raise generations of kids to adults themselves
who would then have kids and all of it would just
worship and glorify God the creator.
Now there are couples in today's world
that don't wanna have children,
and that's fine if that's you, that's between you and God
and your family and God, but a lot of times
I'll run into people that are like,
oh we don't want kids, we don't want kids,
and it's because having kids is this bad thing.
And there's even Christian couples that I hear this from.
And I just wanna encourage you, if you, your family,
you've decided we don't wanna have kids
and that's between you and God, awesome, follow the Lord.
But don't you dare disdain the having of children,
because that was God's blessing,
the original blessing on mankind.
So if you don't wanna have kids, fine,
but don't let it be because having kids is a bad thing.
Don't believe that lie from the world.
In this culture, if you couldn't have children
because that was really the main function
within the family for a woman,
it would largely mean the woman felt useless.
She had no purpose in life if she couldn't carry on
the family through the birthing of children.
Now the reason this detail is told us here
as we're being introduced to Abram
is because the fact that she was barren
is what leads to so much of the massive difficulties
that Abraham experiences.
It's what leads to the challenges he has,
the challenges of faith, the difficulties
and the victories that he had.
So much of Abraham's life is wrapped around the fact
that Sarah or Sarai couldn't have children.
And then we're gonna see throughout the Old Testament
that the challenge of barrenness,
it comes up in the lives of other matriarchs of Israel.
We see it come up in Rebecca's life.
We see it come up in Rachel's life.
Later on we're gonna see this issue of barrenness
come up in Samson's mother's life.
We see it in Samuel, Samuel's mom, Hannah, right?
We heard that story this year Mother's Day
where Hannah, his mom, she couldn't have children.
And the other wife, again another culturally
acceptable thing at that time, could have kids.
So she was the favored wife and Hannah was just
heartbroken that she couldn't provide children
for the family.
And so we read about how she went to the temple
and prayed, God please, please let me have a child.
I'll dedicate him to you and God honored
that prayer in her life.
And so we have to understand that this detail
is again setting the table for what we're gonna see
as we get into the life of Abraham.
Another important detail it gives us here in these verses
is that Abraham and his family, they were from
this place called Ur of the Chaldeans.
We've discovered Ur today, archeologically.
We know where it's at.
They've actually uncovered the ziggurat,
the big temple pyramid that was used to worship there
and they have restored most of it.
You can go visit it today as a tourist.
It's pretty incredible.
Go look it up on Google, ziggurat of Ur.
It's an impressive structure.
They've been able to kind of restore it
but what's interesting is in their restoration
they've left the very top unrestored.
I don't know if that's on purpose or not
but it's interesting that the very top
is where the ritual sacrifice and the worship
of false gods would take place.
God's like cool, discover it, build it,
kind of cool to look at, nothing on the top.
So we know a lot about Ur because of archeology and stuff
and one of the things we know about the people
of this city Ur is that they were worshipers of false gods.
One of their prime gods that they worshiped
was the moon god and so at the top of their ziggurat
they would see the moon and all this stuff
but here's what's interesting is the name
of the moon god is Nana.
Nana, right?
That's not a very threatening god.
That's like our moon god Nana and she bakes cookies.
If you're called Nana, that's a great name,
don't take offense but for some reason
Nana was the moon god that they worshiped in Ur.
They also know through discovery of mass graves and stuff
that there was a lot of human sacrifice
in worship to Nana and the other gods there in Ur.
The reason this detail's important is this is the context
of this man Abram we're gonna learn so much about.
This is his background, this is where he lives,
this is his upbringing if you will.
His whole background here is that he lived in a place
that had pagan worship, that sacrificed people
in worship of false gods.
And what that means according to the Bible,
well Joshua tells us this in Joshua 24 verse two.
Joshua said to all the people,
this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says.
Long ago your ancestors including Terah,
the father of Abraham and Nahor,
lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods.
Guess what, that means Abram was an idolatrous pagan
false god worshiper.
It was his culture, it was his life,
that's just, that's what you did.
And so through the Noah and through Shem
and coming all the way down to Abraham,
we find that Abram and his entire family
were initially polytheistic idolaters.
Now I love that detail because what it shows us
is God works through sinners.
Aren't you grateful for that?
If God didn't work through sinners, none of us would be here.
But God works through sinners.
As we're gonna read in chapter 12,
as God revealed himself to Abram and spoke to him,
God spoke to him while he was a polytheistic idolater.
You see some people, they get it in their heads sometimes
that I've gotta clean up my life before I'll seek God.
Because God's not gonna accept me in the middle of my sin.
I have to stop drinking and then I'll give my life to Jesus.
I have to stop cheating on my spouse
and then I'll give my life to Jesus.
And God is constantly saying, come to me just as you are.
I'm not gonna shun you because you're a sinner.
In fact, in the middle of your sin, I will talk to you
and I will call you and you will have that opportunity
in that moment to say, am I gonna listen to God
and obey him or not?
And so if you're in this room this morning
and you're going, man, I wanna give my life to God,
but understand, God knows.
God's not waiting for you to clean up your life
because if you could clean up your life,
you would have already done it already.
But God is saying, come to me and let me clean up your life.
Because God loves you, he wants to save you.
And we're gonna see that in the story of this man, Abram.
But as we move past this, we read in the story here
that it was Terah who rounded up the whole family
and headed to Canaan, right?
And he never made it to Canaan.
They stopped in Haran, it tells us, and settled there.
Now some people go, wait a second,
his son's name was Haran and his son died
during his lifetime, does it have anything to do
with the city of Haran that they settled in?
We don't know.
But it's very possible that when Terah left
this family, there was such a large family
that when they got there, they named the place Haran.
That's just speculative, but we see that it tells us this.
There's a problem here where people will point out
a detail and say, this is a Bible contradiction
and therefore the Bible's not true.
Okay, so let me give you the answer to this right now.
When we get to chapter 12 of Genesis,
this is next time in our next message,
it appears as if Abraham's call happened in Haran.
It says this in verse four of Genesis 12.
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him,
and Lot went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.
So it appears that he was called in Haran,
he left Haran and went to Canaan.
However, when we read in the book of Acts,
chapter seven, verses two and three,
this is what it tells us.
Brothers and fathers, he replied, listen,
the God of glory appeared to our father Abram
when he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran
and said to him, leave your country and your relatives
and come to the land that I will show you.
So sometimes people will point to this and go,
this is a contradiction in the Bible, you can't believe it.
We're gonna deal with this when we get to chapter 12
next time, but suffice to say that the true
narrative here, it tells us in Acts that Abraham
was the one that got the call from God
when he was in Ur, before Haran is what it's telling us.
Then when we go back to Genesis 11, it says,
Terah is the one that rounded up the family to leave.
So did Abraham tell the family to leave or did Terah?
The answer is this, in their culture,
the respect and honor that was given to heads of the family
was immense, right?
You did not disrespect the head of the family.
The head of the family was really judged during execution
in those days of the family.
And so in the genealogy that we read in chapter 11
where it says Terah rounded up the family,
I believe that the truth is, is Abraham got the call.
Abraham said, Terah, we need to leave, convinced him,
I don't know how he did it,
and then Terah rounded up the family and left.
So the honor is being given to the head of the household
still in the genealogy in chapter 11.
There's no contradiction here,
there's no issue with the scripture.
Now we're gonna deal with that more detail
in Reconcile in chapter 12
because it is based on some assumptions,
however, it's easy to answer.
So, but here it was Abraham who was called to Ur
to leave his country and his relatives to go to Canaan.
He somehow got Terah to lead the family out,
they all went there.
And the point of all of this is that it was there
in pagan, idolatrous, dark, wicked Ur.
It was there that Abraham saw the God of glory.
Again, God shows up into the dark place,
into the sinful place,
and he shows up there to call a man to follow him.
God does that in our lives too.
It's in the midst of our darkness,
it's in the midst of our hangover,
it's in the midst of our being high,
it's in the midst of being with someone
that's not your spouse,
it's in the midst of the sinful place
that God will show up and shine the light.
And so, Abraham then gets this call and he leaves.
But the call to Abraham was as a pagan idolater.
As a worshiper of false gods,
this is when God said, go to a land I will show you.
Now they went and then it tells us
that as Terah was leading the family there,
they got to Haran and stopped.
It doesn't tell us why, right?
Maybe Terah was like, bro, I'm old.
I just want to stop walking through the desert, right?
We don't know.
Maybe they had a gift shop that was really cool.
No, they didn't have no gift shop.
But they stopped.
And then what we see is Abraham doesn't say,
dad, God said we're going to Canaan.
So if you're not gonna go,
I'm gonna lead the family anyways.
We see Abraham honoring the head of the family,
honoring Terah and staying there
until Terah died at 205 years old
and that's the end of the chapter.
So again, we see this honor
and it answers the question of why does it say here
that Terah left and in other places it say Abraham left.
Now, I believe it was just a respect issue
of Abraham to his father.
But this genealogy is all coming down
and leading to this great figure of Genesis,
this great figure of Israel, Abram.
Now, we know Abraham is important,
but how important is he?
Well, we have this book, Genesis,
that I believe the Holy Spirit spoke to Moses.
And this book covers about 2,200 years of history.
From the very beginning till we get to the end of Genesis
and they're in Egypt, it's 2,200 years of history.
Now, 1,800 of those 2,200 years
takes place in chapters one through 11.
That's 20% of the book of Genesis.
Right, there we have creation, the fall, the flood, babble.
And then from chapter 12 all the way to chapter 50,
that only covers about 400 years of history.
So we have 20% of the book covering
the biggest chunk of time and the largest part of the book
covering the shortest period of time.
But what's covered in those 400 years?
Abram's story.
The story of Abram and how he grew and his faith in God,
how it was tested, how he came to grow and all of that,
how he taught his family, how his family grew,
ultimately ending up in the 12 tribes of Israel.
So the beginning, the beginning here that we see of Abram,
this first mention of him,
it sets up the rest of the book of Genesis.
Now his departing from Ur, as we're gonna read about,
that had to have been an immense act of faith.
So there are people in many countries of the world today
where if they convert their religion,
they have to flee their country
because they're at risk of being killed,
they're at risk of all kinds of dangers.
You can imagine in this culture where everything was based
around the worship of these false gods.
Everything was based around this worship of Nana
at the top of this ziggurat.
The whole culture was this way.
And Abram, out of all those people,
is approached by God, if you will,
and says, all those false gods are false.
There's only one true God.
Huge act of faith and then God said, leave.
Leave because I'm gonna give you something
that I've promised you.
Now, it was also a big act of faith,
not just because of his paganism,
but it was because he was getting old too, right?
It tells us that he was 75 when he left Haran, you know?
I mean Abram was getting to be an old man.
Now I know in those times the life spans were longer,
but still, it was a huge act of faith
for him to trust God, to believe God, and to go.
And not only that, but in that whole culture,
he was the only one, we're told, that heard God's word.
Does that mean God didn't speak to anybody else?
We don't know.
But this man was called out, especially by God,
to fulfill God's promise.
What God did is he called a man who didn't deserve it,
he called a man that didn't earn it,
he called a man that worshiped other gods,
he called a man who was just a sinner to be the vessel
in which he was gonna bring blessing to the entire world.
And so when God spoke, we're gonna see that Abraham,
Abram listened.
He believed that God was real.
He went as God told him to go, or got his family to go,
so he had faith, and then he obeyed.
And that obedience was simply
the outward evidence of his faith.
You see, some of you today,
there might be something in your life
that you are pretty sure that God
has been prompting you to do.
Maybe it's to talk to someone,
maybe it's to get involved in evangelism,
maybe it's to go somewhere or do something, right?
And you're pretty sure it's God telling you to do that,
but you have been resisting.
And I wanna encourage you today,
if God said go, go.
Because if God is telling you to go,
God is telling you to do, God is telling you to say,
that is the best possible thing you could do
that will have the best outcome in your life
that God has in the plan for your life.
I mean, there's been so many times,
you know, you're at the grocery store,
and you pass someone in the aisle,
and God says, give them a gospel tract.
And what do you do, many of us?
We go down the rest of the aisles debating with God
whether we're gonna do that or not.
Well, God, do you really want me to give them tract?
Just do it.
This is what we're gonna see in Abram's life.
He heard God, he believed God,
and then he did what God told him to do.
So much of the church, I think,
would be in such a more positive position
if everybody in the church just simply did
what God was telling them to do.
Some of you here might be having relationship problems, right?
And you're seeking counseling,
and I've been in many positions where I'm trying
to give counsel from the word of God to a couple
that's having difficulties,
and the answer over the years, you know,
I used to be like, oh, let's drag this practical thing in
and this strategy, and over the years,
the answer has boiled down to this one thing.
We're having relationship problems.
Well, stop doing what you wanna do
and do what God tells you to do.
That's it.
Well, she does this and I do this.
Okay, well, stop doing whatever you're doing
and do what God tells the husbands to do
and do what God tells the wives to do.
Problem solved.
And then people come back two weeks later,
it's not working, and then you find out,
well, you didn't do it.
You're still trying to do it your own way.
Honoring God by following what he says
is one of the greatest ways we just glorify his name.
It's one of the greatest ways that we find ourselves
in that place where God wants us to be.
God leads, God directs, God calls,
God sends according to his purposes,
and God is not obligated to tell you what his purposes are
before he calls you or tells you to go or speak or do.
Our job is to do when we're called,
to believe, to say, God, you are God,
so if you're asking me to do something
or go somewhere or do something,
it is the best possible thing.
It is the right thing to do,
so God, without question, I'm gonna go do it.
And then God blesses through that in such amazing ways.
If you say you have faith, the fruit of that is obedience.
Now, we know it's not perfect obedience,
none of us are perfect, but faith steps out.
Faith and obedience are inseparable
in relation to our man's relationship to God.
James touched on this, right?
James said in chapter two, verse 26,
for just as the body without the spirit is dead,
so also faith without works is dead.
We don't earn salvation by our works.
We're saved because we believe God.
It's a simple faith.
God, I believe you're real.
Nana's not.
Sorry, Nana.
But God is real.
You are the one true and only God.
I believe you.
I'm this messed up person.
God said, hold on, we're not, we're not,
just, do you believe I'm real?
Yes.
Okay.
You're saved, the Bible says, through faith.
Now, who is God?
He revealed himself in this world
when he was born in the flesh
and was named Jesus Christ.
That is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity,
God here revealing himself to us
in a way that we can truly understand.
And you say, I believe that.
I don't understand it fully.
I don't understand it fully, but I believe it
because I believe God is true, God is real.
God says, good, you're saved.
Now, since you're my child, since I'm your God,
I wanna call you to do this
or I wanna call you to go here.
And then we say, God, you're my God,
I give you my whole life, but wait a second,
let's talk about that.
Can I adjust the details?
You know, I'm really comfortable here at home.
No.
Faith begets obedience.
And really, if you imagine you have faith
but you're not being obedient,
your faith can be questioned.
If you say, I'm saved, I'm saved,
but you don't obey God.
I have a good reason to question
whether you're saved or not.
It's just one of those issues where if you have faith,
you're gonna endeavor to be obedient.
You're gonna stumble and make mistakes,
and then God says, yeah,
that's why I died on the cross 2,000 years ago.
Let's get up and keep going.
God, I wanna honor you.
This is what we see in this man Abram's life.
Perfect works, no.
But steps of faith based on belief in God
and His word and His will,
knowing that He has a purpose and that purpose is right.
So the beautiful thing in Genesis,
we have the two greatest characters of faith here.
We have the hero of the primeval period, Noah,
who was saved simply because he believed God.
And then we have the hero of the patriarchal times, Abram.
Both champions of faith,
Hebrews 11 makes that very clear.
Both men who were saved by their faith.
Both men who were then had righteousness
accounted to them because of their faith.
You see, faith does not earn righteousness.
Faith receives righteousness.
When you say, God, I'm a sinner and I'm a wretch
and I deserve nothing,
and you know, actually, if you just killed me
and judged me and that was it,
you would be completely holy and just.
I deserve nothing.
And God says, do you believe in me?
Yeah, and I'm gonna give righteousness to you.
But God, look at all the cool things I'm doing.
Didn't I earn it?
Your best work is comparable to a filthy rag.
Well, just stop working to earn.
Rest in who God is, believe,
and then work out of obedience just to honor Him.
Both of these men were used to bring salvation to others
by their faith.
Noah's faith saved his family.
Abram's faith will create a people
through whom the promised offspring will come,
ultimately blessing the entire planet.
And so my encouragement to all of us today
is may we be people who believe God.
Just believe in Him.
What's His name?
Jesus Christ, that we believe in Him.
We have faith in Him to say,
I'm gonna do what you say to do, help me do it right.
Because I can't do it right on my own.
Help me be the person you're calling me to be.
May we be people that believe God's word,
that believe in the true reality of His presence,
that like Noah and like Abram,
we would be people through whom God
will affect salvation to others.
That's the goal.
I wanna glorify God in my life
so that other people will see God's glory, not mine.
God's glory and go, I need Him.
That's why we're here.
That's why we study the word, that's why we worship.
That we would go into the world and be lights.
Christians aren't supposed to be lights
that are hidden under a basket.
We're supposed to be lights on a hill.
And the encouragement is if God says go, go.
Well what if they are mean to me?
God didn't say go if they're nice, He said go.
But what if, but what if, but what if?
What if you just trusted God
and did the thing He's calling you to do?
Man, what would happen then?
Well you won't know until you do it.
And so I pray God would just bless your life,
that God would keep continuing to speak to you,
and that from here on as you hear it,
you would obey and experience just the blessing
of doing what He's called you to do.
Ultimately to see people come to know the Lord
because you got to hand them a tract.
You got to have a conversation with them about God.
Or that they just saw the way you lived your life
in obedience to the Lord,
that they wanted to have what you have.
And that is the ultimate thing, the ultimate gift,
the salvation, the promise of eternal life, amen?
All right, let's pray.
Father God, we trust you so much.
And yet God, we don't trust you.
Lord, as Peter said when he was confronted
with the reality of what you're calling him to do,
he said Lord, increase our faith.
And God, I pray Lord that you would increase our faith.
That as we trust you, you would increase our trust.
That as we work to obey you,
you would increase our ability to obey you.
That God, as we talk to you, Lord,
we would hear you more and more.
As we study your word, God, we would grow closer to you.
God, we want to be people of faith that you work through.
Lord, you gave us your word and you're showing us
that your promises in working through humanity are true.
And God, you've made promises in our life.
We have so many of them in your word
and so many of them spoken to us
in the quietness of our own mind
or through prophecy, through whatever, Lord.
And God, help us to not question that.
God, help us to not question those promises,
but instead to live in obedience to him,
to step out in faith.
God, you're calling us to take those steps of faith,
even when we're not sure what's gonna happen after.
God, you called Abram out and didn't even tell him
where he was going, but he went.
And we have that kind of faith, God,
because we know that on the other side of that faith,
there is the opportunity to introduce you
to people who don't know you.
And we step out on that faith, God,
because we know on the other side of that faith,
there's blessing for us, yeah.
But God, that you would be lifted high and glorified.
Lord, we wanna be used by you.
We wanna be tools in the hand of our creator
to accomplish our creator's will.
Help us to be those people, Lord.
Help us to trust you more.
Help us to walk in faith more.
God, thank you for loving us so much.
Thank you for saving us.
Thank you for everything you've done in our lives, Lord.
We love you.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Well, God bless you guys.
We're gonna close in worship here,
and I just pray that you just take this final moment.
Don't think about where you're going to lunch right now.
Don't think about what you're doing after church.
Just use one more moment to focus on him.
Say, God, I have no words,
but I'm gonna try and use the words
in this worship song anyways to praise your holy name.
May God be blessed in your life.
May he use you to do great things.
Praise the Lord.
God bless you guys.