Sunday 08/09/26 – Adams Village Baptist Church
Sermon Title: “Abraham - The Reluctant Patriarch” – “Ordinary People, Extraordinary God” - Sermon Series - (Part 2 of 5) – Genesis 12:1-3
(Cover
Picture – Abraham, Father of Faith - Picture)
Last Sunday, we started a five-week sermon series called “Ordinary People, Extraordinary God.”
In this sermon series, we will continue to take five people or figures from the
Old Testament, or Hebrew or Jewish Bible, that God used in extraordinary ways.
These people were “regular” or “ordinary people” like many of us are, but God
used them, as God can and does use us in extraordinary ways!
Last Sunday, we talked
about the story of Noah, and the Ark. That God made a “Covenant” or an agreement
with Noah. If Noah built the Ark, stayed righteous and faithful, after the
earth flooded for forty-days, God promised to never again fully flood the
earth. This “Covenant” is called the “Noahtic Covenant,” because God made this “Covenant,”
or promise with Noah. The big take way from the story of Noah and Ark is faith,
righteousness, holiness, and obeying God.
Does anyone remember what
God put it the sky when the flood ended to show Noah as a sign of the promise that
there would never again be a world-wide flood? The answer is of course a rainbow.
A dove also flew to the Ark with an olive leaf in its beak as a sign of peace,
and renewal. This is loosely in part where we get the term, “extending an olive
branch.” The power of faith, righteousness, and devotion to God.
This morning though, our “ordinary”
person that God used to do extraordinary things is Abraham. In fact, his name
was originally Abram, and his wife Sarah’s name was originally Sarai, before
God told Abram that he would now be called Abraham, and that Sarai would now be
called Sarah. Like Noah, God made a “Covenant” or a promise to Abraham. We call
this promise the “Abrahamic Covenant”. As I also said last Sunday, at the Last
Supper Jesus made a “Covenant” or a promise with us, when he took the cup and said,
“this is the blood of the New Covenant”. The promise of Christ is that we have
forgiveness and salvation in Him. These “agreements,” or “promises,” or “covenants”
from God are all throughout the Bible.
While I do not want to rank
the five ordinary people that we are learning about from the Old Testament that
do extraordinary things in this sermon series, Abraham is a name that many of
us might have heard a lot lately. In fact, who here has heard of the “Abraham
Accords?” The Abraham Accords of 2020 were designed to created better trade and
relationships with the country of Israel, that is in the majority of the Jewish
faith, and the country of the Middle East, which in the majority is of the Muslim
faith. Further, our country, the United States has been very involved in the “Abraham
Accords,” and we are a country that is majority Christian. About two-thirds of
the people of the United States identify as Christian. We certainly have a variety
of beliefs or lack of beliefs in this country, but by far the majority religion
in this country in Christianity.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims though, all claim spiritual
descendancy from Abraham. The “Abrahamic Religions” of the world then, are
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In total this makes up about 55% of the population
of planet earth. Christianity is the world’s largest faith, followed by Islam,
and there are only about 16-million people of the Jewish faith in the whole
world. With a current world population about 8.3 billion, Christians, Muslims, and Jews then make up
about 4.3 billion people.
(Ordinary
People – Extraordinary God – Picture)
So, this morning, once
again, we are going to look at Abraham, an ordinary person, that God used to do
extraordinary things.
(Genesis 12:1
– Picture)
In looking at our scripture reading for this morning, once again, from
Genesis 12:1-3, we hear this, once again:
The Call of Abram
12 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. 2 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. 3 I will bless
those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the
families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen. 12:1-3, RSV).
(Genesis 12:1-3
– Picture)
Further, God tells Abram, who will be called
Abraham, this of the land of “Canaan” in Genesis 13:15-17:
15 for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. 16 I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. 17 Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you” (Gen. 13:15-17, RSV).
This, once again, is land of “Canaan,” or as it is called in the Book of
Exodus 3:8, “The Land of Milk and Honey,” or “The Promised Land” as it is
listed in scripture too. This of course in Exodus 3:8 is when Moses is preparing
the Jews to leave slavery under the Egyptian Pharoah, to go through the Red Sea,
to wander the wilderness for 40-years, and eventually get to “The Promised Land.”
God calls Abram, soon to
be renamed by God Abraham, and God tells Abraham that he will be the father of countless
people, of more people that there are starts in the sky. Now Abram, soon to be
Abraham was very wealthy and affluent, but if God never talked to him and made
a covenant with him, I doubt any of us would know anything about him today. In the
time of life, he was not ordinary, but today, we would not even know who he is
without the covenant that God made with him. So significant is Abraham, that one
of our most beloved Unites States Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was named after
the great “Father Abraham.”
(Abraham
and Family - Picture)
The other interesting
part of the story of Abraham was that Abraham, and his wife Sarah had only one
biological son, who they named “Isaac,” which means “he will laugh,” or “laughter”.
The “Covenant” or promise of God through Abraham then passed on to his son
Isaac. This same “Covenant” or “Birth Right” then continued down the line, to
Moses, to then the great “King David,” who God promised a decedent that would
be eternal or forever ruler. This promise of a savior is Jesus Christ, who once
again at the Last Supper took his cup, and said, “this is the blood of the new
covenant”. When you eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper or Communion,
we are remembering this “Covenant,” this promise through Christ that started
with God, to Adam, to Abraham, the great “King David,” and lastly to Jesus
Christ.
(Abraham
and Sarah – Picture)
Now getting back
to Abraham, according to the Bible Sarah gave birth to Isaac when she was about
ninety-years old, and Abraham was about one-hundred years old. Part this
promise from God to Abram, soon to be Abraham having a line of decedents that
today, once again, make up over half of the world’s 8.3 billion people. Part of
the promise of God, or the “covenant” of God, that we call the “Abrahamic
Covenant,” was that Sarah and Abraham would produce a male heir. At one hundred
years old and ninety years old, by the way!
(Abraham
and Isaac – Picture)
As you can see from this
portrait, Abraham and Sarah don’t look a day over twenty-years old do they?!
Without getting too deep into this story this morning, we
as Christians claim our decent though Abram, who soon will be called Abraham.
Muslims claim the same decent, but not through Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac,
but instead through Ishmael. Who is Ishmael? Ishmael is the son of Abraham and
his wife Sarah’s servant Hagar. So, Jews and Muslims both claim decent from the
great Father Abraham, but Jews and Christians claim decent from Isaac after Abraham.
The Old Testament, the Jewish Torah, the first five book of the Old Testament,
which is the Jewish or Hebrew Bible says that Jews decent is from Abraham to
Isaac and so on, as Christians do. Muslims, once again, claim there decent from
Abraham to Ishmael, and claim that Mohammed, the founder of Islam is a direct decedent
from Ishmael.
All this matters, because this figure in the Old Testament,
or Jewish Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament, or the Books
of Moses, as they are sometimes called, explain that Abraham, through God is the
“Father of many nations.”
Since God promised that Abraham would be the father of
many, have more descendants than the stars in the sky, and since we as
Christians trace our lineage back to him, God’s promises then matter. If the
land of Canaan, the promised land, Jerusalem were promised to Abraham and his
decedents, and since Jews and Christians trace our ancestry from Abraham, then
Isaac, and so on, then Israel is clearly Jewish land. Yet, Muslims who claim their
ancestry through Abraham and Ishmael have a different understanding of this. An
unavoidable reality though is the centuries of persecution, slaughter, and prejudice
towards Jews. After the Holocaust nearly killed all Jews in World War II, many
survivors than said they wanted to return to the land that God promised to them
through the great “Father Abraham”. Muslims, however, do not see “Canaan” or
the “Land of Milk and Honey” as promised land to the Jews. As a result,
Jerusalem and surrounding lands are “hot” real estate.
Efforts to create a Jewish country of Israel and majority Muslim
country of Palestine have been ongoing since the Jewish State or country of
Israel was formed in 1948. President Jimmy Carter, a good American Baptist
tried fervently to create a two-state solution, or a country for the Jews, and
one for the Palestinians. To this day, this problem has not been solved.
This goes back to “Father Abraham” and the “promise,” or the “Covenant” that God made with him that he would be the father of many nations. Further that his people would inherit “Canaan” or the “Land of Milk and Honey”.
(Abraham – Picture)
Brother and sisters, this is Abram, who God renamed
Abraham, “The Father of Many Nations,” to whom God promised his decedents
Canaan or “The Land of Milk and Honey”.
So does Abraham, one of five “Ordinary People, Extraordinary God,” do something
extraordinary? Well, if over half of the world’s population claim decadency from
the great “Father Abraham”, then I would say, yes indeed God took an ordinary
person, Abram, soon to be Abraham and did something extraordinary!
To make this a sermon that can walk out the door with us
this morning, let us look at some application points of why Abraham was an ordinary
person with and extraordinary God:
Genesis 12:1-3 records God's call
to Abram, containing a divine command to leave his home, a promise to make him
a great nation, and the ultimate vow that all peoples on earth will be blessed
through him.
The Call and the Promise
·
The Command: God tells Abram to leave his country, his
people, and his father's house to go to a land that God will show him.
·
The Blessing: God promises to make Abram a great
nation, bless him, make his name famous, and make him a source of blessing to
others.
·
The Protection: God states He will bless those who bless
Abram and curse anyone who treats him with contempt.
·
The Global Scope: The covenant concludes with the
promise that all families and peoples on earth will be blessed through Abram
Abraham is important in the Bible
because he is the first Hebrew patriarch, the receiver of
God's covenant, and the ultimate model of faith. Most users on Quora agree that his
obedience shaped the entire history of salvation. [1, 2,
3,
4]
The Covenant and Promises
·
Great Nation: God promised to make Abraham's
descendants into a great nation.
·
The Land: God promised the land of Canaan to his
family.
·
Universal Blessing: God promised that all families on
earth would be blessed through him, pointing forward to Jesus. [1, 2, 3]
An Example of Faith
·
Total Obedience: Abraham left his home and idols to
follow a call from God without knowing where he was going.
·
Justification: His trust in God was counted to him as
righteousness.
·
The Test of Isaac: He showed supreme trust in God by
being willing to offer his son Isaac on the altar. [1,
2, 3]
Father
of Many
·
Ancestry: He is the physical ancestor of the Jewish
people through Isaac and Arab peoples through Ishmael.
·
Spiritual Father: The New Testament calls all who
believe in God the "children of Abraham". [1, 2]
Brothers and sisters, God made a “covenant”
or “promise” to Abraham that we believe passed from Isaac, eventually to Moses,
eventually to the great King David, and eventually was eternally fulfilled
through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We all might feel “ordinary,” but
through God, He can use us to do extraordinary things! Be blessed this day and
always children of Abraham! Amen.
