Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.14 – April 1995

 

Curse And Redemption By Covenant

 

Sermon by Rev. A. R. Esselbrugge on Genesis 12:3

Scripture Readings: Genesis 12:1-9; Galatians 3:1-14

 

Brothers and Sisters, Young People, Boys and Girls.

If there is one thing that we should take home with us from our short time together today, then it is what we find in our verse here in Genesis 12 verse 3, and what the entire salvation history repeats, from Genesis to Revelation.  I pray we are all prepared to listen, and more, not just listen to me, but to the Word of God.

So what is that one thing we are to take home with us today?  From the very beginning, Christ’s grace, the mercy of God the Father and the blessing of the Holy Spirit, but above all else, Christ’s grace has been bound up with the earth and human society, and still is to this very day.  Christ is keenly interested in what is happening among us now.  He is, at this moment searching our hearts and reading our thoughts and motives.  He is here, and I hope, before God, that each one of us is supremely aware of that, from the back pews to the front here.

I want to take you back into Chapter 11 of Genesis for a moment.  There the people of earth were still small enough in number, language and culture to be able to live and work together.  But they began to fall further and further back to the original sin of the Fall of Eden.  They desired more and more to be independent of God, and they decided to build a tower: the Tower of Babel.  They chose to reject God’s promise to preserve the human race, and one day send a Saviour to crush the head of the evil one.  They were afraid of the world, but chose to establish their own defences and protection, and superstition and the worship of all kinds of things except the one true God, took over religion.

It’s happening again in our own part of the world today.  People are afraid of the conditions of the world in which we live, so pagan festivals are organised under the guise of Christianity and called ‘Revival’ meetings, and shops in our shopping centres sell magic potions and spells, and the amulets and idols you need from all corners of the earth.  You can choose which flavour you want, but no God, not the God of heaven and earth.

None of what happened at Babel, or what is happening now, and deceiving so many people and causing so many to blaspheme the name of our holy and wonderful Saviour in those horrible meetings where emotions are captured by the devil to ‘slay’ many… none of that should surprise us in the least.  Without faith in the pure Word of God people always begin to believe their own ideas about God, instead of clinging to what He has revealed about Himself.

God will allow us to follow our own paths for a time.  If we won’t listen, we’ll have to learn our lesson the hard way.  That’s what He did back at Babel.  They saw their empire begin to take on a mighty shape, and then God brought it to an end, and confused the language of the people, and fragmented them and scattered them across the earth.

But, as we see, if we will but look, the grace of God shines through all these ugly events.  Even after He had scattered the people across the earth, He never abandoned them.  In spite of everything, He still intended to send the One who would crush the head of the devil, and save the nations.  This great One, would do God’s will in everything, and His steps would follow the Word of God exactly.  He would be obedient for all, and take away the sins of the world.

As we sit here now, with the wonderful revelations of the New Testament salvation history, so accessible and familiar to us… we look back, and now know that the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and man is that One.  But back here in Genesis, God was only beginning to reveal the magnificent plan He had.  It would involve taking a group of people from among that Babel crowd, and setting them apart from everyone else.  He would do it like that, to show all the world that the Saviour would be completely different and unlike us, in our ungodliness and sin.  To those people, God would send His prophets.  Within them He would preserve the knowledge of His Name.  Because His chosen people would live apart, they would have to realise that their faith in the Saviour requires an absolute breaking with the sin, the immorality and idolatry and superstitions of the rest of the people of this world.  But as we look at our verses here, that nation wasn’t yet born.  It would come into being through one man, and the man God settled on was Abram.  Why He chose this man is something that can only be attributed to the sovereign will of God.  He was no better than anyone else.  His father’s house worshipped idols, but when God chooses to have fellowship with you or me or anyone at all, and graciously confers the blessing of eternal life upon us, we had all better understand that such a mercy rests only in the being of God.  There is nothing within us, as there was nothing in Abram, that moved God toward him.  God simply chose, and chooses according to His own pleasure.

But when He does, well, look at those two verses at the beginning of Genesis 12 and see how priceless, magnificent, glorious – words simply cannot describe the magnificence and magnitude of the promises that God confers upon those who are the objects of His love and grace.

God appeared to Abram; how, we don’t know, but God came down to him and made it clear to him that he was to leave his father’s house and family and land.  He was to move to another land.  The Lord Himself would show him.

Abram had to break with everything familiar and dear to him.  He was to separate himself from the sinful life he was accustomed to.  He was to simply move out and trust God; trust in the power and wisdom of God, not just for the end result, but for everything… food, water, children and clothing as well.

Congregation, do you hear what we are saying?  We are describing God’s acts and ways with a man who lived thousands of years ago, perhaps six to ten thousand years past, and we may be inclined to think that he was a primitive tribesman, even a stone-age type.  So, what he did, and the requirements God would have for a man like that, have to be different to what God wants today.  That’s a fatal mistake.  God hasn’t changed.  The basic outlook, ability, and motivations in the heart of the human soul haven’t changed one scrap either.

We don’t have to pack up and leave home, family and country like Abram had to, but there’s no escaping the necessity of breaking with the sin and sinfulness in our lives and our hearts.  Through faith in the promise of God, Abram was able to do that.  Through faith in the promise of God in Genesis 3:15, where God said to the serpent Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel” …through faith in the faithfulness of God, and God’s covenanted promise, Abram made the break from sin.  Through that same faith, we may do the same.

We also must follow the way of the Lord.  Sometimes God leads us along paths and events that cause us pain and confusion, but if we continue to follow Him in faith, we will eventually receive His blessing.  When we face a cancer, or a major financial setback, perhaps family tragedy, we want answers and cry, “Why, God, why?”  But many times… most times… God is silent about the details and simply says, “Leave your sin behind; leave everything you get a sense of security from behind; trust me.  I know what I’m doing; my grace is sufficient for you.  Now hear my promises.”

That’s God’s way.  It takes courage to go against the trend and overwhelming current of the behaviour and life of the world.  But by faith in the power and promises of God, in Christ His Son, we can.

The Lord strengthened Abram in his obedience by giving him a promise; six, in fact.  Abram had to trust the Lord simply because the Lord called him, and yet, the Lord also wanted to make it easier for Abram by way of a promise.  Like Abram, we must follow the Lord simply because He calls us, but we also have those wonderful promises to sustain us.

The Lord promised Abram he would become a great nation, and eventually he became the father of the people of Israel, from whom the Christ was born.

The Lord promised He would bless Abram, and He did so in marvellous ways.

The Lord promised to make his name great… and we still speak of him now, because the Saviour was born from his family line, and we now, if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, are actually spiritual children of Abram.

But the extraordinary kindness of God shows itself in the way God covenants Himself to Abram in verse 3.  There, in a pledge of special love, the great, mighty and awesome God of heaven and earth comes down to us.  Here we can thrill under the special relationship God brings to us.  God so embraces us with His favour that He has promised, before Abram, and through him to all God’s people in Christ Jesus, that He will bless our friends, and take vengeance on our enemies.  Such a promise, such a rich gift reminds us of the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 8, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him… who shall separate us from the love of God? …we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us… nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”

The real crown of these blessings is the way this promise pointed Abram, and still now keeps pointing us, to the Saviour, Jesus.  All people on earth would be blessed through him.

And, strengthened by that promise, Abram left everything behind as he departed from the country of his father, Terah.  The Lord gave him faith.  As much as it surely must have hurt Abram to leave family and friends, as much as it must have caused him to have all kinds of doubts and nervousness about cutting himself loose from everything he’d grown up with and received security from, Abram surrendered himself to the Lord and put his life into the Lord’s hands.  The Spirit of God was upon him and led him out.

We may marvel at a man like Abram, but the work of God, God’s faithfulness, His marvellous plan of salvation for a people, upon whom He should have turned His back… His mercy and love… these are the things that should stand out for us more than anything.  That’s the entire story of the Bible, salvation history.

Congregation… every time you are privileged to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, under God, what you do is exactly the culmination of what God began in Genesis.  You remember again, and we are by faith to believe, that God came down.  He condescended to join Himself to us, to bless us, to curse those who curse us, to bless those who bless us, and through Jesus rescue us from sin and separate us to Himself.

Remember and believe, in Christ Jesus, from the very beginning Christ’s grace has been bound up with the earth and human society, and most especially with your soul.

Amen.