We are going to do some heavy lifting in the next thirty minutes. We are covering the life of the man who was the foundational figure for the children of Israel and we are going to grasp and master a theological concept that is critical to understanding both the Old and New Testament.

Are you ready for this?

In this series so far we have charted God’s goodness and the downward spiral of the human race in Genesis 1-11. Today we are covering Genesis 12 -22! In Gen. 1 God blessed Adam but Adam and his descendants disobeyed so God started over and in Gen. 9 we read that God blessed Noah but things go from bad to worse. There is a climax at the tower of Babel where people are trying to be like gods.

It is easy to wonder if God is going to run out of patience. Is His dream of community with and among humans going to be lost forever? The answer is no! He changes His strategy and begins to work with one man who was formerly named Abram but God changes his name to Abraham. (means the father of many nations)

God formed a covenant with Abraham. Covenant is our key word for today.

Covenant: A means to establish a binding relationship where none existed before based on faithfulness to a solemn vow. Faithfulness is the core virtue of covenant behavior. Through Abraham something remarkable is happening. God, who created the heavens and the earth, is entering into a relationship with an ordinary human being. God is promising himself to fallen people. As we look at Abraham’s life we discover four dramatic encounters he had with God that kept clarifying their relationship.

DTR: Define the relationship. There were many of these moments in the life of Abraham. God was continually testing him to allow him to define the relationship. (use illustration of young couple) Someone brings up commitment and asks the big questions. (It’s time to paint or get off the ladder.”

DTR 1: The Call to Leave

“1Then the LORD told Abram, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. 2I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others. 3I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you."

God had a single command for Abraham: Leave! Leave your country, your people, your tribe, and your father’s household—everything safe and familiar. He was also to leave his old gods. Abraham did not know the God who was calling him to this radical step of faith.

There’s an Old Testament principle here. It would be the “Principle of Separation.” God says, “Be separate from other gods—old values, old priorities—and be separate for the one true God.” This principle was in effect for Abraham, and it is still in effect for us today.

We have to understand the choice that Abraham is facing. Abraham is not some uncouth nomad with nothing to lose. He is a prosperous merchant. Verse 5 we read that he had accumulated many possessions, enough to have a whole retinue of servants and slaves. He is living in an urban setting in Mesopotamia. He was known, respected and secure. It was a place of safety and familiarity.

Abraham is told to leave for a wilderness where he has no lands, no networks, no connections, and no prospects. Humanly speaking, this move is financial, vocational and maybe even literal suicide.

God tells Abraham, “ Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go!” Go where? “Go to the land I will show you.” Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we talked about men having problems communicating at times. What I really said is that we struggle with repeating all the details of a conversation. Let’s be honest. How many of you know that this is not much information to give your wife?

Can you imagine the conversation? “Sarah, pack up all our belongings. We’re moving away from everyone and everything familiar to us.” “Where are we going?” “I don’t know exactly. I’ll know it when I see it.”

You have to believe that Sarah would have asked what any wife would ask: “How will we know if we get lost?” Where will we get directions?” Abraham replies, “We won’t get lost. God will tell me when we get there.” “God who?” Remember Sarah didn’t know this God. “Uh, I didn’t catch his last name.” This is the only time in recorded history that a wife would ask, “Where in the world are we?” and her husband would say, “God only knows,” and he would be speaking literal truth.

Is God asking you to leave anything? Is he calling you to walk away from some idol, any sin, or some fear? Is God calling you to go someplace, to take a step of faith, to risk for him, or to start serving in some new area of ministry? Do you ever trust God as Abraham did?

The very first words of Abraham ever recorded in Scripture are, “As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you they will say, This is his wife. Then they will kill me but let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

This is not a great moment in the history of husbandry. Sarah ends up getting stuck in Pharaoh’s harem, and God has to intervene. Pharaoh ends up giving Abraham a lesson in integrity, which apparently doesn’t strike a real deep cord, because in Genesis 20 Abraham uses the same lie on another king named Abimelech. Abraham was struggling to understand the concept of following the God of the Ten Commandments.

He did get some things right. In chapter 13 and 14, especially things that pertained to possessions. There is a conflict in chapter 13 between Abraham’s staff and his nephew Lot’s employees over grazing rights. Because he is generous and humble about it Abraham experiences the blessings of a generous God.

In chapter 14, Abraham interacts with two kings over the spoils of war. The king of Sodom, offers to allow him to keep the spoils of war but Abraham refuses because he doesn’t want to be beholding to this king. The other king, Melchizedek, is an intriguing character. He is mentioned only briefly and is called the priest of the Most High God. Abraham is finding that God is at work in other people and places. In Genesis 14:18 we read that Melchizedek blessed Abram. He taught Abraham that our possession are all a gift from God and belong to Him. This is the first reference to tithing. “Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” Tithing is a declaration of trust in God that He will provide for you because you are in covenant with Him. When you give and tithe you are living in covenant with God and when you don’t tithe and give you are saying in essence to God, “I don’t trust you. I would rather hoard for myself instead of living in a covenant relationship with God.”

DTR 2: The Cutting of a Covenant

Some things in life make sense and some things seem to baffle us. God’s desire to enter into covenant with Abraham and us is one of those things that seem almost beyond comprehension. There are two kinds of covenants: bilateral (between two equals) and unilateral (between a stronger and a weaker partner) The covenant between God and Abraham was clearly unilateral.

In most translations we read, “The Lord made a covenant.” But in the Hebrew it literally says, “The Lord cut a covenant.” This is a shocking and powerful use of language. In those days, when people made a covenant, they would take animals and literally cut them in half. They would set the two pieces next to each other, side by side forming a walkway between them. Then they would go for a covenant walk. They would pass between the pieces of the animal, and the symbolic meaning of this walk was, “May this be my fate if I don’t live up to the covenant, if I am not faithful.” Jeremiah 34:18 says, “Those who violated my covenant, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.”

It is God who is taking the walking promising to keep His covenants. It is truly amazing. There’s a kids version of this today or at least in my day, “Cross my heart hope to die” and for the really serious we would add, “Stick a needle in my eye.”

Notice in Genesis 15:17 who takes the covenant walk in Abrahams story.

6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 He also said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." 8 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?" 9 So the LORD said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon."

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river [d] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

God is so desirous for someone to trust Him that He condescends and takes the walk. Fire and smoke is always a sign of God in the Old Testament. Let me give you a little New Testament teaching. Now you understand the significance when Jesus turns to His disciples and says at the last supper, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The old covenant had been broken by sinful humans. The covenant was violated and somebody had to pay. Jesus says, “I’ll pay. I’ll suffer. I will cut a new unforgettable and unshakable covenant with my blood.” Let this image be in your mind the next time you take communion. Coming to the table of communion will take on a whole new significance.

God is saying to Abraham, “I am going to make a nation and community out of your decendants. Do you know what the problem was with this promise? Abraham had no descendants. He had no kids. What was worse was he was in his eighties, Sarah was in her seventies and she was barren. They had a promise but no children. They have a word from God in their hearts but no baby in their arms.

In chapter 16 Sarah decides to take matters into her own hands and she decides to offer her servant Hager to Abraham so that he can sleep with her and she will bare them a son. Sarah is trying to do God’s work. She is discouraged. It seems that Abraham is a little passive here. He doesn’t take any kind of real moral stand he just agrees and goes along with the plan. A little boy is born and they call him Ishmael. This is a powerful illustration of trying to do God’s will but doing it our way instead of His.

1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

In telling the story of Ishmels’s conception and birth, we discover that the writer is very artistically crafting this passage by repeating the words from the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Back in the garden the writer said, “the woman took some of the fruit and gave some to her husband.” Literally the text says, “And the man listened to the voice of the woman.” And here the writer says, “And Abraham listened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai took. . . Hagar. . .gave her to her husband to be his wife.” It is another fall. This is not trusting covenant behavior! This is another reminder of the power of sin to break the community God wants to establish.

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty [a] ; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."

3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram [b] ; your name will be Abraham, [c] for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."

God decides to give Abraham a sign to help him remember the covenant.

9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

Imagine that you are Abraham, God comes to you and says, “There’s going to be a sign for our covenant. (The sign was to be a constant reminder.) Then God continues, “This is the sign for our covenant: I want you to be circumcised.” Now imagine you, as Abraham, have just received the news. Don’t you feel like saying, “Hey, Noah got a rainbow! Couldn’t we make the sign something a little more gentle? How about a secret handshake or a decoder ring or something like that?” In all seriousness, the critical thing you need to remember is what we read in verse 23,

23 On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him.

DTR 3: The Call to Hope

God gave Abraham a specific and staggering promise. We looked at it earlier. He was supposed to father a nation. The problem was that he was old and they had no children together. Out of this painful situation, God brings laughter.

Abraham and Sarah did not have perfect faith. They both laughed. In 17:17 Abraham laughed and in Chapter 18 Sarah laughed. Why did they laugh? Visitors come and tell them that Sarah will bear a child and the dream of a new community will be born. Abraham is ninety nine and Sarah is in her late eighties. She is listening to this conversation from within the tent. Verses 10--13

9 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him.
"There, in the tent," he said.
10 Then the LORD [c] said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son."

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master [d] is old, will I now have this pleasure?"

13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' 14 Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son."

15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh."

But he said, "Yes, you did laugh." They are full of doubt but they seek to obey God and live in a hope that seems beyond their reach. Finally, one day a child is born, God tells them to name him Isaac. He is aptly named because Isaac means, “He laughs.”

21:6 “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” She was right!

21:10 Hagar story. She doesn’t call them by name. She dehumanizes them.

21:15—17

21:20 God does not play favorites.

DTR 4: A Call to Deeper Faith

When you look at the life of Abraham it is clear that God is shaping a relationship. He called him first to leave everything he knows. That is a huge DTR moment. Next, he cuts a covenant with Abraham and it is a historic moment in his faith. Third, Abraham and Sarah are called to hope in a promise that has begun to feel hopeless. But as they walk in faith God gives them a son.

You might wonder, isn’t that enough? Haven’t they matured in their faith? Could there be one more ultimate test to define their relationship? Genesis 22 contains the ultimate DTR. Just when we think maybe we have grown all we can grow spiritually, God will say, ‘Let’s take it to another level.” Just when you think you cannot possibly be stretched anymore, you discover that it is time for one more DTR.

Genesis 22:1 is a very important first sentence. “1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.”

The writer wants us to know that this is just a test. The strain of reading this will be too hard on the reader if you don’t know what Abraham didn’t know and that is that this is just a test. God is asking Abraham to take a shocking step of faith. He is asking, “Will you trust me even when you don’t understand?”

When Abraham says, “Here I am.” He is not giving God his geographic location. All his life he has followed God’s voice. Genesis 22:2 “2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

This is the first time the word love is used in the bible. It is used to describe a father’s love for his child. A father willing to sacrifice his beloved son. This son is the promise of a dream of community.

4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

I have always found it fascinating that Abraham had enough faith in God to believe that they both would be coming back! Notice that he is the loving and protecting father as he lets Isaac carry the wood but he carries the fire and knife.

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"

"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.

"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

This is the little boy he would check on in the night to make sure he was still breathing. This was the boy named laughter he had held so many times and chuckled to himself at the impossibility of it all. Once again he answers Here I am! Here I am God. Where else am I going to go? Who else am I going to turn to? Who else would I follow? God says, “Don’t harm your son. I know now that you fear me, you honor me, you reverence me, and you trust me.” The dream of God’s community continues. In chapter 25:9, you can read of the final moments of Abraham’s life. His two sons are there for the first time since they were separated at Isaac’s infancy. The world still waits for the descendants of these two brothers to live together like brothers under the covenant of love.

Abraham’s life is a life of obedience to a God he couldn’t see. It is a story of trust and covenant in the God of creation who wants nothing more than for us to walk in community with Him. God’s community is built on covenant.

I want you to reflect on your own commitment to community with God. Serving God is all or nothing. There is no halfway. Will you get it right every moment of every day? No, but the bigger question is have you laid your all on the altar of sacrifice symbolically before God? What is it that you have drug in here with you today that you need to surrender to God? The altar has always been a symbol of surrender. That’s why we are using them today.

Closing story of wife and mother praying to go to the next level with God.

This sermon and series is based on material provided by J. Ortberg and the OTC series.