Clough Genesis Lesson 41

God starts a new thing with Abraham – Genesis 12:1-3

Beginning with Genesis 12 we have begun a new dispensation in the history of the Old Testament. The word “dispensation” is a word that means age, a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s sovereign plan. I’ll run that by again because it’s a basic definition. A dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s plan. And the Bible, in order to be interpreted carefully, must be interpreted not only in the times in which it was written, and not only in terms of the language in which it was written, but it must be interpreted according to the dispensation in which it was written.

Now “dispensations” is a bad word to a lot of people because they have been taught that dispensationalism is a cult; that dispensationalism teaches six or seven different ways to be saved, or something else. Well I’m here to say that I’m a dispensationalist, I’m not a cultist, I have never taught there are six or seven different ways to be saved and I don’t know where this false information came from but it is false information. To show you a little bit about dispensations and give you a feel for them, let’s compare three; the one of Genesis 1-11, the one of the Law, and the one of the church age, and we’ll compare those dispensations on four different levels to give you kind of a sense of what we are talking about.

Let’s first think about the object of faith; what is it that men focus on when they trust in God. In the days before Abraham, men focused on what they knew of God; God was a Trinity then, like He is now, although it wasn’t as clearly revealed, so the object of faith was still God the Son. In the Old Testament times, during the days of the tabernacle, during the many revelations of the prophets, they again focused on God, the Godhead, and one particular person of the Godhead, God the Son. So the object remained the same during the days of the Law. And obviously during the church age when God the Son was the One who became incarnate we have once again a focusing on God the Son. So the object of faith remains unchanged from dispensation to dispensation.

Let’s look at the means of salvation; what about the objective means of salvation? The means of salvation in the Old Testament prior to the days of Abraham was the anticipated work of Jesus Christ on the cross; this was shown clearly by the blood sacrifices, so we can honestly say, though not historical, it was by way of anticipation that Christ’s cross was the objective means of salvation in that dispensation. And then in the dispensation of the Law or dispensation of Israel we have again the cross, looked forward to by the many rituals of the Mosaic Law. And obviously since the cross historically occurred we look back to the cross as the objective means of salvation. So in all dispensations the objective means have remained the same.

What about the subject of means? What about the means by which you and I appropriate salvation that is offered to us by God’s grace. Once again, it has remained the same from dispensation to dispensation. In the days before Abraham the means of salvation was by faith. No man was ever saved by keeping God’s commandments perfectly, because if you want to be saved by being good you have to be perfectly good; no one can be perfectly good, ergo, no one can be saved. So therefore, since the works salvation is out it must be a by faith salvation plan. And then under the Law it was still people being saved by faith; it was not because they kept the Ten Commandments, no one can keep the Ten Commandments and Christ made that very, very clear, not that we don’t try, but the point remains is that that is an effect but not a cause; it is a result but not a means. And then obviously in the church age, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved;” it couldn’t be expressed more clearly that the means of salvation is by faith.

So in all those regards the dispensations are the same; no change. But there is one change and that is in regard to the fourth point and that is with regarding the information available to believers, that has changed. We can’t stand up here with a straight face and tell you that Noah had as much information about Christ as you do. You know where Christ was born. You know where Christ died; you know how many days He was in the grave. You know Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. You know the attendant circumstances of the death on the cross. You know the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You know the ascension of Christ. You know that Christ was born of David. You know that Jesus Christ was perfect God and perfect man in one person forever without confusion. So you know all those things; they did not. And so we have back here a primitive version of the gospel. We also have it universally spread in that all men, because they are the sons of Noah, all men, the sons of Ham, the sons of Japheth, the sons of Shem, all had access to this information so it was universal and primitive.

Now during the days after Abraham, and this is the major change in this dispensation, during the days after Abraham we have a detailed gospel but we have it local; that is, it is not being revealed to all over the face of the earth. It is only being revealed in one location and that is a major shift in history. And finally, we come over here to the church age when we have a detailed gospel being witnessed to throughout the world, so once again we’re back to universal.

That’s the flow of history and that’s the significance of what’s going on in Genesis 12. We make such a point of this because now as we begin with Genesis 12:1 we are face to face with something that modern man finds extremely distasteful, and this is probably one of the most distasteful claims of the Christian faith. In fact, this is probably a claim that you have personally been embarrassed about in the past, when you’ve been in a conversation, and that is the claim of religious exclusivism.

Let’s look at this doctrine: exclusivism. What do we mean by exclusivism? We mean that there is only one religion that’s right; that’s what we mean. Exclusivism means that truth exclusively appears in one and only one religion. Now the moment you say this immediately there’s something that rises up in men’s hearts that says, why, this is bigoted, this is being prejudice, this is wrong, this is not loving to assert this; why can’t you Christians be like the Hindus, after all, they say everybody is under the same tent and we just kind of embrace all religions. Now if you’ve been in this position let me give you a few tips. The first thing is don’t you ever apologize for exclusivism. The moment you apologize for exclusivism, that is the moment you have just become a traitor to the whole plan of God through Jesus Christ. You have undermined His truth by admitting that you are embarrassed by His claim to exclusivism.

Let me show you that your critic is the one who is the bigot and not you. It’s a very simple proof and very easy to see. Your critic is saying that Christianity is wrong by making the claim to exclusivism. All right, let’s see what our critic friend looks like. He starts off with human viewpoint which assumes that all truth comes out of man’s heart. He, in other words, says nix on revelation; there is no revelation from God and therefore finite man sits here and he cranks out truth out of his own finite resources. That’s that man’s starting point. Now I will show you that beginning on that starting point he is the bigot; he’s contradicted himself to call you a bigot. Now here’s how the proof operates. If he starts with the fact that man is limited and finite, all truth coming out of man, it would then follow that no man can make an absolute or universal claim—the reason because an absolute or universal claim can’t be made from a finite resource. Only an infinite resource, only an infinite mind, only an omniscient mind can make an absolute or universal claim. But what has this man, who claims you are a bigot, just done? He has said for sure it’s the case that God did not reveal Himself locally. That is a universal statement. So here is our friend, who’s turning around and calling us the bigot, but he has made the most profound and bigoted statement of the conversation, in the name of love, in the name of consideration of other people, starting from this assumption, knowing that no one can make an absolute universal statement he’s made an absolute universal statement, namely that there are no such things as authoritative religions emanating locally. Who said there can’t be? Has this critic gone through the heights and the depths of the universe? Does he have access to all the facts that ever were or ever shall be? And on the basis of this infinite encyclopedia of knowledge come up with the fact that there can’t be such a religion as Christianity. Where do we get this from? It’s a complete dogmatic absolute statement asserted into thin air. So our critic, then, is the bigot, not those of us who claim to be and who are in turn being called bigots.

Let’s start now with the Christian position on the divine viewpoint basis. On this basis God speaks to man, and so therefore here’s finite limited man and here’s the infinite God speaking to that man and out from infinity comes perfect knowledge. We call this revelation. And since He has given a message to this man, and this man then says I must spread this message around me, and I am the source of this message, and since the message collides with everybody else, I am the only one that’s right. That’s right! But it’s not because I generated the message, it’s because the message was entrusted to me. Now what’s bigoted about that? All the claim is that we as Christians are making, when we say there is only one religion that is right, the only thing we’re saying is that God has so designed history that we are His channel of truth. We didn’t ask for it; God didn’t take a Gallop Poll and check to see who was most enthusiastic for His plan and then design His plan accordingly, like our foreign policy and domestic policy are designed. God chose to design a plan that was pleasing to Him, without your advice and without my advice. There’s God’s sovereign initiative.

Now at this point many, many important things follow. Let’s look at them carefully so we appreciate what it is we’re reading at this point in our Bibles. From the flood until the time of Abraham we have all the world’s cultures being gradually developed as the sons of Noah spread across the face of the earth. These cultural compartments or divisions, whatever you want to call them, these cultural compartments are all affected by sin, because the Bible claims man is totally depraved, that is, he has an old sin nature that affects all of his being. Said another way, it means that man is depraved between the eyes, man is depraved in the brain, man is depraved in his emotions, man is depraved in his will, and because of this, man corporately is depraved and wherever it is we can we are going to rebel against God’s truth. That is our beautiful heart. So all these cultures, were it not for God’s sustaining grace, would begin to crater.

Now beginning with Abraham God takes one of these cultures out of the line of Shem, and He says I am going to work exclusively with this culture. Now what’s the result of all this? The result is that He’s not working with the other, it’s very simple. Isn’t that true? If God says He’s working with one culture the conclusion is that He’s not working with the other cultures. All right, if God is not working with the other cultures, doesn’t it follow that these cultures are going to gradually disintegrate under the power of sin? Not disintegrate necessarily physically but spiritually they’re going to deteriorate. And that’s what we observe in history. We observe when we go far, far back in ancient history that there was a primitive monotheism, and then as man was left on his own and as things began to crater and crater and crater and crater and crater he developed polytheism; the Greeks, with Mount Olympus; the Canaanites with Mount Zephon; the Hindus with their pantheism and the Ganges and so on. All of this is the result of God’s abandoning the cultures of the world.

Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 4 for confirmation of this point. Try to follow this because here is where the Bible will begin to shape your thinking about the cultures of the world. It will also be a time when the Holy Spirit can take this material and work into our hearts a missionary vision, which many of us lack. Deuteronomy 4:19, as Moses speaks, he gives a warning about the people not to become idolatrous, “Lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and all the host of heaven, and you should be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God has divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. [20] But the LORD has taken you,” now you see the difference? “All nations under heaven, but the LORD has taken you.” Now there’s a difference. Verse 20 is talking about God’s plan with Israel; verse 19 is talking about God’s abandonment of all Gentile cultures.

Now this has important implications for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It means, let’s take India for one, I’m not picking on India but because India is the fountain of a lot of Oriental religion that is pouring in, like a flood in the United States, if you haven’t seen a Hare Krishna and a local guru or something you may not be aware of this. But Oriental religion is coming in very rapidly in the United States and my uneasiness as a pastor is that most Christians are not at all equipped to handle this… not at all equipped to handle this problem. And this is why in our education committee we’re training our teachers right now on how to handle this kind of a problem.

All right, say India here; now India comes up with Hinduism and Hinduism is a brilliant religion, it seems to be a very open-minded religion; it’s one that seems to incorporate everything and everybody, why we follow Christ, and we follow Krishna and a number of years back George Harrison’s famous popular song, My Sweet Lord, was being sung even by Christians because the naïve Christians thought that George Harrison was praising God when he said my sweet Lord. He wasn’t. If you listen to the song carefully what he was saying was Hallelu, Hallelu, and then he shifts in the middle of the song to Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. What he was Krishna and Christ are the same, just two names for the same thing. That can’t be! That denies the whole Scripture. George Harrison, of course, knew what he was doing and he was laughing at all the Christians who thought his song was talking about Christ. He was making money off of silly believers.

Hinduism came out of India but the Indian culture, according to Deuteronomy 4:19, is an abandoned culture spiritually. The abandonment clause here in verse 19 means that any religion that comes out of the Gentiles, from 2000 BC on to the present day is a degenerate religion. It is not blessed of God; it has not been authorized by God. So repeat, the conclusion of all this matter is that no religion emanating from any area outside of Israel after 2000 BC is legitimate. God has condemned all religion by abandoning the culture. Now it’s true that there is a race in history to get information to the four corners of the earth and here’s why. As time went on, and only Israel contained its truth, these other cultures, the truth gradually dried up. They had it and then it fades out. They had information about Noah and it gradually was lost. They had information about Christ coming again and it gradually was lost. And so in society after society myths began to grow and to choke out, like a garden full of weeds, it began to choke, choke, choke and choke out the truth. Here and there glimpses of this early revelation remained. Remember when I quoted Beowulf, an essay that most of you have studied in high school English at one time or another, and you look at Beowulf carefully you will notice all the elements of Genesis 1-6. There in England’s oldest epic is preserved the Japhetic memory of the early primitive revelation; then gradually it was lost.

And so when this situation sets up, and if God loves all men everywhere, how does He resolve the situation. The answer: a new thing that starts in history with Abraham. The new thing that begins with Abraham is world missions, horizontal dissemination of the truth. Missions are made necessary the moment local revelation occurred. It is not an act of arrogance to send missionaries into a foreign land. What it is a confession of is that revelation has occurred only here, these people out here don’t have the revelation and we are transporting that revelation horizontally in time. Now this is opposed. We have increasing strictures against missionary activity in the world; in fact, if the United Nations treaty, the genocide treaty ever passes the United States Senate you will see a decreed destruction of all United States missionary work; it’s that simple. The founders of the United Nations and the founders of the genocide treaty legislation, at which they have tried to get every Congress since 1945, they have tried to pass this legislation, every time the conservatives have beat it down, but it goes on and it goes on and it goes on because the head of both political parties want to destroy missionary work. So we have to, as Christians, be on guard against both of the leadership of both of the parties, unfortunately. So missionary work is a corollary to Abraham.

Let’s go again; why missionary work? Because you have all these people out here, you have only one group that the truth is kept in, so the truth has to go this way instead of coming down from heaven this way. No longer is God going to reveal Himself in India, to China, to Australia, to Europe, to America this way; only one nation, Israel, and from that nation are you going to get disseminated information.

Now let’s turn to Genesis 12:1 and see the details of this new plan, this new moment in history. “Now the LORD said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” Now let’s draw some applications off of verse 1 for a moment, just kind of stop right here and think through; this verse is a result or an expression of God’s sovereign interference into history. God now officially interferes with what’s happening. He’s let these other cultures go but now He says I interfere. I do not consult anyone; I interfere with whom I please, when I please, how I please. That is an expression of sovereign initiative by God. When this takes place we can make these three operational conclusions, principles that carry over into the Christian life. One of these is: therefore, God’s plan does not depend upon our efforts, of our works, because Abraham was not consulted, the nations were not consulted, no man was brought into this, it was God’s initiative, therefore God’s plan is totally secure. You can no more jam God’s plan than you could stand in front of a tank and expect to stop it. The point remains that God’s plan cannot be stopped.

The second application: while God’s sovereign plan cannot be stopped, God’s sovereign plan works through human means. For example, notice in verse 1, “Get thee out of thy country,” and then the last verb in verse 1 is then “I will show you.” The point is, if Abraham doesn’t get out, God will not show him. So God’s sovereign plan works through human responsibility or volition. It doesn’t negate it. God, in order to carry out His sovereign plan doesn’t turn us into machines and robots and automatons. He uses us. Now how He uses us I have no inkling. Here’s the mystery and many of you have struggled with this, I know when the feedback cards come in. The problem is, if God is totally sovereign, how can He totally control you? How can He totally control us? I have no idea how He can; I just know that the Bible says He does. Many times, to cite an illustration of a mystery of how this works and it’s just frustrating to try to think how it works, many times have I taught from this pulpit, been exegeting a passage of Scripture, going through it verse by verse, pointing out this doctrine, that doctrine, this application, that application, it turns out that that particular Sunday there was visiting person X and person Y who had a particular problem that was met just by that particular reference that I made that Sunday. Now how does that work out? I don’t know how it works out, all I know is, if I am faithful as a pastor to constantly teach, day in, day out, week after week, whether I feel like it or not, the Word of God, then God the Holy Spirit takes that and feeds people with it. I have no idea, I don’t see light, there’s not a light saying so and so will be in the service this morning and you will say when you see so and so thus and such. There are no secret messages from God’s CIA on who is coming to church on Sunday morning. Yet nevertheless, it works out this way. You figure it out and let me know, you’ll be a very famous individual.

The third application: the first one is that we can’t interfere with God’s plans because they’re sovereign. The second one is that God’s plans work through our action. The third thing is that God has abandoned the entire world in favor of His Word. Turn to Hebrews 11:8, in this chapter on faith we have Abraham being addressed, and in this address several interesting points are made. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing where he went.” Now just look at that again. “He went out,” he obeyed, “now knowing where he went.”

Ah, look at what a beautiful picture you’ve got here of your decision making through the week. Before you can make a decision, particularly men can understand this in business, you’ve got to have information. You don’t sit there and look at your local biorhythm chart to figure out how you’re supposed to spend the company’s money for the next week or two. So therefore, you try to obtain as much information as you can before you make a decision. It’s true of every business decision, academic decision and so on. There’s only one problem. Can you ever really obtain enough information to make a perfect decision and the answer is no. You never can obtain enough information to make a perfectly secure decision. Isn’t that true; a lot of men think they can but they really can’t. That’s why a lot of men have an arrogant attitude toward the Word of God, oh let momma, she takes care of the spiritual things in our home, I’m a big man, I know everything, I make my decisions all by myself, I have such a fat head I can assume all the infinite data that’s necessary to run my company. Baloney! If you, as a man, knew that much information why aren’t you on Wall Street; you can make a killing in the stock market if you knew all the business data; you can’t because you don’t. So it’s obvious that no male or female has that equipment aboard to make that kind of a decision. You’re kidding yourself.

So let’s look more realistically at what’s happening. When you make a decision you are making a faith transaction every single time. And you’re going to go one way or the other way, but you’re going to go either way, when you make a decision; you’ve got to. Here’s how it works. Suppose you have a business deal out here that you’re working with, a management deal or something. You come into this thing, you obtain as much data as you can and you come out with a decision. At the point you make the decision you have got to take a step that is grounded on something other than the data you’ve got because the data you have assembled isn’t enough to make your decision. So you’re going to have to exercise faith in your autonomous self that, well, I’ve got it all under control, no sweat, I’ve got it all under control with emphasis on the “I,” or you can say before God that I trust I have obtained as much information as I can about this thing and I am going to go ahead and make a decision and I am going to leave it in the Lord’s hands, open to His correction if necessary, open to His change if necessary, open to His new data if necessary, but it will be an expression of my confidence in God.

Let’s look at God’s character. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is just, loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal, these are some of the attributes of God and one of these is that God is omnipresent and He is omniscient. Well now, if God is omniscient doesn’t it follow that God knows everything about that business deal; doesn’t it follow that He knows all the market things in the future; doesn’t it follow He knows all about your future trials? Yes. He has a perfect data bank of information. That’s God’s omniscience. But that doesn’t mean He is going to tell you which way to jump. He is going to give you principles and at that point you’ve got two hands that are holding you up; one hand is trust that all right, I’ve done the best I can, I’m going to walk by faith, resting on God’s good character to let me know if I’m wrong. The other one is I am going to rest in my self-made autonomous being.

Now Abraham, in Hebrews 11:8, obeyed, “now knowing.” He made a profound decision, not only to change his faith, a decision to move 2,000 miles and he didn’t have Mayflower movers to do it. He had a decision to give up all of his holdings and transport his financial resources into an economy he knew not of. Why did he do this? Because when all the data was in he still did not know where he was going; he just knew that God, speaking with His omniscience, said go. Yes sir, I go! Now at the time that we respond this way on a decision like this we have to trust that the word that is given to us comes to us out of a total data bank. So when we read, again in verse 8, “when he was called to go out into a place,” meaning that the Word of God said go, Abraham, get out of here, move, that that command, that imperative was a word that came out of a perfect data bank and had all the access to all the information needed, so since although Abraham didn’t personally have all the data, he knew God who did have all the data. And so therefore he said, yes sir, and he obeyed.

Hebrews 11:9, “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, in a strange [foreign] country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. [10] For he looked for a city which has foundations,” now that is sarcasm, verse 10 is implied sarcasm, because what it’s saying is that if he didn’t do it, if he was the typical American autonomous male who wants to make all his decisions by himself without reference to Scripture, faith, or anything else, if he’s that kind of an individual he is building a city that has no foundation, it’s sitting in thin air, it has no foundation whatsoever because it’s not grounded on a perfect data bank—God’s character. So there’s the choice.

Now one little side note about verse 8 before we leave it, and that is Abraham did not know where this land was, but it says that he was called to go to a land that God would show him. Now here’s the most marvelous thing. Let’s look inside Abraham’s mind, he’s got this decision. Here’s his business decision down here and before he makes a decision he’s got his little check list going. Now one of the questions you’ve got to do before you decide anything, whether it’s a choice of going to college, whether it’s a choice of who you’re getting married to, whether it’s the choice of whether you should buy this thing or buy this thing, whether you should save your money, whether you should invest your money here, whether you should get this job or that job, before you make any decision what do you have to have? You’ve got to have your goals and some of your obligations in mind. You have to have some idea what the future holds, don’t you. And so therefore let’s sum that word up by “destiny.” You ought to have some idea of your destiny in history. You don’t just play your life one moment to the next; now that’s the way most people do but they’re going to get a big sharp surprise when the game’s all over.

Abraham did not know his destiny. Did he know his destiny at Genesis 12:1; no, not yet. Did God? Yes. What was Abraham’s destiny? To set up a missionary people that would reach the earth. Let’s put this in here but we’ll put it in brackets because that means God knows his destiny but he doesn’t, so we’ll say Abraham equals a missionary, that’s his destiny, but it’s kept from him. But not knowing this destiny means that when he goes to settle in the land area, he can’t have any criteria to pick what land would be best for a missionary to dwell in. So the place we’ll put here, and he doesn’t know that because that is a function of his destiny and he doesn’t know his destiny. All he knows is what the Word of God tells him. So here he is, and he takes his first steps and he starts to move. Now when he starts to move God leads him to a particular piece of real estate.

Now here’s something very interesting about that particular piece of real estate. Since I don’t have a map of the world you’ll have to exercise your imagination. This is Spain, the Italian boot, the Mediterranean, Africa here and so on. Now let’s suppose we have all these land areas mathematically sectioned off into squares, and let’s suppose we go to a computer and we ask the computer to solve a little problem for us. Let’s take any given square and let’s call it X, and let’s say we want to measure the distance between square X and square 1, square 2, square 3, square 4…. And we measure the distance between X and 1 is distance D1, and then we measure the distance between square 2 and X and that’s D2; and we measure the distance between square 3 and X and that’s D3 and so on, and we measure all the separate D’s, and then we average them. And so we get an average D, that is an average distance that every square of land area on the earth is from square X so if we were to go in any direction from square X we would be this far away from any point on the surface of the earth on the average. Now let’s suppose we further ask our computer to do it, not only for square X but for all squares, so every time it moves to another square it goes to all the other squares, finds the distance they are from this one, then the computer moves over to the next one, finds all the data again for that one, goes to the next square and finds all the data for that one. Now if you do such a program, and it’s been done by the Institute for Creation Research, you come out with a very interesting answer. Ask the computer the following questions: after you’ve computed, tell me, which square on the face of the earth is closest to all other squares; what is the center of the earth geographically. And the computer’s answer is the square centered upon Jerusalem, Babylon and Ararat.

In other words, that square represents the ideal location for missionary activity. Going into a new dispensation when God wants to transport revelation horizontally in other cultures instead of coming down into them, in that situation He’s got to place His missionaries strategically at the best transport point. What’s the best transport point? “To the land I will show thee.” Could Abraham carry his little calculator and as he lumped across the Sahara Desert calculate where it would have been the best place? No, because probably Abraham wouldn’t have had access to cartographic data to find out what this continent’s shapes were like, what the distances were like. So therefore, when it says in Hebrews 11:8 he went to a place and he did not know, but he obeyed the Word, do you see what he’s doing. Get this picture across because it’s a great relaxing way to live your life. It avoids a lot of the up-tightness that many Christians experience over decision making. If you will do your research, learn the data, and then finally come to that point where you say Lord, under the pressure of time I have to decide, I’ve got to make a choice, and I’m going to leave the results in Your hands, I’m going to be open to Your changes, but as of now I’m choosing this and start to roll. There is a “by faith” decision making system.

Now let’s turn back to Genesis 12 and look at what else God tells Abraham to do. He says “Get thee out … of thy father’s house,” before God could work with Abraham and give him his destiny and his goals and his obligations, he had to separate from the culture he was raised in.

In Genesis 12:2 we find the next piece of information God gives him. And incidentally, as an exercise here, notice in verse 1, 2 and the first part of verse 3, you can do this if you just kind of trace with your finger or something, notice the difference between “thy” if you have a King James, or “your” if you have a more modern translation, and “I.” The Hebrew is so constructed here that it is emphasizing the difference between Abraham and God. Again let me read verse 1 slowly and you watch the pronouns as I read it. Let’s take it real slow, watch the pronouns. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show you.” Do you hear that, how it does; it starts with Abraham, Abraham, Abraham, and suddenly God intervenes, “I will show you.” And this is where Abraham is grabbed by the sovereignty of God and he’s put under His authority, “I will show you.” And so in verse 2, notice the heavy shift now; in verse 2 it’s not thy, thy, thy, but it’s I, I, I. “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. [3] And I will bless them that bless thee, and I will curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall families of the earth be blessed.” The sovereign initiative of God.

Now this promise, this Abrahamic Covenant here, consists of three parts. The first part is a promise that he would have a seed or a historic people. This is the origin of the Jew. Abraham was a Gentile who became a Jew. And since the Jews began in this time with Abraham we have a physical seed that will last forever and ever and ever in history; no one will ever eradicate the Jew. Arafat may think so; Hitler thought so, and they are dead and they have all gone to their place but not the Jew; the Jew remains still, indestructible because he has been sovereignly chosen of God. No foreign policy will ever destroy the Jew because right here it says “I will make of you a great nation,” and other promises in the Scripture, such as Genesis 13:15-16, Genesis 15:5-18; Genesis 17:1-8, Genesis 22:17, these are all references where the great seed will come into existence and act as a missionary people.

The second promise that God says, of course, is given at the end of Genesis 12:1, “unto a land,” the seed will have a place to live on the face of the earth and Israel’s home is Palestine. By divine mandate Israel has a right to the land. If you’d like to study before we get to it in the Sunday morning series, Genesis 15:18-21 gives you the boundaries of the state of Israel as they will one day exist in history, and if you look at those boundaries you’ll notice an alarming thing. Those boundaries extend all the way to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, all through Syria, all through Iraq; there will be no countries like that when Israel is finally blessed of God. The Jews will own the Middle East. Why? Because they’re better than anyone else? No, because God has designed history to work that way. So that’s the second great promise, the promise of the land.

And then in Genesis 12:3 you’ll see the other promise; the promise that Abraham will be a worldwide blessing and that is because of his missionary work. Again, God has left all the cultures of the world to degenerate and to crater out; He has picked one, Israel, and the moment He picks to localize His revelation, that revelation has to pour out to the other countries, and it will do so, as it does here, “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” We’ll come back to that in a moment but let’s go back to verse 2 and notice a few points.

It says: “I will make of thee a great nation ... and I will make thy name great.” Underline that, we’re going to come back because that’s a play on a certain word that I’ll go back to. “I will make thy name great,” what does that mean? It means that Abraham will go down in history with a reputation for being a great man and a great people. The Jews are a great people—“I will make thy name great!” The result at the end of verse 2, and it is a result, and let it or thy name “be a blessing.” That’s not a sovereign work of God, that is a result of the sovereign work of God.

Now verse 3, the strange work here. This is the Jewish protection clause, “I bless those that bless you and I curse him that curses you.” Notice the shift from plural to singular. God is more willing to bless than to curse, and this is an expression of the intent of God’s heart. But there’s something else in verse 3. That’s a warning to Satan. Who is it that’s the author of anti-Semitism? Satan. Why? He wants to destroy, to crush the Jew from history. God says I will curse you; every time you try I will curse you. And it’s ironic how the cursing has always come to those who curse the Jews. Many of you saw the movie series, The Holocaust, on TV, and featured prominently in the series of The Holocaust was the Warsaw ghetto uprising; in the Warsaw ghetto uprising the one feature of that ghetto uprising that was interesting from the historical point of view was how it happened. The Nazis walled the Jews off in the ghetto with a wall, and they built a wall across the street and they kept the Jews confined behind this wall of brick, stone and barbed wire. What city today is divided by a wall of stone, brick and barbed wire? The capital of Germany, Berlin. “I will curse him that curses you,” you see, God always turns the tables on those who mess with His people. Take Poland as another illustration, one of the most anti-Semitic countries on the face of the earth over the centuries has been Poland. Which country in Europe has been more invaded than any other country, first by the Germans, then by the Russians, then by the Germans, then by the Russians? Poland. So wherever you go you see God recompenses justice in history, to those who mess with His people.

Then he says, “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Now the word “family” is a word that we’ve seen before and we want to go back to it; Genesis 10:5, here we can find out what our author wants us to see. Who are the families in Genesis 10:5, “these were the coasts” or the islands “of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families.” In Genesis 5:20, “These are the sons of Ham, after their families….” Verse 31, “These are the sons of Shem, after their families….” So who are the families in Genesis 12:3? The families in Genesis 12:3 are the three sons of Noah, and here is the mandate that the Jew will be the root of world missions. The Jew will be the one who’s the basis of God’s plan to reach all men with the Word of God.

Now I believe, and this is just an inference from Scripture, but I believe this is why Jews have historically had a certain character about them. For example, has it ever dawned on you or ever struck you, interesting about Jews, what business or what type of work do most Jewish men engage in? Most Jewish men don’t engage in sedentary occupations that require them to be at one point all the time. For example, how many Jewish farmers do you ever see? Mostly Jews are engaged in commerce type jobs, business, finance. Those kind of jobs require them to do what? It requires them to travel from place to place. If God is to use the Jew as a missionary people the Jews must spread across the face of the earth; they must engage in occupations, whether they know this or not isn’t the issue, I’m not saying that the Jewish men think this out, I’m saying that the sovereignty of God works in a mysterious way so Jews tend to go into traveling professions. Interesting to, is it not, that in the book of Revelation, before Christ comes back the world will be evangelized by 144,000 Jews. Now why Jews? Because Jews know the world’s language. Name a language on the face of the earth that Jews don’t know. You see, the Jews are linguistic universalist. Go to Israel and you can find people multilingual all over the place because they’ve come from every country on the face of the earth. So we have a high linguistic, commercial trading metropolitan character to the Jew.

Now let’s turn to the New Testament to see how the Abrahamic Covenant historically led to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to Acts 3: this is to show you that the Bible is one; you can’t divide the Old Testament away from the New Testament. The Old Testament is the basis for the New Testament. And if you are a Christian, falling in the category that I call a New Testament Christian, here in our congregation that is not a compliment; a New Testament Christian is one who only reads the New Testament and we strongly urge you to read the Old Testament at least twice as much as you read the New Testament. It takes you twice as much to understand it but once you understand it you will be blessed spiritually.

In Acts 3, in the speech of Peter, he talks to the nation Israel, and as he winds up his speech in Acts 3:25 he says this: “You,” that is all of you, “are the children of the prophets,” that is, you are Jews, “and the covenant,” there it is, Abrahamic Covenant, “and the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. [26] Unto you first God, has raised up His Son,” unto you first. Why did Jesus Christ come to the Jews first? Because they become the evangelistic arm. Who were the first missionaries in Christianity? Jews.

So the Abrahamic Covenant is the heart and the whole center of the Christian gospel. Now let’s turn to Galatians 3 for a similar passage, not by Peter this time but by Paul. Gal 3:8, Paul talks about Abraham being the father of all them that believe, and in verse 8 he says, “And the Scripture,” that is, the Old Testament, “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen [Gentiles] through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” The gospel is a Jewish message. We have a Jewish Savior; Jesus was a Jew, and He’s in Abraham, and in Abraham shall all the world be blessed.

We’ve pretty well gone through the first three verses of Genesis, let’s go back and see where we’ve come and wind this up with a perspective of some sort. Up until the time of Abraham, from the flood till that time, man had already begun his apostasy and the first great apostasy in history, which is still with us, the kingdom of man, is Babel. I spent some time over the last few weeks going through the four levels of Babel. We find the lowest level at Babylon, the basic ground of it all is arbitrary money, that is, the first kingdom of Babylon, known for its deficit financing; known for its currency manipulation. And today, both parties are for the manipulation of currency. Said another way, both parties are for theft because whenever the government prints money and has no backing they have stolen from you; they have stolen from the poor old person who has saved and saved and saved their money trying to be independent and the government keeps on printing more and while that person is holding their dollar it’s collapsing. That is theft and it said so in Isaiah 1:22. So we have Babylon with money.

And then we have the next step up, the Medo-Persian Empire, with their vision of one-world culture. And then we have Greece with a view of rationalism and their intellectual development, and then Rom with their order, law and order and power and military might. These are the features of the kingdom. Now, the Abrahamic Covenant begins the opposite kingdom, the kingdom of God. To see these programs bump against each other, turn back to the tower of Babel in Genesis 11; now I want to show you a phrase that is the opposite of the one I said to remember as we read through Genesis 12:1-3. Remember when we read through I said watch this verse because there’s something in it that I want to show you later; now we’re coming back to it.

Genesis 11:4; what was the spirit of the tower of Babel. “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name,” contrast that with Genesis 12:2, with the kingdom of God, “I will make thy name great.” So on the one hand you have the tower of Babel and on the other you have the kingdom of God in Jerusalem; two cities, two names, two programs, two destinies: God’s Word on one hand, man’s word on the other. And it’s so easy for us as Christians to get trapped into all the details of this kingdom. Take, for example, the first lady of our country, who professes to be a Southern Baptist evangelical, who at the same time promulgates ERA, which is a destruction of the family and the home, who when the Christian women in Washington gathered together for a pro-family she snubbed them. Why? Her husband, who also professes to be a good Southern Baptist is one who got so alarmed when he read the ad that Dr. Walvoord and many of our evangelic theologians put in the New York Times when saying evangelicals oppose the United States policy on Israel and gave four or five different reasons why, it was our President, who in a midnight call to Billy Graham asked what’s wrong, why are the evangelicals leaving my camp, and Billy Graham had to tell him why historically for the last 150 years American evangelicals have been basically pro-Jewish and in the last years, since 1948, pro-Israel, a very great difference.

And now we come to the latest in a whole series. In 1979 it’s scheduled, under the United Nations, to be international children’s year, and our President appoints as the head of all the efforts in the United States to bless all the children, Dr. Peter Burn, who happens to be the leading legalizer of marijuana in the United States. Who is the man he appoints to conduct the areas of the United Nations but Dr. [?] who said (quote) “the legal status of children, with all the accompanying civil and social rights, may be a concern of the family but must be a concern and responsibility of the community, the state and the nation, and in some ways the concern of the world through the United Nations.” Legal experts who have looked at the program make the following three forecasts: (1) Under this program that is going to be advocated next year on nationwide TV, children may gain the legal right to sue their parents for being forced to attend church. (2) Children who perform household chores may become eligible for minimum wage. (3) Public schools would conduct behavior modification programs to develop a world mentality in the minds of the students. This all done by good old Southern Baptists. Now this is not a knock on the Southern Baptist Convention, there are some godly people, I’m just saying it could be anything, it could be an independent, but here are people who claim to be evangelical, claim to be followers of the Scripture, and yet carry out the programs of Babel.

Let’s come on down to more personal things; most of us are not involved in detailed political decisions but we are involved in personal decisions and it’s the same thing. Are we starting with Babel or are we starting with Abraham? Are we more concerned with the Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis 12 than we are concerned with the various books and ideas… and by the way, some of you who like to do some reading ought to, sometime in your life read at least three books that will outline for you the complete kingdom man; they are famous books and all college students ought to have read them but if you education was like mine you never were required to read any more than excepts from them. One book is Plato’s Republic; another book is Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto; and a third one is Jacque Rousseau’s Social Contrast. Those are three key documents; you ought to know them; that is where the intellectual ideas for the kingdom of man were most skillfully put forward.

Those are the choices. Now in our own lives here’s a practical way of checking on yourself. One way is to take your goals for the next five years; take a piece of paper, a pencil, and sit down with the Word of God in prayer and ask yourself where am I going. Do you ever ask yourself that; it might help. Drive your car out, never ask where you’re going, you just drive… well, a lot of people live their life that way, never ask, what do you intend before God to be your place five years down the road. What are your goals? After you do that you articulate your goals, write them out on a piece of paper, take a good look at them, and start judging them on the basis of Scripture. Find whether your goals fit the Scripture, fit the norms and standards of the Scripture; criticize your goals, are they promoting divine viewpoint, are they promoting the kingdom of God, or do they, like the good ole people, promoting the United Nations, Babel and all sorts of other small scale phenomena.

Now let’s look at another thing that can help you in this decision making process. After you’ve doe that and worked it out on a piece of paper, come to the next thing and start listing your obligations, obligations to your wife, to your husband, to your school, to your company, start listing them, whatever obligations you have, make a long list, try to make it as complete as you can. And go down through that list and ask yourself, have I, through sloppiness and through neglect got myself in a position in life where I’ve got 15 obligations that are basically unscriptural obligations. This is why the Bible is so forceful to single people; it says single people, before you marry, find out whether the other person is a Christian, you are not authorized to marry a non-Christian. Do you know why? Because God loves you enough that He doesn’t want you to get trapped in a relationship where you become obligated to a non-Christian. That’s an expression of love, He’s not trying to break up a romance, it’s trying to prevent misery in your future. So if you’re in that situation, watch it. Are you assuming an unbiblical obligation? Sometimes, tragically, we get ourselves in situations, take for example that very thing, where a Christian marries the non-Christian; all right, now you’re stuck, under divine institution two you are stuck; you can pray for the other person’s salvation, that’s the only option you’ve got. You can’t take off and divorce, not scripturally you can’t. So you’ve got yourself in a situation where you’ve acquired a non-biblical weight. We can get enough weights in life and enough obligations; we don’t need any more weights and obligations. So here is a way of critiquing your life, check and if you say okay, here I’ve got a non-biblical obligation here, I’ve picked up another one here, I’ve got myself involved over here, and basically those are unproductive spiritually, they may violate principles of the Scripture, all right, I’m going to start right today praying for discernment to make my move to start shedding these non-biblical obligations. Sometimes you can’t legitimately but where you can you ought to, start running light.

The whole principle could be summarized back in Genesis 12:1, the first sentence, “Get out to a place I will show you.” Abraham had to shed his unbiblical obligations to his home, to his father, to his city, because God had called him to do something and he couldn’t do it while he was pinned down with 1005 obligations that constantly, daily, eroded his time, wasted his talent, drained his strength. He’d never amount to a hill of beans this way, never, because he sapped himself. So when you read Genesis 12:1-3 from now on don’t just think of it in terms of the large scale history, but small scale history, your own personal history.