The idea in this is when God took Abraham and called him away from his family, his home, his home country and everything he knew, and called him to a new place, and he didn't even tell him where he was going. Has anybody ever taken, like, an adventure, a road trip, and didn't know the destination? You just said, we're gonna go. Amy would have to help me. There's a song that says, like, heads, Carolina, tails, California.

Yeah. Like, we tried it one time where we said, we're gonna go and we're gonna leave. And every time a new song comes on the radio, if it's a man singing the song and lead vocals, we're gonna turn this direction, like, right. And if it's a woman, it'll be left. You know what the problem with that was?

Like, we kind of went in a big loop over three counties and ended up close to home. And, like, okay, we're not doing that again. Like, I don't mind leaving a few things to chance, but this just chance was not in our favor on that one, you know, but it. It can be fun to do. And so it's like, you know, you try these different things.

But Abraham left. He left with. Now, he wasn't alone. He had his wife. He had a whole bunch of people with him.

I love this. And I put the detail in the sermon companion. He had 318 trained men. Now, when they say trained, it doesn't mean, like, yesterday when we had some people volunteering to mow the grass. Thank you, guys.

Most of them aren't in the building right now, but we had some folks from our other congregation that meets in the other building, the Redeemed Disciples of Christ Church, that they're literally an African church, speaking Swahili. Good group of folks. And they came out, and I had to train some of them on this equipment that they've never used before and explain it to them. Now, that's a type of training, but that's not the training that I'm talking about. The trained men that Abraham had were soldiers.

They were mercenaries. This is an old guy with his own personal mercenary army. Like, I hear two of us excited about that. It sounds really cool. Like, I'm.

I know militias get, like, a bad rap, you know, and all that, but, like, he had his own militia, and he didn't really use them for much except when it really came down to a righteous cause. And that was his nephew. Lot got captured up when the people that he was living near were conquered by some other kings. And when we say kings, like, in those times, a king might have had a few hundred people, you know, maybe a couple thousand in his, like, kingdom. He was the ruler of a city usually.

And so, like, five kings ganged up on four kings or four kings ganged up on five. I never remember that detail. My daughter knows it, though, and she could tell you, but she's not in the room right now. And so these kings take them, they take Lot away and all the other people that are with him. And Abraham's like, not on my watch now.

I'll tell you why this. This is so far off my nose. I'm just rambling about this because it's so exciting. So there's this thing today that's gotten a little bit of a bad rap. And it's the term patriarchy.

Anybody heard people talking, like, down with the patriarchy and all that? I want to explain the difference between what people view patriarchy today and what biblical godly patriarchy was. Patriarchy today is where it's like, I'm the man and I'm in charge, and you have to do what I say. That's not cool. Don't be that guy.

But what. What patriarchy was for, like, Abraham and for the. The. The sons after him that were the patriarchs. What we call them is like the patriarchs, the.

The forefathers, the. The guys that started the family line. A patriarch's job was to take care of and protect and redeem all those under his household, under the umbrella of his care. Now, Abraham, we'll see in the scripture as he left home. Actually, this is at the end of Genesis, chapter 11.

And today we're going to be in Genesis 12. So I'm giving you a little summary of what was going on. In the end of Genesis, chapter 11, we see Abraham and his father. So that would be the patriarch at the time. Abraham's father takes his son Abraham and his grandson Lot, which is Abraham's nephew, because Abraham's brother had died.

And so Lot becomes under the concern of Abraham's dad. And so his dad moves them to a new land. And it's from that place, after Abraham's father dies that God calls them to a new place where Abraham's road trip starts. Now, Lot was under Abraham's control or concern now, kind of like a son to him. He almost adopted him as a son.

And so it's Abraham's responsibility to take care of Lot. And at one point, Lot gets so wealthy and Abraham gets so wealthy that their. Their land, the land isn't big enough for them. So they split up and go to two different places. And that's when Lot gets carried away.

I know I'm kind of all over the place with this, but I want to explain patriarchy here. What the job of a patriarch was to do was to protect those in his household. His children, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren, his servants, and, you know, all these people. So this is why Abraham has his own mercenary army. Because there might be somebody as a wealthy man that comes in and tries to rob him and take his family away and enslave them.

And that's not going to work for a patriarch. So he has to go and be able to defend these people. He has to go and redeem somebody like Lot when he gets captured up by an army and. And go and overtake that army and redeem his family. The patriarch's job is also, if somebody in their family gets into debt and has to sell either themselves or their land into slavery, it's the patriarch's job to take of his wealth and redeem that person that got sold into slavery or into servitude.

It also has to do with protecting their daughters and the women in the household, making sure that when the daughters get married, that they go to a good home, a good household, that. That they go to a good family, you know, that they're not just sold into something like what we saw last week when we were studying the flood story and how these. These big men that maybe were angelic, maybe they were something, they married the daughters of the godly men. Those men should never have let their daughters marry these evil folks, these evil beings or creatures or whatever they were. And so it's the job of a patriarch to be a protective force around those that are by them.

It's not made. It's not meant for them to take advantage of them or use them for their own benefit. It's actually the job of a patriarch is like the chief servant and protector of those. And. And there's this guy online.

He. He calls himself a digital pastor or an online pastor. I call him a pastor without a church. He has no accountability, no anything. His name is Benjamin Kramer.

And I'm going to say this because he blocked me on social media when I typed back and said, hey, what? Have you ever considered this? And he only likes people that agree with him and not people that actually like, will challenge what he's saying. And he likes to say all these. Make all these videos spouting off against patriarchy and how it's so evil and terrible.

And apparently he's never studied his Old Testament in any depth, shape or form. And he just says, well, you know what? I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to ignore all of that and I'm just going to make this thing that makes me popular online, but I'm not actually going to teach the truth of the word of God. The truth is that patriarchy in a true godly biblical sense is something that we've lost today and that needs to return. It doesn't need to return in the sense of like that Barbie movie that came out a couple years ago tries to, to knock down and say, oh, this patriarchy of the Ken world is terrible.

It's all made up. Who cares? It's a Barbie movie. It was really dumb. I had to go watch that stupid thing because my daughter was in this Barbie phase and my wife never outgrew it.

And so like we.

She loves that. She. Sorry, you really like it when she has new Barbies. It's really fun. Anyway, so, so we, we.

So I went to watch this movie and I'm like, oh, I hate this. This is one of the dumbest movies ever. And I still maintain that. But in this movie, you know, they were fighting this patriarchy of the male dominated world. And let's be honest, ladies won that war a few decades ago.

We can just kind of let it go. Ladies. Like, this is not a male dominated world anymore. No matter what you say. I don't care.

We can argue about that later. That's fine. There's a section in your notes to say this is where the pastor got it wrong and you can argue with me later. And that's fine. I'm not like Ben Kramer.

I won't block you. So anyway, and also I have a congregation and I have to answer to you folks. Like, he has a digital audience and he can just block them when he doesn't like what they say. By the way, this was like a year or two ago. So this isn't a recent beef I have with him.

I'm just saying, like, it just popped in my head and it came out. I'll probably have to edit it out later for the online thing because I'll get in trouble for it. You know, they'll try to cancel me online anyway. Like I, like I have that much to cancel. So anyway, Abraham has this like this role, this job of being a patriarch, but it didn't come like naturally to him.

God called him into this role. God called him into that job. And so as God does that, what he says to Abraham is he says, I want you to leave your father's household. I want you to leave everything, you know, all the land, the people, everything you have. And I want you to leave it behind and go to a land that I'm going to call you to.

And so he's going to do that. And Abraham is going to be obedient in that. Before we read the passage, I want to mention something. The story of Abraham is foundational to. For, like, all of the rest of scripture.

And here's why. Abraham's an important guy, because he is the one that God says, I'm going to take you and I'm going to bless you. I'm going to give you so many children, so many offspring that you'll become a great nation. I'm going to give you a land to live in, and I'm going to, through you, bless all peoples on the earth, all nations, all families. Now, this is interesting because he's saying this to a guy that's in his 70s, has no kids, and lives in a tent.

Like, he has no land. He's not homeless. Like, home is wherever he sets his tent up, you know. And so he's in a tent he's got. Now he's wealthy.

Like, don't hear me wrong. He's not like, tent poor. He's tent wealthy. He has lots of tents. He has nice tents.

He has servants, he has animals. He has all this stuff. But he has nowhere that he calls his own. Like, he goes wherever he can find the place. And sometimes he gets run out because they say, you can't graze your animals here or something.

And so he moves on. The first piece of land that he buys is a burial plot for his wife when she dies. That's the first real estate that this man owns. And he gets hosed on the price, too. They're like, you got a lot of money, you should pay more.

And that's how they did it to him. And he's like, fine, I'll pay whatever I've got to, because she's starting to smell. I need to bury her. You know, like, we can't negotiate over this too long. I need burial ground now.

That's not in the scripture. That's just how I imagine it, right? So not the smell part. I mean, the rest of it's in the scripture. So we're going to read in Genesis, chapter 12, verses 1 through 9 right now.

And if you need to, it's in page 13 in your pew Bible. Like, you don't have to turn Very far. If you don't have a scripture with you, there's a Bible in the rack in front of you, and it's page 13. Now, the Lord God said to Abram. This was before his name had been changed to Abraham.

Now the Lord God said to Abram, go from your country, your relatives and your father's household to the land that I will show you. Then I will make you into a great nation. And I will bless you. I will make your name great so that you will exemplify divine blessing. I will bless those who bless you.

But the one who treats you. I don't like this. It says, the one who curses you, I must curse. This scripture says, the one who treats you lightly, I must curse. I think it's harsher than that.

The one who pronounces a curse on you, I will curse. And all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name. So Abram left, just as the Lord had told him to do. And Lot, his nephew, went with him. Now, Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.

And Abram took his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot. And all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran. And they left for the land of Canaan. They entered the land of Canaan. Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem.

At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said to your descendants, I will give this land. So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who appeared to him. Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and AI on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and worshiped the Lord.

And Abraham continually journeyed in stages down to the Negev. Now, one of the things that is interesting to me in this is when God says, abram in you, I will, like, use you as a blessing for all people. People will actually pronounce blessings like in your name. Now, nobody, I don't hear anybody today saying, like, oh, you know, in Abraham's name, be blessed. But what they do say is, God bless you.

And God was the one that later, through Abram's line, the Messiah would be born as Jesus Christ through the line of Abraham. And so all people truly were blessed by one of the descendants of Abraham. Now remember, at this time, he's 75 years old, has no land, no kids. He hasn't had a son yet. And he's thinking, okay, sure, God.

That sounds great. I don't know how you're going to do this. Has anybody ever been there? You've had a promise from God of some kind. You've had something that God has told you, and you're like, I. I don't see how that's going to happen.

I don't see how that's going to work out. Like. Like, I don't have it laying here in front of me to. To put the pieces together to figure out how in the world God's going to make good on this promise. And yet he does.

God knows a way where we don't know a way. God has the possibility for this where we don't see any possibilities. And so it takes faith. And Abraham had faith in order to do this, in order to step out in obedience to God and make these things happen. Some of the things that will happen with Abraham, I've got a little list here.

He was living in this land called Haran, or Ur of the Chaldeans. You are. And then he moves to Canaan and later to Egypt. When there's a famine in Canaan there he lies about Sarah because he says, you're really beautiful. Just tell everybody you're my sister, because if they think I'm your husband, they'll kill me.

Now, the weird thing was it was his half sister. Let's just move beyond that and just say, like, I don't know, it was a different time, okay? And also, like, I don't see too many people killing someone over their wife these days. But it does happen, I guess. And he was worried about that.

So he's like, just tell everybody you're my sister. And sure enough, like he predicted, they're like, hey, we should. The king of, like, Pharaoh of Egypt is like, hey, I'm going to take you to be my wife. And then God punishes Pharaoh and Pharaoh finds out what's going on. He's like, you lied to me.

He's like, yeah, I thought you would kill me. He's like, yeah, you're right. I would have. So he's like, okay, take your wife back. Later on, they're back in the land of Canaan.

As I told you earlier, they're. They're too big for the area, so they separate. Lot goes to one place called Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah. Those are famous for another thing.

Lot lives over there. That's where he gets captured from. Abraham goes with his awesome mercenary army, rescues them, brings them all back. Then Abraham on the way back from that meets this guy named Melchizedek. We talked about this pretty extensively in our study.

On Wednesday mornings, I think in our Hebrews study, we talked about Melchizedek. So you'd have to go online to our podcast, or you. It's only on the podcast site, I think, and find it there. And, you know, that's on you to find it. I can point you to it if you'd like.

But Melchizedek is this guy that shows up. He's the king of Salem, which is later Jerusalem. And he's also a priest of God Most High, the God that Abraham worships, the one true God. And Abraham recognizes his priesthood, recognizes who he is, and he takes of all the spoils that he has just returned from war with. He takes those and he gives 10% of it to his.

Him to Melchizedek. This is a tithe, a 10% offering back to God. It's recognizing that you wouldn't have any of it without God giving it to you. And so you return 10% back to God. We kind of recognize that that is what God has called us to do, is to say, God, I only have any of this provision because of you.

So I return a portion to you so that you can. So that I can recognize that this was from your hands that I've received it and I return a portion of it back to you. God doesn't ask us for 100% back. He asks us to return just a tithe, a tenth to him as a thanksgiving for him, as a way of trusting him with what he has given us. And so Abraham gives a tithe to Melchizedek, and Melchizedek brings out a feast for them.

And so they eat. They feast very well. And it's amazing how God does that when we give to him so many times. What God does is he says, let's celebrate. And he blesses you in return.

Not just because it's this thing where you're like, I'm going to give to God so that I can get something back from him. But God says, rejoice with me. Celebrate with me. Many of the offerings that he would later give through Moses to command through Moses, for the Israelites to give is something they would bring. They would bring the items for, like this barbecue feast, like an animal to roast and grain and wine and olive oil.

And they would offer it to God, and then he would hand it back to them. The meat would be roasted at the altar. They'd hand it back. The priest would hand it back. And they would say, now go with your family and your kinsmen and celebrate what God has done for you.

God returned their offering back to them that way. And now they could make bread, they could eat the meat. They would maybe have this. This, you know, this feast out of it. And they would celebrate what God had done for them.

So Abraham, he gives to Melchizedek. Melchizedek hands back to them a feast. And they feast together. And then. Then he moves on.

And he goes back home. Lot's Lot and his family and all those people are free to continue living. He returns all the possessions. Abraham keeps nothing except for what he had given to the priest of God. And he says, I don't want you claiming that you made Abraham rich.

And so he hands it all back and goes home with his awesome mercenary army. I feel like you guys aren't excited enough about this mercenary army. Do any of you have a mercenary army? No. If you do, let me know.

I'd love to meet him. That'd be cool. So then. Then he returns home. The God starts talking to him.

He gives him things. Like, he. He tells them that they're going to have a son. And he says, I wondered about that. And then it doesn't happen for a while.

So Sarah, his wife, says, I tell you what, I've got a servant girl. She's, you know, she's young, she's pretty, she's young, you know, maybe you'd like to have a child with her. And he's like, that sounds really fun. Because Abraham is like most guys, and he's like, huh, okay, My wife's saying, this is a good plan. I'm gonna trust her.

It's not a good plan. Like, if your wife says, hey, maybe you should also have another wife. The answer is always no. Okay? Like, it's just always no.

You're like, no, I think this is a test. No, you're not trapping me on that one. And it's like when she says, like, hey, that one. That one lady we saw, did you think she was pretty? It's like, I. I have no answer for that.

You know, Like. Because if you do think she was pretty and you say no, she might be like, well, maybe I don't know if you wanted me to wear my hair like that. And you're like, actually, I did want you to do that, but I'm. I'm afraid it's a trap, you know? And so.

So you're just like. The best thing to say is don't. Just don't engage that conversation, you're like, I, I didn't hear anything you just said. What was that now? And then she asked the question again.

You just like get up and walk away, you know, like you're just. I'm not getting sucked into this conversation. Abraham not only got sucked in the conversation, he went into the with the female slave woman. He had a baby with her named Ishmael. And Ishmael becomes the father of, you know, many Middle Eastern peoples.

The Muslim faith comes from his family line. And there's just a whole problem there. Muslims believe that the promise of God was fulfilled through Ishmael. They don't believe that the promise of God was fulfilled through Isaac, the son that Abraham and Sarah would later have. They believe it was fulfilled through Ishmael.

And there's an issue with that. First of all, God clearly says no. And in fact, Muslim people will say that they believe the Holy Scriptures, they believe the Bible. They'll say that they believe that. But then also that the final prophet Muhammad also had some good things to say and that he's the final authority.

The problem is you can't say that and not believe it. And they don't believe it. They say that, but they don't believe it because the scriptures tell us that God said, ishmael, I will bless. But the promise is through Isaac. He's the son of the promise.

He's the son through which all nations will be blessed. And God, God never says that Ishmael was the one that God would fulfill his promises through because that was Abraham's fleshly decision. That was his way of trying to create God's plan of salvation on his own terms. How often do we do that? Yeah, too often.

Like so many times. God will tell us, like, hey, this is something that I want that I'm going to do through you. And we say, well, God, you're taking too long. I want to do it my way now. God, you're taking too long.

So I'm going to create my own way of making it happen. And the interesting thing is God will still bless our life during and after our times of faithlessness and disobedience. And God still blessed Ishmael. There's a time when Ishmael and his mother Hagar get sent away because Sarah is, is like mistreating her because, well, she's the one that bore a child to Abraham. And so Hagar leaves and she and her son are about to, to.

To die in the desert. They're about to die in the wilderness. And she's crying out to God because she's like, I can't stand to see my boy die out here. And God opens up her eyes. God provides a well of water in the desert, an oasis in the wilderness, and they are saved from that.

And God says, I want you to go back. Even though you've been mistreated, I want you to go back. So she goes back and she submits to the authority of Sarah over her. She names God, Hagar does. She says, you're the God who sees me.

Even though she had been, let's say, violated by this whole thing of becoming the second wife and then mistreated and sent away, even though she'd been violated in that way and she was treated as less than a human being, God still saw her and God still took care of her. In the midst of our sinful manipulation of God's promises, God will still take that situation and he can still bless us through it, but he'll still call us to his righteous plan of salvation. And so a few years later, Abraham, he. He bears or he. He and Sarah have a child.

Sarah bears him a child. And then they are. That's the child that's born Isaac. And they're the. He's the one that's going to be God's promised salvation through his.

Through whom his salvation comes. Now, when Isaac is born, Hagar is sent away again with Ishmael because Ishmael is mocking Isaac. He's saying things like, you think that that boy is going to be the one. You think he's going to be superior to me? You think he's going to be better than me?

And Sarah overheard this and she said, he's not going to be around my son being a bad influence on him. There's something interesting about that. Because the first time she mistreated Hagar for the wrong reasons out of jealousy and selfishness and all those things, maybe out of guilt over her own complicit sin in the matter. But this time she has this righteous outlook that says this child, he's going to hinder the promises of God and he's not allowed to share in the inheritance with my son. And so they send him away.

Now, it pains Abraham to do it because Ishmael is his son, but he also knows that the promise of God was through Isaac. And so he. He maintains what Sarah wanted and he sends Hagar and Ishmael away. If you want more information on the life of Abraham, you got to read Genesis, chapters 12 through 21. That's on you to read it, you don't want to sit here and have me read all those chapters to you.

We wouldn't get out for a couple, well, like an hour, you know, it takes a little while. It's probably not a full hour, I don't know, but it's. You should just read this on your own or hit play on your Bible, on your app, on your phone or tablet and let it read it to you. It's a great way to do it. So that's a little bit of Abraham's life kind of in a, in a five minute nutshell.

But looking at today's passage though and like kind of getting to the meat of it. Abraham gets called out from his family's home. Now his father had moved from one place to. And he had moved from like Babylon, like kind of where Iraq is today. And also my daughter turns the lights on in the morning and she asked like, what's the sermon about?

And we have to pick a color scheme and she usually picks the color. And I guess we've got like orange for like sun and desert heat and red for just, I don't know, the fires of hell, I guess, I'm not sure. But like deserts are hot, I guess, you know, so I'm not sure what our color scheme is here. But it's orange and red. It's like there's just blazing sun, heat in the desert and.

And God calls them out of there and into another land. Now. Now first Abraham's father moves them out of there and they live in Haran for, for quite a little while until his father dies. And that's where God says, I want you to move. And he says, I'm going to tell you where to go, but I'm not going to give you the road map.

So that's where they start this road trip and they start heading on this road trip and eventually they end in the land of Canaan. He left a land full of, of idolatry, of paganism, a land that worshiped idols. I wonder today about some of the people that we live around. You think, oh, well, we don't have that society today, do we? I guess you don't understand idolatry that much.

You don't understand pagan worship rituals. You don't see that this is going on everywhere around us. And it'd be like God saying, I want you to move out of that. But then he takes you to a place in another land where they're doing the same stuff. Because when he goes to the land of Canaan is where the descendants of Noah's son Shem live and they live there.

Do I have the right son or is it Ham? Oh, I get it mixed up. I should have looked this up better. Anyway, Noah's bad son that does the bad thing. We talked about it last week in Sunday school.

You guys, help me out. Which one was it? Alright, cool. He's in Genesis, chapter nine. I know that much.

So, anyway, so they move there. The Canaanites are the descendants of them. And Keith, whenever you find it, you're looking it up. Just shout out which sign it is for me so we can get it right for the record. Anyway, so his descendants are living there and they're not doing anything right?

They're not following God, they're worshiping idols. They even at one point, get to the place where they're offering their children in sacrifice. The sons of Ham. Okay, see, I knew I got it wrong as soon as I said it. So the sons of Ham were the.

The Canaanites. And they. They're living there. They're. They have not diverged or deviated from their forefather Ham's sins.

They've continued living in sin ever since then. And it's only gotten worse and worse and worse. And it's interesting to me that God calls Abraham out of a pagan, idolatrous nation or region and into another one. Like, he doesn't bring him to some place that's like a holy site of some kind. Although we do find Melchizedek, the priest of God there.

But yet there's all this evil going on all around them. And he calls Abraham to live there. And it's curious to me, he didn't say, I want to bring you out of here as a holy and righteous man. I want to bring you out of this evil place and put you in a holy, righteous place where you're in a holy huddle around everyone else. That's always good.

He puts him in a place that's just as bad. And yet he had to leave behind all this stuff that he had known. He had to leave behind all of his people and his. Even though he brought his. His household with him.

Remember, he's the patriarch, so they are his responsibility. But he left behind the extended family and all those influences that he had, and he left them behind and moved to this new land. It was after he began obeying God, after he began moving, that God started speaking to him about the future. Hear this with me, like. Like God didn't lay out a roadmap for Abram and say, here's What I'm going to do now go start obeying.

He says, obey me, and I'm going to start telling you more things along the way. You see the difference there? Like, like he said, go to the land that I'll show you. He never told him where it was. He just said, head out, start going that way.

And as you start going that way, I'm going to start revealing more to you. As Abraham showed his faithfulness to God, as he demonstrated his trust in God and his faith in God, he was shown more and more of the plan along the way. And even though he would get it wrong, and even though he would step ahead of God and he would begin to do. He would begin to do, like, whatever he thought was fulfilling God's plan rather than listening to God for the next step along the journey. When he would do those things, God would still call him back to the righteous plan that he had for him, and he would still continue revealing his promises to him.

One of those things, as we mentioned earlier and read in the Scripture, was he says, I will make your name great. Like people will use your name in formulating blessings on others. In other words, you won't be a curse to others. You will be a blessing to them. Then he tells them that I will turn you into a great nation.

Again, a man with no offspring. When he was told this, a man with no offspring is not really, you know, it's not easy for him to believe that he will become a great nation. In fact, he tells God at one point, he says, this doesn't make any sense. Like, the man that's going to inherit all my stuff is a foreigner living in my house. A man named Eleazar of Damascus, like my chief servant, is going to be the guy that inherits everything.

I don't. I don't have a name. I don't have a family. I don't have a lineage. And yet God said, just have faith with me.

It would be 25 years before the son of the promise, before Isaac would be born. From the time God spoke about that, it took 25 years to see the fulfillment of that promise. I think of this and I think of so many of our lives, and we look at promises that God might have made or things that we see in Scripture. And the Holy Spirit says, this is for you. I want you to hear this promise in the scripture, and I want you to know that I'm going to fulfill this in your life.

I'm going to give these promises to you. And days go by, weeks, months, maybe even Years. And we start to forget that God had even promised these things. Abraham, it was 25 years before his son was born. It was thousands of years before the final fulfillment of this promise.

Jesus Christ was born. That was the one that was the blessing for all peoples on earth. But God also said the third thing was he said that you will be a blessing to all people. And then he said, people that bless you, I will bless them. And people that curse you, I will curse them.

I want to talk for just a second about something that I think is really relevant today. And I'm not an expert on and I don't have too many solidly formed opinions on like wars in the Middle east with Israel and other nations and all that. I'm no expert on that and I don't have much of a good opinion. My opinion is I wish we would stop killing each other. I wish we would stop using armies and tax dollars and weapons to kill other people.

That's my official position for every nation. Like, okay, but people use this blessing for Abraham to try to defend anything that the nation, the modern nation of Israel does. And I want to be very clear, like I said, I'm not trying to pull sides on any of this conversation that's happening in our world today. But I am mentioning this. God didn't say, and to your descendants, nothing they can ever do will ever be considered wrong.

And if anybody says that they're doing something wrong, then I will curse them. God doesn't say that. What he says is for Abraham and for his descendants. In other words, for the Hebrew or Jewish people that spring forth from him. When people bless the descendants of Abraham, they will be blessed.

And if they curse the descendants of Abraham, they will be cursed. I want to draw a distinction in our thinking between what we consider the Jewish offspring of Abraham and the modern nation state of Israel that was formed in 1948 and exists until this time. The modern nation state of Israel has little to do with the Jewish bloodline of Abraham. They are a political entity. Many of their rulers are atheist or non believers or non practicing Jews.

Some of them are and some of them aren't. Just like we have people in the United States Congress that some of them are Christians and some of them aren't, but they kind of act like they're Christian because it gets votes and it's popular. Jewish people today find themselves all over the world and wherever possible. I believe it's a good thing to bless Jewish people. I believe it's a good thing to be friends with them.

I believe the best thing you can do is lead a Jewish person to have faith in the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. He's the fulfillment of the hope of the Scriptures. And it's a good thing for us to be a blessing to them because in return, we receive the blessing from God. Because these were his chosen people. They still are his chosen people.

And that's a good thing. That doesn't mean that any and everything that the modern nation state of Israel does falls in line with this promise that God made. That's kind of my take on it. I don't want to go too much into depth on that. But I did want to say that God I don't think was saying to Abraham, like, hey, somewhere, a few thousand years from now, there's going to be a country named Israel.

And those people, everybody has to side with them and everybody has to be on their team, go Israel. I don't think that's what God was saying to Abraham, but he is saying that I'm going to be a blessing to you and I'm going to give you the ability to have your son. Your son is going to have a son. They're going to have kids. And that group of people, when they follow me, when they worship me, when they obey me, they're going to be living underneath the blessing that I have pronounced on you, Abraham.

And so this is how Abraham is called to live, and this is how he lives in faith to God. Finally, God says that all people will be blessed by Abraham's offspring. Now, truly, he's speaking of Jesus Christ like, not all people are blessed by the entire bloodline or the Jewish nation or Jewish people of Abraham's descent. But we are blessed by the one, the Messiah, who sprang from that nation, from those people. We have received blessing after blessing from Jesus Christ.

And if it wasn't for Abraham's faithfulness, even though he had times of unfaith, if it wasn't for Abraham's faithfulness, Jesus Christ wouldn't have had that family line to be born through. Now certainly God can use anyone because like you and I, many times falter. We sin, we fail, we go off plan, and God still uses us. And God still calls us to faithful surrender to him. But Abraham, through his offspring, eventually Jesus Christ was born.

And all nations are called to be blessed by Jesus Christ. Some nations reject him wholeheartedly. Nations who declare a national faith or a national allegiance to an ideology or a belief system that precludes worship of Jesus Christ, they're not living under that blessing until they Receive Jesus Christ. You see, one of the things that is easy to look at is say, well, everybody's blessed by Jesus. In other words, God doesn't want anybody to perish.

And so because, because Jesus died for their sins, everybody is accepted. No, you still have to accept Jesus Christ. The blessing is available for everyone, but you have to accept Jesus Christ in faith. You have to believe on Jesus Christ. So I want to wrap up and say, what is God calling to us today out of this scripture?

And I'll tell you, this one was hard for me. Like, I just, I was like, I was struggling with this as I prepared this week and saying like, I had already written all this stuff, I'd written the notes, I'd done all this weeks and weeks ago. And yet at the same time I'm like, where am I supposed to go today? Where, like I'm going to stand before you guys on Sunday morning and I'm supposed to, to, to call you to something. I mean, you can see the at home challenge on the screen.

Spend an hour this week with the Lord in quiet time of prayer, you know, just like put it on the calendar to spend that time with God. Pick a day, find a quiet place and get in there. But there's something else that I wanted to like get at to it today. What is it that, that God like wants us to hear? What is it that he put on my heart to share with us?

And the thing that kept coming back to me is this. And I kind of rewrote the end of this a few times. I want to start by saying that God wants to do more in you and through you to bless this world than you can ever grasp right now. Going to repeat that there's things that God wants to do in this world through you to be a blessing to others more than you can imagine at this moment. In fact, some of the ways that we are tempted most to think that is through this method or this thing that I have.

Some of you might say, well, I can cook good meals and so I'm able to help people that, that you know, need help with food at the moment. And I can do that or I'm able, I have money and I can give. And so that's an obvious way that I can be a blessing to others. Some of you might say, well I have wisdom and so I can help them with that. Whatever it might be that you think is the way that you can be a blessing to others is probably not the thing God's going to use the most.

Because Abraham had all These things. He's like, I know how I can be a blessing. I've got a mercenary army and I can go defend the defenseless people. And for sure, God did call him to do that at one point. But the thing that he said he was going to be a blessing was through his offspring.

And Abraham's like, I have none, zero offspring. And he says, no, but I'm going to give that to you. And through that, you're going to be a blessing. So I repeat, there are things that God wants to do through you to be a blessing to others. And it may not be the thing that you think you're most capable of.

And so what are the barriers that we have to keep that, keep us from fulfilling that or living that out? One of them is some of us need to leave behind something that we're familiar with. For instance, Abraham had to leave his father's household. Now his father had died and his father before that had already moved him away from the place he had grown up. And so we think, well, that's easy, he already left it.

No, what I mean is he had to leave behind everything that he knew from his father's household, from his time with his father. Jewish literature, not in the scripture, but other literature that they had written, tells us that at least the Jews believed that Abraham's father was a man who crafted idols, who made idols. And Abraham saw the foolishness of that. He responded in faith to God and said, I believe you're the one true God and these things are man made. And he smashed his father's idols and destroyed them.

Later, Gideon would do the same thing. If you're reading through the book of judges, I mean, yeah, judges. Gideon smashes an idol that his father had made and the townspeople are ready to kill him. And his father's like, if it was a real God, I suppose it could have defended itself. And he's the one that made it, you know, so he's like, I made that thing, like it wasn't real anyway.

Some of us have to leave behind those man made false things that we have put our hope in, maybe that we grew up with and leave it behind and run wholeheartedly into the calling and promises of God. Some of you, your parents are dead and gone, like it doesn't matter. You're still living based on what they think, what they taught you, what they instilled in you. You're still living based on their life, based on their values. And, and perhaps I will say to you not to dishonor your folks that have passed on.

But some of the things that they believed in or valued might have been entirely false and hopeless. And God is calling you to leave them behind and go into the light that he has called you to live inside of. Sometimes God wants to bless you, but you're still soaking yourself in the sinful culture around you. God wants to bless you, but until you leave the culture of sin behind now, it doesn't mean you won't find yourself immersed in another one, but you'll be living there as a missionary, not as somebody that's partaking in it. See, you might be living in this culture of sin, and God says, like, I want to bless you, but until you're willing to repent of the sin that you.

That you have in your life and leave it behind and go to the place I will call you, he can't bless you. He cannot bless a life of sin. He cannot bless a heart that is focused on sin. It's only when you remove yourself from that and say, okay, God, I'm all yours. He might move you to a place where you're still back in that same culture, and yet he's sent you there as an envoy of hope, as an emissary of God, as a missionary.

And then some of you, it's time to start a new family tree. What I mean by that is, I don't mean you need to have more kids. Some of you might. Some, some. Most of you are like, nah, I'm kind of beyond that.

But it might be time to change your family tree and say, you know what? All the way. It might start with you saying, there's some things that I did wrong. There's some ways that I taught you and raised you that I messed up. Amen.

And I don't want to leave a legacy with you that says, well, I did my best. You got to accept that you might need to repent of some of the things that you did or said or spoke to your children or the ways that you taught them or punished them or whatever it might be. And you might need to say, those were wrong and I'm sorry about them, and it's time to change. You might have kids, grandkids or great grandkids, and you might need to go to them and tell them these things and say, I want to tell you what God's been doing in my life. You know, the greatest thing that you can do is to set up a godly family tree.

The greatest thing that you can do in this world is to set your family on a course for heaven, where their lives are sold out and devoted to God. And so, like Abraham, you might have to leave behind some things you're familiar with. Even when you live in a bad place, the familiar is easy. It's comfortable, it's predictable. And you say, no, I'm really good right here.

God, I'd really like to stay right here. And he might be saying, no, it's time to move on. It's time to go to this place, and I'll show you where to go. And along the way, he's going to teach you different things in stages, it says. He journeyed in stages.

And at each stage, I believe Abraham learned a new thing and a new thing and a new thing. And as he arrived in the place where he would eventually have his offspring living there in that land of Canaan, God said, now I'm ready, and I'm going to give you a son. And that son's going to be born. And through his offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed.