Every epic tale of adventure requires a call to action. A call out of the comfort and obscurity of everyday life to embark on a new journey. A new adventure. For example, without a plea from a distant princess, Luke Skywalker would remain on Tatooine and would perhaps one day make it to the Tosche Station to pick up his power converters. Without hosting an unexpected meal for a dozen boisterous dwarfs with a quest, Bilbo Baggins may never have stepped foot out of the Shire. Without the sacrificial desire to lay down his life for the sake of his brothers in arms, Steve Rogers would never been have been selected for the Super Soldier Program and become Captain America. Every epic journey requires a call to action, an inciting event, a starting line for the hero to rush off from.
This morning’s text will drag us out of primeval history and into plain old ancient history. Or patristic history as we begin to discuss the lives of the fathers of Judaism, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons. We will embark on the grand journey of Abram’s life by hearing how God called him out of darkness and into his marvelous light. We’ll hear about Abram’s inciting incident which drew him out of the land of the Chaldeans and out of Haran, to leave all that he’d known and to walk with God.
The Descendants of Shem
Let’s begin by diving into Genesis 11:10-26. We begin today’s passage with another genealogy. Two genealogies actually! First, we will look at the descendants of Shem and then the descendants of Terah.
Now I want to start this reading by giving you all some freedom when you have to do public reading of scripture. At some point in your life, you will probably need to pronounce some of the names in these genealogies that we read. Maybe you’ll be doing a scripture reading here at church, maybe you’ll be reading to your children, maybe you’ll be leading a Bible study. I don’t know what the situation will be, but if you’re actively involved in church life, you will likely be asked to pronounce an unusual name at some point. John has had to do that a lot so far as this is the sixth and seventh genealogies in Genesis.
Here’s the freedom I’m offering you: the way you pronounce ancient names does not matter, so long as it is recognizable when someone reads alongside you. Cause here’s the truth of the matter, we are not pronouncing these names like the ancient Hebrews were. Modern Hebrew readers likely aren’t even doing that. And the function of a standard of pronunciation is only so that communication will be more effective. So as long as you’re pronouncing them in a way that doesn’t impede communication, you’re doing it right. Don’t worry about the standard or correct pronunciation, just read it so others are able to follow along. And trust the English translators who wrote these names in English characters for you! They’ll get you close enough that it won’t matter. With that said, let’s dive into the text. Genesis 11:10-26
10 These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11 And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
12 When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. 13 And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. 15 And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.
16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. 17 And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. 19 And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters.
20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. 21 And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters.
22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. 23 And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters.
24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. 25 And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters.
26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Now I won’t spend too much time on these individual genealogies this week, because we have the call of Abram to get to in chapter 12. But I do want to draw out a few points of interest. First of all, this genealogy follows in the footsteps of the genealogy in chapter 5. It mirrors it very well. There are ten names between prominent individuals in the text. In chapter 5 it was from Adam to Noah. Here it is from Shem to Abram. Does anyone recall back to John’s sermon on Genesis 5 a few months ago, what are these genealogies called in Hebrew? They’re called toledoths. Toledoths. Sounds like Hall and Oates if that helps.
Both here and in chapter 5, the toledoths are following the line of promise. They bypass the individuals that are considered to be the seed of the serpent, to trace where the seed of the woman is. Again, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman are terms used all the way back in Genesis 3 to describe these two kinds of people that will be at war with one another. From the seed of the woman, we are to expect a wounded victor that will conquer the seed of the serpent. So, these Genesis genealogies are tracing that promise down through generations. They’re saying, “Hey, we’re expecting this guy, waiting for this guy to come conquer the seed of the serpent” and so they watch the line of promise. This required careful consideration and intentional meditation on the theology of this promise by the authors of Genesis. They are recognizing God’s promise being actively kept when they trace these genealogies. They’re recognizing that God is the faithful promise keeper, and so they’re going to wait and watch for his promise by remembering the seed of the woman in the line of promise.
Now some of you just heard me say the phrase “authors of Genesis” and got caught up on that. You’re like did you say, authors, like plural? Yes, I did. Now, hold on, I definitely believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. But Moses is an author in the way that a nonfiction biographer is an author. He takes the stories of eyewitnesses and oral record keepers and editorializes them. He refines them, making thematic adjustments and stitching them together. So, when I say authors all I’m doing is recognizing that Moses received these stories from the elders of Israel’s community who had kept these stories, this history, orally up until now. They passed these stories down at festivals, celebrations, religious gatherings, and family dinners. These were their campfire tales, their legacy. With regard to oral tradition, much has been made of passing history down orally. Modern historians often want to disregard it as an unreliable way of passing down history, you might think of the telephone game. Where everyone sits in a circle and whispers a phrase from one person to the next and the last person in the line has a completely different phrase than the first. This is an inaccurate analogy to how these stories would have been transmitted. Those historians fail to understand how significant a people’s history was to them. They did well to maintain their history’s integrity, so we can be assured that Moses, through the guiding of the Spirit through the ages of these stories being passed down at festivals and campfires and in religious ceremonies, that Moses received and recorded true history.
Now I say all that because it will be important to recognize for next week. It will be important to realize how the history of Abram was passed down among the generations, and what they recognized him as. So, get excited for that discussion.
One more significant note about this genealogy: You may recognize that the ages of the individuals in this genealogy are much much shorter than the ages that have previously been recorded in Genesis. Now originally, I wasn’t going to really talk about this but in my research, I found something very interesting. Now the common answer I’ve heard about why this happened is that the expanse of water above the Earth that became the great flood had some sort of effect on human aging. Something about the ecology of the world before the flood was different enough that humans lived for much longer spans of time, and post-flood that wanes.
Here’s what I discovered that I thought was interesting: there is a clay tablet named the Sumerian King list that we’ve uncovered and it’s been dated around 2100 BC. This is right around the time that Abraham was alive. The Sumerian King list has a record of Sumerian Kings alongside the years that they were reigning and the ones prior to the flood had dramatically longer reigns than the ones after the flood. Now, given that the peoples of world were wiped out in Genesis’ account of the flood, I don’t know how much continuity there would be between the kings of Sumeria before and after the flood, but I thought the archaeology of it was very interesting. The fact that we have an independent document that shows a similar shift to Genesis is fascinating. That being said the reigns of the Sumerian kings before and after the flood were both dwarfed by the lifespans of the people recorded in Genesis, but the phenomenon is interesting, nonetheless.
The Descendants of Terah
Now before we get to the fun stuff in Genesis 12, we’ve got a bit more homework to do. We have the seventh toledoth, the seventh genealogy in Genesis. If you know anything about Genesis the number 7 is a big deal, so the fact that this one is the one that sets up the story of Abram is significant. Let’s go ahead and read Genesis 11:27-32.
27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28 Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
31 Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32 The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.
Again, just want to draw your attention to a few things from this passage. Ur is a prominent city in southern Babylonia. God is calling Abram out of Babylon, the same country that Israel would eventually be exiled to. The Chaldeans end up being a vicious people that is a fearsome neighbor of Israel. Think to Habkkuk, where God tells Habakkuk that even in the midst of Israel’s darkness and evil, he will use a more evil people to bring justice upon them. That people is the Chaldeans. From that vicious people, God draws out Abram and his family.
Also note there are two wives listed in this genealogy. Milcah and Sarai. The genealogy takes the time to point out that Sarai was barren. Now this is not merely a sidenote but a theme and an explanation. Sarai’s barrenness is both a theme and explanation. Barrenness is a common theme in the line of promise in Genesis. Sarai struggles with barrenness. Rebekah, Isaac’s wife struggles with barrenness. And Rachel, Jacob’s favored wife struggles with barrenness. Yet all three of these women end up having children. It is part of God’s faithful providence that the line of promise continues through three women that are incapable of having children. It also may thematically call forth to another woman who is incapable of having children, not because she is barren, but because she is a virgin. The typology illustrated here may be fulfilled in Mary’s miracle of a virgin birth. God is continually producing miracles in the vein of begetting children, in order to preserve his promise and his people. Through these women he maintains the seed of the woman and delivers the savior of the world. Incredible.
Now Sarai’s barrenness is also an explanation. But it’s explanation for something that we haven’t realized needs an explanation yet. See there’s a pattern in Genesis, these toledoths have commonly had 10 names in them. 10 names between significant characters. However, the toledoth for Terah, only has 8. Interesting. Why only 8? Well Sarai is barren, that’s why. If Sarai wasn’t barren, Abram would have offspring and they would be listed among the group here. But this explanation is yearning for the completion of the 10. Now, if you’ve heard Abraham’s story before, you know that he will end up having 2 children. These two children are the fulfillment of this toledoth. They satisfy and complete it thematically. Ishmael and Isaac. And Isaac, is the next main character after Abraham. Isn’t the Bible so cool?
One last note before we jump into chapter 12 and the call of Abram. What does Abram’s name mean? Most Hebrew scholars consider it to be some combination of the words “father” and “exaltation”. Maybe something like “exalted father”. Now this is an interesting name for a man who’s wife is barren. Again, it’s a theme calling forth for the completion of this toledoth. It’s begging to be satisfied by the births of Ishmael and Isaac. And those of you who know Abram’s story will know that his name is to become Abraham. Which means “father of a multitude” or “father of many nations”.
See this genealogy and Abram’s name are already setting up the story for the next several chapters of Genesis. The tension is all going to be around Abram and his progeny. This is made more explicit in chapter 12, so let’s look there now.
The Call of Abram
Chapter 12 of Genesis marks the beginning of the tale of Abram or Abraham’s life. I will likely use the two names interchangeably, just know I mean the same person. I was intimidated to preach this sermon initially, just because of the sheer significance of this passage. This is a hugely important passage and one that would take weeks to cover all the implications of. Lucky for you, since it was assigned to me, I won’t split it up into a 2- or 3-week series on these three verses, whereas John might have.
These 3 verses are a magnifying lens. See the first 11 chapters of Genesis cover 2000 years of primeval history and about 19 generations from Adam to Abram. The remaining 38 chapters of Genesis will cover 4 generations and a few centuries. Why has the pace slowed so drastically? These verses are what link these two sections together. They are the magnifying lens through which we will read the remainder of Genesis. So, let’s dive into the verses then.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
What we see here is a command given to Abram and then seven clauses that God will do in relation to that command. Abram is to “Go from his country and kindred and father’s house. God will then, one, show him a land, two, make him a great nation, three, bless him, four, make his name great so that he will be a blessing, five, he will bless those who bless Abram, six, curse those who curse Abram, and seven, will make Abram a blessing to all the families of the earth. Wow that’s a lot. This is a pretty good deal in my opinion, Abram just has to leave his homeland and God will do all that? That’s incredible. Particularly incredible in an ancient near eastern context. This is like all any human would have possibly wanted in that day and age. This would be like God coming to you today and saying, leave your home and your family, and I’ll make you wealthy, and overflowing with joy. You will have a loving and wonderful family, no need to work, vacations wherever you want as often as you want. This promise is incredible.
Now make no mistake, the cost of this command to Abram is high. Look at the command God gives to him. It’s three fold. First, leave your country. Leave the land and the places you’ve known your entire life. You are to be a foreigner from now on. Second, leave your kindred, your people. Think of this as like your community. Think about it like God is asking him to leave his church. He loves these people and his heart is endeared to them, and in his historical context they represent safety for him. Third, leave your father’s house, that is “leave your family”. Now our modern era of interconnectedness has caused us to forget a lot of the pain of being separated from our loved ones. Now everyone in this room was born after the invention of the telephone. And even before that we had a functional mail system in the US. We are a culture that hasn’t known this level of separation for centuries. When Abram leaves, he is not going to see his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters again. He won’t speak to them again, and he won’t receive letters from them. God is saying this is the last time you will see these people. That’s a high cost. A high cost for a high blessing.
And God’s command here is intense as well. In Hebrew often times to intensify a verb or an adjective, the author will repeat the word twice in a row. My favorite example of this is in Judges, with king Eglon. You remember Eglon, the fat oppressor that Ehud kills. Ehud stabs him in the stomach and Eglon’s fat swallows up the hilt of the sword. Well the Hebrew text of Judges calls Eglon “heavy heavy” to describe his fatness. Here, God’s command repeats the verb twice. It’s like “go on, get”. Some translators have said “Go, get yourself out of your country.” This command is intense and costly.
This is telling for us. God is not afraid to give his people a command that will cost them everything. Some may be called to do missions in a war-torn area like Ukraine. Praise God for Maddie Ellis and Hunter McLinn. Some may be called to give sacrificially of their income to the point of living meekly. We’ve got to understand that our lives are not our own, and so the call of God on our lives must be heeded. There will be times that you have to forsake your comforts for the sake of the gospel. It is not enough to stay in your country, with your people, in your father’s house.
Here’s the beauty of this though. We have been freed from clinging to these things. See, the worldly comforts that we love, yes we love them. And they are good. We are free to leave them behind, because, because we have something better. We have the grace and truth of the gospel. We have the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. We need not cling to anything else. This is the very reason why the gospel is abhorrent to many unbelievers. “You want me to give up alcohol? Or drugs? Or my sex life? Why on earth would I do that?” See, they’re asking that question with incredulity because they have not known the goodness of Jesus that allows us to forsake those worldly pleasures. They have not known that Jesus Christ is the greatest and only treasure worth pursuing. He is our peace and our pleasure. He is our light and our delight. They don’t understand because their eyes have been blinded to the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Pray then that the Holy Spirit might lift that veil and that they might know him.
One more note about the command God gives to Abram. He says, “go to a land I will show you.” That means Abram doesn’t know where he is going. He is going to a place that God has not shown him yet. Now we’ll talk more about this next week and what it means. What do we call it when someone takes God at his word, and steps out in a risky way, trusting that God will be there? Faith. Faith. We call that faith. Abram has faith when he steps out on God’s promise to him here. More on that next week and in the ensuing chapters.
After God shows him a great land, what’s he going to do? “Make of you a great nation”. Now just based on your knowledge of modern geopolitics, did God maintain this promise to Abram? Yes. The fact that there is still an Israel around today, that there are still Jews from the line of Abram around today is a clear apologetic for the truth of at least one of the Abrahamic faiths. Like the Jews have been oppressed by everyone, every notable regime of the last 4,000 years has been at odds with the Jews at one point or another. And they’re still here! Notice who isn’t here: The Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Romans. All of these would have been considered greater empires or nations than Israel ever was, and yet they have remained while empires have risen and fallen around them. God made Abram into a great nation. We will see the development of this nation play out throughout the rest of Genesis.
So, God is going to make Abram a great nation, and then the next clause says he will bless him. A blessed great nation. God does bless Abram specifically in his life. In just a couple chapters, we will see how through an encounter Abram has with the Pharaoh, that he received a ton of livestock. So much livestock that it become a source of contention between him and his nephew Lot. Abram became a wealthy man with much livestock and a house full of servants. He was indeed blessed materially. He will also carry the blessing of the line of promise, that is the seed of the woman.
Next comes the clause “make your name great so that you will be a blessing.” I’m actually going to skip this one for the time being and return to it at the end.
On to the fifth and sixth clauses, God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse Abram. Bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you. This is a theme that we will see pop up repeatedly throughout the rest of Genesis. Those who treat Abram and his progeny well will be blessed. Those who mistreat them always suffer. This is God’s providence at play, preserving the line of promise, the seed of the woman. We will see it next week when Pharaoh, even though he’s ignorant of his wrongdoing, is punished for dishonoring Abram. We will see that happen again with Abimelech for the same sort of thing. Late in Genesis we will see this happen for Jacob. Initially Laban is blessed by Jacob’s work and presence, because he gave Jacob safe harbor. But when he begins to deceive and mistreat Jacob, Jacob begins to be blessed at the expense of Laban. Laban then suffers for his mistreatment of Jacob. He is cursed for dishonoring the line of promise. Think also of Potiphar and Pharaoh at the end of Genesis, who bless Joseph by elevating him to positions of authority out of slavery. They are both immensely blessed by his work for them. This theme will continue throughout the whole Old Testament.
In fact, this theme is one of the reasons many American Christians have been so supportive of Israel. Now I’m not going to spend time on this because it’s a heated debate and one I lack a lot of knowledge on, but for Christians who hold that the promises God made to Abram and Israel are still in effect, blessing Israel would certainly be a goal. Because America would in turn be blessed.
God ends the call by saying “in you all the families of the Earth will be blessed.” In Abram every family in the world will be blessed. The same families and nations that the authors of Genesis outlined in chapter 10, which John preached on last week, they’re to be blessed by Abram. This same promise of Abraham being a blessing to the world is repeated in the Mosaic and Davidic covenants and is a prominent part of this old covenant. It is also speaking directly to you! Are you a member of a family of the Earth? Yes, of course you are! God has chosen to bless you through Abraham! Even now. Because why?
The savior of the world was born to the line of promise, that is he came from the great nation of Abraham. The savior of the world was born to the Hebrew nation, from the tribe of Judah, a king like David. Jesus Christ of Nazareth was delivered to us through the call of Abram, and if we don’t recognize him as a blessing then I don’t know what is. He came and lived a perfect life, died for our sins, and rose again a conqueror over death. And in light of this we hear the call of the gospel. What do I mean by the call of the gospel? Well let’s jump backwards in our text.
Let’s return to the fourth clause, “make your name great so that you will be a blessing”. Making your name great, means to make your reputation prominent and powerful. Now first of all, note that this promise is exactly, exactly what the Tower of Babel was supposed to accomplish. They wanted to make their names great and so they attempted to reach the heights of God. So, the presence of this promise should tell us that God has no issue with a man receiving glory. He has no issue with a man becoming great in the eyes of men. He does have an issue with idolatry. He has an issue with men worshipping themselves or false gods. And he has an issue with a man receiving the glory that is due to his name. He is jealous for his glory. So, the attempt to supersede the heights of God is the problem with the Tower of Babel. In some twisted way, they desired to usurp God. Here, God desires to glorify a person who is obedient to him. A person who has faith in him. And it pleases him to do so. It pleases God to glorify a person who has faith in him.
This is clearly a promise that God kept. Abram lived around 2150 or 2100 BC. That’s over 4000 years ago. And in the vast majority of that time, Abram has had a notable influence on the world. In fact, depending on whatever metric you might measure this by, Abraham is perhaps the most influential person who ever lived. If he’s not the most influential, he’s in the top 5 or so. Three major world religions, basically the only prominent monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all find their roots in him. If you discern that monotheism is true, Abraham’s legacy is basically the only game in town.
AND here’s the thing that we can’t miss. This was not by Abraham’s doing. Abraham did not will this into existence. Abraham did not do this. It was by divine grant that Abraham was lifted out of obscurity and given one of the peak positions of notoriety in all of human history. God selected him out of a place of darkness and brought him into his marvelous light of promise and providence. Listen to how God describes Abram in Joshua 24. “Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. 3 Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan” Abraham was an idolater. He served other gods! There was nothing within Abraham that was worthy of the call, worthy of redemption and yet God reached out and made this man with no children, the father of a nation and one of the most significant historical figures in the world.
I’m pressing on this so hard, because I hope that you’ll see something. You also have received a call from the Lord. You have received a call to lay down your country, your kindred, and your family, and step out in faith to follow Jesus Christ. The same call God made to Abraham is now given to you. Lay down all that you know and follow Christ. The riches of this pursuit are far beyond what is promised to Abraham here. Far beyond. We’re talking about life eternal. We’re talking about unending joy. We’re talking about delighting in the glory of a good God for all of our days, ceaselessly worshipping him for his beauty and truth. The promises made to Abram here pale in comparison to the promises of the gospel. And that call has been given not to a historical figure. It’s been given to you. It’s been given to you, brothers and sisters.
We all love the grand adventure stories. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and especially Pilgrim’s Progress recently. An individual receives a call to come on this great adventure, and charges out to blaze this glorious path. God has given you the call. The greatest and hardest journey of your life awaits for those who answer that call. Notice that Abram was not a man of notoriety before the call, and yet the call of God made him great. And it will do the same for you, for the glory of God. For his name’s sake he will lead you out into murky bogs, and up challenging hills, and into the very heart of what it means to be a human.
If you will believe in Christ, that he lived a perfect life, was crucified, and is raised from the grave to pay your penalty then you can accept this call. If you place your faith in King Jesus, clinging to him and abandoning hope in all other things, whether material or country or kindred or family, then you embark. This is a journey of significant challenge and immaculate reward. Hear the call, believe the gospel, and live the life of a disciple of Christ. Hear the call, believe the gospel, and live the life of disciple of Christ. God will make you a blessing to others as he did with Abram.