God called Abram. It wasn't his idea to have any
kind of relationship with the God of the Bible, with the God
of creation, the God of salvation. That was the furthest thing from
his mind. He was a man who was an idolater
just like all men are by nature. But God came after Abram. Abram was one God marked out
before the world began to be his own. And therefore God worked
all things in the life of Abram to bring him to himself, to bring
Abram to a knowledge of his neediness, and then to bring him to Christ
Jesus, the Savior. Now, as the name Genesis indicates,
this is the book of beginnings. All of the book, all 50 chapters
of the book of Genesis is basically centered around four great beginnings. First of all, of course, there's
the beginning of creation. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning,
God created the heaven and the earth. Heaven, that place where
he will take us, that will be our everlasting abode, the abode
of his people. When we go home to glory, based
upon the grace of God and based upon the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus, we shall someday enter into heaven. and earth,
well, this is where God will fulfill his purpose of redemption. We know that this salvation was
ordained of God before time ever began. Really, salvation is as
old as God is, and that's eternal. So our salvation never had a
beginning, and it will never have an end. And back in the
endless past of eternity, I don't know any other way to put it,
God Himself ordained, He purposed the salvation of folks like you
and me and He would bring it to pass in this world, on this
earth. And so at the right time, according
to God's intention, according to God's decree, God made the
heaven and the earth, and then he began to bring into reality
that which he had purposed to do before he ever made anything. He commences to work this work
of salvation. Now, the second great beginning
we find in the book of Genesis is, of course, the beginning
of our race, the human race. God created a man. He made him
out of the dust of the ground, the red dirt, the red dust of
the ground. And God breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life. And God gave to this one man,
Adam, he gave him a wife and her name would be Eve. She's the mother of all living. And from these two people, this
beginning, from this union, from this establishment by God of
marriage. Of course, all of us came into
being. So we find at the end of Genesis
chapter one, and of course going through chapter three of Genesis,
we find that God brought into existence our humanity. And this was ordained because,
you see, before God made anything, He had already purposed the body
that our Lord Jesus would have. Because in order to save us,
and God knowing and foreseeing and foreordaining all things,
God ordained salvation even before we fell. He had a Savior even
before there were sinners. And God therefore had ordained
a body for our Lord Jesus and Adam's body was patterned after
the body that God would prepare for the Savior. You remember
the Lord Jesus is quoted as saying in Psalm 40 and also in Hebrews
chapter 10, a body thou has prepared me. And in that body, he would
come into this world. So God created Adam. their first
Adam, and then there's the last Adam, which is the Lord Jesus.
So there's Adam and Eve, and from Adam and Eve, of course,
all of mankind would come into being, and Adam being the representative
of the human race. So first of all, there's the
beginning of creation. Secondly, there's the beginning
of our human race. And then the third thing, there's
the new beginning, of what the old times used to call the post-Diluvian
earth. And that just means after the
flood. Diluvian has to do with the flood. Sometimes you'll be reading in
books and you'll read of Diluvian, pre-Diluvian and post-Diluvian. It has to do with the flood that
God would send into this world. And so the third beginning is
the post-Diluvian race upon this earth through Noah and his sons. And of course, we trace our lineage
back to the sons of Noah, all men and women do, to the sons
of Noah and to Noah himself, and then ultimately right back
to Adam. There's the beginning of the
post-Diluvian race after the flood. And then the fourth beginning
is the beginning of a nation that God chose that he would
use And the man who originated that nation is Abram, and then
he came to be known as Abraham, as we shall see in our studies
here in Genesis. Now, of these four main beginnings,
This last one that I have mentioned, it covers about 39 chapters of
the book of Genesis. There are only 50 chapters in
Genesis, and this covers 39 of them, so more than 75% of the
book of Genesis has to do with the life and the
generations of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. So the
rest of the book, beginning here, actually beginning in the middle
of chapter 11, because that's when Abram is first mentioned,
and continuing to the end of the book of Genesis, and in fact,
throughout the book, the Old Testament books, all the way
to the book of Malachi, everything is focused upon Abraham and this
nation that God would raise up through this man. And of course,
this nation is a picture and a type of the true Israel of
God, as the apostle Paul speaks of us in Galatians chapter six. National Israel, we're not saying
that national Israel, that they all knew God, they didn't. We
know that, all you've got to do is read in Hebrews chapter
three, there's so many of them who died in unbelief. and their wilderness journeys. We've been speaking in the book
of Exodus quite a bit, and we're beginning to see them as they
go through their wilderness journeys. Most of them die in unbelief. They die without God. They die
without Christ. They die without grace. So I'm
not saying that they're all believers. Certainly not. But there was
a remnant according to the election of grace. We're thankful for
that. But as a nation, they pictured another nation, a spiritual nation,
even the true Israel of God. It's amazing, before we get to
the study of Abram, And after we have studied Noah, right between
these two great men of faith, and by the way, in the book of
Hebrews chapter 11, these men, they're put back to back. By
faith, Noah, by faith, Abraham, back to back. But right between
those two men was an ungodly man called Nimrod. Because you
see, if God has his genuine gospel, as he does, and if God has his
people, and he does, then you can be certain that Satan will
have a counterfeit, and he will have his people, and he will
have a counterfeit gospel, and all of that is tied into Nimrod,
and the city of Babylon, and the tower of Babel. So we have
the truth of God, we have the error of Satan, we have anti-Christ
religion, we have a false gospel as is seen in Nimrod and in Babel,
the religion of works. Babel being the gate to God. That was the original meaning,
later it came to mean confusion, because God confused the languages
there at Babel as set forth, and we studied that last week
in Genesis chapter 11. But while God has his true gospel,
Satan always has his counterfeit. you may be absolutely certain
that he does not set idle on the sidelines as God works. Now, that which Satan does, he
does according to the everlasting purpose of God. Satan can do
nothing except that which God has ordained for him to do, which
will fulfill God's eternal purpose. And we must never forget that.
But here are two great men of faith. Noah and Abraham. And in between them, we see Nimrod,
a rebel, a rebel. But remember this, by nature,
Noah and Abraham, Abram was his original name, they were by nature
rebels too. You see, there's no difference
between Noah and Nimrod and Abram, except the difference that grace
made. And if you're a believer this
evening, if Christ is your only hope of glory, and you look to
Him and you're not looking to your works, well, you can't trace
any of that to yourself. It's God who made the difference.
And Noah and Abraham being great men of faith are not to be commended
for their faith because their faith is a gift of God. And we
don't want to commend them. We don't want to heap any kind
of congratulations or any kind of a great favor or outstanding
merits upon either Noah or Abram, because like is written in 1
Corinthians chapter 15, this is what Paul said, by the grace
of God, I am what I am. It's the grace of God that made
the difference with Noah. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. And God showed grace to Abram. But He didn't show grace to Nimrod. And if you, in your heart of
hearts, love the Lord Jesus, and you believe Him, and you
look to His substitutionary death, this is all my plea. This is
all my hope. the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the righteousness of the Son of God. If He is all of your
hope, it's grace that has made the difference. It's interesting that Noah, when
he came forth from the ark, the first thing he did was to build
an altar. and he offered sacrifices unto
God. He knew without the shedding
of blood is no remission of sins. But as the years go by, men fell
away from the truth, certainly Noah didn't, and his son Shem
did not. But in general, men forsook the
things of God as the population began to multiply. Men went back
to their natural, the natural religion of man, which is idolatry,
idolatry. And God just let men go. And if God lets men go, then
they'll never believe Him. And our prayer ought to be, there's
a song that we sing quite often. Keep us, Lord, O keep us, cleaving
to thyself and still believing, till the hour of our receiving
promise joys with thee. Keep us looking, O Lord. Keep
us believing. Well, when we get to Genesis
chapter 11 and verse 10, we see these are the generations of
Shem. Shem is now a hundred years old
and we begin to go through and begin to look at his genealogy. And then we get down to verse,
Genesis 11 and 27. Now these are the generations
of Terah. Terah begat, And thus we're introduced to
this man who is so unusual, made unusual by the grace of God. He's referred to as the father
of the faithful. This is a man who's brought to
believe God. And he believes God because the
Lord revealed himself to him. Now, let me give you several
things here, and then I'll go right into talking about Abram. But let me just say this. These
are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram. Terah begat Abram. Terah's Abraham's father. And
he's an idolater. He's an idolater. He, though
he is a descendant of Noah and the three sons of Noah, he has
no interest in the gospel. And I'll give you some interesting
things about Terah, about his name. His name is very significant
because his name has threefold meaning, wild goat, and then
the word turning and then wondering. That's Terah. That's Terah, Abram's
father. He's a wild goat. He's not a
sheep. He turned from the gospel of
Shem, and he wandered further and further and further away,
even leading his family well on away from the gospel of the
grace of God. But God had his purpose. And his purpose of grace was
tied up in one of the sons of Terah, Abram. Abram means exalted father. Later,
the Lord will change his name to Abraham, which means the father
of many nations. We'll look at that in chapter
17 in verse five, later in our studies in Genesis. But let me
give you five things about Abram and the grace of God. First of
all, there is the God's choice, God's choice of Abram. Look at chapter 11 in verse 31. And Terah took Abram, his son,
and Lot, the son of Haran, his son's son, and of course there's
Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife, and they went
forth with them. They went out of Ur of the Chaldees
to go into the land of Canaan, and they came into Haran and
dwelt there. And the days of Terah were 205
years, and Terah died in Haran, and he died in unbelief. He died
an ungodly man. He died in idolatry. But God
laid it upon his heart to leave Ur of the Chaldees and take Abram
and these other ones with him. Well, what was the reason for
them leaving? It was at the insistence of Abram,
of Abram. Go with me to the book of Acts
chapter seven. And you remember in the early
church of Jerusalem, there was a need that arose which resulted
in seven men being put forth by the congregation to be deacons,
which would kind of free up the time of the apostles so that
they could give themselves to the study of the word of God
and to prayer. And one of the men who was chosen
as a deacon, in fact, the very first one whose name is mentioned,
a man of faith and full of the Holy Ghost, his name was Stephen.
Stephen stirred up the people. He was quite the preacher too.
We'll get to chapter seven, verse one. Stephen is standing in front
of the Sanhedrin. which is the highest Jewish court
of the land. Then said the high priest, are
these, are the accusations against you true, what you've said about
Jesus of Nazareth and so forth? And so Stephen answers and he
says, men and brethren and fathers, hearken, the God of glory appeared
unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before
he dwelt in Charon. And he said unto him, Get thee
out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the
land, which I will show thee. You see, it was at Abraham's
insistence that his dad said, Let's all move. Let's all leave. It was Abraham that God had spoken
to. He had spoken to his heart, and
he said, Let's leave here. You'll notice the expression
there in the second verse, the God of glory appeared to our
father Abraham. The God of glory is a phrase
that's only used here and in, I think it's Psalm 29 in verse
3 if I remember correctly. The God of glory, and it's a
reference specifically to the Lord Jesus Christ. The God of
glory appeared to Abraham, the Son of God in pre-incarnate form. He appeared to Abram and he taught
him the gospel. Go back over here to our text
in Genesis chapter 12. You'll notice how Moses is led
to express this in verse one. Now the Lord had said unto Abram,
the Lord, God, our salvation, God, our savior, that one who
originated salvation, that one who is salvation. The Lord had
said, He had already said to Abram, get thee out of thy country
and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land
that I will show you. You see, God determined to have
a people of His own, a people He would call by grace. And it
is not until Nimrod, he exposed the natural enmity of man against
God in building the city of Babylon and building this tower of Babel,
seeking acceptance with God upon men's works. It was only after
this has been set forth, as we can see man in his natural rebellion
against God, in his natural religion. Understand this, the natural
religion of man is always idolatry. That's his natural religion.
That's the way we go. It isn't merely we tend to go
that way, we do go that way. We're alienated from God from
the womb. We came into the world speaking
lies. We're sinful people. And the
gospel of God's grace is absolutely foreign to us. That which we
take hold of and embrace is the religion of works. And Nimrod
did. And after this has been revealed,
man with his enmity against God, after all this has been set forth,
and God has therefore dispersed people throughout the world,
having separated them according to the different languages. And
of course, people who have the same language, they would tend
to go together. And so the whole world is populated.
But after we've seen man in his natural rebellion against God,
it's then that God introduces us to a man that he will use
in a mighty and in a powerful way, a man who is God's choice. It was sovereign grace that set
Abram apart from his family, from his loved ones, Election
is said to be of grace. In Abraham, here we see the choice
of God of Abraham. You see, electing grace retrieved
Abram from the idolatry of his fathers. Let every saved sinner
give thanks unceasingly unto God for his electing grace. It makes the difference. There's
not only the choice of Abram, but there is the call of Abram.
God called him. You can read about this in Galatians
chapter three, verses seven and eight. He heard the gospel. Who
did he hear the gospel from? He heard the gospel from the
Lord. You see, notice verse one of chapter 12 again. Now the
Lord had said unto Abram, He received a personal visit from
the Lord of Glory. And I think about Saul of Tarsus. That's what happened to him.
He received a visit from the Lord of Glory, the God of Glory,
as Stephen used that expression there in Acts chapter 7. The
God of Glory visited Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? Who are you, Lord? I'm Jesus,
whom thou persecutest. And the same one who visited
Saul of Tarsus, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years
later, visited Abraham. And you know what he does? You
know what the Lord does today? He still visits sinners by His
Spirit. He visited you. If you're a believer,
you've received a personal visitation from the God of glory. The Son
of God sends His Spirit to work in us. God called Abraham. He
called him. Notice in verses one, two, and
three of these I wills. Notice what God says. Chapter
12 again. He says at the end of verse one,
unto a land that I will show thee, I will reveal it to, I'll
manifest it to you. And I will make of thee a great
nation. I will bless thee and make thy
name great and thou shalt be a blessing. And this is a reference,
not so much to Abraham being a blessing to people, though
he was, But it's the seed of Abraham, even the Lord Jesus
will be a blessing to people. And verse three, I will bless
them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in
thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Blessed in Christ Jesus. Certainly the religion of Nimrod
and Babel had become the religion of the world. There's no question
about that. There were a few exceptions.
Job, who lives somewhere pretty close
to this time. Melchizedek. But idolatry is
the religion of man's choice, and it covered the world. It
covered the world. Here's an interesting verse. Go look at Job with me. I was
looking at this today. Back in those times, there was
a time of the worship of saints, which very much parallels our
day. This is a day of, you know, Saint
Christopher or whatever saint, depends on what kind of problem
you've got as to what kind of saints you'll worship. Well,
look at what Eliphaz says to Job in Job 5 in verse 1. Call now, Job 5 verse 1. He says, call now, if there be
any that will answer thee, and to which of the saints wilt thou
turn? This was an age of worshiping
of saints, very much like our day. But no saint is ever to
be worshiped. The only worship is due to our
God. He's worthy of worship, not a
saint. But back here in Genesis chapter
12, here's Abram being called by the Lord. Now, astrology back in those
days was very much a part of everyday life. Abram had all
of these things going on. It was in this kind of atmosphere
that Abram grew up. But in the midst of all of it,
God got the truth to him. And I was thinking about how
today people in astrology, saint worship, false religion is everywhere. But if you belong to God, he'll
get the truth to you. And there may be an Abram down
in Ur of the Chaldees, mired up in idolatry. Oh, but he belongs
to God. He'll get the word to him. He'll
get the gospel to him. And Abraham heard and believed
this gospel. No wonder the psalmist said,
blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach
unto thee. And then thirdly, we've seen
the choice of Abram, the call of Abram. Let me show you something
about the consecration of Abram. He was a man who stood unashamedly
for the truth of God in a land of idolatry. He says this in
verses 4 and 5, so Abram departed, believing God, he's committed
to the Lord. He departed as the Lord had spoken
unto him, and Lot went with him. Hey, Lot is also a chosen vessel
of mercy. And Abram was 75 years old when
he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarah, his wife,
and Lot, his brother's son, and all the substance that they had
gathered and the souls that they had gotten in Haran. And they
went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land
of Canaan they came. This is a man who stood for the
things of God. He insisted to his father, let's
leave here. And of course you can read in
Hebrews chapter 11, it says of Abraham, he went out not knowing
where he was going. He was a pilgrim. He was a pilgrim. He looked for a city whose builder
and maker was God. He's a man who's committed to
the Lord. He's consecrated to the Lord.
Here's the fourth thing, the corruption of Abraham. Now I've
read that. I read this to you. And it reminds
us that Abram, though he's a man of faith, he still has corruption
because he's fearful for his life rather than believing God.
Yes, I know he believed Him for salvation, but hey, he saw his
life to be in jeopardy. And so he says to his honey,
to his wife, you're a good looking woman. And we're going to get
down there in Egypt And those guys are going to see how beautiful
you are, and if I tell them and you say, hey, I'm this guy's
wife, well then they're just going to kill me. They'll do
away with me to take you. So just say you're my sister.
Abraham, what is the matter with you? Where is your faith? And don't you say that about
yourself sometimes. Where is your faith? Where is
your faith? God brought you out of Ur of
the Chaldees. And you urged your father, Terah, let's leave this
place. Let's get out of here. Because
the Lord had spoken to him, said, I'm going to bless you. I'm going
to raise up a seed through you, through whom all the nations
of the earth will be blessed. And here he goes by faith. And
then he runs into a little speed bump in the road. And he sees
his life in jeopardy and says, I can now, I'll fall back on
the flesh. I see a way out of this. And so he lied. And of course,
the Lord kept Pharaoh from laying a hand on Sarah. And he realized
through the plagues that God sent him, You know, we read about
plagues that God sent upon the Egyptians, upon Pharaoh in the
book of Exodus. He sent them here. Pharaoh said,
boy, something is wrong here. And then he goes to Abram and
he said, what in the world have you done? Weakness of the flesh. God help
us to believe it. I'll tell you this, when you
get to Hebrews chapter 11, this little episode isn't even mentioned.
It's covered by the blood of the Lord Jesus. This is the corruption
of Abram. And lastly, here's the custodian
of Abram, that is the protector of Abram. Look at chapter 12
and verse 17. The Lord plagued Pharaoh and
his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. Abram, you should have believed
God, because you had a custodian, you had someone who's looking
after you. Thank God he's the custodian,
he's the protector of his people. He protects us, He provides for
us, He preserves us, even though we're not worthy of the least
of His mercies. We're His children. And He's
always watching out for us and watching over us. And we don't
have to turn to the arm of the flesh. The arm of the flesh will
fail you. You dare not trust your own.
The Lord our God, He who called us, He who chose us, He who called
us, He who consecrated us unto Himself, He who forgives our
corruption, He's our custodian. He's the one who watches over
us. He keeps us safe. God, help us to believe Him and
to trust Him. by our heads. Our Father, we
thank you for the grace that you gave to Abram before the
foundation of the world. Grace that was manifested in
time when you called him by your grace, when he received a personal
visitation of sovereign mercy from the everlasting Son of God
and we thank you that you called us to and you visited us with
the gospel by the spirit of your love and the spirit of your grace
and you brought us to yourself, you called us and you gave us
the willingness to believe and to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now give us, give us grace to
believe you and Lord forgive us when we when we don't believe. Forgive us when we try to take
matters into our own hands and solve the problems that we perceive
that we have. Shall not our God who in old
eternity chose us unto salvation, who redeemed us by the bloody
death of his Son, who robed us in the gorgeous garments of the
righteousness of the Son of God, shall he not who called us to
faith keep us safe and preserve us and meet our needs through
all the days of our earthly pilgrimage? And Lord, like Abraham, we look
for a city, a city that hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God. We bless you this evening and
thank you for the grace that you gave us in the Lord Jesus
Christ before the world began. May your benediction of love
and grace and mercy be upon all those who truly call upon your
name. For Christ's sake, I ask these
things. Amen.