Genesis chapter 12, the story
of Abraham. The call of Abraham, that's where
we are now. Genesis 12, the call of Abraham,
the Lord. We saw how those genealogies
in chapter 11 ended with Abram. And then the next, oh, I don't
know, many, many chapters all the way up to about 17, well,
15 chapters deal with Abraham. Abraham's called, the Lord chose
Abram. Not Haran, his brother, not Nahor,
his brother, but Abram. The Lord chose him and chose
his seed. Isaac, not Ishmael. Isaac. Then Jacob, not Esau. All right? So the story of Abram
is the story of God's sovereign electing grace. The story of
Abram is every believer's story. The story of Abraham, or Abram,
is how God takes an unbeliever, an idolater. In Abram's case,
he was a 75-year-old idolater and revealed himself
to this old man, called him, told what all he was going to
do for him, not asking Abraham to do anything for him, but just
telling him what the Lord was going to do for Abraham. That's
salvation. It's everyone's story. Who was
Abraham? Why is he so important? Look
at Genesis 12, verses 1 through 4. Let's read these. had said,
Abram, this took place earlier, the Lord had said unto Abram,
Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy
father's house unto a land that I will show thee, and I will
make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make
thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless
them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee, and in thee
shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' So Abram departed
as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. And Abram
was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran. The
reason it gives Abram's age is because to further prove to show us that
salvation is of the Lord. Can you teach a 75-year-old man
anything? I'm sorry for looking at you,
Brother Henry, but you're older than that. A 40-year-old man
is setting his weight. A 50-year-old woman, 60, 70. What if that person has been
religious? Abram was a religious. What if that person has been
in religion? Say he's been a Methodist or been a Presbyterian or something
for 75 years. His father's house. That's the
way he grew up. That's why he grew up believing.
Are you going to get him out of that? Are you going to convince
him? No way. But the Lord does. He's the only one that can. He
must bring us out of our Father's idolatrous religion. He must,
or we'll perish with our Father in false religion. Abraham is
called the father of the faithful through scriptures because all
believers Believe as he believed. All believers believe who Abraham
believes. All believers were called as
Abraham was called. All believers are led like Abraham
was led. All believers are kept like Abraham
was kept. All believers are taught as Abraham
was taught. Salvation is of the Lord. Every
believer, every child of God knows that. It's not a doctrine.
It's just life. Eternal life. This is life eternal. I may quote this verse of Scripture
five times before this is over. Our Lord said in John 17 3, this
is eternal life. This is when life begins. This
is what it means to be saved. This is what it means to be brought
from darkness to light, from death to light. This is what
it means for God to reveal Himself to you. In John 17, 3, this is
life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. Many people have a conception
of God. It's not the God of the Bible,
so they don't have life. Many people have an imagination
of what God is like, but if it's not the God of the Bible, it's
not life. And Jesus Christ, whom he has
sent, who Christ is, why he came, what he did, who he did it for,
did he do it? This is life eternal. This is
life eternal. If they don't know, if we don't
know the true God, if the God we believe is not the God of
the Bible, we don't have life. If the Christ we believe in is
not the Christ of Scripture, we don't have life. And I didn't
say that. Jesus Christ did. Abraham believed
a God. Abraham believed sometimes. But it wasn't the God of the
Bible. It wasn't the true God. God referred to Himself many
times saying, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Who
was Abraham? He's just another son of Adam.
He's no one special. He's no one special. No one is. No son of Adam is any better
or more special than anyone else. There are billions and trillions
just like us. No matter what our mothers say,
we're not unique. We're just sons of Adam. And
sinners in God's sight, he calls us worms. That's not appealing
to a proud flesh, but that's what God says. Just another son
of Adam is who Abraham was, just like Noah, but Noah found grace. He's a sinner. Abraham's a sinner.
He wasn't a saint when God called him. He didn't know God. He wasn't
looking for God. He was a sinner. God found him. Abraham was an idolater, as we
saw. Back in chapter 11, you see this, he was in verse 27
and 8. Abram, Nahor, and Haran from
their father Terah, verse 28, They lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. Where is that? That's modern-day
Iraq. Iraq. Iraq. Do they believe now, the people
in Iraq, believe the truth? No, they didn't then either.
Chaldeans. Chaldeans. They worshipped other
gods. A god, but it wasn't Jehovah. A true god. Such were some of you. Such were
some of you. Paul said this even about his
Jewish brethren. He said, I bear them record,
they have a zeal for God. They're very zealous in their
religion, but it's not according to knowledge, saving knowledge.
They don't know the true God. They don't know the true Christ. Though they're zealous, Zeal
doesn't save you. If it did, the Arabs would be
all saved, pretty zealous. The Hindus, the Muslims, the
Buddhists would be saved for their zeal. But that doesn't
save you. Christ saves. Christ saved. And such were some
of you, idol worshipers, ignorant of the God of the Bible. Believing
what you believe. Believing what your parents believe.
But God called you like Abraham. Now, verse 1 says, The Lord had
said unto Abraham, Get thee out. As I said, Abraham wasn't calling
on the Lord. He didn't know the Lord. No one
will call on the name of the Lord until he calls them. Everyone quotes Romans 10, 13.
Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Where
did that come from? Joel 2.32, which is fulfilled in Acts 2. But Joel
2.32 says, Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord, it's
the remnant whom the Lord our God shall call. That's who calls
on the Lord. And why do we stress this? Because
the Bible does. Why do we stress this? Because
God must get the glory. He gets the glory for us calling.
He gets the glory for us repenting. No one would repent if God didn't
give them repentance. No one would call if God didn't
call them. No one would seek the Lord. Seek
the Lord. He said, seeking me, you shall
find me when you search for me with all your heart. But the
heart, God has to give a new heart to seek the Lord. Why do
we insist on it? Because it's so. Why do we insist
upon it? Because it gives God all the
glory. And God says, I will not share
my glory with another. What is his chief glory? Salvation. Salvation. When Moses said, show
me your glory, he had already seen glory. He'd already seen
the Red Sea parted. He'd already seen the water coming
out of the rock. He'd already seen so much glory,
all the plagues. But he said, show me your essential
glory. Show me your greatest glory.
And God said, alright, I'll show you. He says, I will be merciful. Great mercy for the Lord to show
mercy on unworthy. ungrateful, unseeking, uncalling,
unthankful creatures that don't give God a thought. It's great
mercy. And he said, I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. They don't deserve it, but I
am so merciful. I'm going to show mercy. And
I'm so merciful, I'm going to show mercy on many as the stars
of the sky and the sands of the seashore. I'm so merciful, they
don't want it. They don't ask for it, but I'm
going to show it. And then they're going to appreciate
it. Not until then. He said, I will be gracious.
I'm going to give, give, give. I will be gracious to whom I
will be gracious. I will be gracious. And that
doesn't mean offer them anything. They wouldn't take it. Then I'm going to make them willing
in the day of my power. Where am I? I'm supposed to be
in Genesis 12. Well, it's all the same. The Lord had said,
Abraham was an idolater. And God came to Abraham and called
him by His grace and said, Get out! You're going to perish there
with your parents, with your unbelieving family. You're going
to perish. Get out! Come out from among
them. He called him out. When God came
down to the children of Israel in Exodus, He said, I am come
down to bring you out of Egypt. I'm going to destroy this place,"
he said, Egypt, which is a picture of the world. Christ came down
to bring a people out. He didn't come down to try to
get people to believe in Him. He came down to save the sheep
that God gave Him, to bring them out and bring them up into a
land that floweth with milk and Verse 1, he said unto Abraham,
Get out of thy country. The Lord had said. The Lord chose
him. And we saw that he did not choose
Haran, his brother, nor Nahor. Nahor stayed where he was. But God told Abraham. Abraham would have stayed right
there and died in his idolatry. But God said, Abraham, I've chosen
you. Abram, come out. Get out. Get out. And he did. Come out from your kindred, from
your father's house. And he says, look at verse 1. Come out from thy kindred, from
thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. Salvation
is a revelation. It's what God shows his people. They don't figure it out. They
don't study and find out. Scripture says that. Can a man
by searching find out God? No. He doesn't even believe there's
a God until God reveals himself to him. How? Through this word.
But he said, come out of your father's house, out of your kindred.
Our Lord said, I am come. I am come. Now, this is in our
text in Matthew 10 for the next hour. He said, I am come. You suppose I am come to bring
peace? He said, no, I say a sword. He said, I am come. And there's
not one in a thousand so-called Christians today that have ever
even heard this verse of Scripture. Our Lord said, suppose I come
to bring peace? I say, nay, a sword. He said, I'm come to set a man
at variance against his father and a woman against her mother
and mother-in-law. I'm come to separate households. Now, you understand what that
means because you went through it. Many of you went through
it, have gone through it. The Lord called you, revealed
Himself to you, the true God, the true Christ, and brought
you out of your father's religion. And now you're at variance with
your family over it, aren't you? And they can't understand. Of
course they can't understand. God didn't reveal Himself to
them. And they think you're in a cult. That's what they thought
about the early church, didn't they? You're not like us in organized
religion, organized Judaism. You're not like that. You're
a cult. No. The called, not the cult. God calls His people like Abram. That's why He chose Abraham. That's why he's in Scripture
so much, like he is. And it may sound hard, but it's
true. You know, what the Lord said,
the people said was hard. What the Lord said, all the way
through John chapter, well, the whole book of John. But the people
some who thought they were disciples, said they were disciples, after
he finished speaking, he said things like this, ìNo man can
come unto me except the Father which has sent me to draw him.î And after he spoke, they said,
ìThese are hard sayings. Who can hear them?î Our Lord
said, ìHe that is of God heareth Godís word.î He said, but you
believe not because you're not my sheep. As I said unto you,
my sheep hear my voice. They believe. They follow me.
He that is of God, heareth God's word. Why? Because God chose
him. God revealed himself to him.
It's hard to say. This may sound hard, but it's
true. It's true. If your father or mother, husband
or wife, believes a God who loves everyone, They don't know the God of the
Bible, and they're lost. If your father or mother or your
husband or wife believes in a God who tries to do things and can't
do things unless men let them, that's a God who can't save.
And the Scripture says that's no God at all. That's an idol.
Is that too hard? It's so. That's a sword. A sword is a hard thing. A sword
is a severed thing. severs you from the joints in
the marrow, the Lord said. Things that are inseparably connected. I'm going to believe what I believe.
I believe all this. This is what my father believed, what my grandfather
believed. I'm going to believe that, not
that the sword drops. If your father or mother or husband
or wife or whoever, son or daughter, believes that man has a free
will, How could they possibly believe
in the God who works all things after His own will? They don't
know God. This is a conclusion. And everyone
in here who knows God, that's the conclusion you finally came
to, isn't it? It's like your eyes were open. And that's exactly what happened.
You were blind, following a blind leader, and then one day, You've
got to figure out to see, you know, He is God, isn't He? And
He's not trying to be God. He is God. Fear of the Lord. I'm in His hands. He's not in
my hands. And those of you who are in religion,
you rejected this God. You heard a little bit about
this, and you rejected it, didn't you? And it struck fear in you. Oh, I rejected the truth. I've turned away my ears from
the truth unto fables. Great mercy for the Lord to bring
you out. That may sound hard, but salvation
is a violent thing. Yes, it is. Like birth, new birth. You're
lazy at giving birth to children. Did you ask that baby, would
you accept me as your personal mother? Huh? Did that baby have
anything to do with its birth? Does the baby get any glory whatsoever? Huh? Does everyone applaud and
thank the baby for accepting you? Oh, come on. Does that sound
silly? It's more foolish for creatures
to talk about what they're going to let the Creator of the heavens
and the earth do. The God in whose hands our breath
is in all our ways. The God who says, I have the
keys of the... What are you going to let me do? Well, a true God does the choosing. A true God does the calling.
God had said, get out. Look at all these I will. See this? Who's willing? Did the Lord say, Abraham, if
you're willing, if you will let me, at any point did the Lord
say to Abraham, if you will let me, Abraham, I want to do this
for you. No, sir. See, the Lord is from the outset
in the book of Genesis showing us who the God of the Bible is
and who he calls, how he calls. what He called, what He does,
who He is, what He did, what He does, and it shall be. Look at it. He said, I will show
you. Verse 2, I will make of thee
a great nation. I will bless thee and make thy
name great. I will. And what? Thou shalt. The difference between the true
God and the false God today is this. The false God that False
preachers preach to say this, if you will, God shall. The true God and the truth says
this. God says, I will and you shall. Isn't that what it is? And boy, when the Lord reveals
that to you, you're so thankful. Oh, you're so thankful. So thankful. John and I, Davis and I, well,
every believer in here David said, Thou hast given commandment
to save me. I'm so glad that God gave the
commandment. Not a request, not an invite,
but God said, Like David said of Mephibosheth, Mephibosheth
is going to die. He's an enemy of the King David,
but King David is a merciful man. He told two strong men,
he said, you go down to the house of Maker and Lodomar and you
get that enemy of mine called Mephibosheth and you fetch him.
Excuse me, I got to holler that? Had to. Pick him up and bring
him up here. See, he couldn't come. He was
lame. He wouldn't come. He was an enemy. His father was
the deposed king, Saul. He wanted to be on the throne.
But David was merciful for a covenant he made with Jonathan, Mephibosheth's
son. He says, Go get him. I promised
Jonathan that I'd have mercy. And they brought him up there
and sat him down in front of the king, and David didn't ask
him anything. I'd like to do this if you'll
let me. I'd want to." And your father said, you know, you were
a good boy. No! He said, Mephibosheth, I have
decided to show mercy on you. Mephibosheth, I'm doing this
because of Jonathan's sake. What a covenant I make. Mephibosheth,
you are going to eat bread with me at the king's table as one
of my sons. And a fiddleship from that day
forward was so thankful, so glad, so grateful that the king fetched
him, that the king brought him, that the king called him, that
the king, because of a covenant, he was so thankful for Jonathan. And that's not my story. It is
my story. It's all the same story. There's
no different story. The call of Abraham is a call
of a fiddleship. It's a call of Henry. This is
how God said, I will. God said, God did it. He said, I've spoken it, I'll
bring it to pass. I'll bring it to pass. I will
and you shall. Verse 3, I will bless them that
bless thee, curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all the
families of the earth be blessed. You know, Abraham, those of you
who know this, Abraham is a wonderful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He knew I was going to get to that. Had to open, John said,
open. Abraham's a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Abraham, we're not blessed in
Abraham. We're blessed like Abraham. And
if we read, I don't have time. I'm out of time. I was going
to go over to Galatians where it said those who are of faith
are children of Abraham, like Abraham. Those who have this
same faith are blessed with Abraham. He is not a Jew, which is one
outwardly. This is not about the Jewish race. This is a spiritual
picture. This is a gospel story of how
God chooses people. I doubt it. Abraham wasn't a
Jew. He was Iraqi. He wasn't circumcised before
the law was given. He didn't keep the law. There
was no law. salvation by God's choice, by
God. At any rate, when God said to Abraham, I'll
make your seed over in Galatians, Paul brings this out clearly.
He said he didn't say seeds. He said seed. And he said that
seed is Jesus Christ. Who he's talking about is Jesus
Christ, who God The one that God chose, he said, Behold mine
elect, Isaiah 42, mine elect whom I have chosen. Who's that?
Abraham? No, Jesus Christ, whom he chose. Ephesians 1 says, According
to this, he has chosen us in Christ before the foundation
of the world. All of Abraham's seed, Jews,
Isaac, Jacob, and so on and so forth. came out of Abraham, okay? They're called Jews because they
came from Abraham. Well, God chose Christ before
the world began, and all of those people come out of Him, from
Him, through Him, to Him, by Him, for Him. And when God said
this to Abram, He's really speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our
Lord said that. He said, they or they would testify
of me. He said, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. Abraham
believed Christ. Abraham's a type of Christ. Whom
God made head over all. Whom God will bless, make a great
nation, a spiritual kingdom. Whom God says, I'll make your
name great. God says he's given him a name
which is above every name. Whose name? Abraham? No. Jesus
Christ. And you will be a blessing. You
will be a blessing. They'll be blessed in you. And
He said, I'll bless them that bless you, and I'll curse them
that curse you. Scripture says, Cursed is everyone
that loveth not the Lord Jesus Christ. But blessed are those
that do. And back to our text, and I quit
with this in verse 4. So, what happened when the Lord
chose Abram? said what he was going to do.
What happened? Abraham departed. He did exactly
what the Lord told him to do. Was there any possibility that
he wouldn't leave? None. None. Was there any possibility
that the Lord wouldn't bless him? None. None. And he went out. A lot with him. The world wasn't a lot grateful
for Abraham. He almost perished in Sodom if
it wasn't for Abraham interceding. And we know that Christ would
perish here if Christ wasn't interceded for that. OK.