Genesis 12

And, and then Abraham said, calls the name of the place Yahweh will provide.

Um, and then the angel calls to him again and gives him this reinstitution of Genesis 12 that, "I will surely multiply your offspring, and he, your seed, will possess the gate of his enemies," and, um, it's this Messianic promise.

And if, which I think the overall argument of the Bible can prove that this is actually God the Son intervening with Abraham to say, "It's not going to be your son." And if that is actually the person of the divine Son, certainly always acting with the Father and the Spirit in tandem, but the person of the Son being the one intervening with, with Abraham saying, "It's not going to be your son.

I will provide, and, and then there will be a son who will possess the gate of his enemies," well suddenly that brings the entire scope of the Biblical revelation of the gospel crashing in on one verse.

The second responsibility of blessing is to become a blessing to others.

In Genesis 12, it says, I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you and make you famous.

And you... be a blessing to others so god's blessing carries a responsibility towards people there is a difference between being blessed and becoming a blessing i'm not just praying god bless you god make me a blessing make me a blessing there are persons that look good they dress well they look rich If you ask for anything, I don't have because they are just blessed.

A blessed person does not merely ask, how can I live? But what will remain because I lived? What will remain because I came to the earth? And number five, The fifth responsibility of blessing is to advance God's kingdom, specifically to advance God's kingdom.

The ultimate purpose of Abraham's blessing was larger than Abraham's household.

In Genesis 12, it says, I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse him who curses you.

Check out this slide.

We saw it in Genesis 12, 7.

To your offspring I will give this land.

And then right after that, we see that the woman Sarah was taken into Pharaoh's house trying to corrupt the seed.

Tonight, Abraham will once again entrust himself to the character of God and allow the Lord to work in the life he deeply cares about, apart from his personal intervention.

Next slide, please.

In Genesis 12, you see that he leaves his country, people, and his father's household.

Genesis 15, he cuts animals to create a covenant with the Lord.

Now, we see this quite clearly in Genesis chapter 12, verses one to three.

In Genesis 12:1-3, God calls Abram, or I was about to say Abraham, but it's actually Abram.

He calls Abram out, who later becomes Abraham, and he says, "It's through you that I will bless the nations.

I'm gonna bless you and your family, but your family's gonna be the conduit through which I bless the nations." And immediately what we see in Genesis 12 is how the idea of election is about a job or a calling to do.

As many scholars will say, it is a vocation, and it's a vocation specifically laid upon the family of Abraham or upon Israel.

Israel is the avenue through which salvation will come to the world.

So the best approach to all of this is to just say, well, I want a, a- an interpretation that actually makes the best sense, not only logically, conceptually, morally, theologically, but exegetically.

And as we've seen, this approach that I'm advocating for makes sense of what's going on here in the New Testament with Jesus' ministry.

He warned Abimelech, the king in Genesis 20.

He warned the, I mean, Pharaoh in Genesis 12 when Pharaoh tried to take the wife of Abraham, say, "Stop, stop it.

Stop it." I want you to lift up your voice.

You are gonna cry unto God and say, "Lord, in the journey of today, fight my battles for me in the name of Jesus." Open your mouth.

For those of you taking notes, the church did not begin with Abraham.

When did the church begin? What was its origin? Not Genesis 12.

Genesis 12 is when God called Abram out from all the other peoples of the earth to make him a great nation which would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.

It would be the nation through whom God would send His Son into the world to be the Savior of all mankind.

Now what God did in Genesis 12, that made Abram the father of the Hebrew people.

And Genesis 12 marks the beginning of the nation of Israel, but it does not mark the beginning of the church.

And the error that we're refuting just as quickly as possible this evening, not in depth and not in detail, is the error of replacement theology.

Yes.

We're going to have a reading now, and we're going to see what goes on when God speaks to Abraham.

So Danielle's going to come and read for us from Genesis 12, verses 1 to 8.

Thank you, Danielle.

Thank you.