God Calls Abram

Genesis 12:1-3

In our study of Genesis we have come today to a point in history which will prove to be of such tremendous importance as to shape the course of the world both in this age and the age to come. God calls Abram (Abraham as God will later renamed him). Why is the call of Abram so significant?

Remember what God has done so far in Genesis. In the beginning God the Father, through the agency of his eternal Son, created all things by the word of His command. Therefore, God owns all things, has a purpose for all things, and on Him all things depend absolutely. He created mankind with the purpose to glorify God by filling the earth and ruling over it as His vice-regents. Man was to live in a perfect relationship with God in full dependence on God’s abundant provision.

But in Genesis 3 our first parents became enamored by the possibility of not relying on God’s merciful provision, not living for His glory, and not advancing His purpose in creation. Lured by Satan, they chose rather to reject God’s loving commandment and to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, believing the lie that they would become like God. The desire of man to rule his own life and promote his own glory became so strong that he scorned the wisdom and power and love of God by rejecting God’s provision of eternal, abundant life. And with Adam fell the whole human race.

Since then, we all come into the world with a nature that is prone to sin. The essence of sin has been rebellious self-reliance and self-exaltation. We saw it in Cain when he murdered Abel; in Lamech boasting of his vengeance; in the corruption and violence of the human race before the flood; in the tower builders of Babel who desired to make a name for themselves. There is enmity between man and God. The natural heart will not submit to God (Romans 8:7), but seeks its own glory (John 5:44) and, therefore, deeply resists the call of God to turn and become like little children and enter the kingdom (Matthew 18:3). And God, in His holiness will not be indifferent to sin and the defamation of His glory. Humanity is under God’s righteous condemnation.

But before the world was made God had a plan to redeem fallen humanity, a plan to reconcile mankind to Himself. God began to give hints of this salvation in the first few chapters of Genesis. He promised a seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. God accepted the blood sacrifice of Abel. God kept a remnant of those who, like Enoch and Noah, walked with Him by faith. God rescued humanity from the flood by saving eight people on the ark. He blessed Noah and promised not to destroy humanity with the earth again. God transmitted the promised seed through the line of godly Shem. Finally, God zeroed in on one man, Abram, from a family of idol worshippers (Joshua 24:2, 3) in the land of Ur, and calls him who would become the father of all the faithful. From Abram will come God’s chosen people, Israel. From Israel will come the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Savior of the world.

It would be an understatement to call this a pivotal passage. Some have called this the single most important passage in all the Bible. Everything else that follows Genesis 12—all the way through the Old Testament into the New, including the coming of Christ, the establishment of the church, and the promise and vision of Christ’s return in the book Revelation—all of it flows from this great promise to Abraham. One commentator wrote: “If there is such a thing as an interpretive key which opens doors of understanding in both the Old and New Testament narratives, then certainly that key is precisely here.” Everything that comes before it in Genesis 1-11 is leading up to it. Everything after Genesis 12:1-3 in the Bible is fulfilling it.

See if you can glimpse the magnitude of this moment as I read our text, Genesis 12:1-3:

¹ Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. ² I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This is God’s call to Abram. How did the Lord speak to him? Did Abram hear God’s voice? Did he dream a dream, or see a vision? The text does not say. But the call was clear.

This passage is the birth of God’s covenant of grace with Abraham on which later passages will elaborate. Genesis 12:1-3 has a symmetrical structure: There is a command from the Lord (Gen. 12:1), “Get out” (or “Go forth” NASB) followed by three promises: “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you; And make your name great.” Then there is a second command, rendered as a future tense in most versions: “And you shall be a blessing,” followed by three more promises: “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So, there are two imperatives in this passage: “Go forth” and “be a blessing.” Abram will obey the first command and God will bless him so that he could fulfill the second command to be a blessing, which would result in God blessing others through Abram.

So first let’s consider the,

1. Covenant Command (Gen. 12:1)

Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you.”

First, notice that Abram’s relationship with the LORD began with him hearing the word of God. God initiated this covenant with Abram. God always takes the initiative. He always speaks first, acts first, calls first, loves first. Remember that we learned last time that Abram’s family was pagan. They served other gods in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram’s call came by the grace of God.

Second notice the authority of God in this call. God said to Abram, “Get out” or “Go forth.” The Lord didn’t suggest to Abram, “If you’d like a happier life, you might try moving to Canaan.” No, the Lord gave a command that demanded a response. The only way to follow God’s call is to take God at His Word. We’ll look at Abram’s response to God’s call next time but briefly look at it in Genesis 12:4, “So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” Abram believed the word of the LORD and he acted on it.

Third, notice that the covenant of grace begins with the command of God to Abram to separate himself, “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house.” It was a threefold separation: 1) From his country—Abram must leave the land where he was born, grew, and lived. He was to leave behind his past identity to be identified with the LORD. 2) From his family—Abram must leave his extended relatives. He was to leave behind connection, closeness with family to have intimacy with the LORD. 3) From his father’s house—Abram must leave his father household. He was to leave behind the security of his father’s house to be secure in the LORD.

Abram was being asked to separate himself and forsake everything in order to follow God’s call. Why would God ask him to do that? Probably, part of the reason that Abram needed to leave his country, family, and household was because of temptations associated with them. Ur, though a prosperous city, was full of idolatry and Abram’s family also worshiped idols (Josh. 24:2).

Abram’s call to leave everything is very much like the call of the gospel. Jesus said (Matt. 10:37-39), “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”

God’s command for Abram to separate him is not a command to take himself completely out of the world, to have no contact with anyone else in the world, to hate the world. No, Abram had to live in the world, because what’s the second command God gives him? Be a blessing to the nations. So on the one hand he must separate, on the other hand he must be a blessing. That is our calling too. Jesus prayed for his disciples this way (John 17:15-16), “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”

Finally notice this command was to move “To a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). The New Testament writer of Hebrews comments on this (Heb 11:8), “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” God told Abram to leave everything and didn’t even tell him the destination. God was calling Abram to a life of faith, to trust in the word that God spoke to him.

When Jesus calls us, He does not tell us everything that the future will hold for us. He does promise to take us to be with Him. He does promise forgiveness of sins and peace with God. He does promise to be with us always. He promises affliction, persecution, and trouble. God does not promise our life will be easy, but He promises that He will work all things for our good and for His glory. And the Lord promises He will lose none that the Father gives to Him.

So, God’s call to Abram began with God speaking His authoritative word to Abram, giving him a command to obey: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1).

Abram’s journey of faith was not a call to just walk blindly into the unknown, rather, God gave him great,

2. Covenant Promises (Gen. 12:2a)

When God calls us to Himself, He always supplies the grace we need to obey His call. As I said, with Abram’s call there are two commands, but there are six promises of blessings.

God’s first command is accompanied by three promises. God says to Abram (Gem. 12:2), “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you; And make your name great…” God promised to make Abram into a great nation. This implied both a land and a people. God will specifically promise these in Genesis 12:7 when Abram arrives in Canaan: “…To your descendants I will give this land…” This is an amazing promise when you consider that Abram owned no land. He never built a city, but lived as a nomad all his life in Canaan. And the greatest obstacle was that Abram’s wife Sarai was barren, she had no child (Gen. 11:30). Yet, the Lord promised to make Abram a great nation.

Secondly, the LORD promised to bless Abram, saying, “I will bless you.” Blessing refers both to temporal and spiritual well-being. The specifics of this blessing will be spelled out later, but Abram is to be the object of the Lord’s special saving favor. Abram is being singled out here as the line of promise, a line that we have already seen developing in Genesis 1-11. Later, after Abraham obeys God in Genesis 22 the Lord expands the meaning of this blessing:

“blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Gen. 22:17-18).

So this blessing included the temporal blessings of physical descendants, abundance, and victory over enemies. Abraham’s blessing centered on his relationship of faith and obedience with God and included spiritual descendants from all the nations through the promised seed whom we know is the Lord Jesus Christ.

God also promised to make Abram’s “name great.” Remember that ironically this is what the builders of the tower of Babel sought—to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:4). Abram didn’t make his own name great; he received it as a gift from God. Later (Gen. 17:6, 16), God will promise Abraham that “kings” would come from him. Finally, the ultimate king would come from Abraham to whom God gave “the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-10).

These promise were outstanding blessings for Abram but they were not to be kept for himself alone. These blessings also carried with them a,

3. Covenant Obligation (Gen. 12:2b)

Here is the second command to Abram: “And you shall be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2). This is not just a promise of blessing, but it is also an obligation to be a blessing to others. God’s purpose is to bless the world with the blessings of Abram. He is to be a conduit, not a cul-de-sac, of God’s blessing. This is the glory of God’s blessing: to be a blessing of God to others.

God said to Abram, “I will bless you … And you shall be a blessing.” The ultimate fulfillment of this comes in Abram’s descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, Abram becomes the greatest blessing anyone could be to this lost world. And since, by faith in Christ, we are Abraham’s heirs, blessed with believing Abraham (Gal. 3:7, 9), we also have the obligation not to bottle up the promise, but to take it to every people group on this earth. This is our Lord’s Great Commission, to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). If you have received the blessings of God’s salvation, you have the responsibility to do all you can to be a channel of that blessing to those who have not heard. If our heart is not in evangelism and missions, if we’re not burdened for the lost, if we’re not investing the material blessings God has entrusted to us in the work of His kingdom, then we must learn the obligation that God gave to Abram: We are blessed to be a blessing.

Finally this God’s promise of blessing and obligation to be a blessing are for a purpose. So we see the,

4. Covenant Objective (Gen. 12:3)

Along with the command to be a blessing God gives Abram three more promises: 1) God promises to bless those who bless Abram; and 2) to curse those who curse him. In Genesis 12:3 the LORD says to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you.” This will indeed play out in the Abram’s story. When he goes down to Egypt, Pharaoh takes Sarah as a wife, and God curses Pharaoh’s household with sickness. Afterward, Pharaoh gives Abraham his wife back along with great wealth (Gen 12). Similarly, when Abimelech takes Sarah as a wife, God cursed him (Gen 20). Then Abraham’s wife was returned along with wealth once again. Those who are kind to Abram (who bless his name) are indeed blessed, whereas those who do wrong to Abram (who dishonor him) are cursed. This will also play out in the rest of the narrative of the Old Testament. Those who bless Israel (the descendants of Abram according to the flesh) are blessed, whereas those who do wrong to Israel are cursed. Ultimately this will be fulfilled again in the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who receive Jesus, who believe in His name, God saves and blesses. Those who reject Jesus remain condemned in their sins, cursed.

The third promise in this verse is “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This is the farthest-reaching promise God gave to Abram, and it is a key verse in redemptive history. This is at the very heart of what God has planned for the world. God promised to bless all the people of the earth through Abram.

How would God do this? The primary way was by sending the Messiah, Jesus Christ, through Abraham’s line. The messiah would be both divine and human. He would die for the sins of the world and rise from the dead on the third day. Jesus Christ is a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. Jesus will send His disciples to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth and to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19).

The apostle Paul referred to this verse in Galatians 3:8-9: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” And so here we have the good news, that Jesus Christ would be born to Abraham’s descendants, and that He would save us from our sins by faith in Jesus Christ.

Let me point out that all of these blessings from God are promises, not stipulations. Notice the repetition of the words, “I will” in this passage. God spoke to Abram saying, “I will, I will, I will.” The fulfillment of these blessings depends on God’s promise, not Abram’s performance. As we go through Abraham’s story we will see that he will sometimes exercise great faith and other times he will fail miserably. It will be the same for all his descendants: Isaac, Jacob, and the whole nation of Israel—a little success and a lot of failure. Yet, in spite of their failures, God will accomplish what He promised.

This is gospel, and not law. Law sounds like this. “Do this and you will live; do that and you will die.” Law sounds like this “if you do such and such, then I will do this and that.” Law puts forward stipulations—“if, then” is the pattern. But the good news of the gospel is not grounded in law, but in promise. The blessings of the law are obtained through obedience. The blessings of the gospel can only be received by faith. God preached the gospel to Abraham.

God called Abram and blessed him, so that he would be a blessing, so that through him all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. Certainly, this should be true about us in one sense as well. God has called us by His Spirit and His word. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3). And He has made us a blessing to spread the gospel of the Kingdom of God. God’s call for us is first to salvation by faith in Christ and second to share Christ with others. We do that directly through preaching the gospel and indirectly by living the gospel. As a child of God, you are blessed to be a blessing.

Two questions as we conclude:

1) Have you responded to God’s call of salvation? I am proclaiming His call today. Jesus Christ died for your sins. God raised Him from the dead to give you life. Turn from your self and your sin. Turn to Jesus. Trust in Him. He will bless you and make you a child of the King.

2) Christian, is your life a channel of blessing? Is the love of God flowing through you? Are you telling the lost of the Savior? Are you ready His service to do? Pray today: Make me a blessing, a channel of blessing to others.