A New Hope

If you have a Bible, go and grab it and turn it to the book of Genesis. We've been going through the book of Genesis. We went through chapters 1 and 11, and then we took a brief detour through the first three chapters of John. Now we are back in Genesis with Genesis chapter 12.

So again, Genesis is the first book in your Bible. If you don't have a Bible, you can use a pew Bible in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, if you don't have a Bible and you'd like to have one, please feel free to take that Bible home with you. We would love for you to have a copy of God's word that you can read for yourself.

So again, we'll be looking at the first book of the Bible, Genesis 12. We'll be reading from verses 1 through 9. And God's word says this:

The Lord said to Abram:Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to the Lord there, and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

— Genesis 12:1-9 (CSB)

Let's pray. Lord, just as Abram heard your voice and went up and obeyed you, we want to do the same. So as you speak to us this morning, we ask Lord that you would encourage us, help us to see your glory, to trust your promises, and to obey your commands. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

A Pattern of Hope amid Chaos

As a recap, the book of Genesis operates in cycles. You may remember our overview sermon on Genesis in a nutshell. Really, Genesis kind of follows the same pattern: you learn where you come from, and then those patterns ripple throughout the rest of the book and really throughout the rest of the Bible. We come from God, we come from sin, and we come from hope.

We saw that example when it came to Adam, his creation, his fall, and the promise of a redemption with the seed. We see that happen as well at a worldwide level—at a cosmic scale—as we see the world fall into sin. Most recently, where we left off in the book of Genesis, we see this happen throughout the whole world at the Tower of Babel, where people fall into sin and disobey God's commands.

As a result, God scatters them. He gives them all different languages so that they all have to spread. And we see different generations go throughout the whole earth. And yet, they are still sinful. They're still rotten to their core, and they're still without hope. Generation after generation: birth, then death; birth, then death.

And now, in Genesis 12, we get to see what God does in the face of chaos once again. And what he does is he calls people to follow him. He does that with Abram, and he does the same with you and me this morning. The main idea this morning is for us to follow the Lord's call. There are two things that God wants us to do in light of this passage. First, he wants us to believe God's promise. And second, to obey God's commands.

Really, think of this split between a time where we understand how God operates and what he's trying to do with Abram (and by extension, the rest of the Bible), and in the second half, we'll take some time to meditate and think about what God wants us to do in light of his promises.

Part 1: Believe God's Promise

Let's start with point number one: Believe God's promise. Chapter 12 introduces us to Abram, who will later on be renamed Abraham throughout the book. You may be more familiar with that name, but this actually isn't the first time that Abram shows up in your Bible in the book of Genesis. He actually shows up in the previous chapter, in Genesis 11, in the genealogy.

So, read with me if you're willing to go back to chapter 11 and look at verse 27. Chapter 11, verse 27 says:

These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans, during his father Terah’s lifetime. Abram and Nahor took wives: Abram’s wife was named Sarai, and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Sarai was unable to conceive; she did not have a child. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.

— Genesis 11:27-32 (CSB)

You see, in the book of Genesis, the first person to get up and try to go to the land of Canaan actually isn't Abram. It's his father, Terah. Terah had three kids: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran passes away and gives his land to his son Lot. And when Terah heads out to go towards Canaan, he makes a pit stop in the land of Haran. He spends the rest of his life with his grandson Lot, and ends up dying in the land of Haran before he could step foot into the land of Canaan.

See, Terah's plans are interrupted. Before he could make a claim on land and establish himself, he stops by Haran and settles in. After all, moving is a ton of work. All of us know the pain of having to pack a U-Haul and move things from point A to point B, unpacking boxes. It is a ton of effort. It's hard, especially once you're comfortable.

You can imagine Terah wanting to go visit his son and spend some time there, maybe play with his cute grandson, Lot. Then you blink, and next thing you know, decades of life go by, and you're nowhere that you actually wanted to be. See, if you forget where you're going, don't be surprised if you end up nowhere. There's a reason why there isn't a territory in the Bible named after Terah. The reason is because he didn't obtain any land. He ends up utterly insignificant, a footnote in this story.

The Empty Life of Abram

But the focus of the story isn't on Terah. It's on his son named Abram. And Abram, based on this description, seems to be taken right after his father, Terah. He and his wife are unable to have children. They don't have any kids. This is especially ironic given that Abram's name means "exalted father" or "high father." So his name means father, and yet he doesn't have any kids.

He is living in the land that belongs to his brother's son. So, Abram is a childless man who's living with a fatherless son, and Abram is landless, childless, and upon his death will end up completely nameless. There's nothing that he has. There's nothing that he can hope in.

See, Abram represents the ultimate conclusion of sin. It's exactly what sin and suffering do: they leave us with nothing, with no hope, wandering through a land that isn't even our own. And what God does is he speaks into Abram's nothing and promises him something absolutely spectacular. God tells him to go, promising him three things. And these three things are very important for us to understand.

Place, People, and Power

The first thing that he promises Abram is a place. Look at verse 1 again. The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house to the land that I will show you." So, God tells Abram to go grab his stuff and leave. And this leaving is leaving everything. If you want to emphasize something, you repeat it, and he repeats this three times: you are leaving your land, you are leaving your relatives, you are leaving your father's house. You are abandoning everything you know and starting something brand new. In return, Abram will be given a land that God will show him—a new place.

This promise is more than just an offer that you may or may not see on Zillow. This is talking about stability, about permanence. Think about your own home, the comfort that it provides when you kick back on your recliner and feel the rug on your feet—the comfort, the security. See, this place doesn't just provide security; it also provides a legacy.

We typically don't think of a house like that, given how frequently we move and relocate, especially in a modern urban environment where we're constantly checking to see if there are better offers or different places we can go. But that's not the way people historically have lived. I have a friend who lives in the South who told me last month that he lives on property that has been passed down now eight generations in his family. So even though he's not doing well financially himself, he has hundreds of acres that have been passed down in his family over hundreds of years, and he's not going anywhere. It's his family's land, and they can just live off of that. That's because that's where his family has planted roots.

Having land, having a place, means that you have a legacy. If you don't have land, if you don't have a place, then that means that you're destined to wander forever in someone else's world. And God promises Abram a future, a land, a place where he can live.

But there's no point to land if you have no one to give it to. So God doesn't just promise a place, but he also promises a seed, which brings us to the second thing that God promises: God promises Abram a people. Verse 2 says, "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing." Abram is at the youthful age of 75, and God promises him children—and not just children, but lots of children, a great nation. He promises to make Abram's name great, that Abram's name would be remembered.

I doubt any of us in this room remembered that Abram's father's name was Terah. But unlike his dad, Abram's name would continue on from generation to generation. He would become this patriarch that people would look up to. But this idea of having a great name is more than just having kids (after all, we all have great-grandparents, but I don't think any of us know their names). To have a great name is not just one of childbearing; it is an idea of power and of authority.

So, God doesn't just promise a people, but a supernatural blessing, which brings us to the third thing: God promises Abram power. That's verse 3: "I'll bless those who bless you. I'll curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you." It says here that Abram will be a blessing. Depending on how people interact with Abram will determine whether or not they will be blessed or cursed.

This is like an ultimate fantasy when I was a child, right? That I could just smite those around me, bless those I like, and the world would kind of operate around me. It's like a Bruce Almighty kind of existence. Except in this case, this power isn't coming from who Abram is, but who God is. This idea isn't that Abram is just able to will things into existence, but that Abram becomes a conduit by which God blesses the world. The way that people interact with Abram is the way they interact with God. If they bless Abram, they will receive blessing. If they curse Abram, they will receive curses.

This power of God would then channel through Abram to the nations around him. And this view isn't one of domination, power, and submission in the way that a dictator or totalitarian government may do, but the idea of blessing—that all nations would be blessed through Abram. God promises him three things: a place, a people, and power. A true legacy as promised and declared by the Almighty God.

The Fingerprints of the Promise

Does any of this sound familiar to you? If you pay attention to your Bible, you will see the fingerprints of these three verses all throughout your Old Testament. In fact, all throughout your New Testament as well, you will see this pattern of place, people, and power all throughout Scripture. It rhymes.

In fact, it even begins not just in Genesis 12, but in the very beginning of Genesis. It says in verse 1 that the Lord spoke to Abram. That's exactly how God's work starts: it begins with God speaking. It doesn't say that Abram woke up one morning, decided to fasten his belt, and said, "I've got to do something with my life." No, God came and initiated. He spoke to him.

And the same is true in creation. The earth was formless and void, God's Spirit was hovering over the waters, and then God spoke. He creates something out of nothing. Not only that, God speaks and he commissions mankind. He looks at all of humanity in Genesis 1:28, and it says that God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it." You can see the themes that God gives Abram all the way back in Genesis 1. You see a place ("fill the earth"), you see a people ("be fruitful, multiply"), and you see power ("subdue the earth"). God blesses them in light of those things. Abram is a new beginning. He is a new hope.

But that's not the only place in the Bible where we see these themes of people, place, and power show up. It also shows up in the people of Israel. You can imagine why Moses would be writing this for Israelites as they are wandering in the wilderness before they enter the promised land. He's trying to explain to them: "God has a purpose for you beyond slavery in Egypt. He actually has a land that's been put in place for you that he promised centuries before you. He's going to make you into a great nation. And look at us: we are a tribe traveling together, going to establish ourselves in this new place. And not only that, you are going to go from the shackles of Egypt into now being in a position of power where God blesses you. And in exchange for that blessing, you're going to be able to be a blessing to the nations."

In fact, this idea of place, people, and power channels not just to the nation of Israel, but also to Israel's leaders. Turn in your Bible to Second Samuel chapter 7. This is God speaking with David, king of Israel. And this is what he promises him in Second Samuel 7, verses 9 through 11:

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have destroyed all your enemies before you. I will make a great name for you like that of the greatest on the earth. I will designate a place for my people Israel and plant them, so that they may live there and not be disturbed again. Evildoers will not continue to oppress them as they have done ever since the day I ordered judges to be over my people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies.“‘The Lord declares to you: The Lord himself will make a house for you.

— 2 Samuel 7:9-11 (CSB)

See, when God is promising David these promises, it's not just that he's telling David that he's going to give him a lot of cool things. God's promises there also rhyme with the promises he made to Abraham. He promises him a place ("I will designate a place for my people," "I will build a house for you"), he promises him a people ("I will make a great name for you"), and he promises him great power ("evildoers, your enemies, will be completely destroyed, and I will give you rest"). David receives a place, a people, and power. He receives the same hope that Abraham did.

Jesus: The Ultimate Fulfillment

But neither David nor Abraham are the culmination of this hope. Sometimes you read promises and things that happen in the Old Testament, and it feels like all these things are happening to someone else. One of my favorite films when I was a kid was The Lion King 1½, which follows Timon and Pumbaa. Timon the meerkat looks over the land as his mom tells him, "Look out at the land as far as your eye can see. Everything that the light touches belongs to someone else." We can kind of feel the same way.

But the good news—the reason why this matters for you and me—isn't because this promise was given to Abraham or because this promise was given to David, but because of the person who would ultimately fulfill all of these promises. Turn your Bible to Matthew chapter 1. This is how Matthew starts his Gospel. It's a chapter that you probably skipped in your Bible reading because it just lists a bunch of names. But the introduction is key for us understanding how the Old Testament works. Matthew 1:1 says this: "An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

Matthew is not making a mistake with this description. "Genealogy"—the root word gene goes all the way back to Genesis. He is saying from the beginning, this is God's intention: that when God makes this promise to David or to Abraham about having a place, having a people, and having power, all of the promises that they were anticipating for centuries would now be fulfilled in one person, being the person of Jesus.

Jesus fulfills all of these promises in himself. He fulfills the promise of place by bringing us to a greater place, by promising us not just the land of Israel, but a new heavens and a new earth—a new land for us to dwell in forever. He fulfills the promise of a people by gathering to himself a nation from every tribe, people, and tongue. And he promises and demonstrates his power by putting sin to death through his own death and rising from the dead, victorious over sin and death. He blesses us, as Ephesians 1 says, with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Jesus Christ. Jesus provides a place, a people, and power. All of this coincides together, works together, and harmonizes together to show God's cosmic plan throughout the centuries.

And this promise that Abram receives is enough to get him to get up, leave everything he knows, and pursue God. What about you? You and I, we have the benefit that Abram didn't have. I think about what it must feel like to be Abram, hearing God's voice about what he might do in the future and giving up everything on that gamble—the idea that God promised him something that's worth giving up everything for. While we can look forward like Abram into the future, we have the added advantage of being able to look at what God has done in the past.

So let me ask you: has God called you? Just like Abram, he calls you and me. Second Corinthians 4:6 says that the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Just like God creates in the midst of nothing, and just like God calls Abram in the midst of his chaotic emptiness, God also calls you and me to get up and follow him.

That's exactly how God works. All of us are lost in darkness. We're all lost in our sin. And then God speaks light into our darkness. He sends his Son, Jesus Christ, to live the perfect life that you and I could never live. And on the cross, he pays the punishment for sin on himself, and he rises from the dead three days later.

When you and I hear this good news, this promise, these words from God's word, and that light shines into the darkness of our hearts, what God expects us to do is to respond by turning away from our sin and trusting in Christ. That can be you this morning. If you hear the message this morning about the good news of the gospel, about what God has done for you in his Son, these promises that he gives to Abram are even greater and available for you. The good news of the gospel is that God can save your soul and transform your life in such a way that you can joyfully give up everything you know and have, and follow him.

Jesus fulfills all these promises that were given to Abram, and he expands his promise of a blessing by sending us to go out and proclaim the name of Jesus to the ends of the earth. He commissions us to go as well. In Matthew 28, he tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything he has commanded us. You see there the same themes yet again: you have a place ("all authority in heaven and on earth" and to go to "all nations"), you have a people (getting baptized, getting born again in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit), and you have power (teaching them to observe, to obey everything that Christ commanded).

It's exactly what you and I do as a church. We are here in God's place—not in this building, but as God's people—and we expand. As you share the gospel, as you invite your neighbors, your coworkers, and your family members to hear and trust in Christ, what you are doing is you are expanding God's place. His glory expands to the ends of the earth. As we share the gospel and people believe and are baptized and join churches, we are adding to the number; we are growing God's people. As we share the gospel and as we exemplify Christlikeness, as we preach the gospel into the darkness, we carry the authority of Christ. We get to see lives changed, sin defeated, and God exalted, all in the name of Jesus. We get to make his name great in our lives.

If you want to know what God intends to do in all the world for all eternity, you need to remember his promises about place, people, and power. It ripples all throughout the Bible. It's like if God's promises were a lock, Jesus becomes the key that unlocks it and unleashes all of the blessings of heaven onto us. Every single thing that God does—from creation to the call of Abram to our own salvation—is not a mistake. He is doing all of these things in order to accomplish his own purposes through his word. And in light of hearing those great promises, Abram then responds and obeys him.

Part 2: Obey God's Commands

Which brings us to point number two: Obey God's commands. Turn back to Genesis 12. There are two things that Abram did in response to God's great promise: he went, and he worshiped.

Let's start with the first thing he did: he went. Look at verse 4 with me:

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.)

— Genesis 12:4-6 (CSB)

Abram hears what God tells him. He leaves everything; he drops everything that he has. He goes immediately. I remember moving to Kentucky to be able to go to graduate school and driving across the country. As I was driving in my Kia Soul, as it was puttering down the I-40, I could see Big Bear Mountain and San Bernardino behind me as I headed forward toward the endless desert. And I was in my feels. I was feeling things. It felt literally like I was risking it all: everything I knew behind me, everything I didn't know in front of me.

Abram leaves everything he knows. He packs up all his possessions and people, and he goes. That takes faith. You don't pack up all your stuff if you think there's a chance you might come back. We're about to approach the holiday season. Feel free to drive toward Los Angeles and look at the exit that goes to LAX, and look at all of the Californians going back to their real home. For Abram, this is it. He is not packing a suitcase; he is packing a U-Haul. He's not coming back. He is taking everything, which means he is permanently moving. That is an act of faith.

The Danger of Partial Obedience

Except there's a problem. He takes everything with him, except there was one thing that he shouldn't have taken. He takes his nephew, Lot. Do you see that? It mentions it twice: it says that he takes Lot with him.

Now, at first, it doesn't seem like taking Lot is that big of a deal. I mean, if God has given such a large blessing to Abram, then why not let that blessing overflow to his own family? Except, by taking Lot with him, Abram actually disobeys God's command immediately after God's promise to him. Do you see what God told Abram to do in verse 1? He doesn't just tell him to go from his land; he says, "Leave your relatives." And Abram doesn't do that. He takes his nephew with him. He brings collateral.

Not only that, Abram taking Lot is more than just a sentimental tag-along. This isn't Abram just grasping at what's familiar and going with what's convenient. He is disobeying God's command that he gave him. Not only that, it shows a deeper problem. I think this actually taps at the very heart of the struggle that you and I have when it comes to following God.

Because Lot is not Abram's son. He's Haran's son. In fact, Moses goes out of his way to double-underline this in chapter 11, that section we talked about before: Lot is a son of Haran. He is Haran's son—he mentions it twice. In other words, he is not Abram's son. Lot is the image; he represents Haran.

And Abram taking Lot could be a hedging of bets, a security deposit if you will. You can imagine living together for multiple decades, the emotional connection they have together, the way that Abram looks at Lot and even views him as his own son. He can be looking at Lot almost like a security deposit: "I'm taking everything with me, but I'm also 75. My joints are crunchy. I don't know if I'm going to be able to have a child. In case this whole God thing doesn't work out, at least Lot will be there to inherit everything that I have." In other words, Lot is a false seed, a false son, an insurance policy against a worst-case scenario. See, while Abram may have left the land of Haran, Abram takes Haran with him in the person of Lot.

Friends, it is a dangerous thing to follow God's commands with an asterisk—to take a leap of faith while hanging onto a parachute of sin. Because partial obedience is disobedience. Partial obedience is disobedience. Partial obedience is a terrible thing for Christians to do. It's a terrible thing because it will cause problems for you and me in the future.

I mean, Abram brings Lot with him, and by chapter 13, their servants are about to engage in civil war. Unsurprising, because they don't represent the same family. They represent separate promises, separate blessings. Even after Lot separates, he moves to Sodom and Gomorrah, and things don't go well for him there. And even after God spares him from that judgment, after Abraham's pleading for them, his kids are Moab and Ammon, which grow to be the very nations that cause Israel so much trouble for centuries after Abram and Lot pass away.

There is a long legacy of hardship because of this one decision that Abram makes in chapter 12. You get to see the difficulty of obedience through the rest of the Old Testament because of Abram's unfaithfulness here. Because if you bring the seed of sin with you, it will grow thorns and thistles around you. Don't be surprised when your security deposit, when your parachute, becomes a noose around your soul and chokes the life out of you, where the sin in which you find security ends up scarring your soul.

Partial obedience doesn't just cause external problems; it also causes internal problems as well. Bringing Lot with him brought a lot of trouble. Not only that, it feeds into Abram's pattern of constantly trying to find refuge in something other than God's promises. In fact, the very next week in our very next passage, we'll see Abram even try to sell his own wife as his sister to Pharaoh for the sake of securing his own life. In chapter 17, Abram begs God to fulfill his promises through a different son other than Isaac. He says, "Why can't you just take my son Ishmael as your son instead?"

It's no wonder that Abram is constantly questioning God's promises when he's constantly evaluating things through his own worldly lens. "Maybe I'll give things to Lot; maybe I'll give things to Ishmael." Don't let the weed of sin infest the garden of your soul. "Yes, I know I need to follow Jesus, but let me just advance my business this one time." "I know I'm supposed to obey the Lord with everything I have, but let me just hang onto this one sin in my heart so I can make it through this week. I'll stop after." Sin will kill you. It will destroy you. It will cause tons of unnecessary pain.

As we limp through this difficult life, we need to be proactive and comprehensive in our obedience. If you have those struggles in your own heart, one way to be able to fight those things, to be able to walk in obedience with Christ, is to shine light on those dark crevices of our hearts—to be able to tell someone about the persistent sin in our life and to have them remind you of God's good promises in your future. Abram had nothing to worry about. He had an almighty God behind him who was going to fulfill all of his purposes and plans. And yet, sin makes us dumb. So we need God's word. We need his promises. We need other Christians in our lives to remind us of what's true.

It's exactly what church membership allows us to do. When we're all being enticed by the fruit of sin and its allure in our lives, we can have other people who are more sober-minded than us take us and say, "Hey, let's put that fruit back on the tree. We have everything that we need. We have the gospel. We have the truth. We have the promises that we have to look forward to." We need Christians who love us enough that they're willing to dump an ice bucket of water on our soul and wake us up from the seduction of sin—even if that means being willing to do the difficult thing and even discipline people out of the church so that they can feel, at least experientially at a ground level, what it's like to not have God's promises ahead of them.

Harriet Tubman used to carry a pistol with her while going through the Underground Railroad. And the reason why she would carry a pistol with her wasn't so that she could fight off enemies that would come after her; it was actually to point at the people she was trying to save. If people would get cold feet in the Underground Railroad, freaked out at the thought of the consequences of being found out and being returned, fearing for their own lives, some of them would even consider going back to their slave owners, hoping that the goodwill of their own voluntary return would somehow lighten the punishment they would have. And Harriet Tubman, in exchange, would take that pistol and point it right at their forehead. And the purpose wasn't to actually kill them. It was to remind them of the harms that actually existed for them if they were to go back—that if they were to go back, it would be just as useless for them as a bullet in their own forehead. Harriet Tubman used to share that and brag that she didn't lose a single passenger.

The same is absolutely true for us. It is easy, while we wander through this wilderness of this world, to be seduced by sin or to be convinced that we may be missing something, or to start to make our own worldly calculations. We need the truth of God's promises and the warning of sin to sober us and to help us to be able to follow after him.

Abram is an imperfect example of this kind of obedience. That's exactly why I think that he's such a helpful example, because him being an imperfect example of obedience makes him an accurate example of obedience for you and me. There are so many times where we've heard God's promises, and we still doubt, don't we? Where we struggle, where we try to find ways for us to weasel in our own desires. Even the high father of Israel was not a perfect man. He messes up in verse 4. His promises were in verses 1 through 3—there wasn't even another verse! But while his obedience was imperfect, his example of worship wasn't.

Worship is Work

This is the second thing that Abram did. Look at verse 7:

The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to the Lord there, and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

— Genesis 12:7-9 (CSB)

As Abram travels, God reaffirms his promise to him. And Abram responds by building an altar. Why does he do that? After all, wandering isn't really doing much. I don't know if you've ever wandered. One time I had a day off, I had nothing to do, and I just walked around Costco wandering aimlessly. It's exactly what Abram seems to be doing here. He hasn't obtained any land. He doesn't have any kids. Abram has no reputation there.

But when God has given you such an extraordinary promise, when God has assured you that he will accomplish his will through you, worship actually is work. It's actually the most productive thing that you could possibly do. It's the best thing that Abram could possibly do in light of God's promises. I mean, what better response is there to all of God's promises than for you and me to worship?

Because Abram's promise isn't primarily based on the things that he will accomplish, but on the things that God will do. It's no wonder that when God speaks, it's not primarily about all the stuff that Abram has to do, but all the things that God will do. Did you notice that in verses 1 through 3? Just look at the amount of times that God says the words, "I will." "I will show you." "I will make you." "I will bless you." "I will make your name great." "I will bless those who bless you." "I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt." This promise is not about what Abram produces, but about what God does with his promises.

What motivates Abram to get up and continue to wander in this foreign land isn't his to-do list, isn't his productivity, but God's promises to him—that God doesn't just give him instructions, but he gives him a rich inheritance for him to receive. Which means for Abram, worshiping is the best thing he could possibly do. Because what do you do when you worship God? You get to remember that he's good. You get to remember his promises. You get to glorify him and bring him praise. You get to anticipate all the things that God will do through him.

See, when you're wandering through the wilderness of this world, the way that you make sure that you're able to hang onto God's promises isn't by you doing what Jesus did for you. You can't save yourself. The way that you hang on while you wander through the wilderness of this world is by worshiping God: remembering who he is, remembering the promises that he's made. When we build an altar in our hearts, when we worship God in light of his promises, we are catechizing ourselves. We are fortifying our own souls to be able to continue to believe even when it seems like the world around us isn't making sense.

When you're wandering through this world, remember God's promise that he has a place for you in heaven. When you feel like you're alone and completely abandoned, remember God's promise that he will not leave you or forsake you. If you need proof of that, look around at the family that he's given you. When you feel hopeless in the face of the chaotic whirlwind of death and brokenness of this world, remember that the power of Christ has conquered all evil.

When you remember those promises, when you build that altar, you will be able to stand in the face of temptation, in the face of discouragement. Walking in obedience can make our feet ache and our hearts heavy, but God's promises remind us that we have something to walk toward, something to strive for, something to wait for. Because the good news for Christians is that we don't just have an "I will"—we don't just have to look forward to the day that Jesus comes back. You and I can look back and see Jesus on the cross, crucified for you and me, and we can say: not only will he, but he did. And because Jesus did, that means we can take up our cross and follow him too.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for the promise that you've shown Abram here of a place, of a people, and of power. Thank you, Lord, for fulfilling that promise in the person of Christ. We pray, Lord, that you would help us as we walk through this world to be found faithful, to be able to hang onto these promises as we cling to your word. And we thank you, Lord, that Jesus came, that he suffered, and he died, and that we have that guarantee in heaven. Help us to remember those things even now as we worship you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.