I Will Bless Those Who Bless You

So let me ask you this. What if God told you to leave the only home that you ever knew and to go someplace you've never been before? Would you do it?

Well, that's a question. and there's no turning back. And well. Abram did it. Yeah.

He did. and we'll look at that story today. Unboard the naked.

Well, hey, good morning. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. And this is More Than Inc. And we have been reading Genesis for the last several weeks.

Fascinating. We just arrived at this massive turning point in the book, right? We've had the first 11 chapters, which kind of are primeval history. Where did mankind come from? What happened to him at the beginning of all things?

The beginning of heaven and earth. The beginning of everything. And then suddenly, with the end of chapter 11 and in chapter 12, that whole gigantic story zeroes right down onto one little family. And that's the family of Abram. And so that's where we're at today.

We are starting into chapter 12. But just where we left off was Abram and his father and nephew Lot and his wife had left Ur of the Chaldees and journeyed some several hundred miles to Haran, where they had stopped and Terah died there. We don't know any more details than that, but Abram's father died there.

So he's just lost his father, and God somehow communicates to him the call is still good. We're heading for Canaan. And so that's where we're going to pick up the story today. We left it off saying Tara lived 205 years and he died in Haran. Right.

So the people going forward from here, we're going to find out, are Abram and his wife Sarai and Abram's nephew Lot and a whole lot of household people that they have gathered on their journey. Yeah. So when you think about this, it is all about the leaving, the call from God for Abram to leave his place. If you've ever moved in your lifetime, and especially if you're moving to a place you don't know really well, it's really disorienting, very uncertain in so many ways. And you're carrying a lot of stuff.

And you're carrying a lot of stuff. And so think about that. Put that in your mind and think about the fact that Abram and this entourage are leaving the only place they've ever known based just on a call from God to go to Canaan.

So going out to a place he's never been before based on what God is saying to him. And God is realizing that Abram is a friend of God. He'll listen and he'll obey. And so here's the story of that leaving.

Well, and we raised the question last week, too, before we start reading, why Abram, right? God just called him.

Well, it wasn't because he was so righteous. It wasn't because he was so famous, so good, so rich, so anything. It was simply God's choice because Abram was a man who would believe. And so we're going to see that unfold as the story of Abram unfolds. But picking it up here, it begins in verse 1 of chapter 12.

Now, right after Terah has died in this Haran, which is about, I don't know, a third of the way to Canaan from Ur.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Wow.

So Abram went. We're going to stop right there. This is big. This isn't just something where God says, you need to move and it'll be good for you. God says the world's going to change because of this.

To go to a place you've never seen. Go to a place that I'm going to show you. Right.

Right.

Right.

But he says, Look, go from your country, go from your kindred. Go from your father's house. Right.

Go from the place you've always known, your country. Go from your kindred, right? Your clan, the people you've always been related to, and go from your father's house, right? His father has died. Abram is the firstborn in the family.

His brother has stayed behind. His brother Haran or Nahor stayed behind and Haran has died.

So here's Abram going forward with his childless wife and his nephew. Yes, yes. Out into the great unknown. Into the on the edge of known.

However, it's not the unknown. No. Because if you notice repetition, there's this phrase that God says, I will. I will. How many times?

One, two, three, four. I count five. Five times.

Well, that's interesting because every one of those is followed by a bless. Yeah, oh, yeah. But the context. Contrast to me to what we saw last time in the Tower of Babel, where they said they're going to make a name for themselves. It's all about what they are going to do, what they are going to accomplish, how people will think they are great, everything they can do.

Here, it's not Abram being great, it's God being great. He says, I'll show you, I'll make you the nation, I'll bless you, I'll make your name great. This is everything that God's going to do, nothing, nothing that Abram's going to do. He's just going to obey, and God's not taking him into really a great unknown, he's taking him into the great promise of God Himself. And so, as we look, I mean, across all the scriptures, even as far over Galatians, we're looking at Galatians right now, church.

Galatians, Abram is called a man of faith because Abram takes him at his word. God says, This is what's going to happen. And by faith, Abram embraces that and believes it and says, Well, okay. It's a perfect picture of faith.

Well, God's promise to him is extraordinary, right? When he says, Now, go where I'm going to show you, and I'll bless, bless, bless, bless, bless you, right? I'll bless you in order to make you a blessing. I will do this for you. I will do this.

You're not going to do this for yourself. But these whole first two verses are just. Dripping in God's intention to bless Abram when. 11 chapters of Genesis, we've only run across the idea of God blessing one previous time, and it was clear back in chapter one when he says to Adam and Eve, be blessed and go forth and multiply. Right.

Right.

So, uh, but now that's really interesting to me. All the families of earth shall be blessed because of this one. Because of this one man. Yeah, yeah. It shows great purpose on God's part.

I mean, a real outward focus. This isn't about Abram making a name for himself. This is about God making his name great so that God will be glorified through Abram's descendants. Yes, but it's interesting too that God says, Not only am I going to do this for you, I'm going to set this protective thing around you, right? I, in verse 3, the one who dishonors you, I will curse.

Right? That's God says, you know, I'm not only going to do this proactively for you, I'm going to actually work on your behalf against those people who would dishonor or belittle or hold you in contempt. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating.

So, in a way, God is promising He's going to pave the way. for Abram and for a plan that God has to bless the world. All the families of the earth shall be blessed. Isn't it interesting that he doesn't say all the peoples of the earth? No, all the families.

All the families. There's something very familial going on.

Well, yeah, and we're not talking about particular races. In fact, this later on, you know, at the time Moses is writing this, the Jews who have an identity as the chosen people will look at this and say, you mean it's not just all about us? I mean, this history is not just about us, it's about all the families of the earth. And that's kind of overlooked, especially in the early Old Testament and even in parts of what Jesus came across in the New Testament. They figured like they were the only game in town.

God favored them. But no, Abram, who was the father of the Jewish nation, he was put in that place by purpose for God to bless not just Israel, but all of the entire world. Right.

How is it that by the first century the Jews had forgotten that? I know. And Isaiah several times talks about the fact that the Jews. Gentiles, the light to the Gentiles will be the Jews themselves.

So it's very inclusive. And then when you get in the New Testament, especially into Acts, there's a great emphasis on bringing in the Gentiles.

So it's actually happening, but it's happening after Jesus arrives. And Paul makes the point in Galatians that the offspring of Abram is Jesus himself. He's the one that brings that blessing. Wow.

And then we all, by faith, become offspring of Abram. Yes. No, exactly. Oh, my goodness. It's interesting that Abraham comes into the story, Abram, so early in Genesis when he shows up in practically every other book in the Bible from here on to Revelation.

I know. And, you know, I'm amazed, too, if you ask someone, you know, worldwide today, contemporarily, what's the most famous name of a person you know worldwide? And uh a lot of names will come up. Jesus will even come up, which is which makes sense. But Abram, Abraham, Abraham is the backbone of the Christians, for the Jews, and for the Muslims.

I mean, even the Muslims.

So, I mean, he is. Can you imagine how long ago Abram existed, and yet we all know his name today? I mean, around the world, well, those three major monotheistic religions. Yeah, I'll make your name great.

So it's come true. Abram's name is recognized. It's interesting, too, in direct contrast to what happened in chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel.

So we're going to make a name for ourselves. We're going to make ourselves great. And God said, hmm. I don't think so. Not so much.

And here he turns around and makes that deliberate promise to a single man. Abram, because he knows what he's going to do for him and through him. Yeah, so I might point out again: you know, Abram is moving because of faith. Faith accepts what God says and then acts on it. Let me just read for you.

I mentioned Galatians a second ago, I just brought it up here. Galatians 3:7.

So know then that it is those of faith. Who are the sons of Abraham? Verse 8. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.

So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Faith. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so here we have it evidenced because it says, God said, Go to him, go from the country, your kindred, your father's house, go to the place I'll show you.

And the next verse says, So Abram went.

So he went. That's faith in action. He hadn't seen it. He didn't know anything. He just said, This God who is talking to me is trustworthy.

I will go. Right.

And I might point out that James, in his little book, says, If you have faith, but you don't have action, then maybe you don't have real faith. And in this particular case, does Abram have faith? Yeah, because what did he do? He went. He went.

He walked out trusting God. Oof.

Okay, we better read on. Push on in verse 4. Verse 4.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, so there's about 500 miles in between those two phrases, they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak of Morah, and 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 to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD, and Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

So he's going to see the whole thing. Yeah. Right.

So he's going generally southbound.

So he's coming into the upper end of what we know as Canaan, today present-day Israel. He makes his way about halfway down the length, north to south of present-day Israel, then Canaan, and that's where he hits Shechem, which, by the way, is a very important city. That's right.

So don't forget about this. There's a ton of Jacob's history, you know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, a ton of Jacob's history that happens in Shechem. It's a berg that's between two basic hills, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebo.

Some amazing things happen there. And if you like the woman at the well in John 4, she's in a town called Sychar. And by the time you get to the time of Jesus, Shechem is called Sychar.

So it's a very famous place. It's like it's the middle place of all action in all of Israel in the narrative that's going to come up.

So it's important that as Abram comes in, the first mention of a specific Specific place is Shechem. It's like the grand central station of all the movies. There's a well there, right? Which is a logical place to stop. Yeah, yeah.

And so here he is standing almost in the geometric center of Canaan, the geometric center of Canaan. God says, I'm going to give you this land. And there's Canaanites still living on it. Right.

Yeah. Well, it says the Lord appeared to him there. And reiterates the promise, to your offspring, I will give this land.

Well, Abram's got no kids. Exactly. He has a barren wife. But what's his response? He builds an altar there to the Lord who had appeared.

God had said, Go and I'll show you. And then Abram goes. And when the first place he stops, God appears to him and he builds an altar. Not a city. Not a city.

He builds an altar. He doesn't drive a stake in the ground and say, this is mine. But a place to worship. A place to worship. And then he moves on going to the south and he comes down toward Bethel, which again, historically, is a fascinating place.

Another very important place.

Well, Bethel and I are both very important places in the history of Israel and we'll get there. And isn't it nice to know that Abram stopped here? Yes. Ancient, ancient places. And there again, he builds an altar to the Lord.

And he calls upon the name of the Lord, but he knows he needs to keep seeing the whole land.

So he journeys on.

So he's not building cities. No. He's not driving a stake in the ground and saying, This is mine. Nope. He's just passing through.

I love that. He's a sojourner. The scripture of the New Testament says he lived in a tent, believing God. For his entire life. Yes.

Yeah, he was moving the entire time.

So he heads out of Bethel, by the way, Bethel, Beat El, Bayet is house. House of God. El, house of God. I mean, it's a very important place. Again, for the Israelites, since they have so much of their history after this that looks back to places like Shechem and Bethel, they can say, you know what?

Our father Abraham. These were some of the first places he stopped in and then continued.

So from Bethel, he goes south. He goes through the area where Jerusalem will be years after this, years after this, presumably past the people, the Jebisites that live there. Continues down to the desert.

Well, there's going to be some fascinating stuff happening right there in a couple of chapters. Yeah, yeah. So it's a fascinating thing. It's kind of interesting because, you know, we kid these days about George Washington being the father of our nation, and the joke is kind of like George Washington. And slept here.

Isn't it fun about the fact that here's a place where he actually was the father of the nation? This is kind of the equivalent here where they're saying, our father Abraham, Abram, who was a man of faith who listened to the promise of God, who moved and he went and he left his home based on God's promise to him, he was here. He was here in Shechem. He was here in Bethlehem. He was here.

He was here. Abram slept here. And so it's a nice kind of tie back to the call of God to the nation, starting with his call to Abram, who was a man of faith. Yeah, to his faith. Let me think about that for a minute, because Abram, God said, go, and he went, right?

He left his entire past. And he trusted God for his future. He went out on the basis of God saying, you're going to have descendants and I'm going to give them this land. But he was married to a woman who had no children. He had no children.

Right? Right.

And he didn't ever own any of this land himself. He simply passed through it as a sojourner, living in tent. But he believed God. that a land would belong to his descendants. That's wow.

That's phenomenal. That's faith. That's faith. Can I read for you, Hebrews 11? Please.

Oh, please. Because in Hebrews 11, the writer of Hebrews is trying to give us an understanding about what faith looks like.

So he has a list of people that are examples, and he uses Abraham. And this is what he says in chapter 11, verse 8: By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

Now, listen to this: for he was looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Ah! Not a man-made city. Again, what a contrast to Babel. We're going to make ourselves a city.

And God says, no, I'm going to build a city for you. And so he went out by faith because he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Don't you love that? The city has foundations. It has foundations.

It sounds eternal. It's our real place. It's not just built out of bricks on top of the sand. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is our man, Abraham. What a man of faith. What a man of faith. I should continue the Hebrews 11 thing. I'm going to skip a little bit because he sums up all of these people of faith, not just Abram, but all these other people as well.

And he says this in verse 13. He says, you know, they all died in faith, not having received the things promised. That's really true of Abraham. I mean, it was 400 years before they came back to Canaan, his descendants.

So, okay, so I'll keep reading. Not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged. that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus, make it clear that they're seeking a homeland. If they'd been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But as it is, They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. Yeah. What a you know that Abram was looking for the city that God built that God would build, not those guys in Babel. Yeah, yeah, because you kind of have the feeling he had his fill of man-built cities.

Yes, right? He knew what Babel could do. He knew what Ur was like. I mean, it was very civilized, settled at the time, but man is man, and this, and man is tainted by sin.

So, you know, just one little word here that this just caught my attention: that it says, when he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east.

Well, those two places are so significant in the history of Israel, right? And when Israel, 100 years later, when they're hundreds of years, when they came back into the land and crossed the Jordan, they had great success at Jericho, but the next place they went was I. It was a place of profound thought. Failure because of their disobedience and lack of faith.

So, I find it fascinating here that Abraham pitches his tent between Bethel, the recognized, named house of God, right? God is here, and this place of terrible failure on the part of his descendants hundreds of years later. Yeah, so I'm just planting that in your thinking so that you are looking ahead in the story. Oh, my goodness. These are famous places.

I mean, every time I see the name I, you know, it's spelled AI. I kind of shudder a little bit because I know what's coming. But Abram built an altar and called on the name of the Lord and remembered God's promise in that place. And I want to emphasize again: called upon the name of God, called upon the reputation, called upon everything of who God is. The one who had promised.

Right, He brought him here, and God said, and Abram said to him in this worship, You're the one that promised to me. You're the one that brought me here. You're the one that promised that I will make you a great nation. You're the one who. Doing all this stuff, so at this altar, he calls upon that entire reputation of God and says, I'm here at your call, and that's why I'm here.

You alone are worthy of my worship. Let's head south.

So fascinating.

Well, Taylor, we're going to quit there today because I need to announce this is going to be our last broadcast on KUTR in Salt Lake City in Utah. But we're not stopping this broadcast. We're going to continue on in Genesis, but just not over the airwaves on Saturday mornings like we normally have. We'll continue on in the great interwebs. I mean, we have a podcast that you can find us.

In fact, if you listen to us on podcasts right now, like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, we're on that all the time. It's a duplication of the broadcast, so you can find us there. Or we have a website where all of our messages, all of our talks are, and that's called morethanink.org, all lowercase without any spaces, morethanink.org. And you can find those there.

So look for us on your favored podcast resource or on that website. And I'd just like to say this is, we started this in 2020 during COVID when people weren't getting out. Decided that this might be a great place to get people exposed to how they can read the Bible for themselves by us having this dialogue across the kitchen table from each other. And we're still doing that, the dining room table, here we are, and we're still doing that. But since we started this at COVID, we've done a lot of stuff.

I mean, we've covered a lot of ground. We started during 2020 and COVID at the book of John. And so, if you want to go and listen to the entire book of John, there's like 30 episodes.

Well, and we did replay some of them this last year. That's right, this last year. Yeah. And after we finished John, we looked at Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, fascinating stuff, which led us naturally to the book of Exodus. That's right.

We did all of Exodus. It took us almost an entire year. And then after that, we jumped into the Gospels. We did the whole book of Matthew. Fascinating book.

And then the little letter of Colossians to the Colossi church that Paul wrote, which is just jam-packed with. Powerhouse things in it. I mean, it's if wow.

So we did Colossians, that was back in 2024. And then we did the entire book of Acts. I had forgotten that we did Acts. That took an entire year of Saturdays just to read through Acts, and that's fascinating. And so, and then after we finished Acts, we started to Genesis, which we are in chapter 12 right now.

So it's just been a great, it's been a great time just to reflect on what God's put in these passages. We learned new stuff every time. Even though we've read these sections before, we're blessed in the reading of them, and we hope you've been blessed as well. And before we leave this broadcast here, I just want to thank the Truth Network in Utah and manager Russ East. Russ is the one who, he's the current manager as well.

He's the one who encouraged us one time when we were sitting in his office. You guys should do a show. We said, nah, we don't have the time. And we said, no, we're too busy. And then COVID happened.

And we said, well, maybe if our emphasis is actually to encourage people to read the Bible for themselves. And so then we started that.

So thank you, Russ, for his encouragement and pushing us, pushing us into doing this because it's been a marvelous thing. And we're going to continue to do it. We're just going to do it through the internet and through podcasts online.

Well, and let me just add that we, as a married couple, have found tremendous value in this: in sitting at the table with our Bibles open and discussing together what we each are reading in the same passage and learning from one another. And that's been a tremendous blessing for us. We hope it's been a blessing for you, in a sense, that we've just kind of let you join us and come in on the conversation we were having.

So it really has proven to be a delight to us when we initially had thought we didn't have time, and yet now we look forward to these. These days, when we sit and just have the conversation in your hearing. And we hope that you've been blessed by it. We certainly have. And I hope in your hearing of it, you have felt like you've been pulling up a chair along the dining room table with us.

Because what we do here isn't just a rebroadcast of something else we do. We do this just for this. Just for this. Just for this, and invite you into our presence and say, hey, let's look at the Bible together. Hey, maybe it's possible for us to read the Bible ourselves and glean something.

Amazing, and the Bible is meant for us to read it, not for professionals. And we would love to hear from you. Yeah, we would. If these podcasts have been familiar or been comfortable, been helpful, been encouraging to you or propelled you forward in your growth. We'd love to hear about it.

Yeah, in fact, if you go to our website, morethanink.org, there's a place, there's a button you can click there to send us an email. And that would be really helpful just to find out, you know, how this has helped you over the years. And like I say, we're not stopping this. No, we're going to go on. You're just going to have to find us another place rather than over the air on Saturday mornings in Salt Lake City.

So we'd love to meet you there.

So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we are so delighted that you've been with us and hope you continue to follow with us online here on More Than Inc. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.

So next Saturday at 10 a.m., you get to hear from our dear friend Doris Hansen. Yeah, and Doris grew up in the polygamy community here in Utah, but she came to Jesus and now she ministers to them. And she loves to reach into that community with the love of Jesus and the truth. Tune in here next week at 10. Bye.

Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.