Genesis 12:1-3; Set Apart to Be a Blessing

Alex Sarran March 8, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Two Chapter Twelves As Framework

Reading Genesis 12:1–3

What’s Wrong With The World

The Need For Blessing

Creation, Fall, And The Two Lines

Flood, Babel, And Scattered Nations

Abram Called In A Cursed World

Promise Of Blessing To All Families

Why Abraham Matters To Us

Chasing The Treasure Of Promise

Adversity On The Way To Blessing

Only The Artist Can Repair

Jesus As Abraham’s Offspring

Blessing In Christ And New Humanity

Honest Look At Brokenness

Life In The Church And Mission

Carrying The Treasure Into The World

Closing Prayer And Sending

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, good morning. There's one big question that I'd like us to ask ourselves today. What is my purpose? And the reason I want us to ask ourselves this question is because I believe that we tend to struggle to connect our lives to the big picture of reality. Not the little and limited picture of our own individual reality, but the big picture of all of reality. In other words, what is my purpose in connection with what is going on in the totality of history? Is there a connection between why I'm going to do, say, next Thursday, for example, and the lives of billions of other individuals, dead or alive, who've existed all over the world in all of history? How does my day-to-day life fit into the grand scheme of things? And so I want us to ask ourselves this big question as we consider two passages from Scripture today, one this morning and one this evening. They're very significant passages taken from chapter 12 of the first book of the Bible and then chapter 12 of the last book of the Bible. And I believe that these two chapter 12s, if you will, will help us have a framework for understanding the totality of reality and our particular place in it. So, whatever your plans are for today, I do hope you will come back this evening at 5:30 to hear the sequel to this first sermon. So this morning we're going to look at Genesis 12, a message I've entitled Set Apart to Be a Blessing. And this evening we'll look at Revelation 12, a message entitled Set Apart to Overcome. So without further ado, let's listen carefully to the word of God, taken from Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. 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. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Your word is truth. Sanctify us now, instruct us now. By your word we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, something's not right with our existence, don't you think? First of all, it's pretty easy to observe that the whole world itself is not doing very well. There's sickness, violence, poverty, injustice, wars, and so on. It seems that some of the most powerful nations nowadays on the face of our planet are led by reckless people who have a broken moral compass and who seem to be losing their minds. Nothing new under the sun, really, when you think about it. Now that may comfort some of you, maybe not. The state of the world is one thing, but then there's the state of our own lives. Of course, most of us have pretty well-ordered lives on the surface. Most of us even have rather comfortable lives because we live in in a western, uh, wealthy country of the developed world. But what is it like under the surface? How many of you have already struggled with, for example, mental health issues, family conflict, relational heartache, various addictions, shameful desires and sins, spiritual depression and doubt? Everyone knows that something's not right with our existence as human beings. If you don't think so, if you feel particularly peaceful and holy and content this morning, then this sermon isn't for you. Instead, I invite you to go and volunteer to help with the nursery, which will soon strip you of your sense, false sense of peace and holiness and contentment and cause you to run back in here to listen to the sermon. What hope is there for us and for the world around us? That's the very fundamental and existential and dare I say, missional question that our passage intends to address. A very familiar passage, probably for many of you. And the answer to that question is this there is a great work of world repair going on. And the part that you and I have in it depends on the relationship that we have to a man that lived a very long time ago, namely Abraham. Abraham was set apart by God to be a blessing to the world, and his offspring through him was to be set apart to be a blessing to the world, and we are his offspring, we are set apart to be a blessing to the world if we belong to Jesus Christ through faith. Simple enough. Now there are three things I want to emphasize this morning from this passage. One, the need for blessing, two, the promise of blessing, and three, the way to blessing. So let's begin with the need for blessing. Here's my first point. We need to understand the kind of world that we live in if we want to understand our purpose in it. And we need to understand that this world is deeply, deeply damaged and in need of rescue and healing and repair. And that is actually the context in which we're supposed to understand these three verses we just read from Genesis 12. There's the need for blessing. As you can tell, we're near the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 12, but there's already a lot that's that has happened before that in the preceding pages. What exactly? Well, you have Genesis 1 and 2. The one true and living God creates this world as a display of his glory, and he declares it good, and he entrusts it to mankind, which God created in his image as the pinnacle of creation. And then you have Genesis 3. Adam and Eve choose independence from God. Our first parents fall into sin, and it's a disaster which has terrible, terrible consequences. They're cursed, and the whole of mankind is cursed with them, and the world is cursed with them. We're now going to have to suffer physically and spiritually and relationally. There's a chasm that separates us from God, and we're going to have to die and suffer judgment as a penalty for this terrible offense that we've committed against God by not trusting him. And so we see then in Genesis 4 and 5 two things. First of all, we see the first murder in the history of the world where Cain kills his brother Abel, the two sons of Adam and Eve. Why does he do that? Because he's jealous and angry. But we see something else. We see that God had shown unmerited favor to Abel, which Abel had received through faith. And what you see from then on is you have two lineages in the history of mankind. One is the lineage of faith and true religion, which will be perpetuated through Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. And the second lineage is the lineage of non-faith and false religion, which will be perpetuated through Cain. So you see, you begin with a good world, then you have a cursed world and a cursed humanity, but there's a glimmer of hope through one branch of humanity that calls on the name of the Lord, you see? And then what? Well, you have Genesis 6 through 10. Evil spreads as the human heart is given up to its corrupt desires, and God sends judgment on the world through uh in the form of a flood that's going to wipe the world clean. But God shows unmerited favor again, this time to Noah and to his family, who belong to that special lineage. And what God does here is he's typifying the way of salvation. We're saved from God's judgment by virtue of his grace through faith. So Noah is saved, and the world is going to be repopulated again through his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. But sin hasn't been eradicated from their hearts. And so what you have is a repeat of what happened with the children of Adam and Eve, this time with the children of Noah. The curse, you see, is still there. But you have the lineage of faith and true religion that continues through one of the sons of Noah, Shem. Once again, you see, the world is cursed, but God has his eye on one branch of humanity that calls on his name. And so now in Genesis 11, we have the famous story of the Tower of Babel, where all these people groups that are descended from the sons of Noah attempt to unite and make a name for themselves in defiance of God Himself. And what they're trying to do actually is restore paradise to themselves by their own merits and resources and in total independence from God, the creator and owner of the universe. So what does God do? He stoops down again and confuses their language and disperses them all over the face of the earth so that they cannot work together. So we began with a good world, but then it became a cursed world with a cursed humanity, and now we have a confused and dispersed humanity. But what about that lineage of true religion? The line of Seth and Noah and Shem. Well, from this line of Shem comes a certain Abram, born and raised in Mesopotamia, in the land of the Chaldeans, not far from what would become Babylon, the city whose name comes from the Tower of Babel. And so it is to this Abram, before his name is changed to Abraham. It's to this Abram in the midst of a cursed and confused world that a solemn word is given from the Lord that will change the course of history and change our own understanding of the world and of our own existence in it. It's a remarkable, dramatic, unprecedented moment in the text. And we'll come to it in just a moment. But for now, I really want to take in the significance of the backdrop of these three verses in Genesis 12. If you're wondering what's wrong with the world today, you need to read Genesis 1 through 11 again. If you're wondering what's wrong with your own life, your own existence, then you also need to read Genesis 1 through 11. Why is the world both beautiful and broken? Why are human beings magnificent and worthy and incredibly capable and yet at the same time cruel and selfish and violent? Why do we both create and destroy? Why do we experience both pleasure and pain? Why is nature so beautiful and damaged at the same time? Why do we discover treatments for illnesses and then we discover new viruses? Why are all nations desirous of justice and peace and yet there is war between the nations? Why do we love our spouses and fight with them at the same time? And the answers are in the Bible, particularly in Genesis 1 through 11. In a sense, it's as if the world were a magnificent work of art that had been vandalized. Imagine a particularly gifted artist. Suppose that artist spent weeks painting his masterpiece, the ultimate work of art that he wants to hand down to posterity. He puts the final stroke of paint on the canvas, and he looks at it fully pleased and satisfied with the result. That magnificent painting ends up in the Louvre Museum, of course, in Paris. But lo and behold, some random French activists go in there and vandalize the beautiful thing. They smear paint all over it, and then they cut it into pieces, and they throw the pieces on the floor and trample on them. Question, was the painting destroyed? Well, yes and no. It still exists. It hasn't been annihilated, but it has been severely damaged. And perhaps you could still look at bits and pieces of it and you could still perceive the beauty of the original. Perhaps you could even display those bits and pieces in the museum as a memorial, you know, to the original work. But something has been hopelessly and irre irremediably lost. And that's the state of our world and of our existence in it. But if you read Genesis 1 through 11, you also realize that this world isn't all there is to reality. There's also a transcendent, omnipotent, creator God who is able, by definition, to do the impossible. And so if you're paying attention, you realize that you're in need of this God to do something. See, our world is deeply damaged and in need of rescue and healing and repair. And so now we're in need of this God to speak good news into this situation. That is the need for blessing, which is the context of our passage. Apart from good news that only God can give well, we are lost at the end of Genesis 11. So, what do we have in our passage? Well, that one true and living God, the irresistible Creator who spoke the world into existence in Genesis 1, is the one who speaks again. This time to Abram in Genesis 12, and he speaks to him with good news, which brings us to my second point, the promise of blessing. What we need to understand now is that God has set in motion a plan to utterly restore the world and our existence in it. And it's imperative for our own benefit and for the benefit of the world around us, it's imperative that we take to heart what God is doing. We were in need of blessing and God promises blessing. And if God promises blessing, if he speaks good news into a cursed world, we would be absolutely demented not to give him our full attention. Look at how our passage puts it so dramatically. God says to Abram, Abram, drop everything. Such is the importance of what I have to say to you and what I'm going to do for you and through you. Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house. Leave all that behind you, drop everything, leave and go to the land that I will show you. By the way, that's the first missionary in Scripture right there. Because here's what I'm going to do, Abraham. Do you remember what the nations were trying to do at Babel when they tried to restore paradise unto themselves by their own strengths and merits, independently from me? When they were trying to make a name for themselves. Do you remember that, Abram? Well, listen, the nations' attempts at saving themselves are futile. No one will ever succeed on their own at restoring this world and their existence in it. It is only I, the Lord, who can do this thing, and I'm going to do it through you, Abram. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. You, Abram, are going to be my vessel of blessing for the whole world, so drop everything, Abram, and follow me. This is good news, do you understand? It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of this shift in the account of Genesis and indeed in the history of the world. God says, I'm going to reverse the curse. I'm going to offer blessing to all people groups in the world. It will be by virtue of my own doing, and Abraham is going to be at the center of it because I've chosen him. So you're thinking, Well, that sounds impressive. Okay, suppose all of that is true. How is that relevant to my life today? Suppose I really believe that God really said these things to a certain Abraham who really lived about 4,000 years ago, give or take. What now? What difference does that make to me? Well, let's think about it for a moment. First of all, if you really believe these words, then you need to understand that you are in these verses. You're in verse three. All the families of the earth. You and I are part of that. We belong to people groups and nations that are human and live on this planet. Unless, of course, you're a robot this morning or an alien. But moreover, you and I are in the first part of verse three, which describes two categories of people: those who bless Abraham and those who dishonor him. There aren't any other categories. Those are the two options, and we are in one or the other. Oh, and it says that if you bless Abraham, God will bless you. And if you dishonor Abraham, God will curse you. So if you really, really believe that, well, what would be a logical response? I think we would not pass lightly over these words. If there's blessing or curse at stake, especially in the light of Genesis 1 through 11, as the backdrop, we would do everything in our power to try and understand how we can enter into the blessing promised to Abraham. Imagine for a moment that you're looking up your ancestry. Many people do that nowadays. You know, there are specialized websites that'll help you find your ethnic and geographical origins. And actually, many people do that with the secret hope that they will discover that they are Scottish. And suppose you discover that indeed you have a great, great, great, great, great grandparent who was a Scottish prince and a warrior who wore the kilt, played the bagpipes, and ate Englishmen for breakfast. And so you're looking up the history of this guy, and you discover that he actually came upon an enormous treasure one day. A chest full of gold and precious jewels. That's your ancestor. And as you read the biography of this ancestor of yours, you find out that he kept that treasure in a secure location. He never traded the gold or the jewels. And the the only people who knew where the treasure was were his children. And one day he died. The end. What would you do? Obviously, you'd try and track down the names of the children, or you would look them up and do some research, and you'd try to figure out what happened to them and what they did with the treasure. And perhaps you'd discover some more information and you'd be able to put two and two together, and little by little, you'd be able to piece together the history of that treasure until hopefully you might be able to come into possession of it yourself. Well, this is the kind of reaction we're supposed to have when reading Genesis 12. Did Abraham really receive from God Himself a promise of blessing for all the families of the earth? That includes me. I'd better do some research and find out what happened to that treasure so I can come into possession of it myself. And so we're going to come to that in just a moment. But I want you to understand that if you look around you and you see a broken world with violence, pain, injustice, suffering, destruction, corruption, illnesses, idolatry, false religion. And if you look at your own life underneath the surface and you see sinful thoughts and desires and broken relationships and anxiety and discontentment and depression and fear and shame and guilt and despair, I want you to understand that as you read these words from Genesis 12, well, that should logically compel you to devote all of your attention to the rest of the story. You should be desiring to know what Abram did with this treasure. You should study in detail the story of this Abram with a view to tracking down this treasure, how it was passed down to his son and to his father. Son's son and to his son's son's children and so on. You should investigate to try and understand the path that God intended for this treasure, for this salvation, for this promised blessing to travel from Abraham to you today. Genesis 12 tells us that God has set in motion a plan to utterly restore the world and our existence in it. And you see, it is imperative that we take to heart what God is doing. And that means looking very carefully at everything that He's revealed to us. Which brings us to my third point. So we looked at the need for blessing, then the promise of blessing. And now, thirdly and lastly, the way to blessing. The way to blessing. What we need to understand now is that God has kept his promise and he's done everything that was necessary for us to be able to enter into his cosmic work of restoration. So if we'd read the rest of Genesis 12, we would have seen that Abram obeys God. If you just look at verse 4 real quickly, it says, So Abram went as the Lord had told him. And then you see that God promises the land of Canaan to Abram's offspring, but you also see that the fulfillment of the promise is compromised because there is famine in the land, and Abram was forced to leave the land and go down to Egypt. And then, furthermore, when Abraham puts his own wife Sarah in jeopardy by pretending that she's his sister and letting her be taken by Pharaoh as his wife. And so what you see right there in Genesis 12 is that the fulfillment of the promise of blessing has to come through Abram's offspring. But at the same time, you quickly see that it's not going to be easy. There's going to be much, much adversity on the way to blessing. And basically, that's the whole of the Old Testament story right there. That is the whole of history until the time of Jesus. There's a need for blessing, there's a promise of blessing, but the way to blessing is going to be difficult. What you see when you read the Old Testament is that promise of blessing being repeated and expounded and confirmed and illustrated and transmitted from generation to generation throughout all of the history of the people of Israel, the people of Israel being the people of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. But at the same time, you see the curse and brokenness and all of their effects and this evil that is perpetuated even down the line of true religion. And it seems that there's no way to solve this whole situation. It's like the painting that was smeared and ripped to pieces. You can try to clean each part and tape it all back together, but you're never going to recover the masterpiece. You could force the vandals who trashed the painting to redo it, but that's not going to work. You could hire another artist, you could use high-tech labs and programming, even AI, maybe, and you could perhaps obtain a decent counterfeit. But if you're an artist yourself, you know that that doesn't count. You're never going to be able to replace the value of the original. So I ask you, how could this situation be made right? From where could the proper reparation, the proper compensation come for the damage of this great artist's ultimate work of art? The answer, of course, is that only the original artist could be able to provide proper compensation and reparation through a work of his own. That's how talent works, you see. No one is able to repair the work of another artist. I'm an artist myself, and I'm a perfectionist. And I can tell you that if one of my children were to break something I made, and then simply say, Oh, don't worry, I'm gonna put it back together, it'll be as good as new. I'm just going to shake my head and go cry in a corner. And so in scripture, what do we have? We have God's world that was broken to pieces, God's masterpiece that was marred by sin, by our sin. You see, we are the vandals who came into the museum and trashed God's beautiful creation and our own existence in it. And our desperate quest to restore paradise unto ourselves by our own merits and efforts and resources is just a futile attempt at duct taping the pieces of the painting back together. It's never going to be sufficient. But you see, God is so kind that he determined to provide compensation and reparation himself. He promised blessing for the whole world through Abram and his offspring. And the offspring that eventually came was God himself in the form and nature of a man. It had to be God because only he could make things right in a way that was worthy of his own perfect talent and glory. And so you see, Jesus Christ, the direct descendant of Abraham, but also the eternal Son of God, is the one who ultimately went from his country and his kindred and his father's house to the land that was shown to him. He came and lived among us as the perfect man and the ultimate missionary. He dropped everything, so to speak, and gave everything up and devoted himself entirely to the task that was before him, even unto death. God the Son offered Himself on the cry, on the cross, to die in the place of sinners as a perfect substitute, a perfect sacrifice, because only a price of such divine value was sufficient to offer compensation and reparation worthy of the divine glory that was marred by our sin, you see. We trashed the masterpiece. We are unable to offer reparation. God comes in and provides reparation at his own expense so that we, the vandals, can be forgiven and enter into possession of his new creation, a world restored and glorified in a way that only the original artist could do. So what we need to understand is this the offspring of Abraham, who was promised to him and through whom blessing is offered to the whole world, is Jesus Christ. He, being fully God, gave himself as a ransom. He offered his life on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all who believe in him. And on the third day he rose victorious from the dead, and so his name was made great. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. He is the blessing of the world, in whom all the families of the earth are blessed if they put their faith in him. Those who reject him will be cursed, and all those who believe in him, who rest in him through faith, are made into a great nation, a holy nation. They are the new humanity that will eventually be the church triumphant, that will live forever in the new creation, in perfect fellowship with God and with one another. You see, the nations were confused and dispersed, but now they're brought together again in Christ, and paradise is restored to them in him. That is what I meant when I said that God has kept his promise and has done everything that was necessary for us to be able to enter into his cosmic work of restoration. Are you resting in him this morning? At the beginning of this sermon, I made this observation that something's not right with our existence as human beings. And I asked this question, what hope is there for us and for the world around us? And the answer from this passage is that there is a great work of world repair going on. And the part that you and I have in it depends on the relationship that we have to Abraham, according to our passage. And of course, the relationship that we have to Abraham according to Scripture is determined by the relationship that we have to Jesus Christ, the one who was ultimately set apart to be a blessing for the world. Brothers and sisters, the world is messed up and our lives are messed up, but I'm afraid that we have this tendency in our comfortable Western world to look away, to minimize, to pretend that we're doing much better than we really are. I think that Scripture invites us, on the contrary, to look at our brokenness and our sin in the eye. Because there's Genesis 1 through 11, because we can understand where it comes from. God has given us words to describe it. We don't have to be ashamed or scared of it. Can we acknowledge more honestly what's wrong in the world and in our own individual lives? And can we perhaps even share these things more openly with one another in the church? Because we not only have Genesis 1 through 11, we also have Genesis 12 and all the rest of the Bible. And because of that, we know that God not only has spoken good news in the cursed world, but he's also fulfilled everything that was needed for us to be forgiven and healed and for the world to be ultimately restored. Therefore, we need to enfold our lives in the life of the church, where God's glorious work of redemption is constantly reminded to us and where his grace is administered to us through word and prayer and sacrament and through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, who's reconciled us to one another and made us into a new people, a holy nation. That is how we are comforted and encouraged and equipped for the Christian life. And that Christian life, of course, consists in living out the blessing that we've received in Christ. Just as Christ was set apart to be a blessing and went from his father's house to offer blessing to the world, we too are set apart in him to be a blessing. And we're called to go and offer blessing to the world around us. The treasure that Abraham received and which he handed down to his children and to his children's children is the treasure that has come to us through Abraham's offspring, Jesus. And as scripture says, we now carry this treasure in earthen vessels. So if you are in Christ and in the church, what are you going to do with this treasure? Whether we are doctors or engineers or teachers or sales assistants or students or stay-at-home parents or even pastors, we offer that treasure, that blessing to the world around us as we offer Christ to our own children and neighbors and colleagues, and as we live every aspect of our lives, whatever we do from Sunday to Saturday before the face of God and to his glory, we are the line of faith and of true religion. We are the holy seed, the children of the promise, the heirs of Seth and Noah and Shem and Abraham. You are called and set apart and sent to a cursed and dying world. To whom will you now intentionally offer Christ this week who does not yet know him? Whom will you invite to church or to a Bible study? For whom will you start praying that he or she will become a Christian? Which missionaries will you go visit on the field to encourage them and bless them? And which other ministries will you join as volunteers or as prayer partners or as financial partners? You are the glimmer of hope for the world, and dare I say you're much more than a glimmer. The Apostle Paul says that you are children of God in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for sending Jesus, the promised offspring, to be a blessing to the world. And Lord, help us to see how we in turn, as we rest in Him through faith, how we have been set apart to be a blessing. Help us to see very practically this week how you're calling us to offer Christ to the world around us. Amen.