Genesis Week 11 | God-centered Obedience

Sunday, June 18th | Beau Bradberry

"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." — Genesis 12:3

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Beau Bradberry

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That was a little bit too real, watching that I noticed, like, I laughed a lot harder when it was the Mother's Day ones, right?

Watching Moms go through that, and I'm like, no, that is me.

That is me.

That is me.

With that said, good morning, everyone, and happy Father's Day.

So glad that you guys chose to be here with us.

If you're a first time guest, we're so grateful that you're here worshiping with us.

Aaron and I will be back here to my left, back here at this table at the end of the service.

We'd love to meet you.

Love for you to stop by and speak so that we could thank you for being here worshiping with us.

And if there's any questions that you have, be a wonderful time to get those answered.

If you've got your Bible with you, and I hope that you do, I want to invite you to turn with me to Genesis, chapter eleven.

As Burger shared, we have been in Genesis, and we're going to be in Genesis for some time.

Had somebody asked me a few weeks ago, they're like, hey, I'm kind of looking ahead and I see our trajectory.

I'm guessing we're going to be in Genesis for a while.

Yes, we're going to be in Genesis for a while.

So we are here in Genesis, chapter eleven.

And today we're going to look at Noah's.

We're going to see this genealogy of Noah's son, Shim.

And we're going to hit a transition in the flow of text and how we've been seeing things in Genesis, but before we've jumped from, like, situation to situation, individual to individual, family to family as we've gone through and as we've we've read through Genesis.

But but now this has taken thousands of years, even though it's taken us roughly eleven weeks, it's thousands of years of Biblical history is accounted for in what we have read.

And now God is going to draw our attention and we're going to see this in this genealogy to this one family and to focus in on this one family as we continue on throughout Genesis.

So we're going to read this genealogy a little bit different than the ones that we've seen.

And if you're like, man, I'm genealogied out.

We're not going to spend a lot of time in here, but we do want to read this.

It says this starting in verse ten of Genesis, chapter eleven.

These are the generations of Shim.

And when Shim was 100 years old, he fathered Opashad two years after the Flood.

And Shim lived after he fathered a prashad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

Verse twelve.

And when a prashad had lived 35 years, he fathered Salah and Arpashad lived after he fathered Shalah 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Shalah had lived 30 years, he followed Eber.

And Shalah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg.

And when Eber had lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Peleg had lived 30 years, he's fathered Rue and Peleg lived after he fathered Rue 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Ru had lived 32 years, he fathered Sarug and Ru lived after he fathered Sarug 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

And Surug had lived 30 years.

After he fathered Nahor and Suru lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Tara.

And Nahor lived after he fathered Tara 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

And when Tara had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor and Haran.

And so what we are seeing here as we look through this is this genealogy of families.

And what you should be noticing compared to other genealogies is we're seeing the lifespan somewhat shrink as we've read through here and we're seeing some things that we can more so identify with.

All right, here's your useless trivia fact of the day.

How many of you grew up knowing a man who would greet you at 11:00 a.m.

Every Monday through Friday by the name of Bob Barker?

Watching the prices, right?

Did you watch that?

Anybody?

Anybody other than me?

So a handful of us, I did not know this until this week.

Bob Barker is still alive, right?

That's impressive.

Anybody take a guess how old Bob Barker is.

Don't look at your phone.

Don't cheat anybody.

He is 99 years old.

If he lives, I believe, to December 12, he will be 100 years old.

That has nothing to do with the message, but just sidetracked us a little bit, right?

Because you know what, Dads?

Never say I have useless information.

Right?

That's it.

So now let's jump back.

Verse 27.

Now these are the generations of Terra.

Terra fathered Abram nohor.

And haran.

And haran.

Fathered Lot.

And Haran died in the presence of his father Terra in the land of his kindred, in Er of the Chaldeans and Abraham.

And Nahor took wives.

And the name of Abram's wife was Sarah, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milka, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milka, and Ishka.

Now Sarah was barren.

She had no children.

Verse 31 and 32, Tura took Abram.

His son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarah, his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife.

And they went forth together from Earth to the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Hara, they settled there.

The days of Tura were 205 years and T*** died in Haran.

And so what we've seen kind of bringing us through in chapter eleven and where we're going to go is we're introduced this morning to this family and the focal point and in many ways of this family is going to be found in this individual known as Abram as we're going to see who will become Abraham which is very important.

His God's going to change his name and his name means father.

But what we learn from the wholeness of biblical context about this guy Abram that's important for us as we go forward is that Abram is going to be very, very important all the way through not only Genesis, but throughout all of Scripture in our day to day.

Abram is very important and that Abram comes from a family of wealth.

Abram comes from a family of means.

Abram comes from a family of influence.

Abram comes from a family who has servants who serve them.

Like, this is a who's who in the world.

When this time of what we see in this narrative of world history, this is not some nobody tucked away somewhere, forgotten about.

There's this guy named Abram comes from a family of influence, of power, of wealth, and this is the family that we are going to see.

But there's some pieces of this about Abram.

If you've been raised in church or even if you know there's so much that is tied and connected to Abram, who will become Abraham, that three world religions tie their faith back to this individual.

Right?

But here's the thing about Abram.

When we meet Abram here in this account in scripture, and this is recorded in other places in scripture as well, abram is not this guy who's like seeking after the Lord.

This isn't like Enoch and Noah where it's like and they walk with God.

In fact, it's the exact opposite of what we find, that he and his family are pagans, not at all pursuing and following after the God of Scripture.

They practice polytheism, which means they worship many gods.

Some people that I read connect them to babel and Babylon and demonic worship.

This is not a noble, righteous guy pursuing the Lord.

That's important for us as we see through here.

And we find all that God is going to work and all that God is going to do is not going to be because Abram is some guy.

That'S hungry after God.

That's not at all what we find.

That's not his family, that's not his lineage, that's not the steps left and modeled for him to walk in.

But God's going to do something remarkable.

But then also in here, this is going to be really big, important, right?

It says that Abrams wife, that she's barren, which means she can't have kids.

And this is going to be that part that we tuck away in our brains as we hear what God is going to do, as we see matters that Abram is going to take into his own hands as we see the frustrations that he deals with.

As Berger just said, like, we don't always know what you're doing, but we know what you're done.

It's these pieces of faith that is there.

And so we're going to read this morning just these first four verses of chapter twelve and begin to understand what this looks like is.

This encounter of this pagan man from a pagan family is going to have this interaction.

And then for the rest of what we are going to study is going to rest in these four verses.

Like, this is a big moment in Scripture.

This is a big moment in the history of the world.

This is a big moment in your story and in my story, this just like all of Scripture, but this matters at great depth.

So let's look the first four verses.

It says, 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.

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.

In Him who dishonors you, I will curse.

And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Verse four.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he departed from heran.

These are big, important, these four verses of what we see.

There's so much that as we continue to go through Genesis, we're going to come back and unpack this more and more and more.

But what I want us to do, and this kind of flows into last week, is take this moment and look at these four verses and draw the best of what we can from God's word to understand what biblical obedience looks like, what biblical obedience is.

We talked last week about partial obedience, right?

And how partial obedience isn't really obedience at all.

It's in fact disobedience.

And it just keeps leading down a path more and more and more of disobedience.

And that's what we found with Babel.

That's what we found with the moment they stepped off the ark.

It's just this continuing slippery slope of partial obedience which turns into complete and full rebellion and in disobedience.

And so for here, though, we look like man, here's the guy, like, checking the boxes.

And so let's begin to understand what obedience is and true obedience as we go through this.

And so the first thing I want us to see about this biblical obedience, god centered obedience, is this is that obedience is initiated by God.

No, that's not how that works.

Obedience is with me.

Well, I'm going to argue against that.

Just for a few minutes.

Okay.

Number one, god saves you.

God saves you.

Scripture teaches us that his spirit awakens your heart, he draws you into relationship with Him, he changes you.

Scripture tells us that you in your state were once an enemy, but then God brings you into relationship as a child, that you were once dead, but you were now alive, that God saves you.

You do not save yourself in that process of what God does is God gives you His Spirit.

And with the filling of the Holy Spirit that we now can obey God, we now can know God and know Him deeper.

We can feel conviction that leads to repentance, to seek God and to desire the ways of God, that this is what happens and takes place, that as God saves us, he gives us His Spirit, and then this is how we can obey Him in what we do.

And then what does it mean that we obey Him?

That God also gives us his standard.

We don't have to try to figure out or determine for ourselves what God's standard is, right?

God gives us his standard.

It's called God's word.

We dive into this.

The more that we dive into this, we understand what glorifies Him, what he desires in his children, and then we seek to obey Him because he's given us His Spirit in us that can obey Him.

And then in that we come from.

This that understand that God initiates obedience.

And here's why this is so important.

Once I realize, once I accept, once I surrender to the truth the fact that God saved me, that God gave me His Spirit, that God gives me his standards when I obey Him.

Here's what happens all sense of self righteousness is gone.

All sense of me patting myself on the back, saying well done, bow isn't there.

And what is rooted within me is the worship and praise of Him.

I don't obey Him and then praise me.

I don't obey Him and then promote me.

I don't obey Him and then seek to glorify Me.

I don't obey Him and then seek to tell others about me.

My obedience to Him actually takes my eyes off of me and places them on Him.

Because I understand that even in my ability to obey Him is found in and is rooted with Him.

Be careful.

Be careful not to have partially obedience, but not to have false obedience either.

When we think of the Pharisees, when we think of the religious elitist in the time of Christ, they wanted nothing more than to see two things happen in their life for the most part.

Two things.

Number one, to obey every single commandment that God gave them.

That's a win, right?

But then there's two, so that they in and of themselves may be found righteous.

And these were the ones that actually had the conflict mostly with Christ, right?

We begin in this passage.

If we're not careful about going woohoo, go to Abram, right?

But we look back and when we look at our lives we see that this is the praise for God.

Look at this.

Did, did Abram come to God or.

Did God come to Abram?

God came to Abram.

God called abram.

God guided abram.

God changed Abram.

God commanded Abram all of what God has done.

Think back at Babel, what was the issue that was there?

They said that they were going to.

Make their name great.

But God here says, what?

I will make your name great.

And so as Abram obeys, God is glorified.

God's name is known.

God's plan is fulfilled.

Humility in our faith causes you and I to realize that obedience to God is not look at me, but that our obedience to God is look at Him.

And we'll talk some more about this later.

Second thing that we see from this is we understand obedience.

Obedience is costly.

Obedience is costly.

In order for Abram to obey God, it's going to cost Abram.

When we look at the life of.

Abram who will become Abraham, we see all the things.

And in my notes I put this with this word, with quotes around it.

All that Abram gets, all that the Lord gives him.

And in that we can quickly skim past what he is called to give up.

Let's look back at this at verse one of chapter twelve.

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.

So get this for Abram right from the beginning.

In order to obey God, god doesn't come with him to Him and say, hey, go and give up all of these sins.

Look at that.

In a moment God comes to Abram and says, in order for you to follow me, it's going to cost you.

And here's what you're going to leave.

He says you're going to leave behind your country, your nationalistic ideology and identity in order for you to follow me, you're going to leave that behind.

He says you're going to leave your kindred.

In order for you to follow me, you're going to leave your family behind.

There's going to be individuals that you have to say, right?

You can't FaceTime them, you can't send them an email, you can't jump back, right?

This isn't there.

You're going to leave and you're going to go and you're going to leave them behind.

And you're also going to leave behind your home, it says your father's house.

And so you're going to leave what you know, what's comfortable, what's safe, what is good.

In order to obey me.

Abram, you've got to leave that behind.

When it comes to obeying God.

I think if you've been around church for a while, you know that you.

Have to give up things.

You know that, right?

And we give up things all the time and oftentimes to follow God.

What we connect, what we are called to do and what we do and we recognize this, is to leave behind the sinful pursuits of past, present, and future.

And we know that.

And so we leave that old behind.

This is who we were.

This is what we were pursued.

We leave our lust.

We leave our greed.

We leave our envy.

We leave our idolatry.

We leave our pride.

Man we know we're casting that aside.

We're casting it aside.

We're casting it aside.

But oftentimes God asks us not to just leave the things that are easily marked as the evil of this world behind.

But oftentimes, in order for you and I, and we see this with abram, to obey God, we've got to leave some things behind that are good.

That.

Can feel like a blessing, that can feel like we got to work hard for this.

But God, this is where I'm comfortable at.

But God calls us to leave it all behind.

Jesus, when the rich young ruler comes to him, what does Jesus say?

Sell it all.

Sell it all.

Sell it all.

Jesus, when he calls the first disciples, what does he say?

Leave it all behind.

Leave it all behind.

Leave it all behind.

Jesus, with another group of his followers and disciples, says, if you're going to follow after me, you got to do something.

You got to take up that cross daily and keep your eyes focused on me.

Jesus teaches us in Scripture in Luke 1428, when he talks about what it means to be his disciple, he says, what it means to be the disciple is you count the cost.

He's teaching in a parable, and he says, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

You see, true obedience to Jesus is, lord, what do I need to cast aside so that I can pursue after you?

God centered obedience to Christ means that we are willing to cast aside anything as we keep our eyes on him.

For abram, it meant relationships, finances, earthly security.

Tom, many others, says he was 75.

How many of you, as you look forward to 75, think, how can I turn my world completely upside down in this moment?

Right?

And if you've already passed that season.

In your life, you're like, all right, this is what we've been working for, but this is what Jesus says.

So let me ask you this.

As you look at following Christ, what did you give up?

Did you count the cost?

Did it cost you anything?

The third thing I want us to.

Look at with obedience this morning is obedience is blessed.

Obedience is blessed.

Blessing is a big thing in the life of abram.

Blessing is a big thing in the life of Scripture, and God here promises.

To bless him and to bless others as well.

Look at verses two and three again.

Says, 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.

Now, God has a particular blessing in mind for abram, but what we see here also is blessing, promise from the obedience to Him.

And we see this happen and take place in other sections of Scripture as well.

So one of the things we have to talk about this morning is what does it mean to be blessed?

You can cut on and listen to a lot of different preachers who will define this very differently, but it doesn't mean that they're defining it very biblically, spiritual blessing, the blessing of the Lord I want us go ahead and establish does not mean earthly prosperity, okay?

Now, while God can and while God does from time to time bless people with financial means and healthy bodies.

This is not a guarantee of obedience.

All we have to do is look.

At the New Testament.

When we see these disciples, when we see these men and women of faith and the persecution and the loss of everything, of what they give up in order to follow Christ, we see that in Jesus complete and total obedience and what did it cost him?

Everything.

And so while God does I don't want to say that God doesn't, because God does and God can.

But this blessing is not the guarantee of obedience.

And instead, what the Bible does in blessing is it gives us a fuller meaning of the word.

And Jesus teaches about this this very early on in the ministry of Christ at the Sermon on the Mount.

He reads Matthew five three through eleven.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall seek God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kind of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And so Jesus here uses this term blessed in the framework of the beatitudes to describe not external circumstances.

This isn't the promise of Scripture that we find, but instead to describe the inner quality of the faithful servant of God.

This blessing is a spiritual state of.

Well being, a spiritual state of prosperity, a deep joy filled contentment that means this, that it can't be shaken by the external.

It can't be shaken because of poverty, because of grief, because of famine, persecution, war, or any other trial or tragedy that we face in human lives.

And in the terms of this world, the Beatitudes are far from blessing.

But for those in Christ, it is the ultimate blessing because God is with us and he promises never to leave us.

And so the true servant of God is blessed because he has god never missed this.

The blessing is Jesus.

This is it.

The blessing is christ.

He is this, and obedience to him grows the blessing that we find in him.

The fourth thing that we see is obedience is action.

Obedience is action.

Verse four.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

And Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Iran.

Now, how many of you, if you felt like God was calling you to leave your country, all that you knew, all that was safe, your retirement, your plan, all of that behind would go, hold on a minute, right?

Let me mull over this.

Let me talk about this with my wife.

Let me get like a council of people together and kind of rationalize through this.

Could you give me a moment to just kind of exhale and just have a cup of coffee and think this over?

Right?

But what we see is God says.

And then verse four.

So Abram went.

While obedience to the Lord does begin.

In the heart and in the head, it must find its way to be mobilized through the body of the follower of Christ.

To simply agree that something is true and right is important and essential.

But to take the action step of faith is the act of obedience that.

We see here in Scripture.

Would it have been enough for Abram to sit back and for that moment and say, no, man, God, everything that.

You'Re saying, I believe you can do.

But I don't really know that it's.

For me to do it?

Would that have been enough?

No.

But for us, how many things of the Lord do we know in our mind and believe in our heart that they are good, that they are right, and that they are true?

But our unwillingness to mobilize our life after them is where we fall short.

Right?

I love this.

So Abram went, he obeyed and he said, if this is what the Lord has for me, then I don't know what it holds, but this is what I'm going to do.

The fifth thing, and we'll close with this this morning.

Obedience points to Jesus.

Obedience points to Jesus when your obedience and my obedience do not point people to Jesus.

Instead, it points people to us.

And that's the sin of self righteousness in here.

God says in the in the last part of verse three that in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Now, that's kind of a big piece there from this one man and his wife that Scripture teaches us and tells us is baron.

What God tells him is that all the families of the earth should be blessed.

Now, what we begin to see here and understand and what we'll read through is it's the promise and the coming of the Messiah.

And when we look at Scripture, we see that from the lineage of Abram will come Jesus.

And so that in this Abram's, obedience isn't pointing to a lesson that you and I can sit down and study and at the end of the day say, golly Abram's.

Such a blessing.

It's so that in it that we point people to who Jesus is.

In Matthew 514 through 16.

I love this jesus.

In teaching the Sermon on the Mount, continuing on, he says this he says, you are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

Verse 16 in the same way, let your light shine before others so that.

They may see your good works and do what with it and give glory.

To your Father who is in heaven.

The picture of what my obedience in your obedience displays to this world is.

Not this picture of look at how they have it all figured out.

But no, it's look at an all knowing and all loving and all powerful Savior.

It is not Me, but it is Him.

And it is him fully.

But we can often find ourselves willing to take credit for the work that God does in us and the work that God does through us as well.

Romans 310 through twelve says, none is righteous.

No, not one.

No one understands, no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside together they have become worthless.

No one does good, not even one.

Because it's Jesus.

As we go through and continue on with this, in looking at the life of Abram, it's the story of redemption, of God's plan to save, of God's plan to bring the nations to Himself, of God's plan to bless.

And it's not Abram's obedience that we celebrate, but it's the God who saves him and the God who saves us, the God who transformed him, and the God who transforms us, the God who teaches him, and the God who teaches us, the God who loved him and the God who loves us.

Would you pray with me, God?

Thank you so much for this passage of scripture.

God, I thank you in who you are, Lord, and in what You've done, Lord, that you called for yourself a man, you chose for yourself this individual.

And what will be marked in his story is not what he is going to.

Unfold, Lord, and what he is going to do.

But Lord, it's the story of what you are going to show, Lord, and what you are going to do.

God.

I thank you.

I thank you that our call to obey you is not done in our will and in our power of who we are as individuals, but God, that you give us Your spirit to allow us to experience the blessing of obedience in relationship with you.

And God, I thank you that our obedience points to something greater, greater than just a moment of us getting it right.

But Lord, it points to a Savior.

Who'S always gotten it right, and that you're glorified, Lord, when we when we take steps of obedience, when we kill sin, when we pursue after You, Lord, it points people to you, to Your name and you're glorified.

God, I pray that as we go here today, that it will be desiring.

Your will to be done in our life.

Lord, with the power of Your spirit.

You'Ve given us the ability to obey.

Lord, and I pray in faith we.

Will take those steps and you will be glorified.

And it's in Jesus name we pray.

Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.

In the meantime, you can visit [e-mail] or by searching for Willow Ridgechurch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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