Abrahams blessings? Does God offer us a good life?

Introduction

Myself, me and my wife Susie, we have two kids. We have, I live here, and Jet is in the primary program. This year, we finally watched the first Home Alone movie with them. We tried a few years ago, and Kevin’s older brother in the story just early on has some fairly harsh and mean things to say. We’re like, “Our kids are not ready for this.” And so we held off. But this year, we finally watched Home Alone.

Home Alone is Jet’s favorite kind of humor. People getting hurt, he thinks it’s hilarious. Olive, on the other hand, hates it. We couldn’t watch Dog Catcher movies early on because it terrorized her too much. And when the enemies are being hurt, she just has so much compassion for them, something she clearly didn’t get from me. And so we finally got to watch Home Alone with the kids. Many people know the story. Kevin says to his parents, his family, “I wish you guys would just disappear.” And then they, very relatable story, they leave the country without their children. We’ve all done it at least once.

They find out, he wakes up, finds out no one’s there, and there’s that moment in the movie where he kind of in distress says, “I made my family disappear.” And then you see, he thinks about it, then he looks straight down the camera, and there’s just the joy in his eyes when he says, “I made my family disappear.” And then we get this montage of everything a kid does when they find out their parents aren’t around and there’s no consequences for him. He’s even thinking they’re never going to come back. So he’s, there’s no consequences ever. He’s living the good life, doing all the things.

As you see the story, he starts to meet problems that come with that. Although he faces those problems head-on, there’s this undertone for the movie where he realizes actually there are things he likes about his family, and there are actually things he misses about not having his family around. And so it’s that feel-good kind of feeling of seeing those layers that are happening in the story, and we can relate to some ideas with that because when we think about what it means to have a good life, those layers exist for us as well. There’s moments where we would think, “Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have this person that bothers me, I didn’t have this thing that I have to do, I didn’t have to follow these rules?”

There’s also layers under that that we recognize that it’s not that simple, that sometimes when we get exactly what we want, we realize maybe it’s not everything we wanted. Or in times that we feel like we’re longing for something, we get it, we’re not satisfied. Or other times where we have everything we want, and it feels like we’ve now moved on to another thing that we’d like, and we’ve started to take the many things we already have for granted. We’ve called this series the good life because we want to think a little bit about that.

We’re going to follow the story. This is part two of Genesis. We did part one two years ago where we spent the first 11 chapters of Genesis thinking specifically about relationships. This one, we want to think about what the good life means because this is the story of the crew that is often considered the fathers of faith. We got Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As we look at them and living out supposedly a good life, we see that it’s not as good as maybe we expected. We start asking the question, what is the good life? In fact, it launches with this passage that we just read, which is, it sounds like the good life. Listen to some of those things we read about the promises that are given to Abram: “Go to the land I will show you. I will give you this land. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you.” It sounds like, I mean, that is the good life. It’s promised to Abram.

Yet we will see through his life, and we will see almost immediately that it’s not that straightforward, that what God means by these things are more nuanced than sometimes we initially think. So we want to ask the question, what is the good life? We want to ask what that means for Abram, who later on becomes Abraham. We want to think about what that means for us. What is this good life? We’re going to spend the series doing that, but I want to kick off really unpacking these promises that are given to Abraham and the context that they’re given to him in. We won’t drill too much into these promises. Our small groups, our connect groups are going to spend a bit more time focusing in on these promises. But we read the whole chapter because I want us to see beyond that initial glimpse of what this good life looks like and actually see how that plays out in his life immediately.

God Calls Us to This Good Life

What we get is the first element of the good life: we see is God calls us to this good life. It’s a calling from God. We see that in this story in the way God initiates with Abram. There’s five times in those promises that the word “I will” is used, and the “I” there is God. God is the one doing the work. Five times, “I will go, go to the land. I will show you. I will give you this land. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” God is the one that initiates. So the first thing we find about this supposed good life that we’re looking at is it’s something that comes from God.

An Undeserving Thing That He Gives Us

It’s an undeserving thing that he gives us. Abram is not a deserving guy. He’s not even a God worshipper to start with, or at least he doesn’t grow up as one. We don’t see that in this passage, but later on in Joshua, after Joshua leads the people back into that land, Joshua’s last speech as the leader of Israel, Joshua 24, he reviews the story with Abraham, and he gives us this extra insight that says, this is Joshua 24:2, “Long ago your ancestors, including the father of Abraham, who was terror, worshiped other gods.” So Abraham hasn’t grown up as a god-fearer of the God of Israel. He’s a pagan worshipper is how he grows up. So he’s not someone who has been growing up living his life serving God. So he’s not deserving in that sense.

He’s also quite unfaithful through his life. It’s quite interesting really because Abraham is considered the father of faith. We talk about, even today, we talk about the Abrahamic religions. That is all religions that look back to Abraham. Judaism, of course, sees Abraham as one of their forefathers. So Judaism would look back at Abraham, but also Christianity is an Abrahamic faith. Islam is an Abrahamic faith. The JWs, Mormons, Barahigh would consider Abraham as a father of faith to them. The religions that worship the Samaritan religion that springs off Judaism, the religion that follows John the Baptist as the Messiah would see Abraham as the father of faith. He is considered the father of faith for almost all world religions. Yet he’s quite an unfaithful guy for the father of faith. He’s very unfaithful. We see a very explicit example in this lie he tells in order to protect himself and at the cost of his wife and Pharaoh. He’s not a deserving guy. Yet God chooses him and offers him this supposed good life.

So the first thing we find out about the good life is it comes from God. He calls us even though we are undeserving. That’s true through the whole story arc of the Bible, and we see it even more explicitly and clearly in Jesus. In fact, John, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, writes about it. He writes a lot about God’s love, but in 1 John, he says this quite famous verse. He says, “This is real love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” This is the message of this life that God offers. It comes from God, and it’s not because we’ve earned it. It’s not because we’re deserving of it.

He Calls Us to His Mission

The good life God calls us to, and he calls us to his mission. Even back at Abraham, we see that we see he’s told to leave and where he, where he’s told to serve. He’s told to leave in a really explicit way. Verse one, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family.” It’s a very explicit kind of leaving that he needs to do. God will call us also to leave. He’s also called to serve. Says, “You will be a blessing to others.” Part of the blessing he is given is that that blessing will flow out onto others. Now it’s true that that could flow out in a kind of affluent way that he’s so wealthy that his wealth just benefits others as well. But any kind of way that you might serve and bless, any kind of way that you might bless others is a level of you offering something that you have that impacts them. And so he’s clearly called both to leave and to serve. He’s called to mission.

There’s a similar sense that we are all called to leave and serve. I mean, we are not all necessarily called to leave our home, although some God does call to do that, to do mission work, to go work in another country, work and reach another people group, go to another city and serve God there. Some of us are very explicitly called to leave physically, but everyone who is a follower of Jesus is called to leave in some sense, to leave our own selfish identity. The language that’s often used in the New Testament is die to ourselves. We’re all called to do that. Jesus uses this language just before he goes to the cross. He’s talking to his disciples, and he’s talking about himself, but he also makes it clear he’s talking about every believer when he uses the illustration that a seed doesn’t grow unless it’s planted and dies. Only then when the seed dies does it become something else. The same thing is true for any follower of Jesus, that there is a death to ourselves when it comes to life in Jesus. It’s a symbol we use in baptism. The picture of someone going under the water is a picture of dying, and coming up again is a picture of new life. This is the good life that we’re called to. The good life we’re called to is to die to ourselves. He calls us to this mission to leave and to serve.

He Calls Us to Trials

He calls us to trials. There’s trials in the form of suffering. One of the most ironic things about this chapter is the first half of it talks about all these blessings that Abraham is going to get, but there’s another layer. We’re given a nuance that’s going on at the same time. He’s getting all these blessings. “I will bless you. You will be a blessing to others.” All that is going. Then we hit verse 10, and we’re told at that time, right, it’s happening overlapping each other. At that time that he is receiving all these blessings, a severe famine struck the land of Canaan, forcing Abraham to go down to Egypt where he lived as a foreigner. You see what’s happening there? At the very moment that he’s being told, “All this is going to be great for you. It’s going to go well for you,” at the very same time, it’s not going well for him. Those two things are happening at the same time. There is both a promise that’s happening of a good life, and there is suffering that is happening. There’s trials in the form of suffering, and there’s trials in the form of temptation. This is part of the good life.

There’s testing. I heard one guy put it as he told a story about a guy who loved his lawn, was trying to look after his lawn, but kept finding dandelions popping up in his lawn. So he started trying everything he could to get rid of these dandelions and all the different chemicals and different things he tried. Exasperated, he asked an expert about it, and he said, “What else can I try to get rid of these dandelions?” The expert said, “You could try getting used to them because they’re going to be there. They’re going to keep coming back.” There’s a similar sense when we think about the good life with Jesus. We will be tried and tested, and there’s a sense where we must embrace some of that and get used to some of that because that is part of the good life in the form of suffering, but also in the form of temptation.

Abraham is given a very explicit temptation here relating to his wife. It’s quite a wild story. We get with this lie with his wife. Verse 11 says, “As he was approaching the border of Egypt, Abraham said to his wife Sarah,” he said what every husband should say to their wife, right? He gets the check for good husband work here. “Look, you are a very beautiful woman,” right? Check. Nailed it, Abraham. A very short-lived success for him because the next sentence is, “And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife. Let’s kill him. Then we can have her.’” So this is what he puts on his wife. “Please tell them that you are my sister, then they will spare my life and treat me well because of their interest in you.” Very quickly, the man of faith turns out to be quite unfaithful. In fact, not only does he do it here, but this proves so successful for him that two chapters later, he comes across another king, Aimilec, and he plays the exact same game and plays out the exact same way. This is his faithful pattern for Abraham. He tells this lie, but in one sense, it’s only a half lie. We find out in chapter 20, he says to Aimilec, Bimlac says, “Why did you say he’s your sister?” He goes, “Well, technically, she kind of is.” They share a father, so half-sister.

In one sense, he’s trying to skirt the truth, but what’s clearly going on here is unfaithfulness for Abraham, both in honoring his wife and in honoring the promises that God has given him already. He’s resorting to, God has given him all these promises, and straight away he’s jumping into, “I can make God’s promises come true for me if I just kind of dodge the truth here, and then I will get the blessings that God has promised me.” He said I would go well in the land. He told me these things will happen, and so I will make them happen my own way. This is Abraham’s pattern. We will see him and Sarah play this game their whole life. They will be, they will test, they’re tempted to find their own solutions to God’s mission, to God’s call. So this is what we see in the good life. We are called by God. We’re called to his mission, and that will mean enduring suffering and enduring temptation.

God Restores Us

The good news of this good life is that God doesn’t just call us, he restores us. He restores us in one way through discipline. That’s what we see happen in this story. Pharaoh takes Sarah into his palace. She is at this point 65 years old, we’re told. So she, I mean, I don’t want to say anything about aging, but Pharaoh has his pick of who he can have in his house, and he has decided that this 65-year-old man, she has, she has matured like a fine wine it seems, and quite the looker, and Pharaoh sees her, he wants her, he takes her. So God brings terrible plagues on Pharaoh, something Egypt should probably get used to for their future. God sends terrible plagues on him, and there’s a discipline that happens for what’s going on in this situation. In fact, in one sense, Abraham’s life is put at far greater risk than it ever was. He thought it was going to be bad for him if they saw his wife and said, “I want her.” But now he has done something that has caused plagues to come on Pharaoh. You imagine how much more hot water he is in when Pharaoh says, “You have caused this to happen to me.” So in one sense, Abraham puts himself in a far more dangerous spot than he ever was. We see discipline coming out here because God loves his people. We understand that, right? A good parent disciplines their children, that it’s not loving to go without disciplining.

I remember this in school with teachers. Many of you are teachers, I will walk carefully. But you know, teachers aren’t considered by kids to be human beings, right? You know that if they see you outside school, they’re like, “Hang on, don’t you live and live and sleep at school? Like, what are you doing in the shops?” There’s this kind of weird relationship with teachers, but one of the weird things about the relationship with teachers is often the teachers you like the most are the ones that discipline the best. I remember I had one teacher in high school that had no discipline in the class. We could do anything we wanted. He never stopped us from talking to each other. He just talked, just droned on up the front while we had a great old time, and we hated that class. Hated it, and I did very badly at it. I failed that class. I had another teacher that was extremely strict and one of my favorite classes, hated getting in trouble from her, but she ran the class well. As much as we could do anything we wanted in this other class, what we really wanted to do is not be in the class at all. It was a lose-lose. We weren’t having all the fun we would have had if we weren’t in class, and we weren’t learning anything in the time we were supposed to be in the class. It’s a lose-lose. We understand this, right? Discipline actually has its benefits. It’s a loving thing. It addresses one of the great myths about God when we face suffering.

The myth is maybe God allows suffering because he just doesn’t care. Maybe God allows suffering because he’s just so far off, and we are just small ants to him, and he’s just, it’s just his big experiment. He’s just set the earth in motion, and let’s see what happens. That’s one of the big myths we get about suffering, and the reality is God’s discipline proves he cares. The fact that he would be involved in things and try to draw us back to him proves that he cares. So suffering can sometimes be because of discipline. Suffering isn’t always because of discipline, but we see suffering in our world because people have not treated the world God the way God intended, because we’ve broken the order of things that God had set up. We’re living in a world that our own wrongdoing has created suffering, whether it’s from us directly or from the legacy of humanity. That’s the space that we see suffering. Abraham feels suffering in both senses, both because of his disobedience directly and the famine that he faces because of the brokenness of our world. He feels both those forms of suffering. In both forms, suffering can do a good work. It can either do a good work because it corrects us and makes us see the consequences of what we’re doing, or it does a good work because it reminds us we don’t have complete control, and there’s only one who does have complete control. It reminds us we need God.

Here’s the hard truth of suffering. Suffering does a good work, a painfully good work, and we see it at work in this story. This is the good life that Abraham is called to. God calls him back. God calls him, and then God calls him back. God redeems us, and we see it there in the center of the promises that Abraham is given, that this is God’s master plan for all of humanity to be the God that redeems people back. We get that line in verse three, “All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” You cannot imagine that Abraham had any concept of what that meant, the idea that all families on earth could be blessed through him. We see that fulfillment in Jesus in a way that would have been far beyond Abraham’s imagination. We saw it to be far beyond many of the Old Testament people of God’s imagination, that God’s plan of salvation, God’s plan of redemption, God’s plan to bless all the world through the people of God at the time, that that plan far was far beyond their wildest dreams. We see it in a way today that that is amazing, incredible, the way that the story of Jesus has spread around the world and impacted so much of our global culture, the way that blessing has rolled out through Jesus because this is the God like Abraham who calls people and calls them back, who redeems them, and we see that in Jesus.

One of the pictures we get in the New Testament of Jesus’ relationship to his people is the picture of God’s people being called the bride of Christ, the church, the people of God. The church is called the bride of Christ, and Jesus is the groom. It’s a bit of a strange illustration. I think it’s particularly difficult for men to wrap their head around being the bride of Christ. It’s not the most masculine image. You can imagine that if the church had a dating profile, it would be, you know, high maintenance, likes some, likes drama. It’s not the most enticing invitation, but the point here is that God redeems his imperfect bride. In fact, what we see really clearly here is Abraham gives over his bride to save his life. Jesus gives over his life to save his bride. That’s the picture of the good life. Jesus calls us. He redeems us, and he calls us to his mission. That is quite literally when we think about the vows in a wedding, and we say in sickness and in health, when Jesus makes that promise to his church, he truly means it. In the most spiritual sickness that we face with sin, Jesus still calls and redeems his bride.

This is good news for us because it reminds us that no matter how far from God we are, the distance is never too far for him to call us to him. No matter how messed up we are, the mess is never too tangled that he can’t unravel. No matter how broken we are, the break, the wound is never too deep that he can’t heal. This is the God who restores people to him. I want to encourage you that if you’re in that space that you feel too far from God or too messed up or too broken, he is the God who restores and redeems. If you’re in that space where you’re a follower of Jesus, but you are in the burden, the mess, the fog, I encourage you that God is the God that keeps calling you to himself. The New Testament uses the Bible uses the language of not that God is kind of a beaming light that shows us the way, but the language is he’s a lamp to our feet. You might have heard that illustration before. The idea that sometimes the only light we get is the step that’s right in front of us, and we can’t see the path ahead, but all we’ve got to do is keep going to the step that’s in front of us. That step always has to be a faithful step. Abraham tried to take the step in front of him, and he chose faithlessness. What we are always called is to the next right thing. That is the calling. This is the good life. It’s often not what we think it is. It’s often not what we dream we think the best thing for us is, but it is the best life for us.

A band I really liked a number of years ago, I don’t listen to them very often anymore, but a Christian band called Audio Adrenaline. They had a song called “This is the Good Life.” This was the chorus: “This is the good life. I’ve lost everything I could ever want, ever dream of. This is the good life. I found everything I could need here in your arms.” That’s the picture of what happens for this good life. As we unpack the rest of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we will see this time and time again. As we seek to live the good life and all that we desire in our lives, we’ll be reminded once and time and time again that the good life is the only place we’ll find that good life is in the arms of Jesus. He calls us to himself, and he restores us and redeems us, and we should cling to him. I want to encourage you in that. Let me pray.

Lord God, we thank you that you are faithful even when we are not. We know that often we try to solve things in our own life, try to resolve the promises you’ve given us in our own way, and the only way to go is your way. We pray that we might cling to you, run to you, and that you might lead us in your name. Amen.