"Practicing the Presence of God," Series, "Voices" – Week 7
November 13, 2016 – Communitas Group Lesson
Mike McDaniel, Lead Pastor, Grace Point Church of Northwest Arkansas
Icebreaker: Share a time in your life when God’s will frustrated you? Did you trust God and follow, or bail to your own plan?
Transition:Walking with God isn’t a couple-of-times-a-week encounter, it's learning to live in his presence and practice walking in his presence 24/7. Mike called this "Practicing the Presence of God.”
CENTRAL PASSAGE: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
HEAD Questions – what is God doing in this historical account?
1. How did God move Abram and his wife Sarai out of their comfort zone? V. 1
2. What was Abram’s age (see v.4)? How much do the ages and stages of life influence our moving around? Will we be willing throughout our lives and into our 70’s to be available for God to do extraordinary works?
3. How willing are you to move and go with God and not have all the answers to your questions? Read the last part of v. 1. To what degree did God give Abram a comprehensive 5-year plan? (Read also Hebrews 11:8-9)
HEART – What do I learn about God and what do I learn about me?
1. Read v. 10. What would you feel if you followed God but following God led you into a famine?
2. Do a gut-check for a moment: Are you able to trust God enough that even if you don’t realize or get to experience all that God plans to do along your path that you will rejoice with him nonetheless? (Read Hebrews 11:13a)
3. After reading Hebrews 11:13a, how do we reconcile God's promise to do something through us but not get to see it all complete? (We are a part of God’s work not the total of God’s work. God works through us to accomplish his will. We are a part of God’s work. The promises of God don’t center around us. We center around the promises of God.)
HANDS – What is God calling me to do as a result of this message, discussion and Bible Study?
1. What uncomfortable and unfamiliar thing, task, or place is God calling me to?
2. What are your biggest hurdles in trusting God where he may be leading you?
3. Write out something you believe God’s voice has told you during this series. Allow for volunteers to share their callings by God. Take time to pray over them. (Group leaders: tell each person in your group that Mike would like to hear from them what specifically they think God is calling them to. Mike wants to pray specifically for them in this calling. Please email their directions by God to .
Background
In this narrative the direction of the book changes. This passage records how God called Abram out of a pagan world and made astounding promises to him, promises that later became part of the formal Abrahamic Covenant.
The passage also points up the faith of Abram, and teaches that faith obeys God. Abram was middle-aged, prosperous, settled, and thoroughly pagan. The word of the Lord came to Him—though it is not known exactly how—and he responded by faith and obediently left everything to follow God’s plan. That is why he is the epitome of faith in the Bible (cf. Rom. 4:1–3, 16–24; Gal. 3:6–9; Heb. 11:8–19; James 2:21–23).
The religio-historical point of the passage certainly is the call of Abram to found a new nation. Israel would learn by this that her very existence was God’s work through a man who responded by faith and left for Canaan. It would be a message to convince Israel of the divine call they were facing, and their need of faith for their move from Egypt to Canaan.
12:1–3. Verses 1–3 record God’s call to Abram, and verses 4–9 record Abram’s obedience. The call had two imperatives, each with subsequent promises. The first imperative was to get out (Leave your country … go to the land, v. 1), and the second imperative was to be a blessing. (The second imperative, in v. 2, is imprecisely rendered in many versions, including the niv, as a prediction, you will be a blessing. But lit., it is, “Be a blessing.”) His leaving started a chain of reactions. If Abram would get out of Ur, God would do three things for him, so that he could then be a blessing in the land (the second imperative); and he had to be that blessing so that God would do three more things for him. This symmetry should not be missed, for it strengthens the meaning. Abram’s calling had a purpose: his obedience would bring great blessing.
Three promises were based on God’s call for Abram to leave his land: (a) a great nation, (b) a blessing for Abram, and (c) a great name (v. 2). These promises would enable him to “be a blessing” (the second imperative, v. 2). Based on this obedience were God’s three promises to: (a) bless those who blessed him, (b) curse anyone who would treat him lightly, and (c) bless the families of the earth through him (v. 3). To bless or curse Abram was to bless or curse Abram’s God. Unfortunately God often had to use other nations to discipline His people because, far from being a blessing to the world, they were usually disobedient. The third promise takes on its greatest fulfillment in the fact that Jesus Christ became the means of blessing to the world (Gal. 3:8, 16; cf. Rom. 9:5).
The idea of faith is stressed in these passages. Abram was told to leave several things—his “country,” his people, and his father’s household (Gen. 12:1). But he was told nothing about the land to which he must go. His departure required an unparalleled act of faith.
The themes of blessing and cursing are heightened here. In fact this is the central passage of the Book of Genesis. Here begins the program that was so desperately needed in chapters 1–11 (a purpose of which was to show that this blessing was needed). This was the call; Abram responded to it by faith. The ensuing promises were formulated later, under covenant conditions (15:8–21).
12:4–9. The narrative reports simply that Abram obeyed. His obedience is recounted in two ways, corresponding to the two imperatives in verse 2. He left (v. 4), and he was a blessing (vv. 5–9). In Haran many people (lit., “souls”) were acquired by Abram and his family (v. 5). This “getting of souls” may refer to proselytizing, that is, to Abram’s influence on some Haranites to follow Yahweh. Then in the land of Canaan he built altars at Shechem (v. 6) and east of Bethel (v. 8). At this second location he called on the name of the Lord, that is, he made proclamation of Yahweh by name (cf. 21:33; 26:25). Luther translated this verb “preached”; he was not far off. God thus had a witness in the midst of the Canaanites, who were then in the land. In fact the mention of the great tree of Moreh (lit., “teacher”) is significant in connection with this. The Canaanites had shrines in groves of oak trees, and Moreh may have been one of their cult centers.
At Shechem, Yahweh appeared to Abram to confirm His promise and to reward Abram’s faith: To your offspring I will give this land (12:7). Abram arrived in the land and God showed it to him. But it would be given to his descendants, not to him. Indeed, when Abram died his only real estate was a cave he had bought for his family’s burials (23:17–20). After God confirmed His promise, Abram abode in the land, waiting for the promise. But the Canaanites had all the good, fertile land; Abram had to journey by stages toward the great and terrible Negev (12:9), a barren desert south of Canaan.
For Israel the call of their great patriarch demonstrated that their promises were from God, promises of a great nation, a land, divine blessing, and sovereign protection. Yahweh’s appearance and confirmation (v. 7) proved that Canaan was their destiny. But God demanded a response by faith if this generation were to share in those promised blessings. Faith takes God at His word and obeys Him.
This sojourn has much more to it than a simple lesson in honesty—though the story certainly warns against the folly of deceit. The claim that she is “my sister” occurs three times in the patriarchal narratives (v. 13; 20:2; 26:7). Critics say these occasions refer to the same event. However, in the second instance Abram explained that this was their policy wherever they went (20:13) so it is not surprising that he repeated this lie.
One cannot miss the deliberate parallelism between this sojourn of Abram in Egypt and the later event in the life of the nation in bondage in Egypt. The motifs are remarkably similar: the famine in the land (12:10; 47:13), the descent to Egypt to sojourn (12:10; 47:27), the attempt to kill the males but save the females (12:12; Ex. 1:22), the plagues on Egypt (Gen. 12:17; Ex. 7:14–11:10), the spoiling of Egypt (Gen. 12:16; Ex. 12:35–36), the deliverance (Gen. 12:19; Ex. 15), and the ascent to the Negev (Gen. 13:1; Num. 13:17, 22). The great deliverance out of bondage that Israel experienced was thus already accomplished in her ancestor, and probably was a source of comfort and encouragement to them. God was doing more than promise deliverance for the future nation; it was as if in anticipation He acted out their deliverance in Abram.
In relation to the message of the book, Genesis 12:10–20 is significantly placed right after Abram’s call and obedience. In this story Abram was not walking by faith as he had been in the beginning, but God had made promises to him and would keep them. Abram was not the only patriarch who had to be rescued rather ingloriously from such difficulties.
12:10–13. Abram’s scheme, born out of fear, turned against him, and God’s promise to him was thrown into jeopardy. Only God could rescue his wife so that the promise to Abram might be fulfilled. Abram, faced with a famine, decided to go to Egypt to sojourn (a temporary stay—to live there for a while—without plans to settle). Other famines in Palestine are mentioned in 26:1 and 41:56. One cannot fault him for this, except that there is no indication Abram was operating in faith. The bedouin scheme he concocted was to speak a half truth about his sister-wife. This was a subtle way to salve his own conscience. She was indeed his sister (actually a half-sister; cf. 20:12), so he conveyed to the Egyptians only what he wanted them to know. His motive was undoubtedly based on fratriarchical society laws (cf. Laban, 24:29–61). In enemy territory a husband could be killed for his wife. But if Abram were known as her brother, someone wanting her would have to make marriage arrangements with him, which would possibly give him time to react in his own interest.
(Ross, Allen P. “Genesis.” In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, edited by J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985.)