All God's Promises Are Yes In Jesus

Good morning.

This morning's text is from Genesis 12, 1 through 3.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, Abram, go from your country and and your kinsmen and your father's house to the land I will show you, and I will make 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 all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Alright, so James is not here today because he's preaching at JP's church, and JP is preaching at our church, and they have a deal that every time there's Presbytery, the next Sunday they trade churches.

So you guys um would uh give a hand for JP as he comes up.

That's so kind.

Uh it's so good to be with you guys again.

I think this is the third time that James and I have gotten to do this.

And it it really is a treat.

What I tell our folks at Christ Preds, we're along the south edge of the city near the University of Denver in Inglewood, uh, is that what we get to experience when we do this is like our practical Presbyterianism.

Like practically what it means to be Presbyterian is that we actually have sister churches in other parts of the city and in uh in this region, and we get to sort of share uh the love that we have with one another, and we get to do that in this kind of way.

And so James has been in my church this morning uh preaching on Psalm 103 and sharing a little bit of some of the stuff that you guys have been going through together, and I get to do the same thing.

Uh, and so this morning we're gonna take a look at Genesis chapter 12, and just to give you a little bit of a window into uh what Christ Pres is doing in 20 uh 2026 together, we are sort of making our way, which before I do that, I give you greetings from your brothers and sisters uh at uh at Christ Prez, you know, much like Paul would bring greetings to the different churches uh from their sister churches.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

So I bring greetings to you.

Um and what your sister church is doing this year is we are making our way to these Old Testament historical books called Ezra and Nehemiah.

And they're pretty far down the line in the history of the people of God and the history of uh Israel.

They're post an egg a massive exile event.

And so we've been making our way to Ezra and Nehemiah.

And in order to do that and get ourselves situated and in a good place to understand what's going on, we've done a little, we've been doing a little bit of overview through some of these banner texts that exist pre this time in Ezra and Nehemiah.

And so in our first week, we took a look at the creation account in Genesis 1 through 3.

Um, and then in our second week, we took a look at Genesis 12, and the third week we took a look at Exodus 19, and last week we looked at 2 Samuel 7.

What I'm gonna share with you guys this morning is what we looked at in week two in Genesis 12 and God's call to uh Abraham or Abram.

If you hear me use that interchangeably, it's it's just the way that it is in the Bible.

Um so uh we we've been thinking about these big themes as we lead into Ezra and Nehemiah, themes like God being at work, uh, themes like this feeling of uh exile that we experience, this kind of loneliness, a longing for home.

And some of the themes that we're gonna look at this morning in Genesis 12 are the ideas of promise and covenant uh and blessing.

So you can kind of be listening out for some of those things, but let's pray together uh and then we'll dive into uh Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Most gracious Heavenly Father, uh, we pray that you would take the truth of your word this morning, you would write it on our hearts.

Would we would we take in Christ this morning?

Uh would we see how wonderful and beautiful and believable our Savior uh really is?

And so to that end, Holy Spirit, we pray that what you would do, even in these moments that we have together through this call of the preaching uh of the word, is that we would see more clearly and more deeply our sin and more clearly and more deeply the love that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have for us to give us Christ, our Savior.

And so would Jesus become sweeter to us this morning?

And we pray these things in his name.

Amen.

Uh in 1926, there was a young boy named Johnny Sylvester who lived uh uh around what is now New York City, but would have been more like in the outskirts in the rural areas uh of New York, and he lived on a family farm.

And one day he was he was out on the farm and he was helping out and he was helping with the horses, and he found himself on the backside of a horse.

And if you know anything about horses, you want to stay away from the backside of a horse.

And so while Johnny Sylvester was on the backside of this horse on his family farm, the horse kicked him.

Um and uh and when the horse kicked him, it it you know created almost this like internal explosion in his body.

He ended up with osteomelitis and blood poisoning and found himself in the hospital, and he was very much on a trajectory of losing his life.

Well, it just so happened that this incident happened during the 1926 World Series.

And a team that was playing in the 1926 World Series was a team called the New York Yankees.

Uh, and if you know anything about me, I'm a huge Boston Red Sox fan, so I'm really reaching on this illustration here.

I'm not a fan of the Yankees, but I think it's pretty good.

Um, and Johnny happened to be a fan of one of the players on the New York Yankees, a guy named Babe Ruth.

Maybe you've heard of him.

And Johnny's family while he was in the hospital, and and it was really looking like Johnny was not going to live.

Like it was it was really looking bad.

They reached out to the New York Yankee organization and asked if they might be able to get a baseball signed by Babe Ruth to give to Johnny to kind of hang on to and to cling to as maybe a little bit of hope.

And so during a rain delay in game three of the World Series, someone approached Babe Ruth and told him about Johnny's story and asked for that baseball.

And Ruth signed that baseball.

What he signed on the baseball was Johnny, I'm gonna knock a homer for you.

And it was brought back to Johnny, and Babe Ruth had made this promise that he was gonna hit a home run for Johnny.

And then he told Johnny to just hang in there.

Hang in there, Johnny.

Well, in game four of the World Series, Babe Ruth not only hit one home run, he hit two, and then he hit a third home run.

He's one of only four players ever to hit three home runs in a game in a World Series, and he's the first ever uh to do that.

Um and uh on the broadcast post the game and everything, you can hear the crowds and the and the fans and everything, and you can hear Ruth being interviewed.

And uh in Ruth's interview, he says, Johnny, this is for you.

There's something amazing about this kind of story, a story of deep hope and promise and things that we can cling to.

And we love stories of promises made and promises kept, um, and especially ones that require like these great kinds of human feats.

But the truth of the matter is, in the day-to-day grind of promises made and promises kept, and in the day-to-day grind of life, on our promises, we're probably at best 50-50 on keeping our promises.

I think about some of the promises that I've made in my in my own life at my wedding with my wife, Carrie.

We made vows, we made promises to love one another in these ways that are just so far beyond even our capacities.

I think about the promises that I made at my children's baptisms when they were really, really little to raise them in the fear and admonition and in the nurture of the Lord.

And even promises that we make in church membership.

We vow to uh one another.

And I think about all those promises, and the very next thing that I think about is I've broken every single one of them.

Every single one of them.

And yet, there's this inkling inside of me, and I think inside of all of us, that promises were made to be kept.

Promises were made to be kept.

And what we see in Genesis chapter 12 with God and Abraham is that it shows us where this inkling of promises made to be kept comes from.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And that and the truth is that we were created by a promise-making and a promise-keeping God.

Always, always promise-making, always promise-keeping.

So our big takeaway that I want us to think about from Genesis 12 this morning is that all of God's promises are yes and amen in Jesus.

And that word amen is a word we throw around in church quite a bit, but it basically means that like we agree.

We are on the same page.

All of God's promises are yes and amen in Jesus.

And the way we're gonna navigate that this morning, we're gonna play a little bit of catch-up to get us to Genesis 12, and then we're gonna see there's two invitations that exist in our three verses.

There's an invitation there to align our lives with God, and then there's an invitation to be blessed by God and then be a blessing.

Okay?

So that's where we're going this morning.

We're gonna play catch-up.

We got an invitation to align our lives with God, and then an invitation to be blessed, and then to be a blessing.

So playing catch-up, real quick here.

Genesis 1 through 3, God's creation account.

He creates Adam and Eve in his very own image to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to steward over everything that God has made.

And they're instructed that they are to, they can eat of any tree in the garden except for this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And in the day that they eat of that tree, what will happen is they will surely die.

And we know how the story goes.

Adam and Eve, they have this invitation to align their life with God, to obey what God says, and yet they choose to go their own path and their own way, and they fall to the temptation of the serpent.

They eat of the tree that God told them not to eat of.

And then what happens is sin and rebellion enters in.

Shame enters in.

And even this idea of and this reality of exile enters in.

Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden.

God exiles them from the garden, and it's actually God's protection for them so that they won't stay in the state of sin that they are in.

But then there's this feeling that we have as humanity that we're like longing for home.

We're not exactly where we're supposed to be.

This world is not the way that it's supposed to be.

And even in the midst of that, what does God do?

He promises redemption.

And so the seed of Eve will come and crush the head of the serpent.

And that's such a balm to our souls, to our hearts, to know that redemption is promised, that redemption is real, and yet there still is the sting of sin.

There still is the sting of brokenness.

And then we go from Adam and Eve to these first two sons that they have, Cain and Abel.

And the words, in the day of you eat of that tree, you will surely die, really take on a different form.

Because Cain murders his brother Abel.

And you can imagine what that was like for Adam and Eve.

This is death, and death of the worst kind, the loss of a child.

And then we move forward from there and we run into Noah.

We know about Noah and his ark and the animals going two by two, and things have gotten so bad by Noah's time that God's like, you know what?

We're just gonna start this thing over.

I'm gonna save this small group of people.

We're just gonna start this thing over.

And so he does.

He preserves Noah and his family by grace.

And then moving forward out of Noah, we eventually come to this tower that humanity is making at Babel.

And they are making this tower for the express purpose the scriptures tell us to make a great name for humanity.

And so you can see the opposite of what's happening here in Genesis 12, that God makes a great name for Abraham.

But at the Tower of Babel, it's almost like a toddler who's been putting up these building blocks and everything, and God just comes along and takes down the tower and spreads the people with their different languages all over the place.

And then coming out of the Tower of Babel, we get some genealogy.

Shem and Torah, and then we come to Abraham.

Abraham is in a place called Haran.

We find that out at the end of Genesis chapter 11, which is basically northern Syria.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

And then we come into this invitation that God makes: an invitation to, for Abraham to align his life with God.

And so look back with me real quick at verse 1 of chapter 12.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

God shows up on the scene.

God's at work, God's been at work, he's never not been at work, and what does he do?

He moves towards Abraham.

He moves towards him, he pursues him.

And God's first words to Abraham are go.

And this word go here, it's given to us if we were to look at it in the original language.

It comes to us in an imperative form.

And so this tells us something about God's invitations, about God's offers.

You see, God's invitations are not suggestions, they're just good advice.

God's invitations come to us and come to Abraham as a command.

Abraham, go and do this.

Well, what command is God giving to Abraham?

What is God doing there?

What God is actually doing is he's revealing his design for life and inviting Abraham to follow him.

Make no mistake.

This is not, hey, Abraham, maybe this is a good idea.

Oh, Abraham, might I suggest that this be something that you do?

No.

God is coming to Abraham and he's talking to Abraham about aligning his life with him, the one true God.

And here's the deal.

If Abraham doesn't go from his country, from his place, from his kindred, from his people, from his home, from his family, what Abraham would actively be doing is choosing not to align his life with God, much like Adam and Eve did in the garden.

And certainly there are temptations to not align our lives with God.

There are certainly temptations for Abraham.

And if you if we were to read on past this, we would see there are a number of times that Abraham doesn't follow God and align his life with God.

And we too have these temptations as well.

Oftentimes, instead of aligning our lives with God, uh we we will choose this, what I'll call the troubled life.

Instead of life with God, we prefer a troubled life.

And here's what a troubled life is marked by.

A troubled life is marked by self-sufficiency.

A troubled life is marked by like, I got this, I don't need any help.

And here's the deal: here's what happens, and you know this if you try to live self-sufficiently.

If you try to live in such a way that is, I got this and I don't need any help, is eventually what happens is you become a very fretful person.

You become the kind of person who worries quite a bit.

Your heart is troubled.

And troubled is the language of Scripture, and in the language of Scripture that talks about a troubled heart, Jesus told his disciples not to be troubled as he was going to go to the cross.

This language of trouble, that the image that it gives to us is if we were like at the edge of a pond and we took a stick and we just started shaking it around in the water, and it gets all murky and it lacks clarity.

The troubled life is marked by worrisomeness, by anxiety, by being constantly stirred up all of the time.

And maybe you feel that way.

Maybe you feel that way this morning.

I do.

Man, I got older kids.

I got one who's a junior in high school, and we're staring down college, and let me tell you, I'm fretful.

I live a worried life.

I live a troubled life.

So often, I think to myself that I'm a better father to my kids than their father in heaven.

I struggle with that.

Maybe you do too.

There's also another temptation.

There's like the flip side of the troubled life, and the flip side of the troubled life is the open-ended life.

The open-ended life is also a way that we don't align our lives with God, but we actually find ourselves driven by personal pleasure and personal fulfillment.

And so, if this is you, if you're someone who's tempted towards an open-ended life, what you'll find is that very often you have no to little concern for anyone but yourself.

And you find yourself always doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, how you want to do it, and you can apply that across every bit of your life.

And here's a way of like a diagnostic, maybe that you can tell maybe if you struggle with an open-ended life.

Maybe even in your group of friends that you hang out with, you find yourself inside of that group to be fairly unyielding.

And when the group is like, let's say they're trying to figure out where we're gonna go out to eat, and you you only want to go to the place that you want to go to, and you're actually even willing to not go with the group and to go do what you want to do and to forfeit the opportunity to have a relationship inside of the group, all because you kind of want your way.

Maybe that's a small way, a small diagnostic, that you might struggle with an open-ended life and striking out on your own and on your own path.

And everything is about your adventures and what you want to do with your life.

And so you find yourself in these spaces where you don't really have any real commitments.

There's nothing really anchoring you down.

You struggle to be present in your place.

In your mind, you're constantly thinking about being somewhere else, or maybe constantly thinking about the future.

Guess what?

I struggle with an open-ended life.

I want to do what I want to do.

That same illustration of friend groups going out to eat.

I can't tell you how often I ask my wife, Carrie, hey, where do you want to go to eat?

But really, what I'm trying to do is navigate to get to the place where I want to go to eat.

Did you do that?

Yeah.

You see, I struggle with both of these things, the troubled life and the open-ended life.

And here's the truth: both the troubled life and the open-ended life, they ultimately what they do is they push us out to the margins to the point where we feel like we're on the fringes, and then we're out there and we're all alone and isolated, disconnected.

One might even say in exile of sorts.

And here's the deal: Genesis 12, 1 shows us more.

It shows us more than a troubled life or an open-ended life.

It shows us life aligned with God.

Notice the promises that are embedded here to Abraham.

Abraham, go follow me to the land that I will show you.

You see, life aligned with God carries along with it the promise of God's presence, of God's withness, of God being the one who is carrying us, who is carrying you, of God being the one who's showing the way to us.

And that's the invitation that you and I get this morning.

It's the same invitation that Abraham received too, to align our lives with God.

And that leads to this second invitation in the text, too.

You see, because as we are aligning our lives with God, what comes from that is this invitation to be blessed.

To be blessed in order to be a blessing.

But first, in order to be a blessing, you have to receive blessing from God.

And so that's the invitation that we get here.

Um, do you guys, do you guys remember hashtags?

Yeah?

In 2014, one of the most popular hashtags in 2014 on Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is.

I don't have any of those things.

Um, was the hashtag blessed.

You guys remember this?

I mean, you got to dip into some of the recesses here.

Well, and and and in 2014, a New York Times writer, Jessica Bennett, she noticed this hashtag blessed thing being used amongst her friend group.

And so she sought to try and figure out what it was people were communicating with being hashtag blessed, and this is what she came up with.

Jessica Bennett says that hashtag blessed means that your life is marked by God's favor to get what you want and then to brag about it.

Hashtag blessed is a life marked by God's favor to get what you want, and then you get to brag about it.

You get to say how awesome you are.

Uh, because I was really weary of whether hashtags were still a thing or not, I asked my kids if they were, and they said, no, not really, Dad.

They said, but they did say if someone does use hashtag bless today, what they see that meaning is that hashtag bless means that you're rich and you're traveling.

Like those are the things.

So maybe maybe our idea of blessing is And being blessed could use some reshaping.

Let me help us.

Let me help us reshape it because I want you to hear this.

I'm going to read a quote to you from a pastor way long ago in the 300s.

He was a pastor in North Africa, a guy named Augustine from Hippo.

And so I want to read this quote to you from his confessions that he wrote in the 300s.

And I want you to listen to how different this is from hashtag blessed.

This is what Augustine says.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.

Late have I loved you.

And see, you were within, and I was in the external world, and I sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made.

You were with me, and I was not with you.

The lovely things kept me far away from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all.

You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.

You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness, you were fragrant, and I drew in my breath, and now pant after you.

I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.

Jesus, you touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

That's fundamentally different than a life marked by God's favor to get what we want so that we can brag about it.

You see, what Augustine is enumerating, the kind of blessing that God is talking about here in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Blessing in God is the blessing that God offers us to be with us.

For us to hear and to see and to taste and to touch and to smell and to take in, that we will get to do at this table together, God being with us and us being with God.

That's blessing.

That is blessing.

And we see this anchored in verses two through three right here.

Let's look back and read these real quick.

This is what God says Abraham, go, 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 of the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Verse 2, God makes Abraham a great nation.

And now this is kind of crazy for Abraham to hear, because just prior to chapter 12, at the end of chapter 11, what we find out is that Abraham's married to a woman named Sarah, and Sarah is barren.

She can't have any children.

So God is coming to Abraham and saying, look, I'm going to make a great nation of you.

So immediately Abraham's got to be like, all right, okay, that sounds like a pretty, pretty big deal.

But what's also interesting is this word that is used here for nation is the word that is most commonly used in the Bible to refer to people who were not Jewish, also known as Gentiles.

That's where God starts.

I'm going to make a great nation of you.

Like all of the families of the earth are going to come through you, Abraham, not just specifically the Israelite nation.

They would be a part of that.

And so God's blessing of Abraham is for all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds in all kinds of places.

And then it goes on.

Abraham, I'm going to bless you.

I'm going to make your name great, which is there to show us specifically the opposite of what humanity was trying to do in Babel to make a name for themselves.

God is the one who makes Abraham's name great.

Not for the sake of Abraham, but God says, so that you will be a blessing.

Abraham is blessed by God.

And God is with Abraham, and Abraham is with God, and Abraham gets to see and smell and taste and touch the peace of God as God comes to him.

So that Abraham would share that blessing with the nations that would come from him.

And then in verse 3, those who too receive this blessing, Abraham, they will be blessed.

And those who don't, which is to say, those who choose not to align their life with God, and therefore not to receive God's blessing, and therefore to be a blessing.

Those who don't, those who reject that, who reject God's pursuit, who reject God's movement, who reject God being at work in our lives, those who reject aligning their lives with God, they essentially, what they're doing is they're rejecting blessing.

And then life will not be anchored.

It will be floating in the wind.

It will lead only to loneliness and isolation and exile and not being with God and being with God's people.

That's what it means to be cursed.

That's what we're talking about here.

And in Abraham, God lands it with this.

Abraham and you, all of the families of the earth, will be blessed.

God's promise.

Abraham, go, follow me, align your life with me.

I will bless you so that all of the nations will be blessed through you.

Remember, Genesis 12 is about how all of God's promises are yes and amen in Jesus.

This very last word of verse 3.

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

That word, blessed right there, is the only verb that is used in the perfect tense in this passage.

It's almost as if God is saying, Look, Abraham, I'm telling you to go and to follow me and align your life with me, and I'm going to bless you so that you will be a blessing.

But here's what you got to know: whether you do that or not, I will see my promises through.

All of my promises will come through.

It will be a guarantee that this will happen.

All of God's promises are yes and amen in Jesus.

In John chapter 8, John's gospel, Jesus was being interrogated by the religious leaders because Jesus had said this thing to them: abide in my word, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8 · chapter mention

And the religious leaders responded to Jesus and they said, Hey, we're Abraham's offspring.

We came from Abraham, from his line.

And we've never been enslaved.

What are you talking about making us free?

We know freedom because Abraham is our father.

And Jesus looked at the religious leaders and he said, Before Abraham was, I am.

And if you knew me and were Abraham's children, you would receive me.

You would receive me, and you would receive the truth, and the truth would set you free.

You see, all of God's promises are yes and amen in Jesus.

You see, what Jesus is saying is I am God's blessing in the flesh.

Embodied.

I am the fulfillment of Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

I'm the one who is sent by the Father, the same one who sent Abraham.

I am yes, and amen, to all of God's promises.

And the blessing that comes to us comes through the blood of Jesus.

Where all of God's promises are fulfilled on a cross outside of Jerusalem in the body and blood of our Savior, where the curse is removed through the blood of Jesus.

And we are invited to receive the blessing of God in our own lives, in our own hearts.

And the way that that happens is what happens is we're invited to repent of our sins, to take stock of all of the ways we've leaned into a troubled life, and all the ways that we've leaned into an open-ended life, and to bring that to the foot of the cross and to repent of that and to align our lives with God by getting into Jesus what he has done in his life, in his death, and in his resurrection.

We are invited to receive that.

You are invited to receive that.

And if you've never done that, please do.

Please do.

I know that the elders and James and tons of people here would love to talk to you about that.

Or whether you're doing it for the thousandth time, please do.

Take Jesus in.

Yet again, we are invited to receive Christ and to align our lives with God, to receive the blessing that is the Christ, blessing in the flesh, and to share that blessing with all of the families of the earth.

There is no better news.

Church, we have the best news.

Christ has come, Christ has lived, He has died, and He is risen again.

That is the best news that any of us could have, could take in, or could share with anyone else.

Jesus is blessing in the flesh.

And the only way that we will align our lives with God and be blessed and be a blessing is to see our lives through God being at work in and through the cross and the resurrection of Jesus.

And as we do that, here's what happens: our lives begin to move from being troubled, open-ended lives, to lives that are aligned with God, anchored in Christ, who is the only way to get back home, to get out of exile.

And he brings home to us, to God's land, a land of beauty.

And Jesus is the one who promises that he will bring it to us.

And in the meantime, what we get to do is we get to taste, we get to touch, we get to smell, we get to take in.

We get to say, along with our old friend Augustine, God, you called, and you cried out loud and you shattered our deafness.

Jesus, you were radiant and resplendent, and you put to flight all of our blindness.

Christ, you were fragrant, and we drew in our breath, and now we pant after you.

We tasted you and we feel but hunger and thirst for you.

Jesus, you touched us.

And we are set on fire to attain the peace which is yours that you give to us.

And we get to experience that when we come to this table together.

Would you pray with me?

Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that all of your promises are yes and amen in your one and only Son, Jesus.

And that we have hope in this life and in the life to come.

Would you work in such a way to move us away from troubled lives and open-ended lives, and rather to align our lives with you, God, to get more and more deeply anchored, Jesus, in your cross and in your resurrection.

And so to that end, would you move us more and more deeply to see our sin and our need for our Savior and the great love that you have for us to give us Christ?

Holy Spirit, do these things in us.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.