The Gospel According to Abraham

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

American culture encourages us to think of life as a choose-your-own-adventure book. Do you remember those books? You start reading and after a few pages you have a choice to make. Should you take the path to the right or to the left? If you choose right, turn to page 17. If you choose left, turn to page 23. You get to page 23 and it says, “Sorry but you stumbled into a snake pit.” Of course, you can always go back and try again.

And that’s how many people think of life. In a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ world, people switch careers, spouses, churches, even identities with a simple swipe or a move across town. The goal isn’t faithfulness—it’s satisfaction. And if you’re not happy, you just flip back a few pages and try again.

But God doesn’t operate that way. He doesn’t flip the pages back. He binds Himself to a people. He commits. And He calls us into a relationship with Him that isn’t based on our performance but on His promise.

And so, the Christian life is more of a quest, or a rescue mission. A hiker lost in the woods doesn’t need more choices—he needs someone to find him. That’s what God does. He finds us, rescues us, and leads us home.

That’s what happens to Abram in Genesis 12. God comes to Abram and commands him to leave his home.

1 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.

2 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.

3 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.”

Why was this an attractive offer? Abram was already a wealthy man, but he had no heirs. He was also living in a time and a place when major empires were beginning to form around him.

And so, Abram makes the long journey to Canaan, and he starts building altars to this new God who revealed Himself as El Elyon, the God of Gods. But things don’t go as planned.

Shortly after arriving, there’s a famine and he’s forced to take his family to Egypt. While in Egypt, Abram pimps out his wife to Pharoah. I’m not exaggerating, that’s what the text implies. Abram prioritized his own safety and wealth at the expense of his wife’s honor and safety, which dispels any illusions that maybe God chose Abram because he was special or better than other men.

After that, they return to Canaan where his nephew Lot becomes a prisoner of war. Abram rescues Lot and then meets a mysterious priest-king named Melchizedek. He offers Abram bread, wine, and a blessing. This is the first time bread and wine are mentioned together in the Bible, and they are given to Abram by a man who is closely associated with Jesus in the book of Hebrews.

Shortly after this encounter, Abram starts to voice doubts and concerns to God about his promise. Chapter 15:

3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”

Abram is starting to get frustrated. Where are all these blessings you promised, God? So far, I’ve lived through a famine and a war and I still don’t have a son.

4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.”

5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abram is old and has no children, but he looks up at the night sky, which had zero light pollution, and he sees countless stars. No city lights. Just silence and stars. And God says, ‘So shall your offspring be.’

This promise makes no sense… but!

6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Verse 6 is quoted three times in the New Testament as a core principle of the Gospel. God credits faith as righteousness. The Apostle Paul uses this verse to explain justification by faith alone. Abram was not blessed by God because he deserved it, but because He trusted God.

And yet, even his faith was shaky and imperfect. In the very next chapter, Abram gets impatient waiting for a son and decides to sleep with his wife’s servant! For the second time now in this story, Abram has shamed and disrespected his wife. And yet, God seems determined to deal with Abram anyway.

In chapter 17, God establishes a covenant with Abram and his wife, just as He had done with Noah. God changes their names to Abraham and Sarah, inserting part of his own name into theirs. And instead of a rainbow, God cuts the sign of this covenant on Abraham as a private scar – to remind him of the promise and the blood it requires.

It’s important to understand that when God makes this covenant, Abraham is a passive recipient. 11 times in chapter 17, God uses the words “I will”. “I will make you… I will give you… I will establish… I will bless… I will… I will… I will…” One preacher called this a jackhammer on Abraham’s self-reliance.

It’s impossible to read the story of Abraham and conclude that he somehow earned favor with God. You can only draw the conclusion that God chose to bless Abraham, even before the man had any faith!

We see this most clearly in the ritual described in chapter 15. I skipped it and saved it for last, because it is the most dramatic and Christ-centered part of the story so far. We’ll get to another big moment next week, but listen to this:

7 And God said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

8 But Abram said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”

That’s an honest question, but still full of doubt. Understand, this verse is only 2 verses after verse 6, where it says that Abram believed God. That tells us something about the quality of his faith. Abram is still asking for some assurance that God can be trusted. And again we might ask, “Why is God dealing with this man?”

9 God said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

All these animals would appear later in the Mosaic Law as clean and acceptable sacrifices. Three-year-old animals were considered “in their prime”, meaning the sacrifice was more significant – more costly.

10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.

11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

Notice that Abram already knew what to do with the animals. God didn’t need to give him instructions. This is how an ancient treaty was formed. It’s sort of like signing a contract. It invites trust and communicates the responsibility of both parties to keep their word.

If you try to imagine the scene, what you have is a bloody mess. They cut the animals in half and separated the parts to create a sort of pathway made from blood. Then the two people would pass by each other, walking the bloody path to seal the arrangement. And what are they saying to each other? If I break this treaty, you can do this to me!

Abram understands this ritual. He knows what’s about to happen. But it doesn’t happen the way Abram expects. God puts Abram to sleep and then God passes through the animal pieces alone.

What is God communicating in this ritual? He’s saying, “Abram, I will keep my promise. I will not break my covenant. But when YOU fail, when you break the covenant, I will be the one to die.”

And this is where we most powerfully find Christ this morning. God takes upon Himself the curse of the covenant that would be broken by His people. He paid for it at the cross in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus. Like Abram, we are passive recipients of that grace. It is received by faith.

When God passed through the animal pieces alone, He wasn’t just making a contract—He was binding Himself in love to people who don’t deserve it.

This is how we know Christianity is different. Every other religion says, ‘Here’s the path. Walk it. Earn it.’ But the God of the Bible says, ‘You couldn’t walk this path, so I walked it for you—even when it led to the cross.’

Some of you are living as though God is waiting for you to mess up so He can finally back out of the deal. But God has already absorbed the penalty for your failure. He’s not waiting for you to earn His favor. He sealed the deal in blood.

And so, it is important to understand that a Biblical covenant is more than a contract. A contract is built on mutual performance. If either party breaks the terms, the deal is off. Covenants, however, are built on a relational promise.

The closest example we have is marriage. Marriages are designed to last no matter what. Even when one spouse fails, the other spouse is intended to respond in faithfulness which makes marriage a picture of the Gospel. It’s not a contract where two people agree to stay together as long as it works for them, as long as they are happy. No… it’s a promise until death.

In fact, we get our wedding ceremony—at least in part—from the story of Abraham. The bride and groom walk down a central aisle, between the gathered families, like a covenant pathway. Promises are made. Vows are spoken. A sign of the covenant is exchanged—the rings. Names are changed. It’s no coincidence. God designed marriage to be a living picture of the gospel—a visible sign of His covenant love.

And for that reason, I want us to take a moment to honor Sarah. She is often overshadowed by Abraham in the text, but she deserves respect. She stayed with an absolute disaster of a man through some very shameful chapters. He gave her away to Pharaoh to protect himself. Then later, he slept with her servant, Hagar, at her suggestion, yes—but instead of protecting his wife from her own desperation, he went along with it.

And yet, Sarah endured. She waited. She stayed. And God saw her. In Hebrews 11, Sarah is recognized for her faith. In 1 Peter 3, she is held up as a model of godly womanhood—not because she was perfect, but because she hoped in God and did not give way to fear. And in the end, she received the child of promise.

Her story reminds us that God’s covenant faithfulness often works through very imperfect marriages and very broken people. Some of you need to hear that. You’re in a marriage where you’ve been hurt or disappointed. Maybe you’ve been the one doing the hurting. But if God could work through Abraham and Sarah, He can still work in your story too.

This entire story points us to the hopeful possibility of a relationship with God. If God calls you, initiates a relationship with you, credits you with righteousness by faith which Ephesians says is also a gift of God, works on your behalf through the atonement, remains faithful to you even when you continually fail and doubt, and grants you an inheritance in His son – then you can rest assured this relationship will last. Our God keeps his promises.

Some of you have been told that God will only bless you in response to the amount of faith or works that you demonstrate. That’s a lie. Abram doubts God before and after God’s promise. He fails miserably before and after God’s promise, and still God kept His promises.

Faith isn’t about optimism in life. It isn’t about our feelings or perceptions at all. It is about trusting that God is who He says He is. Abraham did have faith, but how much he had was far less important than the object of His faith. The Bible is a story of God’s faithfulness, not ours.

And yet, I do think we should ask ourselves, what does it mean to live as someone who has already received God’s covenant love and faithfulness?

It means we don’t measure our relationship with God by how we feel this week. It means we rest in what Christ has already done. If you belong to God, then He has covenantally committed Himself to you. He’s not going anywhere. He proved it with His own blood.

And because that is true, we are learning to obey even when it’s hard. We are learning to repent when we fail. We are learning to trust God even when His promises seem far away.