00:00:01 So today, we are going back to a very famous passage where God is picking one very ordinary man who has no pedigree, who does not have any history before this. He\'s not a great king who has won many battles. Someone who was just going about his ordinary life, and He is engaging him and calling him out and is totally repurposing his entire life. 00:00:34 After the creation and the fall, and then after that, the flood, and even after that, the Tower of Babel that happened, all show just one thing: that when left to ourselves, you and I will always want to go after things we think that give us joy but always ends in destruction. Whether it\'s Cain murdering Abel or people spiraling and hating one another and hurting one another in severe forms that God had to eradicate it, or even when we come together like people did in the Tower of Babel. 00:01:16 It was to build a name for themselves by building this humongous, purposeless, tall tower that God had to take it down. And now He comes after one guy, some no-name person, Abram, not famous, and He tries to restart once again. Because everything you and I try to do by our strength ends up only making us feel more proud about ourselves and wanting us to be like God, isn\'t it? But God is still so gracious, so kind. He still comes after us because of the covenant of redemption. 00:02:00 So we\'re going to look at three things very briefly today from this passage. We are going to look at the call to a blessed life, trusting God\'s purpose for our lives. We\'re going to look at the nature of a blessed life, receiving God\'s promises. And we are going to look at living a blessed life, which is enjoying God\'s presence. So the call to a blessed life. 00:02:31 So imagine you are someone who has no idea of who God is, and you\'re living in a land where your whole family and those around you are worshiping completely different gods, believing in totally different things. And you hear God come and tell you, \"Hey, I want you to leave all these and follow me.\" Chapter 12, verse 1 begins with three commands that God gives to Abram. He\'s still not Abraham. He\'s still Abram. He says, \"Go from...\" God is calling Abram to leave three things. 00:03:09 He says, \"Go from your country, your kindred, and your father\'s house to a land that I will show you.\" He\'s saying, \"I want you to leave all of this and go to an uncertain future.\" What kind of a call is this? Would you do it? If someone comes to you and says, \"Hey, it\'s about time. You got to say goodbye to your parents, leave the Bay Area, and take a flight which doesn\'t have a destination yet.\" 00:03:37 By the way, they had a flight like that during COVID, where people were so bored, you could just buy that ticket. It\'s called a ticket to nowhere. You can get on the flight, and it just went around and sometimes circling for a few hours and brought you back. That was very refreshing for people. They were so bored of COVID. They just, \"Take me somewhere.\" This is not that. If God were to ask any of us, we would not. 00:04:00 But why did God tell, in this process of rebuilding, why did He pick someone and tell them, \"Leave all these things\"? Well, the clue to that comes, again, we have to look at God\'s Word in Joshua chapter 24, where Joshua is recounting all these to the people of Israel. In Joshua 24:2, this is what Joshua tells. 00:04:23 It says, \"Then Joshua said to all the people, \'Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: \"Long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods.\"\'\" Well, the reason God wanted to take Abraham out of this was because he was surrounded by people who believed in other gods, who were living in an environment that was telling them the false gospel. They drank that Kool-Aid. It\'s like in Silicon Valley. 00:04:59 The gospel in Silicon Valley is, well, you can not just only make the American dream, you can become an entrepreneur, solve the world\'s biggest tech challenges, and your life\'s going to be amazing. But if you want to really know God, God was gracious in first removing these other influences in Abraham\'s lives. Sometimes God has to remove even good things and wonderful things in our lives that He knows will not help us in our mission. 00:05:37 And I\'ve shared with several of you, as you know, I lost my dad when I was a teenager. I was very angry and bitter and all of that, but retrospectively, I know my dad did not know the gospel, and that\'s been one of my regrets. I wish I could have shared the gospel with him before he died. But if he was alive, I can guarantee you I would not have come to know God personally. Lastly, the least thing I would do is to become a pastor. It would have never happened in my life. 00:06:06 And sometimes through painful things that God allows, and certain times He removes certain things, or it creates a frustration in our passions, in our jobs maybe, or in relationships, because He has something better and beautiful planned. God allows failures, pains, disruptions sometimes so that He can repurpose our life for something bigger than ourself and for His glory. 00:06:37 And so the question for Abraham was to trust and obey, like the song says: \"Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus,\" isn\'t it? It\'s a beautiful song. So I want to ask you this morning: Has God taken away something precious for you in your life? Or are you experiencing failure or frustration with your life? Don\'t project that back to God. Don\'t let that define God\'s faithfulness. He\'s bigger than that. And remember, He\'s not done with you yet. 00:07:20 It is not over till God says it is over. You are part of God\'s big redemptive purposes, even though you may not be able to see them now. Let\'s move on to the second point, the nature of a blessed life. So He starts with commands, and now He\'s talking of some promises in verses two and three. He 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. 00:08:00 And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.\" Just like He gives him three commands, three things to leave, He gives him three promises right after that. He says, \"I will,\" number one, \"make of you a great nation.\" He says, \"Abraham, I\'m going to make you into someone or something bigger than yourself, something you have never thought, dreamt, or imagined about for your life.\" 00:08:30 If someone were to have told a 15-year-old me that one day I will live in America and I will be a pastor, I would have laughed it off as a silly joke. Secondly, He says, \"I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.\" The title of this sermon is \"Blessed to be a Blessing.\" When we hear the word blessing, the question is, how is God going to bless Abraham? 00:09:03 Our mind immediately races towards blessing means, oh, better grades, maybe more money, good friends, finding this perfect life partner, or buying a bigger house or getting a promotion, having more power. That\'s how we usually think of blessing, isn\'t it? But we have actually the historic information of how Abraham lived his life. If you look at his life, there\'s not a lot you can think of in terms of the blessings we usually think of, isn\'t it? 00:09:40 Blessed life is not something that God says is about having us have wealth and prosperity. In fact, if you look at Abraham\'s life, he lived a nomadic life. The guy was a wanderer. He was a wandering Aramean. He could never be in one place to call it his own. Throughout his life, every few years, he was an immigrant. He was moving around. He was breaking tents and building altars. That\'s all you can see is something that happened in his life. And many times, he had a hostile environment. 00:10:20 He had to be afraid of other kings or other feudal landlords, and sometimes his own brokenness also gets exposed. He lies. He does all those other things. But that did not stop God from delivering on the promises He told Abraham He will. But what blessing was God talking about? He actually talks about that. And He says in the third one, \"I will bless those who bless you,\" and here is the clue, \"and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.\" 00:11:00 He\'s not just saying, \"I\'m going to bless you,\" but He says, \"Through you, I\'m going to bless all the families of the earth.\" Wow, look at that repurposed life. He says, \"Abraham, you probably didn\'t have a purpose for your life. You were just going to live and die in Ur in absolute obscurity. But no, I\'m going to bring you out. I\'m going to tell you to go somewhere. I\'m going to do something in your life that\'s going to change the course of history, and I will be glorified through that.\" 00:11:35 You know what were the blessings that God was talking to Abraham about? We have to come all the way to the New Testament to let Scripture answer Scripture. Turn with me to Galatians chapter 3, verse 8. It says, \"And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, \'In you all the nations shall be blessed.\'\" What was happening when God was doing this to Abraham? God\'s desire from the beginning was what? 00:12:23 This is Mission Sunday. If someone were to ask you, \"Hey, what is God\'s mission?\" What would you say? Maybe some of you would say, \"Oh, the Great Commission says go and preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations.\" But missions originates in the heart of God. What is in the heart of God? What is really his mission? His mission is simply to create a people on whom he can love, whom he can call his own, and for whom he can be their God, and they can experience true love. 00:13:01 That\'s the mission of God. And so when he creates Adam and Eve and they fall, and when he wipes off the earth almost, he picks Noah\'s family, establishes a covenant, trying to say the same thing: \"I\'ll be your God and you\'ll be my people.\" That\'s the missional heart of God. Once again, when that collapses at Babel, he\'s now picking up Abraham. Says, \"Abraham,\" by the way, he\'s a guy who can\'t even have children late into his old years till he\'s 100. 00:13:34 God picks the most unqualified candidate in every sense of the term. If you\'re a venture capitalist and you have a ton load of money from an IPO, you\'re going to look at the smartest next Ivy League dropout who has a bold idea that\'s going to make it big. You look at resume first if you want to invest everything you got in someone, right? God\'s investing everything in a guy who has absolutely no potential. He can\'t even have kids. 00:14:03 And he says, \"Oh, I\'m going to pick you, and I\'m going to create this people that I want to love. Because you know what, Abraham? One day you\'re going to look up at the stars of the sky and the sands of the beach. That\'s how numerous your people will be.\" Because they\'re not Abraham\'s people, they are God\'s people. These are people God is desiring and intentional to go after and love them. That\'s the mission of God. The Great Commission is right here in Abraham\'s life. 00:14:32 And I know you can\'t in any earthly sense because I want you to know it\'ll be 100% me going after you and creating these nations that are going to come after you, because I\'m going to have people in every nation that I want to love on. And they will be not just your descendants, I\'ll be making a covenant with them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. That\'s what Galatians 3:8 says. That was the gospel preached to Abraham. \"In you shall all the nations be blessed.\" 00:15:09 Yeah, you\'re going to have Isaac and Jacob, and then the nation of Israel will come and they\'re going to be terrible and they\'ll fall and they\'ll be in captivity. And even though I do miracles and bring them out, they\'ll still fall and fail. They\'ll have kings who will fall and fail. Finally, I\'m going to have to do something even more. You know what is the biggest blessing? The blessing for Abraham was not even about children. 00:15:32 Don\'t try to reinterpret this as, \"If I don\'t have kids and I pray, God will give me kids, and that\'s a blessing.\" God gives us children not just for us to enjoy them. He\'s always about his redemptive plans in bringing nations to himself. But even the biggest blessing for Abraham, we read again in the same chapter in Galatians 3:16. Says, \"Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. 00:16:00 It does not say, \'And to offsprings,\' referring to many, but referring to one, \'And to your offspring,\' who is Christ.\" You know how is God going to bless Abraham? This is Abram. He\'ll change his name to Abraham. He\'ll establish his covenant. He\'ll have three encounters with God. We\'ll talk about that in a minute. But do you know who\'s going to be Abraham\'s descendant? Jesus Christ. Wow. Can you believe that? What more blessing can anyone ever dream to have in their life? 00:16:38 That\'s the blessing of Abraham, and God accomplished it. And he says, \"I will bless those who bless you.\" Whoever wants this Jesus in their life will experience the same blessings, and that\'s the nature of our covenantal God. And that brings me to my third point of how do we live a blessed life? Living this blessed life, we read about what Abraham does after he gets this, verses seven to nine. Let\'s start from verse six. 00:17:17 It says, \"Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, \'To your offspring, I will give this land.\' So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east of Bethel. 00:17:45 And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.\" He arrives in Canaan, listening to God. He finds these Canaanites, who just like the people back home, were worshiping different gods. They\'re all descendants of Noah, by the way. They had all lost faith in God. And God is once again engaging in human history to create this nation from one man. And he appears to Abraham in verse seven and declares this covenant. 00:18:21 And the response Abraham had for this, he says he was building an altar and not a house. If you and I were told, \"Hey, there\'s this vacant land.\" God says, \"I brought you here so you can live,\" we would start thinking of building a big house and settling down, and so we can live happily ever after, isn\'t it? Abraham goes, builds an altar. What is the response to being picked by God, by having this revelry, our eyes open to see God, to know who He is? 00:19:00 You know what is the most authentic response anyone can and will and should do? It\'s worship. Abraham starts worshiping God. He\'s just building altars everywhere. Wherever he goes, boom. God says something, \"I\'m going to build an altar. This is special. I\'m going to cherish this. I\'m going to soak it in. I\'m going to take it in.\" And he\'s relishing it. He has three major covenantal encounters with God, Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, and they just are amazing. You know why Abraham did this? 00:19:38 What happened in those encounters? Again, we have to go to the New Testament to get an answer for this. Turn with me to John chapter eight, verse 56. It\'s one of my favorite verses. It says, \"Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.\" You know what an encounter with God should make you? It should make you joyful. It should give you the best joy that the world can never, ever offer to you. 00:20:09 Abraham\'s greatest joy was not possessing the land or seeing his own greatness. His joy was in God\'s promised redemption, ultimately being fulfilled in Christ. He gets a retro view of that even before anything is unleashed. Christ says Abraham got to see the whole thing. That\'s perhaps what happened whenever he encountered God. And what does that do to you? You just worship. There\'s just nothing else you can do. Worship from joy. And his life was characterized by worship. 00:20:51 Yeah, he fell, he failed, he had challenges, couldn\'t have children, and eventually has, and goes here and there. But the one constant in Abraham\'s life was always God bringing him back to worshiping Him, because that\'s the heart of missions. Missions is about helping people to authentically worship God with joy and gladness. It\'s about leading people to worship God, not just converting them, about making numbers or converts. Because people really are lost. 00:21:27 They think they can find pleasure in other things because they don\'t know this. They look for achievements, money, and power, not because they are just bad people, but because they actually think they will give them joy. And we all were like that, too. Paul says we went after it, isn\'t it? Until we got this encounter with God, who opens our eyes and we realize, \"Wow, this is joy.\" And that\'s why Jesus prays in John 17, \"Father, help me to let them to know that knowing you is eternal life.\" 00:22:00 We\'re going to hear more about that briefly. And that\'s the missional mandate for us. When we look around and see our friends pursuing these things, and then somewhere along the line, they hit a dead end, either in their career or in their marriage or in their pursuit of money. They lose money, get bankrupt. That\'s when they wake up, like, \"What have I been chasing all this time?\" 00:22:31 And your friends who are trying different things, they may be acting out in school or college because they really think that\'s the best they can get. And if you love them, you want them to taste this joy by being an ambassador for Christ, and that\'s what missions is about. You need to first love the people before you can go and share the love of Christ. It really sort of saddens me that many of you don\'t even know the names of our missionaries. 00:23:01 Missions is not about throwing money and saying, \"Oh, yeah, those guys, they\'re doing some missions, and my duty is done.\" If you don\'t even know their names, how can you love them? If you can\'t even love our missionaries, how can we love those whom they are trying to reach, isn\'t it? And I know every single one of our missionaries. 00:23:59 Oh, when I see their lives and how they are now so sold out for Jesus, why would they do that? It\'s because they have tasted this love of God. That gives them the most joy than anything else in this world. They\'re willing to literally risk their lives for Jesus. So please pray for our missionaries. Will you? Say their name in your family prayers to your children. So you can love them. God doesn\'t look at how much money you give for a mission. He doesn\'t need our money. 00:24:30 The whole earth belongs to Him. We are getting some of His money to use for our daily things. So let me ask you, my dear friends, do you love your friends around you, whether it\'s at school or college or work? And I shared about this new couple who moved into our house, and this week I was actually very convicted about my other neighbor who lives right next to mine. 00:24:56 He retired, and I know sometimes in his boredom, he resorts to alcohol, and every Saturday morning, I\'ll hear this dumpster with beer bottles being dumped. He\'s sad. He doesn\'t know what to do with his life. And I\'m asking, \"Why have I not invited him to my home and shared the joy?\" I was convicted about that. And I just saw him go for a walk recently. 00:25:18 I was talking to my son, Brian, \"Hey,\" we want to get him to do triathlons with us, but that\'s a way for us to have some time, and I really want to share this joy. I want him to see Jesus and know that he\'s loved. He\'s not an accident. His life is not over just because he\'s retired. He\'s young, by the way. So let me ask you, my dear friend, do you have friends in your life you really love? And if you love them, you want to lead them to discover this God and joy that will be theirs. 00:25:54 That\'s why John Piper, his famous book, paraphrased, says, \"There will be no missions in heaven.\" You know why? Because missions will cease. But what only happens in heaven? Worship. Only worship. We\'ll see that more next week. So Abraham was joyful having discovered God\'s mission because he saw Jesus. There is joy in finding how our life purpose is aligned with God\'s redemptive plans. That I\'m going to now live my life to do something that\'s part of God\'s big redemption plan. 00:26:30 And this God\'s covenant is about redeeming His children still. He still chooses ordinary people like you, you, and you, and me, and He asks us to be His ambassadors. And I know we all are not perfect ambassadors. We don\'t always leave some of those things. We kind of still kind of have a loose connection to money or power or think, \"The next promotion is going to fix my life. This next million dollars is going to make my life great.\" We all fail, but there\'s one who didn\'t, one who really left. 00:27:09 Ultimately, Jesus leaves His Father, and He came to the earth and obeyed Him with obedience that was far better than Abraham. He leaves heaven and comes down to earth, to a broken world. He didn\'t come down to a great place and sinfulness. Rather than Abraham, he was called to go to Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. 00:27:34 He was the offspring promised to Abraham, and He lost it all, heaven and its glory, and even to see His Father\'s face momentarily on the cross for our sake so we can gain it all through Him. He did it all. What Abraham and all his descendants could not do, He did. He lived a perfect life. He died the death on our behalf. He\'s now alive and abides in us and gives us a new heart and a new life so we can see Him. Jesus did not, unlike Abraham, build an altar of sacrifice. 00:28:13 He became the sacrifice on the altar of tasting the wrath of God as a perfect lamb on your behalf and my behalf. And He did get it all, isn\'t it? We do get it all, isn\'t it? Jesus Christ, and I was sharing the gospel with someone this past week, and I got to experience firsthand someone discovering Jesus in a very dramatic fashion. It always excites me. 00:28:41 And I was explaining to him, he comes from another faith, he didn\'t understand the gospel much, and I was telling how there is a huge separation between us and God. There is a huge vertical separation between us and God because God is omniscient, powerful, infinite. We are finite. Our minds are, at best, fallible and broken. So there is a vertical distance. We can\'t just go to God. We just can\'t know God by ourself. 00:29:08 There\'s also a horizontal distance between us and God because God is holy, perfect, and not even a speck of unholiness can enter His presence. It will get decimated, and we are so unholy, so we have to stay far. So how does God bridge this vertical and this horizontal distance? And He does that by coming into this world, incarnating as Jesus Christ. Jesus said, \"If you have seen me, you have seen my Father.\" Boom. Instantaneously, the vertical distance is collapsed. 00:29:41 And by taking our sin on Himself and paying for our sins on the cross, in Him, He says, \"You are sanctified, justified, glorified,\" and boom, the horizontal distance collapses on the cross. How much joy should this give to you and me? The world\'s best philosophers, the greatest scientists can never discover God by themselves. And even the most holiest monastic saints can never be perfect enough to get near God, yet Jesus opens this door for us so we can actually taste God. 00:30:17 Taste and see that the Lord is good. And that\'s why when Jesus picks his disciples in the New Testament He says, \"Come, follow me.\" They drop their nets and follow him. And that\'s why Jesus say the same thing, \"If anyone desires to follow me, unless he does not hate his father and mother and brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple.\" He\'s not calling them to hate on our loved ones. 00:30:46 He wants us to disconnect from all the other ungodly, worldly, idolatrous influences from our lives so we can find him. And when you come to be part of this family, you now have a new family in every nation. I can walk into our friends\' homes in Germany, or my other pastors who are from Korea or China or African American, and feel the same love, or in fact, more love than what I will even get from my earthly family. Isn\'t that beautiful? 00:31:24 So will you pray for three of your closest friends or neighbors or coworkers, or at least one from each, whom you know are chasing other joys in life and are not getting it. They\'re just falling. They\'re trying hard. They have no idea what this joy is. And would you pray and ask God to give you an opportunity to give a reason for the hope that is in you, as Paul says. That\'s apologetics, my dear friends. It\'s not just using your brains to outsmart another guy. 00:31:57 It\'s giving a reason for the hope that you have, is what Peter talks about. And lead them. Have the joy of leading them to Christ. And we\'re going to hear from someone in our own church who went through this. We got to hear Satvik\'s testimony during his baptism, and God has been doing amazing things in his life. After that, I\'ve invited him to come, and by way of application, he\'s my application for the sermon today. So hear him out, especially all of you guys.