What Is the Greatest Nation on Earth?

Genesis 12:1-8

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s
household to the land I will show you.

2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

What Is the Greatest Nation on Earth?

What do you think the greatest nation on earth is? As a foreigner currently applying for permanent residency, I should say Canada, right? Of course, if you listen to the president south of the border, that title would belong to the U.S. Depending on what study you read, Switzerland might offer the best quality of life,[1] Portugal the best health care.[2] You could make the case for any country.

What matters is what criteria you choose. Are you making your decision on the basis of the economy, the military, education? Is culture or morality the most important piece? How about history or influence?

What if I were to tell you that the title “Greatest Nation on Earth” belonged to a group of people that didn’t have a military, or a public school or healthcare system? What if I were to tell you that the “Greatest Nation on Earth” was a group of nomads wandering through other nations’ lands without a permanent home, whose president was a cattle baron who made decisions based on the voices he heard in his head? Those aren’t usually the qualifications for greatness, or the criteria to be considered a nation, for that matter. And yet, that was God’s promise to Abram:

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”[3]

Those are some bold promises from God! But it makes you wonder, why Abram? How did Abram find himself in this situation to receive this blessing from God?

Let me take you back in time a couple thousand years. Last week we read about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We heard about their sin and the consequences that came with it, but we marveled at God’s grace and mercy. He didn’t strike them dead. Instead he promised to send “the seed of the woman” to strike the devil dead. That’s Jesus.

A long time passed from Adam to Abram. A lot of things happened. Adam and Eve’s oldest son murdered their youngest, perpetuating this cycle of sin from one generation to the next. Things got so bad that within 10 generations God wept over the wickedness of this world. He regretted having made mankind and sent a worldwide flood to cleanse the earth, killing everyone and everything except for Noah and his family and the animals God had saved with him in the ark.

You’d think the Flood would be a wakeup call to the world, that Noah’s sons would tell their children about the seriousness of sin and the wrath of God, that they would use that as a reminder of God’s promise of salvation. But we find out that even while Noah’s sons were still alive, their children had already turned their backs on God.

Abram’s family was no different. In the book of Joshua we read,

“Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods.”[4]

Abram’s family had turned away from God.

And yet, God comes to Abram and the first thing we hear him say is, “I will make you into a great nation.”[5] How did Abram deserve that!? He came from an idolatrous family. He lived in a land and among a people who had long since rejected God. Why would God choose Abram?

I suppose the same question could be asked of you. Why would God choose you? Obviously, I only know a small part of who you are, but I can tell you it’s not because you’re a good person or you do good things. God doesn’t pick you because of your pedigree or your family tree. God hasn’t chosen you because you deserve it. Like Abram – and anyone – God chose you purely by his grace.

There wasn’t a soul on earth who deserved to receive these promises from God, and yet that’s what God does – he makes promises to sinners, to rejects and rebels, to nomads and wanderers who have no home here on earth. God makes promises and he keeps promises.

Last week we heard that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. God would send Jesus to destroy the devil. Mankind very nearly messed that all up when things got so wicked that God had to send the Flood, but even then God kept his promise – he preserved the line of the Savior through Noah and his family and he kept this promise going.

Things got bad again by the time of Abram. There were so few who still believed in God. But God kept his promise by picking Abram and preserving the line of the Savior and making these promises to a childless, 75-year-old cattle baron and his 65-year-old barren wife.

There literally, physically wasn’t anything about Abram or Sarai that made them worthy of this promise, but this promise inspired faith in their hearts and transformed their bodies, making the impossible an inevitability.

Abram would become the father of many nations. In fact, that’s what “Abraham” means and that’s why God changed his name after the birth of his son. Sarai would go on to give birth to Isaac, who fathered Jacob, whose sons became the 12 tribes of Israel. Their descendants would number in the millions within 500 years.[6] God kept his promise to make Abram into a great nation.

But a couple million people in a backwater province of the Middle East doesn’t necessarily sound like the greatest nation on earth, does it?

That’s because that was only part of the promise. If all God were promising to Abram was a land to call his own and throne for his descendants to sit on, Genesis would be a mostly boring history book. But there’s so much more to it than that. The part of the promise that makes Abram’s family the greatest nation on earth is the last part:

“All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”[7]

To be chosen and made a nation at all was a blessing of God’s grace to Abram, but with these words God makes it clear that he intended Abram to be a blessing to everyone on earth. It wasn’t all about Abram for Abram’s sake. This promise wasn’t about a precious strip of land next to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is not the Greatest Nation on Earth, but because God chose it by grace, it would bring a blessing to all people on earth.

From Abram’s family would come the promised Savior. God’s promise to Abram was the continuation of the promise God had made to Adam and Eve about a seed to crush the serpent’s head. He would come from a family of sinners to save a world of sinners. And so, the selection of Abram was important not because of who Abram was, but because it showed God’s faithfulness to faithless people, his commitment to keep his promises no matter what, to send his Son to be your Savior.

You don’t deserve that promise any more than Abram did. You may have a good and godly, church-going family; you may be well-respected in the community, but like all of Adam and Eve’s descendants you have sin living in your heart. And we can see it in the kinds of decisions we make. God may not ask you to leave your country, people and family behind to go to a place he hasn’t shown you yet, but God does demand that you love him more than your country, friends and family. Can you say that you always do?

What do you spend more time reading or listening to – God’s Word or the news? What do you spend more time doing – going to the movies, museums, concerts, sports practices and games or worshiping God with fellow Christians, praying privately, having personal devotion with God? Given the choice, who do you drop everything for – God or your family?

None of those things are bad. It’s good to stay informed. Recreation is a blessing. Family is gift, but idolatry is rarely loving a bad thing. Idolatry is often loving a good thing too much. And we do an awful lot of that.

Could you be like Abram and leave all those things behind? Well, neither could Abram without God’s promises, and that’s the point. Abram wasn’t this pillar of faith who was begging God to tell him to go on a grand, unknown adventure. It was the promise that God gave Abram that inspired faith in Abram. It was listening to the Word of God that enabled Abram to act so suddenly and definitively, so boldly and confidently. And it’s the same for you.

God doesn’t choose you because you are so able; it’s his act of choosing you that enables you. It’s his promises that give you something to hold onto by faith and inspire you to action. So that even in today’s climate, with all the fears of something like coronavirus which has reportedly reached Edmonton, we can be bold in our faith and trust in God.

God’s promises put it in context. This virus isn’t his act of judgment against our sin. That judgment was carried out on Jesus on the cross; God promised that it is finished in Christ. We need not fear the penalty for our sin anymore; it’s been forgiven.

We can also have a measure of peace amid the panic, because even if it turns into a worldwide pandemic, God promises that

“as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”[8]

This world and God’s people will survive until Judgment Day.

And even if coronavirus were to take your life or if Judgment Day were to come tomorrow, we know the hope that we have in the promises of Christ – forgiveness and freedom from judgment through Jesus’ perfect life on earth, eternal life in heaven by Jesus’ death on the cross, the resurrection of the dead into a glorified, heavenly body just as Jesus was raised to life and lives and rules eternally.

The promises of God enliven faith in our hearts and enable our hands to take action. They don’t diminish the challenges and problems that we will face. Abram still had to leave his country and his friends and his own father behind to go to unknown land that was already occupied by someone else, but the promises of God made it possible. We may still have to deal with uncertainty and difficulty and fear in this life, but we have the promises of God to make it possible – and as we see in Abram’s example God keeps his promise alive.

He made Abram into the father of nations – and not just the Jews, but you and me and everyone who, like Abram, believes in God’s promises. Whether you are from B.C. or Alberta, South Sudan, Nigeria, Norway or Nebraska, you are a part of the Greatest Nation on Earth because of the faith God has planted in your heart to believe the promises of his Son, our Savior. Listen to those promises. Prioritize them in your life. And see how God continues to bless those who believe in him.

Amen.

[1] http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/best-countries/

[2] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/the-5-countries-with-the-best-healthcare-in-the-world-2020-internationalliving-com-1028832135

[3] Genesis 12:2,3

[4] Joshua 24:2

[5] Genesis 12:2

[6] Exodus 12:37

[7] Genesis 12:3

[8] Genesis 8:22

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Fact or Fiction: "God Wants You to Be Happy"

Genesis 3:1-15

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Fact or Fiction: “God Wants You to Be Happy”

Can you imagine being Adam and Eve? The world is newly minted. It has that “new earth” smell. You’re still delighting in discovering all the different trees and colors and waterfalls and each other, when one day a snake stops you within sight of the one tree that God forbade you to use for food, and he asks you a question, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”[1]

At this point, alarm bells should be going off. Red alert flashing across the screen. There are no talking animals anywhere on earth. Adam knows this because he named all the animals. He’s seen this snake before and it wasn’t talking then. Why would it be talking now?

And not only that, but why would it be questioning God’s goodness? Why would it suggest that God is depriving Adam and Eve of the necessities of life? Adam was there when God said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden…”[2] except for one. They had options and they were good options. Everything about the world they lived in spoke to the goodness and generosity of God. Everything that they experienced told of his matchless love for them.

To hear an animal 1) talking, and 2) questioning God’s goodness, should have sent Adam and Eve packing. But they took the bait and they engaged him.

Martin Luther has a famous quote about temptation. He once said, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.” Adam and Eve were not responsible for running into Satan in disguise as a snake on that day. They’re not to blame for the questions and insinuations that the devil was making. But they didn’t listen to their better instincts. They let that bird land on their heads and didn’t bother shooing him away when he started gathering sticks for a nest.

To her credit, Eve did respond the way that God’s children should if they are compelled to respond at all. She used God’s own word as her shield and weapon. She quoted God’s command faithfully. She defended God’s goodness admirably. She said, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or your will die.’”[4]

At that point, while he has Adam and Eve re-evaluating God’s command to them, the devil drops all subtlety and flat-out lies: “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[5]

The devil is good. He knows better than to come right out and say, “Let me show you how to sin and stick it in God’s eye.” No, he makes sin sound so good. “Let me help you to a happier, more exciting life. God wants you to be happy, doesn’t he? Why would he put this beautiful tree in the garden and this desire in your heart, if he didn’t want you to satisfy it?”

The devil makes sin sound so good, and he makes God sound so bad, as if God is withholding pleasures and privileges from you. He makes God sound so petty: “God knows that you would be like him if you ate this fruit, but you can be your own god. Listen to your heart. No one can tell you what is right or wrong for you but you.”

Does that sound familiar? It’s the same box of lies that Satan sells us today, isn’t it? Why would God put this desire in your heart if he doesn’t want you to satisfy it? Trust your instincts. Don’t let a religion led by old, white men and a genocidal God tell you how to live your life. Why have one sexual partner when you can have twelve? Why stay faithful to your wife, or wait until you get married, when pornography promises you immediate satisfaction? Why deny your desire for someone of the same sex when you were clearly born that way? If God put it in the world, it must be good.

And of course, the devil isn’t a one trick pony. He can whisper these same lies to you about material wealth, mental health, business ethics, relationships, the speed limit. God wants you to be happy, doesn’t he? That may be Satan’s greatest lie.

But the devil is crafty and cunning and the lie worked: When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.[6]

The devil had succeeded in planting the seed of doubt in Adam and Eve’s hearts. He succeeded in tempting them to disobey the one command that God had given them. He succeeded in turning the crown of God’s creation into the leaders of a rebellion against God. The devil must have felt so good at that moment. So smug as he watched Adam and Eve fumble around with fig leaves as loin cloths and scatter like roaches when God came for his walk in the garden in the cool of the day.

But then God does something amazing. It starts so small. The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking.[7] Is God so clumsy that you can hear him walking from a mile away? No, he wanted to be heard. The Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”[8] Is God so blind that he didn’t know where they were or what they had done? No, he wanted them to answer.

Adam and Eve had just committed the greatest sin of human history. By eating that fruit, they corrupted creation itself. They introduced pain and suffering and frustration and destruction into this world. As Paul said to the Romans, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”[9] Every generation of people from that moment on were cursed to be born into sin and to die because of sin. And what does God do?

“Where are you?”[10]

If I were God, I would have kept my promise, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”[11] I would have killed them right there. I would have rained down fire from heaven. I would have shaken the core of the earth and put the fear of God in their hearts. I would have wiped the slate clean and started all over.

But not our God. His love is greater than that. He came to them slowly and gently. He gave them every opportunity to own up to their mistake and confess their sin and ask him for forgiveness. And even when they shifted the blame and shirked their responsibility, God still didn’t strike them dead. Instead, he promised that his Son would strike Satan dead.

He said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”[12]

Satan must have thought that he had won. The devil must have been gloating that he had won Adam and Eve over to the rebellion and put them at odds with God. But God promised to reverse the curse. God promised to restore enmity to where it rightfully belonged. God didn’t want to be enemies with us, he is and wants to be acknowledged as our Father. He wants us to be enemies with Satan, and he promised to be the one to make that happen.

As amazing as it is that God would be so patient with Adam and Eve and not immediately end their lives, it’s just as amazing that he didn’t demand that they make it up to him. He took it under his own initiative to right their wrong. He promised to send his own Son to be the son of a woman and to crush the serpent’s head.

And that’s just what Jesus did on the cross. While the snake was striking Jesus’ heel – torturing and taking Jesus’ life – Jesus’ foot was coming down on his head. The cross was the greatest pain the devil could inflict on God, but it also marked the devil’s ultimate defeat, because there Jesus paid for the sins of the world. On that cross, Jesus died for your sins and fulfilled the promise that God made all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

No matter what we do, regardless of how often we buy Satan’s box of lies, God is patient with us and remains faithful to us even though we cannot remain faithful to him. That’s the kind of God we have, whose first instinct is love and whose final promise is our salvation, which he won for us when Jesus died.

I wish I could say that the cross means that the devil will never bother us again, but that’s not true. That snake still slithers in and out of our lives. To use Luther’s terminology, that bird still flies overhead. But we don’t have to make room for his nest in our hair. The more we learn of his tactics, the better equipped we can be to respond to them.

When he tempts us to believe that obedience to God deprives us of freedom, we can remember that true freedom is not the right to do as we please. The freedom God gives us by faith is the strength to do God’s will – not because we have to, but because we’re happy to as we trust in God’s generosity.

It’s not better to have 12 sexual partners than 1. Innocence and intimacy are lost when we disobey God’s Sixth Commandment. The reverse is also true – love grows deeper and stronger and more meaningful as we remain true to God’s will for our lives.

There are many metaphorical trees on this earth. More than enough within our reach and within God’s will to keep us happy forever. We don’t need to taste the forbidden fruit to be free. We just need to trust that God is good – to hear the record of his goodness in His Word and to recognize it and rejoice over it in our lives.

Satan’s biggest lie may be that God wants us to be happy, but, like the best lies, there is an element of truth to it. God does want you to be happy, but not to seek happiness apart from him. God does want you to be happy, which is why he gave his Son for you – to live and die for you – so that you can be happy with him forever in heaven. Listen to him. Treasure his Word and will for your life as the freedom and happiness that can’t be found anywhere else on earth. I promise that you won’t be disappointed if you do.

God wants you to be happy.That’s the gospel truth.Repent, rejoice and be happy for all that God has done for you in Christ.Amen.

[1] Genesis 3:1

[2] Genesis 2:16,17

[4] Genesis 3:2,3

[5] Genesis 3:4,5

[6] Genesis 3:6

[7] Genesis 3:8

[8] Genesis 3:9

[9] Romans 5:12

[10] Genesis 3:9

[11] Genesis 2:17

[12] Genesis 3:15

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