06/11/2026
Any time the worship live-stream has technical issues, I try to post here the text of the message for you all, especially since we're sometimes in a series that builds one on another. This past Sunday, we continued in Genesis with the story of Abram in Genesis 12:1-9. Here's the message...
I once heard an atheist say that Christianity boils down to two simple requirements: a little bit of “Do this” and a little bit of “Don’t do that.” It’s not a terrible summary of our faith. It’s better than the claim that Christians are just “No” people, as if God is only in the business of telling us not to do bad things, “Thou shalt not….” So, it is refreshing to hear non-believers understand that God also has positive prescriptions in mind for humankind. And we do see some of this simple pattern in the Bible.
For example, last week we were in Genesis 1 together. Y’all tell me, what were the “Do this” instructions in the very beginning? That’s right, for one thing, Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and multiply. Put simply: make babies. No problem, we could handle that. And for another thing, the Lord told meant for them to subdue Creation, to have authority over it and to care for it as stewards. Alright, so then what about the other half of the coin, what was the “Don’t do that” of Eden? Out of all the fruit and food in the garden, do not touch this one particular tree’s produce.
Do this, don’t do that. There it is.
The problem with this pattern, the problem with boiling down our faith to these two components, is that it neglects the deeper thing that is really at the heart of the Garden of Eden: walking with God. It becomes crystal clear in that excruciating moment that Adam and Eve first realize what they’ve lost. After they’ve eaten the forbidden fruit, God comes walking into the garden in the cool of the day, calling out for them (Genesis 3:8). It’s a snapshot of what should have been, and what could have continued for them, this blessed communion directly between humanity and the Lord. But his two children are hiding, because now they’ve been acquainted with sin and with shame.
So, let’s add this third something our list. It’s the most important ingredient of our faith. The other two forms of obedience – doing good and not doing evil – were always really just a tool to serve this third thing. Because, above all, we were designed to enjoy an eternal love relationship with our Creator, one that plays out day by day all of our lives. We were designed for walking with God. And if you notice in the first few chapters of Genesis, that walk looks like a living and breathing thing. Sometimes it’s like God is physically standing right there beside Adam and Eve. But other times he doesn’t seem to be in the scene at all, as if the humans are expected to have autonomy and independence. And God doesn’t have a micromanaging presence – he entrusts them with certain tasks, like naming the animals and caring for Creation, as if they have real responsibility for how things go. God seems to be aware of all that happens, as if he’s everywhere, but God also lets his children have real choices. There are times when it’s like he’s not there at all, and they’re given room, in a way, to stand on their own two feet. In other words, even before the Fall of humanity, walking with God was beautiful and challenging, in the holiest of ways.
Unfortunately, after Eden it looks like it’s all become more difficult than beautiful. After our original communion with God was broken, we see how hard it is to walk with him. I mean, the very next thing you know, Cain kills Abel over jealousy. As humans spread exponentially over the face of the earth, sin and shame also spread exponentially. Eventually, it gets so bad that God turns to a hard reset through the great flood. And, afterward, God’s designated survivors – Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives – all receive a renewed covenant, in Genesis 9:1-7:
“Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.’”
Does it sound familiar? If you notice, we’ve another set of “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Go and populate the earth. Do this. But try not to murder each other. Don’t do that. Make babies and don’t kill anybody. It’s not an incredibly high bar of expectation, right? And we could argue that some human beings probably did a decent job at fulfilling these requirements.
But was that enough? Was living by those two requirements enough to restore the relationship between humans and God? Absolutely not. Because people still largely neglected the third thing, the ultimate goal: walking with God. And, instead of trying to do it, instead of pursuing the better yet the harder thing, they took the easy way out. They crafted idols for themselves. If walking with God is so hard because God does whatever he wants and because God says whatever he wants and because God goes wherever he wants, then all you’ve gotta do is make for yourself a replacement out of wood or stone or bone. Then you can make it look however you like, you can take it (or leave it) wherever you like, you can make it say whatever you like, and you can let it see (or not see) whatever you like. Now that is an easy god to walk with. You can fit it in your pocket if you want it to travel, or make it the size of a mountain if you want to impress.
After the flood, people got really good at this kind of idolatry. If they needed a good crop, they crafted an idol to worship for that. If they had to go to war, they built gods of strength and power to sacrifice to. If they wanted to find love or have children, there could be a god for that. They eventually littered whole temples, and the rooms of their houses, with dozens if not hundreds of God-replacements. As if that could satisfy their deepest calling, which was to walk with the Living Lord.
But while they were getting really good at trying to replace God, God was working on his own mission: to redeem our relationship with him. So, after hundreds of years of biding his time, God saw the opportunity for the next big phase of that mission. In a region called Ur, a pretty cosmopolitan and well-settled and wealthy corner of the fertile crescent, in the land that would one day become the Babylonian Empire, there was a family that showed signs of authentic faith in God.
Specifically, it was a man and his wife, Abram and Sarai. Life had been good and not so good to them. While every other human was busy with that baby-making part of God’s instruction, Abram and Sarai were unable to conceive. So they tried to put together a unique household of their own, with extended family like Abram’s nephew Lot (his dad was Abram’s brother who had died fairly young) as well as other servants and people. And in the midst of it, Abram received a unique message directly from God. Here’s the story in Genesis 12:
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“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
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.’
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.”
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What does Abram teach us? That you can busy yourself with trying to “Do this” and “Don’t do that” for God, and you can try to fill the void of God’s presence with every kind of idol. But when those things all let you down (as they inevitably do), there is still this one thing remaining, this one thing that has been the real point from the very start: walking with the Living Lord.
Little did Abram know what he was getting into, or where things would go. Abram certainly didn't know that by taking these first steps toward setting foot in Canaan, events were being set into motion that would one day lead to Jesus setting foot in Creation. But this is the heart of the story, through and through. God, who once walked with us in the garden in the cool of the day, moved heaven and earth so that one day he could walk here in-person with us as Immanuel. Then he gave himself to suffering and death, in order to be raised back to life, that the power of evil would be destroyed. Why? All so that we could have a way to be reconciled back to him forever.
This is where we'll be in the coming weeks as we continue moving through Genesis. It's an opportunity for each of us, maybe some of us even for the first time, to choose to walk with the Lord, day by day, now and forever.
