January 5, 2025 What Do We Hunger For: A Hunger for God's Blessings | Genesis 12:1-3

Today we will reflect on Genesis 12:1-3, A Hunger for God’s Blessings. When we read this important story of God’s call to Abram to trust in him and leave his country, people, and family behind to follow him to a place that the Lord was going to show him. The Lord promises to bless Abram and make him a blessing to all nations. Life is not always easy and many of us will face times of struggle, times when it feels like everything is against us. In those times we may hunger to experience God’s blessings. We know that Jesus promises never to abandon us, we know we have the presence of the Holy Spirit, and in these promises, we can learn to see how God can use these times as blessings, and then challenge us to be blessings.

Transcript

A Hunger for God’s Blessings
Genesis 12:1-3

Over the past few years, I’ve met a number of people who feel as if God has forgotten them, or perhaps is angry with them. As times have become more difficult, they feel like they’re falling further behind every month. They wonder how they can get back into God’s good graces and experience better times again. They’re expressing a feeling that’s not uncommon, even in biblical times: that if times are hard, it means that God’s unhappy with you and is holding back his blessings. Blessings are God’s gifts that can be material or spiritual, while to bless is to speak well of, or to speak God into a person’s life. 
This morning we’ll begin by looking at Abram whom God promises to bless, and then move to consider people whom Jesus offers blessings to. The Lord reaches out to Abram offering to bless him, “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.” The Lord’s putting into action a plan that will include redeeming and restoring all creation, beginning with this old couple. This promise of blessing comes with its own fears. The blessing is powerful since Sarai is barren and children are a great blessing, but in the culture of Abram’s time, one of the big fears people had then, was to die away from home and family, away from your land because you’ll end up being forgotten. This is one of the reasons Joseph, years later, asks for the people to bring his bones back to the Promised Land when he dies and the Lord brings them back to the Promised Land, rather than be buried in Egypt. 
Abram and Sarai choose to trust in the Lord and his promised blessings. They leave family and friends behind and leave for the land and blessings promised to them. The Lord does bless them as they leave everything familiar behind. This doesn’t mean everything was easy or quick, in the Bible, those whom God uses in his plan of redemption often find life becomes harder than expected. Abram and Sarai faced opposition, a life spent as nomads in this new land, wanderers without a true home. Becoming a great nation begins with a false start and an Egyptian slave girl and a great deal of grief for all involved. About 24 years after leaving Haran, Sarai gives birth to a boy. Many of the promised blessings lay far in the future, after their deaths. It took trust and faith and looking at the blessings working their way out through generations, sacrificing today for the generations yet to come. 
God is faithful to Abram and Sarai’s descendants, making them into a great nation. They experience both blessings and hard times. They know they have been chosen as God’s people; however, they often forget the second part of the blessing given to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” God has chosen them to reveal to the nations who God is and how God calls us to live with God, each other, and even the rest of creation. God blesses Israel with the Torah, all the laws given at Mount Sinai, including the 10 Commandments and the history of God’s faithful relationship with all humanity to help them be a blessing to all people. They’re blessed to be a blessing. 
We see a God who makes promises to his people, promises that are meant to impact all peoples. We see a God who keeps his promises even when his people fail to live into those promises or keep their own. We encounter a God who remains present with his people, guiding them, chastising them, and allowing the consequences of their sinful choices to open their eyes and guide them back to him. God reveals himself as a jealous God, jealous for his people, for their faithfulness to him alone, a God who refuses to share his people with other gods. He's a God who punishes and forgives, a God who continues to bless and be with his people. This is the story of the Old Testament. 
Hard times don’t mean that God’s angry with us, or ignoring us. Often hard times come because, as God’s people, we don’t fit with the gods of our times. We’re not exempt from the hard times that all people face, like economic downturns, pandemics, natural disasters, wars, or poor government. We can trust that God’s with us through it all. A lack of blessings doesn’t mean a lack of God, sometimes it’s merely silence; it may also be that we don’t recognize how God’s at work or blessing us; many blessings are smaller daily moments, sometimes easily overlooked.
After many years of silence, an angel appears to a young woman who tells her, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.” A new chapter in God’s relationship with the world is beginning, a new level of blessing is here. This young girl is Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Son of God; the one through whom God is going to bless all people; the promised Messiah who has come to save all his people, working out his plan of redemption as shown to Abram, “all peoples will be blessed through you.” It was a great blessing to be the mother of the Son of God, but it also came with hardship: a reputation for becoming pregnant before marriage, seeing her son rejected, watching Jesus die on the cross for our sin and crushing Satan. Mary understood that those whom God uses in his plan of redemption often find life becomes harder than expected.
Matthew records Jesus beginning his ministry by preaching, teaching, and healing people throughout the area of Galilee, and begins calling a number of disciples to follow him. these are the people who make up the crowd when Jesus preaches his great Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus understands the people, having spent time with them, seeing and hearing what’s happening in their lives. He sees them and begins his great sermon with blessings for regular ordinary people; he sees them and their hearts, reaching out to bless the people in their places of need. The blessings are, as Dallas Willard writes, “explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom of heaven through personal relationship with Jesus.” 
As Jesus looks out over the crowd, he recognizes those who are poor in spirit, those who are drifting spiritually, those you would never even think of when it comes to spiritual things or knowledge, or say a prayer, or lead a Bible study. Many see church as religion and something to do, but who often feel unseen or unknown by God. Jesus sees them and blesses them with a place in the kingdom of heaven, letting them know that God does see them, that they do belong and God hears their often-quiet spiritual desperation. Jesus sees those who have come because they’re mourning. They may have lost spouses, children, or unable to find work, so many things to mourn over and Jesus blesses them with comfort in the kingdom. He sees the meek, those who are shy, who never stand up for themselves and let others walk over them and Jesus blesses them with inheriting the earth as they need it in the kingdom as they’ve never been strong enough to claim it for themselves here. Jesus looks out over the people and sees those who burn for things to be right, to be the way they’re supposed to be. It may be that they know their own hearts and want to be who they’re supposed to be, or perhaps they’ve been wronged and want justice and Jesus blesses them in the kingdom of heaven with the fullness of righteousness. 
Jesus recognizes the merciful, knowing how they are often looked down on because of their merciful approach to people, but Jesus assures them that they will be shown mercy in the kingdom. The pure in heart, those who recognize how unpure they themselves are and can be so harsh on themselves, they will see God. Jesus sees the peacemakers and how they’re often not fully trusted or appreciated by either side and he blessed them by calling them sons of God; I hear an echo to Jesus being called the Prince of Peace here. Then there are those who are persecuted because they stand for what is right. We know that this can often be dangerous for people, but like the poor in spirit, Jesus offers them a place in the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus sees us today where we're at, our needs and heart needs and continues to reach out to bless us in the places we most need his blessings, helping us to recognize the kingdom of heaven and our place in it. His greatest blessing to us is found in the cross and forgiveness and adoption as sons and daughters of God and a place of belonging in his kingdom. These blessings call for a response from us to be a blessing, using our time, talents, and treasures, and life experiences to bless others, helping to recognize the presence of Jesus in their lives. Paul points to this in his second letter to the Corinthians, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”