True Blessing in the New Year

Today's scripture comes from Genesis 12 verses 1 through 9. 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 75 years old when he set out from Heron. He took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Heron and they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as a site of the great tree of Mure as 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. And there he went on toward the hills of the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and IE 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 negative. The grass withers in the flowers fade but the word of our God endures forever. Well, good morning everybody. If we haven't met yet, my name is Jean and I'm one of the pastors here at Egyzillic. Happy New Year. Is it too late to wish you a happy New Year? There's a famous curb episode where Larry David is very upset because people keep wishing happy New Year way after New Year and he draws a cut off at January 2nd. It's January 4th but I'm going to go ahead and wish you a happy New Year anyway. Today is January 4th and that means that about 80% of you who made New Year's resolutions have already broken them. What were some of your resolutions this year? According to Chatsheapetee, the top New Year's resolutions for 2026 were exercise more, eat healthier. Is that up there? Exercise more, eat healthier, be happy, save more money, quit a bad habit, lose weight, improve mental health, less time on social media, learn something new, spend more time with family, pray more and read more. Any of yours listed there? Here are some interesting trends for 2026 that you may not have heard. First, younger adults under 45 like me are significantly more likely to set goals compared to those over 45 like Pastor Aaron. Now saving more money was the number one resolution of 2025. It's dropped to number four for 2026. That's interesting. Surpassed by fitness and general well-being. Of course, resolutions focused on digital well-being, such as spending less time on social media and quitting bad habits remain prominent. Those are some of the New Year's resolutions. Whatever your New Year's resolutions are for this year or even if you haven't made any, the New Year is this special time where we could kind of reset, where we can maybe get a second chance, where we can reflect on the past year and then hope for a better year, a blessed year in 2026. Many of us have already prayed to God asking for God's blessing upon the upcoming year. Let me ask you this, what does that blessing look like for you? If God were to come to you in a dream and say, "I'm going to bless you this year," what comes to mind when you hear blessing? I think for most of us, God's blessing is equivalent to some combination of health, happiness, and wealth. Some combination of those three. When we ask for God's blessing, that's what we have in mind. Health, happiness, and wealth. Well in our passage today, God blesses Abram, better known as Abraham. He gets this name changed later. So we're going to look at what does the blessing of God look like for Abram? What does the blessing of God look like? I thought that this was an appropriate passage to preach on for a New Year's sermon because a lot of you have made New Year's resolutions to read the Bible and you're starting out in Genesis and you're going to quit by the time you get to Leviticus. So I thought, "Hey, let's start with Genesis." No, the real reason this passage is appropriate is because this passage marks a new beginning in Genesis. So if you look at Genesis 1 and 2, God creates the world beautifully. He blesses it and then he gives it to Adam and Eve. And Adam and Eve, rather than taking care of this world and obeying God, what do they do? They disobey God. They sin against Him. And then Genesis 3 through 11, it's no longer about God blessing the world, but what is Genesis 3 through 11 about? It's about the shocking, slow, steady spread of sin from that very first sin in the Garden of Eden. So five times in Genesis 3 through 11, God doesn't pronounce blessing, but He pronounces a curse on sin and sinners. A curse. Instead of the original blessing of life in the Garden, God pronounces a fivefold curse on creation. But then here in Genesis 12, it's a turning point. Because instead of a fivefold curse, what does God give Abram? A fivefold blessing. A fivefold blessing. In the chapter right before this, the people they gather together and they come up with this idea and they say, "Hey, let's build a tower that's going to stretch into the heavens. We're going to make a great city. We're going to make a name for ourselves. We're going to accomplish this on our own. We're going to be equal to God." That was the idea. And then of course, we know that God curses them. But here in Genesis 12, God promises Abram that He's the one who's going to make Abram's name great. He's the one who's going to build this great nation from Abram's descendants. Now in the past at Exillic, we always, we had this tradition where we began every new year with the sermon series on the DNA of our church. And we would talk about three things. We would talk about our name, our vision and our mission. Our name, our vision and our mission. When we get our name, our vision, there we go. The DNA of our church, our name, Exillic church, our vision, being fully formed in Christ to embody His head, heart, and hands and our mission, inspiring thinkers to believe and inspiring believers to think. And I kind of want to talk about these three things from our passages today as we look at God's blessing for Abram. So God does three things in the life of Abram and it's promised in these verses. God calls Him, God forms Him and then God sends Him. God calls Him, forms Him and sends Him. And that's God's pattern. That's His M.O. throughout the Bible. We see this with Moses, with Joshua, with Elijah. We saw this with His disciples, a pattern that we see repeated again and again and again in Scripture is God calling His people, God forming His people and then God sending His people. So I want to look at these three things today. In other words, I want to look at identity, the call. I want to look at formation and then I want to look at mission. So these three things in God's promise to Abram today. First, let's look at identity. Look at verse one. The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land that I will show you." So God tells Abram to do three things. Leave your country, your people, your father's household to the land that I'm going to show you. What we see here is that the call of God is a call to exile. Exile. So God doesn't just tell Abram, Abram, I want you to move to Canaan. He doesn't just tell Abram to relocate, to change locations. What does he do? He tells him specifically, leave country, people, and family. In the ancient Near East and even today, in many ways, your country, your people, and your family, they were the three biggest identity markers in society. First he tells Abram to leave your country. Abram grew up in Err, in a city called Err, and then he moved with his father to Haran. Now Err and Haran, they were two of the three greatest centers of trade in Mesopotamia at the time. So they were the New York and Los Angeles of the ancient worlds. The places where the influential people lived, the movers and the shakers. He had to leave all of that behind. and move where? God doesn't even tell him. God doesn't even tell him where. God says, "Just go, leave them, go to the land that I'm going to show you." Even if God did tell him where, it would have been a step down. Because in Abram's time outside of the major metropolitan areas, there was nothing. It's like God telling you, leave New York and move to Wyoming or North Dakota. There are more people in New York City than in those states. And Abram's, he's at retirement age. He's 75 years old. But God tells him, "Leave your comforts. Leave your plans. Leave your retirement savings. Go to an unknown land with no plan and no security." But not only that. Abram, leave your friends. Leave your relatives. Leave your people. Live amongst foreigners and potential hostile neighbors. He not only had to leave his financial and his professional identity, but also his cultural identity. From a place where he is known, where he is seen, where he is heard, to a place where he would not be understood. Nor would he understand others. He would not only become a national exile, but a cultural exile. If you are raised in an immigrant home like me, you understand acutely what it's like to not belong to any majority culture. But God takes this a step further and he tells Abram, "Abraham, don't just leave your citizenship, your culture, but I want you also to leave your father's household." In the ancient world, your primary, your core identity was your father's household. And yet for Abram, one of the biggest problems for him was that he and Sarah couldn't conceive. They were barren. So they couldn't perpetuate the line. And yet God calls him to leave the entirety of his identity and to surrender everything to God. God calls him to lay down his identity so that God could give Abram a new core identity. And that is God's call to us. To take the very foundations of our identity and to surrender them to him so that he could give us a new identity in him. The pillars of career, family, friendships, romantic relationships, parental relationships, political affiliations, cultural affinities, familial ties, all of it. All of it. God doesn't ask for a part of you. He has for all of you so that he can rebuild and recreate you completely. This is terrifying. But what the story of Abram shows us is that very often our vision for our lives are too small. Think about it. Abram probably would have been very content with a comfortable life where he was. If he was wealthy, healthy, if he could have some children live a long and easy life, many of us would look at that and we would say, "That's the blessed life. That's the good life." But if God had given that to Abram, no one would remember him today. If God had merely given Abram some prime real estate, a robust portfolio, well-behaved children, a long and healthy retirement, that would have seemed great to him. But God's plan for Abram was so much bigger and grander than he could ever imagine. He calls Abram to leave behind country, people, family, but what he offers to Abram is so much more than what he gives up. Take a look at Genesis 17. This is where God flushes out for Abram, his covenant more, what he's offering him. Genesis 17 verse 3, "Abram fell face down and God said to him, 'As for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram. Your name will be Abraham for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful. I will make nations of you and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you and I will be their God." Our church's name is Eczillic and I love our name because I need to be reminded every week that I'm not home yet, that I am an exile, that I am living for something so much bigger than I could ever imagine. I am living for something eternal that can never be taken away because my temptation every single day is to be consumed with living for now rather than eternity. My vision for my life is way too small and I clutch my identity with the Titus grip because I don't want a surrender to God. I don't want to struggle. I don't want to suffer. I don't want to lose but what I miss is that what he offers, the home he promises is incomparably greater than what I can imagine. This is what the Eczillic life is. It's not easy but it's so much better. And this is true for Abram. You know, he obeys God in faith here. He follows. He goes but very soon we see him losing faith and failing to trust in God. There's a famine and God said, "Go to the land I will show you but what does Abram do?" He leaves and he goes to Egypt. And in Egypt he's just crippled by anxiety and fear. His wife Sarah, I don't know if he's paranoid, she's like 65 but he's like, "Hey, everyone's going to think you're so beautiful, they're going to kill me and take you." Right? And then so he says, "Tell everyone you're my sister." What is Abram doing? He doesn't trust in God. He loses faith. He sins against God. And yet God patiently forms him. You know, in our passage, Genesis 12, Abram is 75 years old and he and Sarah, they don't have Isaac until Abram is a hundred. He waits for 25 years for God to deliver on his promise. 25 years. Does it feel right now like you're kind of stuck? Like God's not working? That God's not moving fast enough according to your timing? Try waiting 25 years. The thing that they wanted the most children, they couldn't have any. God said, "I promise, I'm going to give you a child. When? I'm 94." What is God doing with Abram during those 25 years? Abram is shaped and formed and molded by God through many trials and failures. If God had given Abram everything he promised right up front, he would not become the person he became. You know, if I won the lottery today, I might think, "Oh my God, God is blessing me with this wealth." But knowing me, knowing myself, I think that's a worse thing that can happen to me. The worse thing that can happen to me is God giving me an easy pain and struggle for life. If God gave me everything I wanted, when I wanted it, that wouldn't be a blessing. It would be a curse. God forms us very often through struggle and pain. If you are struggling right now, it's easy for you to think this is the curse of God. But know this, God loves you. He is forming you. This is not a curse. It is a blessing. We learn from failures and mistakes from waiting and longing we grow. Our church's vision statement is being fully formed in Christ to embody his head, heart, and hands. God is forming his church and his people. And that is the greatest blessing that you can receive right now to become more like Jesus. What if for this year? Instead of hoping for career advancement, relationship fulfillment, financial stability, physical, mental well-being, what if we ask God for this, [BLANK_AUDIO] more, make me more like Jesus. Transform deep in my character, my mind, my heart. How different would your day to day look like if that was your big goal for 2026? Now, how does God transform us? God doesn't transform us through behavior modification. He doesn't use fear, guilt or shame. You know what God uses to transform us? Grace. Grace. Did you notice that with Abram? God doesn't come to Abram and say, Abram, if you do this, this, this, this, and this, I will bless you. Here's the law. Here are the things I want you to obey. If you fulfill them, if you obey them, then I will bless you. No, when does God promise blessing to Abram up front? Before Abram has taken a single step towards the promised land, God promises in blessing. Abram has not done a single thing. He hasn't done anything to earn God's blessing. This is not transactional. It is entirely covenantal. Now, you may have heard of covenant before. God's covenant with Adam in the Garden of Eden. That was transactional. Right? God said to Adam, Adam, if you obey me about the tree, you will live. If you disobey me, you will die. So God said to Adam, if you obey, here's blessing. If you disobey, here's a curse. But God's covenant with Abraham is very different. It's not performance based at all. It's entirely grace based. No matter what Abram does, no matter how faithful or unfaithful he is, no matter how many times he makes the same mistake or sin again and again and again, God still promises blessing. There are no conditions of obedience for Abram. Again and again, God says this to Abram, I will. I will. I will. I will. He doesn't say you shall. You shall. You shall. He says, I will. Nothing is more powerful than grace to transform you. Next week we are starting a brand new sermon series on relational intelligence. For 12 weeks we're going to explore what the Bible says about relationships. And right here in Abram, we see that God's relationship with us, it's covenantal rather than transactional. Do you know what the difference between covenantal and transactional is? A transactional relationship is like the relationship that I have with my barber. My barber's name is Eric. We get along really well. We even text each other. We'll talk about our favorite whiskeys. We'll talk about where we want to travel. But a few weeks ago I went to get a haircut and I saw a sign next to Eric's chair and it said this, starting January 1st, 2026 the price is going to go up. And I knew as soon as I saw the sign that my relationship with Eric was over. Because in a transactional relationship, as long as I get what I want at a price that I'm willing to pay, I'm in. But the moment the cost becomes too high or the product that I receive is too low, I'm out. Like if you messed up my hair really bad, I would leave. Right? That's a transactional relationship. Now a commitment based covenantal relationship, that's like the relationship that I have with my family, with my kids. No matter how much I have to give for them, no matter how little I receive, I receive very little for my kids. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying. I'm there, dad. I'm not leaving. Why? Because I'm committed to them. You know, transactional relationships aren't that bad. Aren't all necessarily bad. We all need transactional relationships. I can't like covenantal commit myself to every person I meet. Right? We all need Eric's. There's nothing bad. There's nothing wrong with that. But here's where things get messed up. When relationships that should be commitment based become transactional, that's when they become dysfunctional, unhealthy, and toxic. Here are some examples of commitment based relationships and how they can become transactional. Maybe a romantic partnership that's just driven by performance. Right? You only get affection when you meet my needs. That becomes transactional where it should be commitment based. Or friendships, maybe that are just based on favors or convenience. You know that friend who just calls you and you know they just need something. Right? Or things just always operate according to their convenience or their schedules. Right? Maybe that happens. Here's one that I'm guilty of. Parent child dynamics centered on obedience or achievement. Maybe you've grown up in an immigrant family where the only time you saw your parents proud of you and happy was when you got good grades. Right? Parent child dynamics that are just based on obedience. That's transactional. Or work relationships. A lot of work relationships are naturally transactional. But we know the lines are blurred. Maybe there are some hidden emotional costs that go with that. These are just a few examples of relationships that can go become unhealthy when they become transactional. What are some signs that you're in a transactional relationship? Here's just a few. You feel appreciated only when you're useful. Emotional support feels conditional. Affection or intimacy comes with many expectations. You feel guilty saying no. The relationship feels like a constant negotiation. There's a lack of genuine vulnerability. You constantly track who owes what? That's a big one. Conflicts revolve around unmet deals. You fear losing value if you stop giving and you feel emotionally exhausted, not supported. I know even as I read through this list, we all thought of transactional relationships that we're in. But here's a thing. In our relationship with God, we don't have to feel a single one of these. There's not one moment where God is upset at us or disappointed at us or mad at us. Because of Christ, God never has a frown. He's never shaking his head. He's never distant. God is always welcoming. He's always smiling. You can never lose his favor. He's proud of you. He rejoices over you with singing the Bible says. He delights in you. And the more we dive deeper into a covenant relationship with God, the more our relationships with others will be transformed as well. It's going to be through grace. Here's what Paul trips says about healthy relationships for the new year. He says this, "If you want to experience your healthiest relationships in the new year, whether it's your marriage, with your children, extended family neighbors, friendships, or relationships in the body of Christ, healthy relationships are healthy because people in those relationships find joy in grace, cancelling debts. Yet, if you have lived with another fallen human for more than five minutes, you will know that forgiveness is not always attractive. Forgiveness is difficult and costly. It will push you to the borders of your faith. It will tempt you to fear and doubt. However, when forgiveness is granted, debts are canceled. The return is far greater than the cost." Cancelling debts, offering forgiveness, is the only way to live in a long-term relationship with another sinner. It's the only way to navigate through weaknesses and failures that will inevitably mark every relationship. It's the only way to deal with hurt and disappointment. It's the only way to protect your love, build trust, and regularly reinforce that trust. It's the only way to restore hope and confidence. If you're stuck in a relationship that's not healthy or not moving, the path forward is not to force or guilt or shame the other person into changing. It's extending grace. And the more we are transformed vertically by God's grace, the more our horizontal relationships will be transformed and renewed. My last point is mission. Simply put, Abrams, Abraham is blessed so that he could be a blessing to others. Abram is blessed so that he could be a blessing to others. Look at Genesis 12, too. God says this, "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. You will be a blessing." Do you see how that works? I will bless you. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. Whoever curses you, I will curse. All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. This is how the blessing of God works. It never ends with the person who blesses. But whoever God blesses is meant to be a conduit of blessing to others. You know, this world is obsessed with consolidating wealth and resources. Becoming the richest man in the world. And in the kingdom of God, blessing is meant to be channeled, not consolidated. This isn't just uniquely a Christian concept. If you've taken Econ 101, you know about circulation versus consolidation, don't you? Let me give you an example. If you spend $100 at a locally owned business, that money often stays in the community. The owner uses that money to pay his local employees, where they're going to go and spend it at the local grocery store that buys, produce from the local farmer. That's kind of how it works. Studies show that independent local businesses can recirculate up to three times more money locally than chain stores. But if you take that same $100 and you spend it at an online chain or an online giant, like Amazon, not nothing wrong with Amazon. A large portion of that money is immediately taken out of the community. And where does that money go? It goes to corporate headquarters. What does that money do? It sits or it's used for stock buybacks. It benefits distant shareholders, not the immediate community. Another example is this, one of the ways that economists measure a healthy economy, it's by measuring the velocity of money. What is that? The velocity of money is just how quickly, how fast money changes hands. So high velocity of money, it's an indicator of a thriving economy. While a low velocity, it shows a stagnant economy. And I say this because the economy of God's blessing works the same way. If God's blessing is not circulating, if you're just consolidating and holding on to God's blessing, then that's a stagnant unhealthy life. Do you remember that story, the parable that Jesus tells of the man who was forgiven, 10,000 talents? And then he refuses to forgive the man who owes him 100 denari. Let me just do a little bit of conversion. 10,000 talents is the equivalent of about $12 billion. So this man has been forgiven $12 billion and then he refuses to forgive a $12,000 debt. Here's what the king or the master says to the unforgiving servant in Matthew. Then his master summoned him and said to him, "You wicked servant. I forgive you all that debt because you pleaded with me and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you." And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also, my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. God's blessing in your life, it must be channeled out to this world. God says that all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. So God's big plan is to create a chain reaction of blessing that reverberates out to the whole world. And the beauty is that the more you invest God's blessing, the greater the return is going to be for you. And I don't mean if you invest $100 in offering your guaranteed $10,000 back. That's not what I'm talking about. But have you ever like volunteered? Have you ever gone on a mission trip? And maybe you come away, you end up being way more blessed than the people you actually served? Have you ever felt that? Imagine an entire life lived that way. Where you cherish and enjoy God's blessing and then you use it to bless others in mission. That is a life that's going to be full of joy and contentment and fulfillment. God calls us to leave country, people, family, but look at what He promises us. Mark chapter 10. Here's what Jesus says. "There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands. What is that? That's country, people, and family. For my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions that in the age to come eternal life." Our church's mission statement is inspiring thinkers to believe and believers to think. It's all about channeling God's blessing to others. So let's remember that we live our lives on mission. What a privilege it is to be God's agent of blessing to this world, to play a role in God's great drama of salvation. In this drama, it culminates in Jesus. You know, Jesus was the ultimate exile. He didn't go from earth and her hand to canine. He came from heaven to earth. And the reason that we sinners can get the covenant blessing of God is because on the cross Jesus bore the covenant curse. Jesus who knew no sin became sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So Jesus takes our covenant curse and he gives us his covenant blessings. Jesus was cursed to be a blessing so that we could be blessed to be a blessing. Let me say that one more time. So I want to encourage us in this new year to think deeply and critically about identity, formation and mission. Let us remember that God has called us to be exiles, trusting in him through struggles and wilderness to call and help others journey with us to our true home. God calls us, He forms us, He sends us. May this be a new year full of the blessings of God. Let me pray for us. God we thank you for your grace in our lives. We thank you that though we are sinners and we deserve only judgment and condemnation. God, you give us grace. Help us to go on mission and channel that grace to others. And may that return to us so much joy and blessing in this new year. Thank you. May we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.