Gen 11:10–12:3 — Abram’s Call from Babel to the New Jerusalem

The title of the sermon today is “Abram’s Call: From Babel to the New Jerusalem.” We come to this key point in the Genesis narrative, which is the transition from the primeval history to the patriarchal narratives. So Genesis 1 through 11 is referred to as the primeval history, it is ancient history, but then now we come to the patriarchal narratives, which begins in chapter 12. And continues to the end of the book of Genesis, the stories about Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the 12 sons of Jacob, and the formation of the nation of Israel. This is a key transitional point in the Genesis narrative.

And in fact, I have decided to take a break here at this point. This is going to be the last sermon for a bit on Genesis. And I am going to take a break. Actually, we are going to have two one-off sermons over the next two weeks. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and then Easter Sunday after that. But after Easter, I am going to depart from Genesis for a bit and preach through Paul’s, well not Paul’s, but someone that was associated with Paul, an epistle that is called the epistle to the Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews. And once we do that, then we will come back to Genesis and pick up in Genesis 12 and continue to the end of the book of Genesis.

But this is a key point, this is really the climax of the primeval history because now we are on the threshold of what God is doing with Abraham and his descendants. I call this Abram’s call from Babel to the New Jerusalem because we see that Abraham is called out of the land of Babylon and he is called to go into the land with his vision set upon what God is going to do there in the land. And it is not simply focused upon the earthly fulfillment in the land of Canaan, which will become later on the people of Israel living in the land, worshiping God in the temple. It is beyond that to the ultimate fulfillment in the new Jerusalem. The author of Hebrews that I just mentioned a minute ago, I am going to be preaching on. He says specifically that Abraham knew, Abraham believed that the promise that God was making him, when God called him out of the Mesopotamian region where Babel was and the Babylonian culture, when God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, into the land that he was being called to a heavenly inheritance, to a heavenly land, to the new Jerusalem, the city of God, the city whose builder and maker is God.

He was being called to something far greater than simply an earthly land, an earthly piece of real estate in the Middle East. Abraham’s call is a call out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. It is a call out of this world which is passing and which is dominated by idolatry and sin into the new kingdom of God, to God’s heavenly purpose which is fulfilled in Christ.

The Genealogy of Shem

Let us begin by looking at our text. We have our genealogy of Shem beginning in chapter 11 verse 10 down to verse 26. This genealogy of Shem Remember the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is focusing on that key son, Shem, the one whom God promised to be the God of Shem back in Genesis 9:26. In Noah’s oracle, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. So this genealogy picks up on that one son of Noah and traces the genealogy of the offspring of the woman from Shem down to Abraham. At this point in the narrative, his name is not yet Abraham. His name will be changed later. But at this point, his name is Abram.

This genealogy in Genesis 11, 10 through 26 connects back to the table of nations in chapter 10. Remember in chapter 10, we have the nations that descend from Noah, and it goes through the three sons. It begins with the sons of Japheth, then the sons of Ham, and then the sons of Shem. And so notice in Genesis 10 verse 21, we have the first few names that are going to be picked up again in our genealogy today.

But in 10.21, it says, to Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born. The sons of Shem, Elam, Ashur, Arpachshad, that is the key name, Arpachshad, Lud and Aram. Then it mentions verse 24, Arpachshad fathered Shelah, And Shelah fathered Eber. And then verse 25, to Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg, and the name of the other was Joktan. So our genealogy today mentions those same names. Verse 10, these are the generations of Shem.

When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad. And then Arpachshad had Shelah, and then Shelah had Eber. And then it does not mention the two sons of Eber. It only mentions the one son, Peleg, in verse 16. When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. And then Peleg carries the genealogy down to Terah and Abram. There was a branching that happened here.

Back in Genesis 10:25, Eber had two sons. The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided. The name Peleg sounds like The word for division, the word Peleg means divisions. For in his days the earth was divided and his brother’s name was Joktan. Joktan is the father of the Arabian tribes, but he is rejected.

And this is a common thing that we see throughout the Bible. We saw Cain and Abel. We saw that Cain was rejected. Cain was killed, so God raised up Seth. And the godly line then goes through Seth. Whereas the ungodly line, the offspring of the serpent, are separated off. We see it later on in the text, in Genesis, in the patriarchal narratives, where you have Jacob and Esau. Esau is rejected, but Jacob is the one through whom the line will go. And so we continually see this splitting off as the covenant line narrows down.

Our text then in Genesis 11, this genealogy of Shem, is showing us the godly line, is showing us the offspring of the woman. This genealogy in Genesis 11 actually links back to the earlier genealogy in Genesis chapter 5. Genesis 5 was a similar genealogy taking the godly line of Seth. The rejected line of Cain has been dealt with in the previous chapter in chapter 4. But then in chapter 5 we have the genealogy of Seth all the way down to Noah. And if you compare those two genealogies, the one in 5 and the one here in 11, we see that they are very similar in the way that they are worded.

They both mention the age at which the ancestor had children. It says he was so-and-so years old when he had the next person in line. And then it mentions that he lived so many years after. After he fathered the next descendant. He lived several hundred years afterwards.

That same way of forming and formulating the genealogy in Genesis 5 is repeated here in Genesis 11. And the purpose of that is to tie those two together, is to tie these two genealogies together. You could stitch them together because chapter 5 takes us from Seth down to Noah and then here in Genesis 11 it picks up with Noah’s son Shem and takes us down all the way to Abram. And so clearly these two genealogies are intended to be stitched together in our minds. And in fact, when we turn to the New Testament, and we read the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, these two genealogies are in fact stitched together perfectly.

And it matches word for word, name for name, from Seth, from Adam, and Seth, all the way down to Noah, and from Noah down to Abraham. The genealogy of Jesus given in the Gospel of Matthew does not go all the way back to Adam. It only goes back to Abraham. But this one here in Luke, in Luke chapter three, shows us the genealogy of Jesus from Seth all the way to Abraham and from Abraham to Christ. This is the genealogy of Jesus. At first you might be thinking, I am just reading some strange genealogy with names that I have never heard of. I do not know who Ra’u is. Kind of a funny name. I do not know who these guys are. And to us it feels like nothing.

The Faithfulness of God

But when you realize this is actually the ancestral line of Christ himself, then suddenly this text jumps out with meaning and significance. One of the main things that we see from this is that God is faithful, is he not? God is faithful to preserve his covenant community, to preserve this godly line that is the ancestry of the Messiah himself. These genealogies testify to God’s sovereign faithfulness in preserving this covenant community even in the midst of a world that is apostate, a world that is rejecting God. That is why the story of the Tower of Babel is given just before this genealogy. The story of the Tower of Babel shows us mankind rejecting God, seeking to build a tower to heaven, to make a name for himself, seeking to reach to the very top of the heavens, to reach to God himself, to reach God-like status and authority by his own efforts.

Of course, God puts a stop to it. He curtails this effort, but this effort is always lurking there within fallen humanity, and it crops up from time to time throughout the history of redemption, leading to one final climax at the end of history when the Antichrist seeks to defeat God’s people and to set himself up over all the earth. But God is restraining that impulse, that anti-God rebellion within mankind. He is restraining it in order to do what? In order to preserve a history that will allow for God to accomplish his redemptive purposes through the godly line, through Abraham and his offspring, ultimately leading to Christ and his work.

And so these genealogies are full of theological meaning and significance. Do not just dismiss them as just a bunch of names that you have never heard of. These genealogies are testifying to God’s sovereign faithfulness in preserving a covenant community within the city of man.

Surrounded by all these worldly powers. Surrounded by all these anti-God forces that break forth from time to time even though God restrains them until the appointed day at the end. God is preserving his people through the midst of all of the worldly powers around them. It was not easy for the covenant community to live in that relentlessly pagan environment. It was not easy at all.

In fact, interestingly, we are told later on in the Bible, in the book of Joshua, remember after Joshua brought the Israelites into the land, and he said, okay, I have given you the land, now be faithful to the Lord. In Joshua 24, in Joshua’s parting sermon, exhorting the people of God to put away the false gods and to worship Yahweh only. He says something very fascinating in Joshua 24, verse two. He says, long ago, our fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham, and of Nahor, and they served other gods. What a remarkable statement we have.

Terah, the father of Abraham, And Abraham’s brother, Nahor, served other gods. Now, that does not mean that they were completely pagan. It does not mean that Terah and the family that were being given here, this description of the family of Terah, his three sons, one of whom died, but then his son Lot and all of that, does not mean that this whole family now is completely intermixed with the pagan world and has become no different from paganism.

But it does suggest that in that pagan environment, even the covenant community had become somewhat entangled in idolatry. It must have been challenging to live in that world, to live in that area of Mesopotamia where these great powers would rise, the kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria, these kingdoms that are opposed to God’s people that later on will be the enemies of God’s people, that are characterized by hubris and by pride and arrogance and building these great massive cities and towers to heaven and seeking to make a name for themselves. Even though God had put an end to this one episode of this Tower of Babel outbreak, yet that spirit of man was still living in the world at that time. And it was still characterized by idolatry and the worship of false gods.

We actually know that in Ur, the city that Terah and Abram’s family came from, that it was a city that we have done archaeological excavations of it. It was a city that had one of those ziggurats that the Tower of Babel is describing. There were many of these ziggurats all throughout the Mesopotamian region at this time.

And they worshiped the moon god. And they also had family idols. Remember later on in the book of Genesis it talks about Jacob having his household gods. These are like little figurines of their little gods that they would keep within their household to honor the ancestors and to worship these false gods. Even the covenant community was being somewhat entangled in this to a degree.

And yet, the Lord never lets go. The Lord is faithful to his people. He preserves the godly line, even in the midst of this pagan environment in which they lived. And he is going to now call Abram out of that land and to bring him to a place where the true worship of God could once again be established in the land of Israel, in the promised land. God calls him out of the land of paganism to the land of promise, a land where God’s people will dwell in safety, and they will worship the Lord at Mount Zion. So these genealogies then are significant, and the most important thing to take away from that is God’s faithfulness. In spite of the unfaithfulness of the people of God, God is still faithful to his people. He preserves the godly line.

He preserves that lineage that is going to lead ultimately to Christ himself, the offspring of the woman that was promised back in Genesis 3:15.

The Generations of Terah

Now after the genealogy of Genesis 11:10 through 26, we have a transition now to focusing in upon Abraham and the Abrahamic promises that God is making to him. So this is in chapter 11 verse 27.

It begins with this heading, these are the generations of Terah. And the generations of Terah, that is the further developments that happen to this one key ancestor named Terah, who is the father of Abraham. Generations of Terah are now going to be described. And what continues on in the rest of the story, not just in this paragraph here, but continuing on into chapter 12 and following, is the generations of Terah. And at first you might think, should not it be called the generations of Abraham? Is not the focus now upon Abraham? Why mention Terah?

I think the reason is that it highlights that we are going to be continually in the narrative as we get into Genesis 12 and following, we are going to be noticing that God provides mothers, he provides wives for the patriarchs from this family, the family of Terah. Terah is like a patriarch, and he has a clan that is an extended family of sons and wives and a large extended clan, and it is from that clan that the matriarchs of Israel will come.

Sarah herself, Abram’s wife, Rebekah, the wife that was found for Isaac. Remember God or Abraham told his servant, I do not want you to find a wife from among the people of the Canaanites living in the land. I want you to go back up to Haran where my family of origin is. And I want you to find a wife from there. And so Rebecca was found to be the wife of Isaac. And then the same thing happened with Jacob. He went back to that same area and he found that God provided him with two wives, Leah and Rachel, from whom came the 12 tribes of Israel.

All of these matriarchs, all of these wives that God provided for the patriarchs are descendants of Terah. They are from this extended clan and family of Terah. And so that is why the text begins with this statement here, now these are the generations of Terah. And that heading there, these are the generations of, is covering the next several chapters concerning Abraham and Isaac and so on.

Although Terah and his family seem to have been somewhat compromised because of that passage in Joshua 24 that says that they served other gods, yet they are still part of the covenant community. And they are still, it is better to find wives from them than from the pagan Canaanites living in the land. And so again, we see God’s faithfulness to his people.

The Divine Call of Abram

But here, We now come to an interesting point, which is we hear about this call of God to Abraham. The call of God to Abraham while this family is still living in Ur, before they even get to God originally called Abram in Mesopotamia, in Ur, not in Haran. Now if you just read the text in a straightforward way, without keeping in mind that there is a helpful cross-reference in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, you might think that the call of God to Abraham, recorded in Genesis 12 verse one, go from your country, and so on, and I will bring you into the land, you might think that call came to Abram in Haran. But actually, we know from the book of Acts, in Stephen’s speech before the Sanhedrin as he is about to be martyred for the faith, Stephen tells us that the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.

It explicitly says that. It says explicitly before he lived in Haran. And then he went out from Ur of the Chaldeans and had a temporary stay in Haran. And then from Haran, God reissued that same call to him. And he said, do not stay there in Haran. You have to complete your journey. Come now into the land.

Where did Stephen, in his sermon in Acts 7, get this from? Where did he get this idea that the call to God, the call of God in Chapter 12, Verse 1, was actually given back in Mesopotamia before Haran? Well, he got it from the fact that in our text, there is a little clue to that. In our text, there is a clue that suggests that.

So it tells us in verse 31, Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, meaning Lot is Terah’s grandson, you have Terah, You have his three sons, one of whom is Abram, but also Haran is another one of the sons. Haran died in the presence of his father, Terah, back in Ur. So it says, Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, Haran is now dead, and Haran is his grandson, or Lot is his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram’s wife, and, look at this, they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. That is the key.

That little phrase right there. They went forth from Ur of the Chaldeans intending to go to the land of Canaan. Not intending to go to Haran. They did settle in Haran temporarily. But they were intending to go to the land of Canaan. How could that have been?

How could it have been that this family was intending to go to the land of Canaan unless God had already appeared to Abraham and said, I want you to go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And so Stephen is correct in carefully reading the text to realize that the call to Abraham happened earlier back in Ur of the Chaldeans, that is in Mesopotamia. If you look at a map, many of your Bibles will have a map at the very back of your Bible where it is titled The World of the Patriarchs. And it will show you the basic travels of this family from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran, and then from Haran down to the land of Israel, or at least Abraham and Lot’s travels from Haran to the land of Canaan.

It is like a triangle, the fertile crescent. You have the Persian Gulf down here, and you have the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris going up this way. And actually I am doing it kind of backwards for you guys to go like this. So you have the Gulf down here, and then you have the two rivers, and then you go up the two rivers to Haran, and then from Haran down to the land.

They cannot go across this way because it is desert. So they go up to Haran first, and then they go from Haran down to the place that God had ordained. Pretty long trip, hundreds and hundreds of miles. And it must have been a challenge for them to do this.

But it happened, God’s appearance to Abraham happened back in Mesopotamia, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Back in the land of the Tower of Babel, which is also called the land of Shinar. The same region from which all of these great powers will eventually come. In modern day terms, it would be the land of Iraq. That is where they came from originally.

But God appeared to Abraham and called him out of Babylon. God called him out of Babel in order to go into the land. Haran was simply a temporary stopping point. And although they had stopped there maybe for too long, God came and reiterated and reissued the command and the call, and Abraham obeyed the Lord and continued on from Haran down into the land.

The Radical Nature of the Call

Consider the radical nature of this call. Abraham is commanded to leave his country, to leave his kindred, to leave his father’s house, This is an amazing thing. He has to leave the comfort and security of everything that he knew in terms of his culture and language and family and the financial support and the resources of his own people. It reminds us, does it not, of the call of Jesus to the disciples where he called them to leave their nets, to leave their occupations as fishermen, to leave their father who was the one who was teaching them how to be fishermen, to leave all the investments they had made, and the nets, and the boats, and all of this whole career and life that they had set up for themselves.

He says, come, follow me. Leave your old way of life. Come and follow me. Renounce the old way of life and follow me, even though you do not really know what is to come. You do not really have a clear understanding of what the future holds. But you have to trust me and follow me out of the old way into the new.

Abraham’s call is just like our call, just like our call. The Lord calls us to leave the world, to forsake everything and to follow Christ, to renounce the old way of life and to live for him and to trust him, even though we do not fully see what is going to come next, but to trust him that he has a future for us, that he has a plan. And that future ultimately is the new creation. It is the new Jerusalem. It is something eternal and heavenly. Leaving this earthly world and living for heaven.

When God makes the call to Abraham, he also says to him, not only go out from your land, in the ESV it says from your country, but if you look at the footnote there, it says land. Why is that significant? Because he is saying go from your land to this new land. The old land in Mesopotamia that you were comfortable with, surrounded by paganism and idolatry, leave that land and now I am going to bring you into a new land, the land of promise, the land of Canaan.

And there in that land, 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. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Universal Blessing through the Offspring

That last statement there, in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed, is picked up a few chapters later in Genesis 22. After Abraham offers up his son Isaac. Well, nearly offers him, and then God intervenes. And the Lord says to Abraham, because you have done this, because you obeyed me by being willing to offer your son as a sacrifice to me, even though he is the one in whom all the promises rest, he is the promised offspring, so that is a pretty hard thing for him to do, to be willing to give that up to the Lord, to offer Isaac to the Lord. The Lord says, because you have done this, I am going to bless you, and he says the same line here that we just read in 12.3, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. He repeats that same line, but he alters it slightly to say this, and in your offspring, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

In your offspring. And we know, of course, what that is referring to. That is referring to Christ, the offspring of the woman that was promised back in Genesis 3, verse 15, immediately after Adam and Eve sinned. And plunge this world into that whole direction that is leading to this anti-God rebellion against God, God says, I am not going to let the world go down the drain. I am going to send the offspring of the woman, and he will defeat the serpent, and he will bring about God’s eternal purpose for creation. So in that promise then, in Genesis 12 verse 3, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, referring to the Gentiles, he is saying in your offspring. That is how God is going to bless the nations through Abraham. Not just through Abraham the man, but through Abraham who is the ancestor of Christ, the offspring who is promised, the offspring of the woman.

The Abrahamic promise then, here in our text, advances God’s purpose going all the way back to Genesis 3:15. The promise of becoming a great nation, then, is for the purpose of providing the vehicle through which the Messiah can come. That is what makes the people of Israel great.

It is that not they themselves are great. In fact, they themselves are, according to the Bible, they are one of the least of the nations. They are not that impressive in size. The territory that God is going to give them is that not massive. They are not like these great Babylonian kingdoms or the kingdom of Egypt. They do not have this great might and military prowess. They are a small and weak nation.

In themselves they are not great, but God is going to make them great. Why? Because they are the matrix out of which the Messiah is born. They are the people of God through whom the Messiah will be born into this world and be given to the world so that the nations might be blessed in him. That is what makes them great.

The Cosmic Temple Promise

And furthermore, there is another key element here, which is it is not only focusing upon the offspring, upon Christ himself, It is also focusing upon this promise of being taken out of the land of Babylon where the idolatry is happening and being brought into this special land where God is going to produce the opposite of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel is man’s sinful attempt to build a tower reaching to heaven in order to become God.

But God is going to instead build a tabernacle and then later a temple on Mount Zion, which is like a ziggurat. A ziggurat is like a mountain. An attempt to reach up to heaven. But he is going to build the true temple, the true ziggurat, the true way of reaching to the presence of God through the temple. And of course that temple focused in the heart of the land in Jerusalem is going to be a picture of the true reality, which is not a temple made of stone, but it is the reality of Christ himself and his church.

The Faith and Goal of the Call of Abram

What a glorious passage we have here. We have a key passage that is the transition from the primeval history to the patriarchal narratives, focusing in upon the call of Abraham. But all of the context leading up to that shows us that God is doing something great. He is fulfilling his purpose that he originally had for Adam in the garden. What are some things we can learn from this text? Abraham’s call has three qualities to it. First, it is divine origin.

This shows us that God is the one who takes the initiative. God is the one who appears. God is the one who comes to the family that is starting to veer off a little bit, compromised with the idolatrous world around them. But God comes. God intervenes. God reveals himself. This is the grace of God.

The call to Abraham originates in God’s grace in reaching down and also in preserving the covenant community that was in danger of being snuffed out by syncretism. This reality of God himself intervening, coming, and calling Abraham, points us ultimately to the way in which Christ himself, who is the ultimate offspring in view in this whole genealogy, that he himself comes into this world from the outside, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might become a man, assuming our nature to himself, so that in that nature, he might suffer and endure the wrath of God. For that we deserved and that he might obey God perfectly for us and then be raised again from the dead to give us justification and eternal life.”

Abraham’s call is like a little precursor, a little foretaste of what is going to happen later with the coming of Christ into this world and how he then calls us to be his disciples, calls us to leave our Father’s house and to follow him. The second point is that Abraham’s call has a divine origin, but the second point is that it requires a response.

It requires Abraham to leave the comfort and security of what he knows and to step out in faith and obedience to the Lord. To do something risky, to do something precarious, but to do it trusting God that He knows what He is doing, trusting God that He has a purpose and a plan. The author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11 makes this clear. He says, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

He obeyed the Lord, trusting the Lord that he knew what he was doing, that God had a purpose and a plan, that God who had been faithful all these years to preserve the covenant community through this genealogy, that this same God who had appeared to him and said, go out from the land that you are comfortable with to this new land that I will show you, that this glorious God who is the creator of heaven and earth, who appeared to him in glory and made promises to him, this God can be trusted. And that he has a purpose and a plan, and that he will sustain Abraham and his family, even if they do not know where they are going to live and where their next meal is going to come from, and they are not sure how it is all going to work out, but they can trust the Lord.

That is the essence of faith. This is the response that God requires of us, is to trust him. That is the essence of the first commandment, is not trusting in ourselves, not trusting in any creature, but trusting in God. And trusting in His promise that He has revealed to us in His Word. And then the third quality is, Abraham’s call has a divine origin in God’s own grace. It has a required response of faith and trust in the Lord. But the third point is that it also has a forward look to it, does it not? It is a forward look.

Abraham is now set on this pilgrimage where he is looking forward to something great. He may not fully understand exactly what God means when He says, I am going to make your name great, and I am going to make you into a great nation, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. He may not fully understand the way we do now, looking back upon it, and we see the fulfillment in Christ. But he understands something is great. He understands that there is an eschatological goal here. He understands that God is doing something wonderful and marvelous, something spiritual and heavenly, something that is completely different from the pagan world that he used to be a part of.

So there is the forward look of Abraham’s call, looking forward to the new Jerusalem, which is the counterpart. It is the spiritual, divine counterpart to the city of man and the tower of Babel. God says, leave that old city and that old tower and come to the new Jerusalem, to the land that I will show you, to the land that I will give to you, where true worship will one day be established on the true mountain of God. In Hebrews 11, verse 10, we are told that Abraham was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

It is a remarkable thing. He was not just looking forward to an earthly land and an earthly city and an earthly temple. He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. He was looking forward to the New Jerusalem.

He was looking forward all the way to Revelation 21 and 22 when they saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God as a bride prepared for her husband. God gave the earthly types, the earthly land and the temple, as almost like sacraments through which he could look beyond them to that to which they pointed, to the ultimate eschatological hope that God had set before him.

Let us follow Abraham. Let us have the same mindset of Abraham, of trusting in God’s promises, not being conformed to this world and its way of thinking, but being transformed by the renewal of our mind as we set our minds on and look forward to that heavenly city that God has prepared for his people.