Go Up Abram

Genesis 12: 1-9

English Standard Version Chapter 12

The Call of Abram

12 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And 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. 3 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.”

4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

Good Morning Church of God and what a glorious morning it is to be God’s people! Amen? Amen! We’ve been brought forth from the cold and have made it to our beautiful little church for another week of worshipping God the King! Hallelujah for that! For the past two weeks we talked about Noah and his faith before God. We talked about Noah’s immense faith and righteousness in the face of evil and the death of all creatures. Old Noah, as we remember planted a vineyard and lived out his elderly years contentedly. Because his son Ham dishonored Noah in his old age, God caused the descendants of Ham to be cut off from God’s promise of being the chosen people of the Lord. Ham’s people became the Canaanites and the Philistines, who would be a thorn and and evil in God’s presence for generations. Noah’s son Shem was the father of the Hebrew people, the Semites and he was righteous before God. One of the things the Canaanites did was build themselves a tower to reach the heavens. Starting in Genesis 11:1 we see that the Canaanites are bent on evil, making themselves a city fortified with bricks and a tower to reach the heavens so that everyone in the world would know that they were powerful and united as rulers of the earth. God confused them and gave them all different tongues and dialects until the Babelites scattered and abandoned their mighty fortified tower to reach God.

Shem’s descendents prospered in the Lord their God and He

blessed them. Seven generations after the flood was born Shem’s descendent Terrah who fathered Abram when he was 70 years of age.

Abram and Sarai:

The Lord’s Chosen-Genesis 12:1

Abram and His wife Sarai were from Ur of the Chaldeans,

which, if you have to put a place on it, is about 200 miles south of modern day Baghdad in Iraq. Old Terah took the family up from their and settled them in Haran, which was Canaan’s land. They prospered there and old Terah lived to be 205 years old. Here’s Abram, himself a spry, young 75 years of age and doing pretty well. He’s got flocks and herds and land and is blessed. His wife Sarai is considered handsome and they’ve done well and can look out on all they’ve accomplished and are greatly respected. They have no children, but they’ve been richly blessed in every other way. God came to 75 year-old Abram and told him to pack everything up, including all of their possessions and their household staff, and move away to the place God would reveal to them. Sounds like it makes sense, right? I mean, you get to be where you’re cruising into old age and retirement with your beloved wife. You’ve got everything you ever wanted except for children, and you can look out over all you’ve done and smile. Then, the Lord says to pack it up and go to a place you haven’t been and aren’t even sure where it is! To put this into perspective, this would be like God telling Pa Cartwright on the old Bonanza show to pack up Haas and Little Joe and Hop Sing and move from their ranch. It would be similar to God telling the J.R. Ewing on Dallas to pack up and go look for new oil wells in Oklahoma. I promise, I’ll find a more up to date example, but you get the picture: God is telling this man to close down the home of his golden retirement years and move to a foreign land. Like his ancestor, God-fearing Noah, Abram does what the Lord commands and moves his family and possessions. They make their way through Egypt and settle in the Negev, which is Hebrew for “the dry.” Abram and Sarai build a new life in the desert of what is now Southern Israel and fulfill God’s command for them.

Living in God’s Promises

In those first Nine verses of Genesis 12, we are introduced to Abram and we learn everything about his character that God wants us to know. We learn that God has called He and his family as His chosen people. We know that at every step, Abram is obedient to the Lord God and never questions God’s wisdom of His commands. Everybody else around Abram does, but not the patriarch. We know that Abram is humble, despite his wealth. At every stop, Abram gets off his animal and praises God, building God altars and offering sacrifices. And…we know that God has chosen Abram to bring forward His plan of salvation in those small first steps. When we sang in Sunday school as kids about father Abraham, that was no little song. “father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so lets all praise the Lord.” Abram fathered two earthly children but he was the father, the patriarch of the nation of Israel and through his story, the Lord our God could write the story of salvation in Jesus Christ. So, you see here in Genesis 12, we’ve turned the corner from the story of God’s creation of man and man’s vile and worthless corruption. Now, we begin the story of Salvation that culminates in the Lord Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection and the birth of the church.

What Did it Mean to Leave Haran?

Abram’s people had left the sands of Baghdad during his

early life and gone to settle in Canaan’s land. In that land of the Canaanites, they prospered. Their flocks grew and they lived a good and prosperous life as ranchers. Each morning, Abram could get up from his sleep and gaze upon his lovely wife and go survey all that was his, as far as the eye could see. He was 75 and he was grooming his nephew Lot to take over the family estate. Life was what a human would call perfect. In that time, God came and told Abram to get up and go and take the flocks and the family with him. This wasn’t an easy ask. They couldn’t get some livestock trailers and move everyone in a day’s operation. Abram would have to do serious work. Abram is obedient to the Lord and we’ll see that over and over again. He is a hero of faithfulness to God. Our God tells Abram that he will be the father of a great nation and Abram agrees, despite the fact that he looked upon his 75 year-old wife and knew that she was barren. Abram operated from that place that all people should: The Lord my God said this was true and I trust God with my life, so I will follow. Abram, Sarai, lot and their enormous contingent travel to the dusty Negev region. That is a journey of 750 miles on an animal and foot caravan and it is still 13 hours by car. God was not asking Abram and his family to do the simple. Leave your green grazing lands old man and take your people out 750 miles into the desert. Abram did as the Lord commanded. He left what he knew for what was known to the Lord his God.

What God Promised

God promises a lot in this passage and we know the Lord

our God is faithful. First, the Lord promises to show Abram where to go. Abram doesn’t know. He can’t google it. His donkey doesn’t have GPS. Nobody sent him and email of what he could expect. God told Abram to go and the patriarch went. We see this all through Abram’s life. When God gives him a promise, Abram does what is commanded. He doesn’t ask for long explanations. Abram isn’t holding out for a written contract. He’s not adding an addendum to God’s promises. God tells him to go and the old man goes. This passage is our first Scriptural example of God’s conversing with Abram. The elderly patriarch has been following God’s commands faithfully without ever even having a conversation that proves his existence.

Do you remember about two months back when we

talked about John the Baptist’s father, the priest Zechariah? What did the wise old priest ask the angel of the Lord first before putting any trust in God. Verse 18 of Luke 1 has the priest, the Lord’s appointed minister asking the angel “How will I know?” The answer should be as his elder Abram’s answer was: The Lord said it and it’s true. Abram never needed a show or a fireworks display, but simply went about worshipping the Lord His God and doing as God commanded. When we’re kids, we get into that habit of asking why. Sometimes, we’d make the mistake of asking our folks the “why?” question and they’d always answer: “Because I told you to.” Any further question usually resulted in a visit from one of the hand family-backhand, fronthand, paddling hand. Abram never asked God the great, human “why” question. He went about doing the Lord’s will because God was God and he was one of his people.

God promised a great nation would come from him and

that Abram’s name would be great among the generations. He didn’t build himself a statue, or write a play about himself. Abram did what the Lord God commanded and took his family and herds out into the desert. Contrast that with the descendants of Ham, the Canaanites. They wanted their name to be great among all the inhabitants of earth, so they built a monument to themselves where they could climb to the heavens and be like God, ruling over men. The Lord thwarted and confused them instead. When you look at the two stories you see who makes people great: God alone in all His glory, not our shabby attempts to dress ourselves up. What did Abram do when God told him he’d be father Abraham, father of many sons and famous among the nations? He built the Lord altars and went where his God told him to. Nowhere does it say he did anything to honor himself.

Three Lessons from the Story of Abram:

We can take a lot of things from the early story of

Abram and Sarai. I want to set down three points you can take with you into your life this week. Here is the first:

#1: God Creates from What we Can’t See:

This whole beginning of the story of Abram is a

reminder that God uses whatever he wants to create man’s destiny. He uses whatever he thinks is best to lead mankind toward salvation in His Name. I’m going to be honest, the more times I read the story of God’s promises to Abram in Genesis 12: 1-9, the more I admire and praise God and the more I see the righteousness of His servant Abram. Now, granted, like Noah and all servants of God, Abram had a tendency to screw up and sin. We’ll see that coming up. What we do know, however is that Abram belongs body and soul to the Lord our God and He never forsakes God. When we see God take Abram from the land of milk and honey and move him out into the desert, it doesn’t make any sense. One of my favorite songs is Billy Preston’s “Nothing from Nothing.” Nothing from Nothing leaves nothing....From a human perspective this seems going from a big something to a lot of nothing. God’s math isn’t human math, though. He’s creating Abram’s and the nation of Israel’s destiny and our salvation out of what looks like nothing to us humans. The point is to trust that God has a plan in mind even when we can’t see it.

One of the questions that I’ve been asked a lot lately as a chaplain is why people can’t see what God’s doing. They tell me He must have forgotten them and He must not be working because they aren’t getting what they want. I always gently remind them that they can only see life through a narrow lens. I tell them that they live life looking through a box. They see this much of life and no more. Their vision is clouded by sin. It’s clouded by the past. It’s clouded by their fear of the future. It’s clouded by their wants and wishes. God sees the whole picture. He sees all of life in the light of salvation. God is God and we’re near-sighted humans who won’t allow ourselves to be loved by God and won’t allow Him to work in us. Abram didn’t live like that. He walked through the narrow box of life, knowing that God was always in view, always on the other side.

Trust in God is trust in the creator and sustainer of

the universe. He doesn’t necessarily have to tell us how he’s going to work for good in our lives. He doesn’t owe us an explanation of the materials He’s about to use to fulfill the goal of salvation through Jesus and through our ministry. God’s just going to do it. He’s not a contractor who owes us an estimate and then fudges on the cost of materials and throws in a couple of extra lunch charges. He’s the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of the Jews, the God of the Gentiles, the God the church is founded on around the world. His Word through Scripture and deed is good and right and God uses whatever means He needs to accomplish His good will through our life and ministry of the Gospel of Christ. Abram knew this and he took up his family and followed the Lord’s command, going into a foreign land and starting over again in his old age. God would make the way and Abram would worship and adore Him.

#2: Abram was Patient.

Hebrews 6:13–15 “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.”

The author of the New Testament letter to the Jewish

Christians made a powerful point here: Abram obtained God’s promises by patience and reverent belief in God. Not always. He lied to those in authority, telling them that Sarai was his sister. In chapter 15, Abram grows impatient and cries to the Lord that he has no offspring. Sarai gave him over to her servant Hagar to have a baby. Abram had to again and again save impatient Lot who ran after riches and pleasure. Through it all, however, Abram patiently waited on the Lord his God, sacrificed to Him and did what God told him to do, ultimately obeying God and giving up his only son born to his wife because God told him to. The writer of Hebrews knew all of these things about Abram, but also knew that Abram was patient and humble and that if the Lord God said the promises would be fulfilled through him, then the promises would be fulfilled through him. Abram was patient knowing that God wouldn’t produce the generation that would cross into Israel during his lifetime. Abram was patient being what the Lord asked him to be: the first in the line of many who see their destiny fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus Christ.

There was a famous national radio DJ who recently

got sucked into a scam. He would talk on the air constantly about generational wealth. He often talked about strategies for building generational wealth, money for his generation and generations of his family to come down the line after him. He got impatient, however and went in with a scam artist who promised this kind of wealth. In the end, he and and hundreds of people got bilked out of millions of dollars. One of the many problems was that the radio host misunderstood the word generational. He wasn’t thinking of the word in the way God thinks of it. The radio host and his followers were looking at the wealth in terms of their own time and their own life right now and not so much down the road. In the case of Abram, everybody around him was doing the same thing. Let’s have a baby now with the most fertile of the servants. Lets get rich and drunk and entertained in Sodom and Gomorrah and not worry about tomorrow. Let’s settle into this land and not worry about the better tomorrow God’s got in store.

God had told Abram that his descendants would be

as numerous as the stars. That would be overwhelming for anyone, but he believed and was patient in the Lord. His wisdom was that of his God and he patiently lived his life knowing that providence would be in the generations to come if he was faithful to God. That should teach us a kind of Godly patience that is worth living with.

I have a habit of not flying off the handle in the

workplace and staying calm and fairly serene. One of my co-workers used to say “Man, you must have the patience of Job.” No, but I have the patience God gave me to wait on my savior Jesus Christ. That means not worrying about the small stuff. Kings and presidents come and go. News stories happen and then we move onto the next one. The economy goes up and down with the wind. Superbowl winners change and never seem to be the Lions. God is forever and is promises are unchanging. He is always faithful. Therefore, I will be patient knowing that the Lord my God has the master plan of salvation firmly in His hand. It may not happen in my generation, but I will wait patiently for His promises.

#3: God is Not and Oathbreaker.

Hebrews 6: 16-20

16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes han oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to ithe heirs of the promise jthe unchangeable character of his purpose, khe guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which lit is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope mset before us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into nthe inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone oas a forerunner on our behalf, phaving become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

The author of Hebrews again writes wisely. There is

nothing greater than an oath and God swore an unbreakable oath to Abram and his descendants. God would fulfill the plan of salvation through Abram and those who came after him as descendants. That oath was fulfilled in Jesus Christ who became our high priest before the Lord. The blood of that oath was fulfilled in the blood of the Son of God, high priest for always. God doesn’t make promises lightly. Over a thousand years between Abram and Jesus he fulfilled that Promise of salvation for mankind that we’d impatiently tried to grab for ourselves every which way and through every false God.

When we say God is our high priest, we mean that we

no longer have to go through a church priest to seek God and to confess our sins. We go to Jesus himself. We no longer have to burn sacrifices as Abram did at every stop, because our sacrifice is to fall on our knees before the Lord at all times. We are to be a blessing as Abram was with everybody he came into contact with and to know that God will deal harshly with those who persecute believers in His Holy name.

When you live in the promises of God and are

patiently awaiting Christ’s return, you are free to be a blessing to those who desperately need the Lord our God. When you believe that God will fulfill His oaths, just as He did by bringing a savior from the descendants of Abram, you can live a life that is full of service to other, love for them and peace in your heart. If the story of Abram throughout Genesis and as described in the Letter to the Hebrews look like one of a very calm, dignified man, that’s because it was. Abram was the Lord’s patient servant. He didn’t needs to go wild and run up and down the road, because he blessed all he came into contact with. He blessed them with patience and forbearance that only God can provide a man. When the Lord calls on you to be the father of a nation, the progenitor of a plan of salvation, your only job is to be patient and go where the Lord your God tells you to. Our only job is to wait on the Lord our God knowing that He’s given us the one true priest for all time, Jesus Christ and that we can be patient knowing all things are fulfilled through Jesus Christ.

Let us Pray: