The Call of Abram
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Genesis 12:1-9
Genesis 12:1-9
Sermon Intro:
This year (and every year) we embark once again in telling the Big Story of God and God’s People: Creation - Covenant - Jesus - Church - New Creation
We tell this story again and again, year by year, paying attention to how this Story intersects our own stories and invites us into a bigger story.
The Creation part of the story, leading into the Covenant begins with the primordal history… with Genesis 1-11…
Creation accounts, Adam & Eve
(things don’t go so well and chaos begins to cover the earth again…)
start again with Noah
(things don’t go so well, ie Babel)
and then in Genesis chapter 12, God starts again with Abram & Sarai
As Kevin comes to read for us, would you please stand?
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “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.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
4 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. 5 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.
6 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. 7 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.
8 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.
9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.
On the surface, this is a really straightforward text.
Right in the opening words, we hear “God called.”
And then vs 4 begins, “Abram went.”
God called and Abram went.
So, let’s skip right to how this might work in our own lives, shall we? If God tells you to go, go.
Let’s pray. ;)
Can we take a second look? What else do we see in this text? There is a call to go and Abram responds by going. But what else is in here?
Who was Abram?
Who called Abram?
And what was the call?
Who was Abram?
Well, we actually find that information in the end of chapter 11.
10 This is the account of Shem’s family line.
Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad.
26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.
27 This is the account of Terah’s family line.
Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.
31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.
32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.
We learn a few important things…
Abram is a descendant of Shem. One of Noah’s boys.
People lived a long time during this time period. Hundreds of years.
And while many of them seemed to become fathers in their 30s, Shem and Terah, Abram’s father, didn’t get started with fatherhood until they will much older…shem was 100 and Terah was 70.
So, we meet Abram who is 70 and childless. And with his family history, he may well still have hope for children.
But then we meet Sarai, Abram’s wife. And the text is careful to tell us something about her. In fact, she is the first woman in Scripture whose fertility status is discussed. v 30 says She was childless because she was not able to conceive.
So Abram is a man who still likely has many years to live, but without the hope of children. And, in this culture and time, without sons. Abram is facing an ending.
Other than that, we know that Abram had set out for Canaan from Ur of the Chaldeans (or modern day Urfa in Turkish Kurdestan) with his brother Nahor and his father after the death of his brother Haran. Lot, Haran’s son, Abram’s nephew, came along. But the family got stuck along the way and never made it to Canaan. The family dream of a new life in Canaan. Ended. Over.
It’s from Harran, that Abram would receive the call to carry on… a beginning from an ending?
Who called him?
Yahweh. The Living God.
The same God who made the heavens and the earth.
Who promised Noah never to cover the earth with water again.
Who scattered the people trying to build the tower at Babel and caused them to speak in ways that were unintelligible to one another.
Who now takes a risk on this guy Abram and his barren wife Sarai.
We know of no prior relationship. Other than that Abram could trace his lineage back to the ark. Back to Noah.
But here is what the promise shows us about who that God is…
A God who shows
A God who makes (who makes things happen!)
A God who blesses (and curses)
A God who can make someone a conduit of blessing to others (and not just to some, but to the whole world)
So here is a God who is narrowing blessing onto one man, one couple, one family.
Here is a risk-taking God.
What was the call?
three parts:
God promised guidance (to a man who is being called to leave his father and family and go to an unknown destination, "the land I will show you”
God promised a future - to make this childless couple into a great nation.
And God promised to make Abram a conduit of blessing (narrowing in order to widen)
you will be a blessing.
all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
This narrowing to one person, to one group, is not a blessing of one as opposed to blessing all, but blessing one, setting apart one on behalf of the others.
God said Go and Abram went.
But for us. I mean, have you heard God say “Go” recently? And if you did, did you go?
What does this look like for us? Does God still do this?
Do we really expect that God still does this?
Yes and no.
Matthew 28:16–20 (NIV)
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
God, the Living God, the same God that took a risk with Abram, that narrowed blessing to one in order to make him a conduit of blessing to the whole world, is still doing that. Still calling human beings to partner with the divine in carrying out God’s work in the world. Partnering in love, in grace and in justice.
And we are still called to be people who notice where Jesus is calling us to go… and to make disciples… to help one another follow Jesus and to help people encounter Jesus wherever it is that we are.
God still offers us guidance - showing us where to go
God still offers us a future that is better than what our circumstances indicate
God is still looking to bless the whole world… and will allow us to be conduits of that blessing - what a marvellous mystery!
And so, may God’s blessing continue to flow… and may we learn to see ourselves not as the people where the blessing lands, stops, ends. But as conduits of blessing… to the whole world.
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