Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Genesis: 11:27-12:9

Theme: What God’s calling of Abram reveals about our calling.

Date: 09/18/2022 File name: Patriarch_Lessons_01.wpd ID Number: 57

The first Patriarch we’re going to look at is Abraham.

Abraham is a pretty important guy.

As we sit here this morning 57% of the world’s population look to Abraham as their father in the faith.

That includes the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, 1.8 billion Muslims and 15 million Jews.

You cannot understand world civilization if you don’t understand this man’s story.

By the way, at this point in his story his name is not yet Abraham.

It’s Abram.

Abram means father, but Abraham means father of a multitude.

He will never live to see that multitude, but they came to be, and that’s part of the story.

In Genesis 12 God calls a man who, to the earthly eye, was as unqualified as anyone could be to achieve the things God said would happen through him.

He calls this man out of his home and makes a promise to him that would change the world forever.

Abram’s life reveals the truism that God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

One of the most amazing aspects of God’s relationship with mankind is that He uses imperfect people to accomplish his eternally perfect will.

God is not interested in using people who think they have it all together, but rather is interested in using people that He can transform for his glory.

Such is the story of Abram in Genesis 12.

Over the next seven weeks we are going to spend some time with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

We collectively know these men as “The Patriarchs”.

They are the progenitors of the Jewish people and their lives provide us some rich practical lessons about life and God’s involvement in our lives.

In the passage before us Moses, the author of Genesis, is writing to the nation of Israel to explain to them where they came from, how God formed them, and how God expects them to live.

[Read Genesis 11:27-12:9]

The Bible says that Terah, Abram’s father had three sons: Nahor, Haran, and Abram.

One of those sons, Haran, dies while Terah is still alive.

And to this point the family is living in a city called Ur.

But after Haran dies, Terah take his family, leaves Ur, and eventually settles in a city named Haran (not to be confused with his son of the same name.)

Scripture then says that Terah died at the age of 205.

That is where we pick up the story in Genesis 12:1.

I. GOD CALLED ABRAM OUT ...

1. before God can bless him, and therefore bless the nations of the world, He has to get Abram out of the idolatrous religious mess and cultural influence he is immersed in and this means getting Abram out from his country, out from his kindred, and out from his father’s house

A. GET OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY ... TO A LAND I WILL SHOW YOU

1. Abram’s country was the center of civilization at that time

a. his ultimate destination, Canaan, had nothing to offer from the standpoint of culture or standard of living to attract anyone away from Ur

2. there is no place outside of the nation of Sumer that has anything comparable to offer Abram and his family

a.

God is calling Abram to go to a place where nobody knows his name, and they’re probably not glad he came

b. anyone who has traveled outside of their own nation, knows what it feels like to be an outsider

1) everything about you — your dress, your dialect, your vocabulary, your mannerisms — all scream, “I’m not from here!”

2) and who wants that?

— who wants to be a stranger in a strange place?

3. if he is going to be obedient to God, however, Abram has got to leave a thriving city, a thriving culture, a thriving economy in a thriving nation

a. by the time of our story, Abram and his immediate family are living in the city of Haran

1) Abram’s father, Terah, had moved the family there years before

2) like the great city of Ur, Haran was a large walled city that sat on major East/West and North/South trade routes

3) it was a prosperous city that had much to offer anyone with a little ambition

4) Gen. 12:5 implies that Abram had done well in the city

b.

ancient Sumer was at the peak of its cultural and political splendor during Abram's time

1) it had a high level of literacy, fine cities, highly developed arts, well-established law codes and legal systems, a highly developed religious system, and for the day, technology that surpassed the surrounding nations

2) in other words, they were a sophisticated and cultured society

c.

God has commanded Abram to leave one of the greatest cities in the world, in the most advanced culture of its day, and go to some place he's never seen, among a people he does not know

ILLUS.

Imagine God speaking to a 75-year-old, sophisticated, throughly secularized, prosperous, life-long resident of New York City and saying, “Get up and go to central Wyoming, where I have something great planned for your descendants.”

1) you can understand the incredulity

4. the country of Sumer is his culture, and he got to get out from among it

B. GET OUT FROM YOUR KINDRED ... I WILL MAKE YOU A GREAT NATION

1. according to our text, Abram immigrates to Canaan with small band of people

“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.”

(Genesis 12:1, ESV)

“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,” (Genesis 12:4–5, ESV)

a. they’re there for fifteen years, and it’s going to take the death of his father and the calling from God to get Abram moving to where he needs to be

2. we don’t know how large Abram’s extended family was by this time, but he’s got a brother and all his brother’s family also living in Haran

a. but kindred in this passage means more than one’s immediate family — it’s a reference to the entire society of people he resides among

b. the people of Sumer are his kindred, and he got to get out from among them

3. Abram is 75 years old and childless when he finally leaves his country and his kindred

C. GET OUT FROM YOUR FATHER’S HOUSE ... IN YOU ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED

1. we know Abram best from “this side” of his encounter with God

a. from other places in the Scriptures we pick up bits-n’-pieces of his life prior to his calling

2. one of the things we learn is that he was an idolater coming from a family of idolaters

a. in Joshua 24, Joshua is speaking to the nation of Israel and he says: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many.’”

b. the man we know as Abraham, then known as Abram, was entrenched in polytheism when he heard this call from God

ILLUS.

In the ancient city of Haran, where Abram was living, there was a giant temple complex dedicated to the Chaldean moon god Su'en who was the city’s chief god.

But there were other gods and goddesses.

There was Anu — father and ruler of all the other gods.

There Ea — son of Anu, husband of the goddess Damkina, and father of Marduk — god of wisdom, arts, and crafts.

There was also Ishtar, goddess of love and war.

There were many others.

1) the gods of Babylon were thought to be capricious and whimsical, capable of either good or evil

2) the gods of Babylon also had the same sort of problems and frustrations that human beings had, but on a more cosmic scale

3) like every nation around them, knowledge of the One True God had been lost

c. Jewish tradition has an interesting outlook on Abram’s idolatry

ILLUS.

The Talmud, which consists of century’s old Rabbinic commentary, teachings and opinions on the Jewish Scriptures and Jewish life and which is over 6,000 pages in length, tells how Abram, as a young child, realized that idol worship was foolishness.

His father Terah was supposedly a shop owner who made and sold idols in the city of Haran.

One day when he was asked to watch the store, Abram took out a hammer and smashed all the idols — except for the largest one.

His father came home and demanded to know what happened.

Abram replied that the idols had gotten into a fight and the biggest idol won.

The Talmud teaches that his father was angry but understood that Abram had discovered the truth of monotheism.

1) it’s a nice story, but Scripture tells us that Abram was as thoroughly idolatrous as the rest of his family up until the time he encounters God which was well into his adulthood

3. Abram’s family is as far from worshiping the true God as you can get

a. therefore, before God can bless him, and therefore bless the nations of the world, he has to get Abram out of the idolatrous religious mess and culture influence he is immersed in and this means getting Abram out from his country, out from his kindred, and out from his father’s house

II.

GOD CALLED ABRAM WHEN HE HAD NOTHING TO OFFER

1. listen to the promise that God makes to Abram, then listen to Abram’s life circumstances