The Gracious Call of God - Pastor Tom Loghry
To kick off our latest sermon series on the life of Abraham, Pastor Tom discusses the background of Abram and the incredible promises made to him by God in Genesis 12:1-3.
Good morning.
The Lord had said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's house, your father's household, to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, 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. Genesis 12, 1 through 3. Thanks be to God.
I never had to earn my parents love. They just loved me. The few chores I reluctantly did for them couldn't repay everything they gladly gave me. Food, clothes, home. education, and far too many other things to list. They just gave me all these things out of love. They gave their very selves to me out of love.
Now, unfortunately, not everyone has had good parents. And I'm sorry for that. But we all know how parents are supposed to be. Parents are supposed to love their children like that. Selflessly. I want you to think about that love. Think about that love. And now understand that God loves you in just that kind of way.
God loves humanity. In that kind of way. He wants to give us good things. He especially wants to give us himself. This love is all the more surprising since humanity has rebelled against God from the beginning. Adam and Eve rejected God because they wanted to be gods themselves. God let them have their life without him.
And that is a life marked with hardship that ends in death. Rather than turning back to God, their children doubled down in their rebellion, as did their children, and their children's children, and so on, down to us. Eventually, God brought judgment in the flood, destroying humanity, except for Noah and his family, because he was found faithful.
But the same root of sin was present even in them. And the same corruption sprouted after the flood. At Babel, the people thought they could manipulate God by building a tower to bring the divine down to them as they pleased. God obliterated their foolish plans by confusing their language. sending them in all directions across the earth.
We know all this because God inspired the prophet Moses to record a book of origins. It's the book called Genesis. Now, most people think of Adam and Eve when they think of Genesis. But the original couple leave the stage as quickly as they enter it. Most of Genesis is dedicated to the origins of Israel.
We see this turn from human origins to the origins of Israel, beginning in Genesis 11 and continuing into chapter 12, as Moses narrows our focus on the man named Abram. Who would later become Abraham. I'm going to invite you to open your Bibles to Genesis 11. Because as we go through this series, I'm not going to be putting every verse up on the screen.
There's just so much to take in. So some things I'm going to be summarizing. We're first going to look at Genesis 11. And we're going to be looking at verses 10 through... 32, just to start.
I want you to look at the text, kind of take it in. What you have here is a genealogy. It's the account of Shem's family line. So, Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Abram comes from the line of Shem. And Moses goes down and enlists. All the sons of Shem. And it's interesting to note some things as we look at the text.
We notice how old people lived back then. Shem lived 500 years. See, Arpachshad lived 403 years. Shelah lived 403 years. Eber lived 430 years. Peleg lived 209 years. Reu lived 207 years. You notice, though, as you're going along, the number continues to decline, which is a sign of the deterioration of the human condition.
Human beings were created for eternity, to live forever with God. But after the Fall, they enter into this decline until... We're all familiar with our lifespans today. I don't think there's any recent records of anyone living out 120 years. So it's interesting to see that decay, and it'd be really interesting if you were a scientist to look at the genetic mutation, I'm sure, that time that caused that loss of longevity.
There's something else that you should notice as well, which is that these men were fathers at very old ages. It says in verse 10 that Shem became a father at 100 years old. Became the father, our fact said. And then, when you get down to Terah, who is Abram's father, it says that he first became a father at the age of 70.
And then, when we go to the next chapter, and we see that, Terah had died, well, that's included in this chapter, but we see that Abram left at that time. If we do a little bit of math, we can figure out that he was probably around 135 when Noah, when, Abram was born. So I want you to just tuck that away in your mind, because if you're familiar with the story of Abram and Sarai, Abraham and Sarah, you know, they have some issues with giving birth to children, and it relates to that old age.
But there's obviously some things here that are foreign to our present experience of aging. Now, Terah's family was from this area called the Ur of the Chaldeans. I've got a map up here. You'll see Ur down here. It's in the area of Kuwait. , However, there's some commentators who doubt whether that's the actual location of where they were from just because it says in the text that Terah intended to take his family to Canaan.
But they ended up stopping at Haran. But if you notice, Haran is up here. Canaan is down here. Seems like a curious track to take. Now maybe there's some explanation for that. So, all that to say, they're not really sure if it's not that Ur. They don't really know where the other Ur is. It's maybe been supposed, maybe it was further up north.
But in any case, that's where his family's from. They're living in the era of like 2100 B. C., 1800 B. C., around that ballpark. And, so they left, though, Ur, and they went to Huran, on the way to Canaan. Now, we don't know for certain why they were going to Canaan. Some commentators suppose that God had actually called
Moses, I mean, not Moses, Abram, to Canaan. And that Terah was like, yeah, let's do that. But his head of household is kind of labeled as his initiative. Maybe that's the case. Maybe he was going to Canaan for other reasons other than the call of God. But in any case, on their way there, they do stop and settle in Haran.
Now, the thing that's really interesting about Haran is that. If they're coming from Ur, both Haran and Ur share the same, God of their city. Something to understand about the ancient world is that gods were territorial. So when we think about God, we think of God as being very transcendent. Above the earth, you wouldn't limit God to a particular territory.
That's not how people thought of the divine back then. Each territory had its own god. And so very significantly, when two nations went to war with each other, it was not only those people who were warring with one another, it was the gods who were warring with each other. Now that plays significant, that has significant meaning later on when you have the Isreailtes going into the land of Canaan and overcoming the Canaanites.
So each city has its own God. Now, the God of Ur and the God of Haran. These false, the false God of these cities is a God known as sin, which I know that sounds a little ironic. That's just the pronunciation of his called sin or otherwise known as Nana. I think that's in the Sumerian language is pronounced as nana.
I know, I know, and that sounds funny too, Sin and Nana. Now, what adds some interest here as well is when we look at the names of the women here, when we look at the name of Sarai and Milka, we find that these are drawn from pagan goddesses. So, the name Milka comes from Milkatu. That's the title of Ishtar, who's the daughter of the moon god.
And Sarai, otherwise known as Shiratu, was the moon god's consort. Basically, his queen. Now I mention all this just to demonstrate the context that Abram is being called out of. It's not as though he started off monotheistic, believing in only one god. He was like everyone else around him. Him and Sarai believed in the gods.
She was named after a goddess. There's something particularly ironic, though, about, Sarai's association with this god, the fact that she had this name of the consort of this moon god, because the moon god was supposed to promote fertility. And as we see here in the text, Sarai was unable to conceive. Now, when you, when people are struggling with infertility today, you know, that's obviously a very painful experience for anyone to go through.
And I would say it was even all the more painful back then because, bearing children was seen as all important. And so to not have children would be to be perceived as being cursed by the gods basically. And so that's the conditions that we have here. Pagan context, Sarai, named after this goddess of the moon god, was unable to bear kids. Doesn't look great for the continuation of this, of this line of Shem if she's not able to conceive. And we'll continue to pick this up as we go forward in the story. Now, Terah dies in Haran. He lived 205 years. And, seemingly, after his father's passing, God comes to Abram with a command and a set of promises. And we've already heard this, this read. Charlie read that for us. The first three verses of Genesis 12. God tells Abram, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. Right out the gate, God is calling Abram to something absolutely radical.
Because when he's calling Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father's household, he's basically calling him to leave all security behind. You know, nowadays, people are, you know, people are very mobile. They can move away from the place that they grew up, and they're totally fine. We have automobiles, but in this time, they didn't have those sorts of advantages.
Your security network was your family. And to leave your family was to put yourself at some peril. You also have to remember, too, that by leaving his country, by leaving his father's household, which each household even had their own sets of gods, what God is calling Abram to do is leave these other gods behind.
So, presumably, Abram had been depending on these other gods for his security, for his protection, for his well being. He'd probably been hoping that these other gods might make it able so that Sarai could conceive. But God's saying, leave all of that behind and enter into the unknown. Which... That the writer of Hebrews says that's exactly what Abram was doing.
He didn't know exactly where he was going. The fact that Abraham, Abram responds positively to this and actually does in fact leave is a bit of a report I think on his assessment of his securities in life. That as much security as his family might seem to provide, as much as these false gods might seem to provide some sort of security, he renders the assessment that, in fact, they offer him no real hope.
They offer him no real security. They are offering him just a false sense of security. It's almost like taking tent pegs and putting them into mud. It looks nice, but they won't hold firm. It seems that Abram's at the point where he recognizes that all the things that he surrounded him with, himself with, can't uphold him.
God calls Abram to leave everything he's known behind in order to receive a set of promises. Now what's really interesting about this is that we're given no indication that Abram had done anything to deserve these promises. God just simply came to him and offered them to him as generous gifts out of pure love.
He promises Abram that when he goes to the land that he will show him, that he'll make a great nation out of him. And by that means, he's not talking about Abram, like, forging political alliances and establishing democracy and stuff like that. What he's talking about is that you're going to have lots of kids.
You're going to become your own people. Very striking promise when your wife isn't able to conceive.
Along with that, he says in verse 2 that, I will make your name great. And this is striking because, When we go just the chapter before, in Genesis 11: 4, we see that that was part of the motivation behind the construction of the Tower of Babel. The people at that time said, Come, let's build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the earth. So again, you're getting a sense of the people wanting to stay together for the sake of security so that they can make themselves a great people. There's not anything necessarily wrong with wanting some security and all of that. There's not even anything wrong with someone's name becoming great.
But what's really interesting here is that God doesn't call Abraham to go and make his own name great. He promises him that he will make his name great. He's not calling Abraham to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He's saying, I will do this for you. Don't worry about this. It will be given. He says that Abraham's gonna be blessed.
He's gonna be called the blessed man. He says, you will be a blessing, and in turn, those who bless him will be blessed because they blessed Abram, and those who curse him will be cursed because they cursed Abram. But ultimately, kind of the terminus of all this is found at the end of verse three. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Incredible promises that seem unreal. I would think if you're in Abram's position, not a great household, no kids, seemingly no future, and yet God's promising him that somehow the whole world's going to be blessed through him.
What God's really doing here is showing Abram a vision of his intent to bless the whole world. Beginning with him. So, and this is kind of interesting when we think about the Hebrew Scriptures. Because when you read the Hebrew Scriptures, you would think that, well, maybe this is just going to be all about how God's only going to bless the Israelites.
As though it's, maybe they just cooked up some propaganda about how God loves them best and whatever. That's not what we see. From the very beginning, we see that, yes, God does start with the man Abram. But God's scope... is aimed at including the whole world. God intends to bless the whole world. And we see this continued on later in Scripture.
It's not as though this is an anomaly. In Isaiah 56: 6 -8, the prophet Isaiah says this, And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant. These I'll bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and, and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. The sovereign Lord declares he who gathers the exiles of Israel. I'll gather still others to them besides those.
Yes, Israel did not live up to the law that God gave them. But God's turning towards the Gentiles was not a plan B. As though, like, okay, this didn't pan out with the Jews, so now I've got to expand the people I'm working with. No, before it was already played out that the Jews would fail to live up to God's command, God was always intending to include all people in this blessing.
It was God's intent from the beginning to redeem all of mankind. Not just the Jewish people. It wasn't just intending to save Abram. Abram is just the start. Peter testifies to this in Acts three verses 25 through 26, and he's speaking up at the Temple Mount. He says, and you're heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers, he said to Abraham, through your offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed. When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. And so we see here through Peter's testimony, how God holds both things hand in hand, His covenant faithfulness to the people of Israel, by the fact that the Son of God was born a Jewish man.
And He came to the Jews first. Because God is a faithful God, even when we are unfaithful. But yet, in that same passage, Peter's testifying to the fact that Jesus has been given in order that the whole world would be blessed. And of course, Jesus, because he is a Jew, he is a literal son of Abraham. And this is how God is working out his plan to bless the whole world.
It begins with Abraham, it culminates in Jesus, and it works now through us because we are now considered children of Abraham by faith. This is what Paul testifies in Galatians 3, verses 7 through 9. Understand then that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham.
All nations will be blessed through you. So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. So as you believe in Jesus Christ, through whom all blessings flow, you too share in the blessing promised to Abraham. And in turn, as children of Abraham, we are blessings to the world. We are the salt of the earth. We are the light in the darkness, just as Jesus said. Abraham's faith begins when he takes that first step toward Canaan. Towards a future he has been promised. But which he cannot see. It's a move that requires him to be all in. In verses 4 through 6 in Genesis 12, we read, 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 Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan. And they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Morah at Shechem.
At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. So, in obedience to God's command, Abram does pull up everything. He leaves everything, everything he's known, his country, his father's household, all of that behind. He takes all of his belongings with him, and he takes his nephew Lot. Now the reason why he takes Lot, seems, Lot is probably looking for some new opportunities in life because his father had died.
And so he takes his nephew Lot with him and they travel to Canaan. Now from Haran, I think the map's next, from Haran down to Canaan, that's about, 500 miles. It's a long journey to take on foot. You don't just do that willy nilly. It's a real step of faith. It would take, if you're going at a pace of, I think, about 20 miles a day, which is feasible for those people at that time, you're looking at close to a month's journey.
When they arrive in Canaan, it says that they arrive, that Abram arrives at this place called Shechem. At the site of this great tree, called the Great Tree of Morah. And I've got a picture of a tree. That, that's a picture of a tree in Israel. It's a terebinth tree. It's very possible that this was a terebinth tree.
And, you kind of read that and you're like, Okay, what's the big deal with the tree? And as you read through the Old Testament, you'll see trees come up quite frequently. And their significance is that they're very often cultic sites. There are sites where people would go to try to get in touch with the divine.
They viewed them as oracles of sorts. And if you want to get into like the mindset, the whole reason, part of the mindset is, is well, a tree grows out of the ground, it reaches towards the heavens. And so in some way, it seems that they thought that they could have a connection that way. And we've all seen trees.
A really big tree is impressive. And, and so, this tree had gained kind of this, significance for the people of that land, which was the Canaanites. It says there in verse 6 that at that time the Canaanites were in the land. God has promised Abram that, go to the land I'm going to show you. I'm going to give that land to you.
Abram goes. He shows up. He's at this tree. Which isn't a tree meant to connect with God. It's meant to connect with the false gods. And there's all these Canaanites living around him. And God tells him, This is it. This is the place. And Abram's like, uh, You can imagine him thinking like, Well, how is this going to work?
On the surface, it seems like an impossibility. It's in this seemingly impossible place where God comes to Abram again. In verse 7 we read, The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring, I will give this land. So he like doubles down on it. I will give this land to your offspring. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
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. Then Abram set out, and continued toward the Negev. So in telling Abram that God's, that he's going to give this land to his offspring, what God is telling him is that, yeah, you don't see this right now, how this is gonna come to pass, because all these Cainites are living in the land. But I promise you, your offspring will inherit this land. He's calling Abraham to trust him beyond what he can see, which is the very nature of faith. It's trusting God beyond what we can see. Now, it doesn't mean that faith is blind. We can be given reasons to have confidence in God and As we go along in the story of Abraham, God gives him more and more reasons why he should have faith in him.
But faith doesn't require us to go beyond what we can see. We're not just trusting in our own understanding. Based on what Abram could assess here, it just seems like there's no hope. But he trusts in the God who has made these promises. And so he builds an altar. He worships God in that place. And then it says, between Bethel and Ai, he makes another altar.
And what these altars are really indicating for us is Abram's continued faith. They're markers of his faith in the land. That, yes, I know things aren't, don't seem to be shaping up right now for me to inherit this land, but I believe God at his word. And then it says that he headed into the desert. Now you can go to the next slide, it's got a map.
That's a picture of the Negev Desert. Pretty daunting terrain to head into. Because you would have to understand that the land of Canaan was very lush. And if you go over there today, the, the, the topography is kind of varied. In some places it does look like this. But, especially when you're in Galilee, it's very lush, very green.
It's very much like this area. So imagine leaving this, and then you're going to this. Doesn't look so great. You can go to the next slide. Basically, this is going, the Negev Desert is kind of going down to like the Sinai Peninsula. Yeah, there we are. So it's like going down here, you can see Negev, and it's going towards Egypt.
So that's where Abram is going with his family. And as we'll find in the following verses, which we're not going to get into today, the reason for that was that there was a famine ongoing. So, you take all these things together, like, there's Canaanites in the land, these other cultic practices, There's a famine now.
Things don't seem to be shaping up. But we don't, we aren't given any indication here that Abram has despaired. That he's lost faith. Now, as we go along, we'll see points where Abram does stumble. But we don't find that here. God doesn't rebuke him for leaving the land. God has promised him the land. But the future is not the present.
There are strong parallels for us today as Christians. We are the children of Abraham by faith. We believed God when he came to us. When the Word became flesh. Because God so loved the world. Even though we didn't deserve that love. And so we believed in Jesus Christ. And by believing in Jesus Christ, we have answered his call to be his disciples.
The call to follow Jesus is a call to leave behind all our worldly security. Just like Abram. But everything we leave behind, all these false securities, comes with a promise of a better future. That lies ahead. Peter asked Jesus in Matthew 19, verse 27, We have left everything to follow you. What then will there be for us?
In the following verses, Jesus responds by saying, Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious thrones, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or fields, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much, and will inherit eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. The word of Jesus is the promise of Abram applied to us. We will be blessed in Jesus Christ. For however much we might lose, we are going to gain tenfold more. God tells Abram, go to the promised land. And in Matthew 28: 18- 20, Jesus tells us to go and share this blessing throughout this earth.
This earth that we shall inherit. Matthew 28. Jesus says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age.
Yes, the Canaanites are still in the land. Yes. It's hard to imagine the reign of God on earth. But we persevere in the faith of Abram. Because we know God's word is true. We build altars of praise because God has not abandoned us. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ is coming again. Even when the desert lies before us, Jesus is with us.
He is with us to the end of the age. Let us pray.
Dear Father,
Give us the faith of Abram.
Help us to believe you at your word, Father. When you promised that though we might be last in this world, we will be first in the kingdom of God. That whatever loss, hardship, and pain we experience in this present age, Father, we will be blessed. As you say, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Father, help us to believe you at your word. Father, we thank you for your undeserved love. How you didn't give up on humanity, but that you called Abram. Not so that he alone would be blessed, but so that through him, the whole world might be blessed through the sending of your son, Jesus Christ. Help us to be like him and have faith and go forward in obedience to your word.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham.
It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)