Studies in Genesis

Studies in Genesis Presentation 23

The Call of Abraham Gen 12 v1-6 Presentation 23

Introduction 'It’s too good to be true, what's the catch?' How often have you thought that as you’ve opened the junk mail that arrives through your letter box? I have lost track of the extravagant offers that guarantee to enrich my life. But surely no one would make us rich at their expense! Well God does! He promised to do precisely that, about 4000 years ago, when he called Abram to himself in the aftermath of what had been a major anti-God movement. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Dependence In Abram's day men had begun to reel from the discovery that they couldn't live as they pleased and get away with it. Those who insisted that they would live their lives as they pleased were discovering that they were accountable to God. It was a shattering discovery! Their fears for the future were heightened as they stumbled across the ruins of a previous civilisation wiped out by a great flood. The bleached bones of human and animal carcasses spoke all too clearly of a God who intervened in his world in judgement. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Dependence Disasters of any kind on such a colossal scale will always prompt men and women to seek out a place of safety. In answer to the question, 'Where will we turn, what will we do to prevent a similar disaster from devastating our lives?' The post flood civilization replied, 'We will trust in our own ability and wisdom'. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Dependence As we have seen this was the kind of thinking that led to the construction the tower of Babel. And however else you view it, it stood as a structure of proud defiance. It was a piece of three dimensional graffiti - a symbol of rebellion that said, 'We can live independently of God. We will make our living conditions safe and secure'. Not much has changed from that day until now. Men still believe themselves to be experts at building shelters for their own protection. The great scourge of society in the last 100 years has been man's overweening self-confidence in his own ability. Whatever disaster is envisaged men say, ‘We have the ability to overcome it, we have the know-how to overcome that threat’. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Dependence God's call to Abram, and to us, is to reject the fragile and crumbling structures of human manufacture, in favour of the substantial shelter of eternal security that he provides. This structure is less visible than those constructed by men but more permanent and infinitely more secure. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. 2Cor.4.18 But what is the substantial structure which God provides for us? It grows out of the shelter promise given by God to Abram in these verses. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Blessing We have already pointed out that God's shelter-promise is framed in covenant language. Whereby God took upon himself the total responsibility of the covenant. It was unilateral. God does all of the promising. God is the only labourer on the building site. Notice that Abram is not asked to contribute towards the construction of this shelter. Significantly, when the covenant is republished by God in Gen 15. Abram is immobilised in a way that indicates that God wanted to stress that the covenant was to be all his own work. no human collaboration is permitted. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Blessing God's shelter-promise can be unpacked in a number of ways. Think of the physical provision promised, which clearly addressed Abram’s immediate concerns as he left the safety and comfort of the familiar for a journey into the unknown. There were no documentary programmes on TV, or travel guides that could be consulted in the local library. Isolation, loss of identity, and the endangerment of his physical safety were very real fears. God promised Abram that his progeny would become a great nation v2 . By following God he would not lose the sense of identity that had been his in his home community of Ur, quite the reverse, he would father a great nation. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Blessing God also promises Abram that he would make his name great v2. As soon as a person leaves a community, where they are known and where their gifts are recognised and valued they often wonder if they will enter into some kind of obscurity. They will become unknown people in and unknown land. Again God promises Abram that the opposite would be the case. He would be remembered in history for the unique contribution that he would make to the purposes of God. He would become a conduit of blessing to others. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Blessing The greatest of all the promises is found in v3 'all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you'. This is a blessing that clearly extends beyond Abram and his family! Peter is in no doubt as to its fulfilment. He sees this as a promise of the coming Messiah and of the Messiah’s ministry to bring blessing on an unprecedented scale to all the nations of the earth cf Acts 3.24ff … It is easy to lose sight of the fact that God’s choice of Abram and of the Jewish people does not reveal a disinterest in others. It is not a narrow favouritism. God choses to work through Abram and the nation of Israel in order to bring universal blessing. God has a passionate love for every tribe and tongue on earth. Presentation 23

Abraham: A Call to Blessing God has done what no human construction team could ever do. He has constructed a place a safety, where forgiveness, acceptance and eternal security can be experienced. And clearly Abram grasped the significance of this place of safety not just for himself and his progeny but for the Gentile world. Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” Gal 3.6-8. Presentation 23

Abraham: Response to God How did Abram benefit from God’s shelter promise? The epistle to the Galatians commends Abram because he ‘believed God’. His response was one of faith. He turned from the security of human accomplishment to the promises of God and he said, 'I will run in there!' Authentic faith is not an armchair belief. It doesn’t produce loungers who sink into 9" of foam, but travellers who pull on their hiking boots. Heb 11.8 tells us, ‘By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going’. Presentation 23

Abraham: Response to God Authentic faith always drive men to obey the word of God. What does that mean in practical terms? For Abram, obedience involved a break with the past cf v1 'leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land that I will show you’. Think now of Jesus' words in Lk 14.26 ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple.’ Of course, God does not intend us to sever our links with or love for our families but these links and this love must no longer to be allowed to control our lives. Responding to God involves an allegiance shift. It means putting God first. Presentation 23

Abraham: Response to God Wholehearted obedience didn't come easily to Abram. From 11:31 we learn that his family had set out along with him and not necessarily because they shared his concern to obey God. Did they try to moderate his obedience? Once they'd come half way, to Haren, they would have been in a strong bargaining position. ‘Abram look at the sacrifice we have made for you in coming this far, surely you can make some concession for us? Stay here we have travelled far enough!’ Haren Nuzi Babylon Damascus Shechem Penuel Hebron Abram Beer-sheba Ur Isaac Jacob Presentation 23

Abraham: Response to God The pressure to partial, half-hearted obedience, in order to accommodate the wishes of family or friends, is one that many of us will experience. Notice God refused to allow Abram to rest content in a halfway house of obedience. Had he stayed there, he would have stopped short of God's shelter and provision. Similarly, when, God in his mercy has begun his work in our hearts, he can never settle for anything other than our wholehearted obedience to him. He longs to bless and cannot bear to find us stopping short of that blessing. Presentation 23 Presentation 23

Abraham: Response to God The place of safety that God provides can seem to good to be true. Paul in his Galatian epistle holds up Abram as an example of a man who sheltered by faith in Christ. But alongside that he expresses his horror that his readers had evacuated that shelter for one of their own making. The Galatian church had become re-infected with the self-confident spirit of Babel. They thought that they could contribute to their own safety by observing of a number of religious duties. Whenever we start thinking, 'God must surely accept me for I never miss a Sunday at church, I read my Bible and pray daily, I give alms to beggars’, then we are stepping out of God's Shelter provision. We are trusting in your own abilities to keep you safe. Presentation 23

Conclusion Where are you sheltering at present? Have you, like Abraham, responded to the call of God with the obedience of faith? Have you experienced an allegiance shift that has caused you to turn your back on the feeble structures of human endeavour in order to make Christ your shelter and hiding place? Are you among that great company of pilgrims who are able to say that 'we have here no continuing city but we seek one to come’? Heb.13.14 Presentation 23

Studies in Genesis