A spiritual journey

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 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. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

So Abram left, 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 Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 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. 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 (Genesis 12:1-8).

Of the many wonderful stories in Genesis, the call of Abraham is probably one of the best known. I’m sure that you have heard many talks about the patriarch’s great faith in leaving everything behind to walk into the unknown, trusting in God’s command. But there are other important things contained in today’s Old Testament reading as well. So let us spend some time looking at several of the wonderful teachings that God shares with us through these eight short verses.

You will remember that God had already called Abram to leave his home city in Iraq; that is how Abram ended up in Haran, a place where Abram also had relatives. But Haran was not to be Abram’s final home; God told him, leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. Notice that God was well aware of the sacrifice He was asking of Abram; this 75 year old man, who had a wife but no children, was not only to leave the military protection of his country, not only to leave the comfort of living among people who shared his language and his culture, he was even to leave behind the emotional security of living with his relatives.

Why do you suppose that God asked such a thing of Abram? It was because Abram was setting out on a journey of faith. God was stripping away everything that could come between Abram and his Lord. When worries and hardships came, Abram and his wife would have no place to go for reassurance and security than the Lord Himself. Being utterly dependent on God, their trust in Him could only grow stronger.

Were he here with us today, Abram would challenge you to look at your life. Where do you go for security? Do you place your hope in the care that comes through government programs and bail-outs? Do you find your comfort by belonging to a group of people who think like you, who share your interests? Do you look to your relatives to take care of your needs? Or do you depend, first and foremost, on God? Do you pray to Him every day, sharing your hopes and fears, your joys and sorrows? Before you go to a doctor, do you ask the Lord to give him wisdom in making a correct diagnosis and prescribing effective treatment? Before you make a decision on whether to get married or buy a home, do you first seek heaven’s counsel? Is your relationship with the Lord the primary relationship in your life, or do you need to leave behind your country, your people, and your father’s household, as Abram did to be close to God?

God next told Abram, I will make you into a great nation. Notice that God was not promising to make Abram’s descendants into a great people, but rather a great nation. Abram’s descendants would become the nation of Israel, ruled by a line of kings that would one day find their ultimate expression in Jesus Christ, the King of all Creation. This is made even more clear by the following words: all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Now the Jews who do not accept Jesus as their Savior use this promise to give themselves a pat on the back; they believe that God blesses the entire world through its Jewish population. But this view is not properly focused. In Galatians 3:16, Paul speaks of Abram and his seed—seed being a euphemism for descendants. Listen to Paul’s understanding of God’s promises to Abram: The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. It is clear, then—when the Lord said all peoples on earth will be blessed through you, He meant that all people would be blessed through Abram because Abram and Sarai would be the ancestors of the Savior!

But I want you to notice something—this is all a contingent blessing. God promised to bless Abram after Abram had obeyed God and gone to the place where God was sending him. It was only after Abram left all else behind and dedicated himself to God that these blessings would come to him. Did God have to have Abram and Sarai as Christ’s ancestors? Of course not—the Lord could have chosen any couple He desired. But God reserved this wonderful blessing for the couple who treasured their relationship with Him above all other commitments. It was to deeply committed believers that God gave the honor of inaugurating Christ’s human bloodline, a bloodline that would one day result in blood both human and divine, poured out from the cross of Calvary to atone for every human sin. The blood of Christ, true God and true man in one body, would become the means by which all who believe in Jesus can be rescued from slavery to sin and eternal death in hell. Through the biological seed given by God to a childless elderly couple, generations of children would be born, one of whom would also be the Son of God Himself, the source of blessing for people of every nation.

As a Christian, what do you expect from God? Many Christians feel as if they are entitled to blessings, simply because they’ve been baptized and confirmed; when life gets difficult, they wonder why God isn’t giving them everything that they want. But I ask you—should you expect blessings from God if you put your relationship with Him on the backburner six days of the week? Remember, God promised Abram blessings on the condition that Abram make his relationship with God his top priority. And also consider this: Abram’s life was hardly one of constant happiness. Even after he left everything to tighten his bond with His Lord, he had struggles—military struggles, family struggles, even struggles with his faith. Just because God blessed him, that did not free Abram from all the problems that come from living in a sin-sickened body, among sin-sickened people, in a sin-sickened world.

There is one other blessing that God promised Abram; He said, I will make your name great. To understand the significance of this, you must remember that just before the history of Abraham, Genesis told us of the Tower of Babel. Up until that time, all mankind had spoken one common language; the problem began when the men of that day said, Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves (Genesis 11:4).

Abram is held up to us as an example of how we should look to God for everything meaningful in our lives; this is in stark contrast to what happened at Babel. There, mankind did not ask God in humility how they should live their lives—instead, they arrogantly set out to glorify themselves by building a huge monument to their pride. They were not interested in any name God would give them—a name like "humble servant"—they wanted a great name, chosen and inscribed on stone by their own sinful imaginations. Of course, you know how God responded to their hubris—He took the one worldwide language and splintered it into many different tongues, disrupting their plans and eliminating any future chance for mankind to stand united in pride against their Creator.

What a contrast this is to Abram. Abram does not seek a name for himself—he is content to trust and follow God in humility. It is because of this humble submission that God promises to make his name great—great as an example for us to aspire to. In addition, God promises that through Abram’s offspring, the people of the world, scattered by their many languages, will be reunited; in Galatians 3:28 Paul writes, you are all one in Christ Jesus. Through his humble submission to God’s will, Abram was blessed to be the ancestor of the reunification of mankind through Christ.

What name gives you a sense of pride? Are you proud to be called a United States citizen? Do you find your identity in being of Germanic or Italian descent? Do titles like "boss" or "doctor" or "Dad" or "Mom" make you feel good about yourself? Or does your self-worth come first and foremost from the joy that Jesus has given you the name "Christian"?

The last point I’d like to address today has to do with Abram’s behavior once he arrived in Canaan. Notice what this man of God does, once he has given up all earthly attachments as secondary to his relationship with his Lord: he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent…There he built an altar to the LORD. Notice what Abram builds; when he had chosen a place to settle down, he built a place to worship God. Notice also how Abram builds; he built an altar to the Lord, and he pitched a tent for himself. Abram did not build himself a fancy, permanent place to live; he knew that life here on earth is only temporary. Speaking of Abram, Hebrews chapter 11 tells us, By faith he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents…For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. The only permanent home Abram was interested in was his eternal home with God.

And yet Abram did build permanent structures; wherever he stopped for a time, he built altars at which to worship God. In Abram’s mind, this was God’s land, not his; so he took every opportunity to set up places to honor God for all of His wonderful mercies. In addition, Abram knew that while he would one day die, God would be with His people forever; since Abram believed in God’s promise of a mighty nation which would one day fill the land, he set up altars to always call his descendants to worship the God who had made their nation possible. For Abram, God was the only constant that truly mattered.

What about you? What do you treat as permanent? How much of God’s money do you spend on His house compared to yours? Which house is more valuable to you? Which deserves the most attention? Which house do you want to remain standing throughout the years for the benefit of your children and grandchildren?

And what about your worship habits? When you are in a new city, whether you have just moved there or are merely visiting, is it your first priority to find a house of worship? Your vacation trips are never, I pray, vacations from time worshipping at God’s altar.

Abram’s life was radically changed by God’s call to follow Him. He gave up having his priorities dictated by government, society and family. He acknowledged that if he wanted God’s blessings to fill his life, he would have to move—move not just away from how he used to do things, but move into a whole new way of thinking. He realized that pride in himself and his accomplishments would only get in the way of the great things God wanted to do through him—most especially, make available the gift of forgiveness for all sins. These changes showed themselves in Abram’s new life—a life where the worship and love of God eclipsed everything else, a life where earthly pleasures were treated as the temporary things that they are.

May the Lord Jesus forgive your misplaced priorities, and may He enable you to embark on a life-changing journey of faith, following in the footsteps of your spiritual ancestor, Abram, that you might receive all of the Lord’s wonderful blessings.