God’s Call to Abraham

Text: Genesis 12:1-20

Introduction

Abram (who later came to be known as Abraham) is one of the most important people of the ancient world.

In Genesis, through Abraham, God reveals his purposes and goals for the universe. God reveals that he has a plan, and makes covenant promises that show us history’s direction. God’s redemptive covenant with Abraham reminds us that the universe is personal because God made it, and it is purposeful because God controls it.

We see Abram’s hugely significant story beginning to unfold in Genesis 12 with…

I. God’s Covenant with Abram (vv.1-3)

1. v.1 the Lord said—The history of redemption, like Creation, begins with God speaking. How does Abram go from idolatry to being a believer in the one true God? God speaks to him!
   1. This in a nutshell differentiates Abram’s story from that of his father Tera who was a Babylonian idolater (Josh 24:2).
   2. Yet when God speaks to Abram, God speaks words to Abram. God’s work in Abram began with speaking words/facts—about God himself, and his plan of redemption.
      1. Abram’s faith, then, was not like his father Terah’s blind faith in false gods; Abram’s faith—just like Adam’s faith, & Noah’s faith—was faith in God’s message/good news; it was faith in God’s self-revelation and in God’s plan of redemption thru his Christ.
      2. The same is true of every true believer since. God’s sovereign call initiates the work of  grace in our lives, yet God’s call is a call to believe God’s self-revelation and to trust in God’s plan of redemption in Christ.
   3. Grace, while free, is also demanding. God calls Abram to ‘Go’ from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house… and to go “to” a land God had not yet even specified.
      1. This call to ‘go’ of course has its echo in the NT. Jesus calls his disciples in the gospels. Then Jesus calls all his disciples to ‘go’ in his name to the nations.
2. In vv.2-3 God lists at least six promises included in this covenant, along with at least four obligations: 1) To make him a great nation. 2) God will bless Abram. 3) A great name. 4) God’s blessing and God’s curse. 5) All the families of the earth will be blessed. 6) The Promised Land.
   1. Abram would experience each, but only in tiniest/seed form: although Abram would become a great nation, he would only see his promised son Isaac; altho Abram’s descendants would inhabit the promised land, Abram himself would only own a piece of it big enough to bury his wife; Abram’s name will be great, yet Abram spends most of his time among people who don’t even know him; and altho thru Abram all the nations of the earth would be blessed, he would himself only see a small area of the world personally.
      1. Abram lives his entire life by faith, trusting in promises that he himself only gets to experience in the smallest of ways.
      2. This is what faith has been like from the very beginning. The ‘father of the faithful’, Abram himself, lived mostly in expectation (rather than in fulfillment).
   2. Yet Abram’s faith was well-founded! God did every single thing He promised to Abram that He would do!
      1. The same is true of every faithful saint since: we live mostly in expectation rather than in fulfillment, yet every one of God’s promises ultimately come true!
      2. What Heb 11:10 says was true of Abram is true of every true believer since: he looked for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
   3. Yet along with all these promised blessings, God also lays demands upon Abram: leave your country; leave your people; leave your father’s house. And go to a land God will show, but has not yet defined.
      1. God is calling Abram to leave behind every human source of stability, identity, and security—and to rely completely on God.

II. Abram’s Faithfulness to God (vv.4-9)

1. vv.4-5 Abram responds to God’s call with genuine faith and immediate obedience: He 11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
   1. This decision not only will cost him deeply, we see, but Abram’s family. Which consists  at this point not only of his wife/servants, but also his nephew Lot.
   2. Abram was 75 years old, and apparently had by this point accrued a considerable amount of wealth, and was head of a substantial household.
2. vv.6-9 detail the travels of Abram. Two important things to glean from this list of locations thru which Abram journeys:
   1. This list of towns/people you don’t know should help you feel empathy for Abram, who was himself traveling to locations and among people with whom he was not familiar.
   2. Each of these locations are locations within Canaan. Abram is traversing the Promised Land, although it is not yet his. Heb 11:9.
   3. v.7 The Lord appeared to Abram, promising him this very land for his descendants.  Altho Abram is still childless! And altho we are specifically told in v.6 that the land is already inhabited by others.
   4. v.8 Abram’s faith and priorities are sweetly expressed in the contrast between the verbs ‘pitched’ and ‘built.’ For himself, Abram ‘pitched a tent’; for God, Abram ‘built an altar’. The only monuments Abram left behind him in the land were altars; nothing pointing to himself, no structure built for himself.

III. God’s Faithfulness to Abram (vv.10-20)

1. v.10 ‘there was a famine in the land’.
   1. How does Abram respond? With what seems a very human solution. There is no mention of the Lord leading Abram out of the land which the Lord had led Abram to and promised him. Yet Abram seeks to escape the famine by heading to Egypt.
   2. vv.11-13 Abram certainly now starts making fearful, rather than faithful, decisions. Fearing for his own life because of Sarai’s beauty, Abram tells a half-lie—he claims Sarai, his wife is merely his sister.
2. So then in vv.14-20, Abram’s solution ends up delivering his own wife into the harem of Pharaoh.
   1. Abram was supposed to “be a blessing” to the nations. Yet we find the opposite result almost immediately following.
      1. Abraham is not only lying, and wronging Sarai—he is reflecting a lack of faith in the great God who has called him, in front of Pharaoh.
   2. In v.18, Pharaoh is rebuking Abram for deliberately deceiving him, rather than Abram being a gospel messenger to this pagan ruler.
   3. But God sends a plague on Pharaoh for Sarai’s sake, to the point that Pharaoh cannot wait to send both her and Abram away.
3. God is here faithful to Abram, even tho Abram has a lapse in his own faithfulness.
   1.  Yet the greatest problem here, and therefore the greatest solution, is bigger than Abram himself—it is the problem of the promised seed. What would happen to the promised seed if Sarai ended up in Pharaoh’s harem?
      1. So God moves, not only to save Abram and Sarai from a sticky situation, but curses Pharaoh with plagues in order to protect the seed, the coming Redeemer.
   2. God is protecting/preparing the way for his Son Jesus, centuries before his Son would actually be born into the world. The NT will open with these words: Mt 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
      1. Those words were only true/only possible because of what God did here to intervene.

Conclusion

Because of what God did here thru Abram, for God’s promised seed, we today have the glorious gospel. The same faith Abram had in the coming Messiah, is now ours in the person of Jesus the Christ.

1. And like Abram, we can be sure that God has called us in order to bless us. Yes, these blessings come with demands, but it will all be worth it. The life of faith is difficult, but it is never ultimately disappointed.
2. Drawing this connection between us, as NT believers, and Abraham in the OT is more than just finding some similarities in our stories or experiences. It is thoroughly theological principle, which Paul makes explicit in Gal 3:26-29.
3. We are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ! And being in Christ, we are now recipients, just as every OT and NT believer, of God’s blessings to Abram.
4. Yet with God’s great promises come great obligations. God calls all his people to love Him above family, friends, community, or nation. And God calls every believer to give up every human source of stability, identity, and security—and to rely completely on God.