Don't Get Stuck at Haran

I'm ready to share God's word today.

If you have your Bible, I'm gonna make it easy on you.

We're gonna be in Genesis.

So go ahead and open this first book of the Bible.

We're gonna be Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

And uh here's who I want to talk to today.

I want to talk to anybody who has either had the thought or maybe you have said out loud recently, something has got to change.

Something has got to change.

Maybe you know what needs to change.

Uh maybe it's it's not a matter of uh confusion, it's a matter of follow-through and execution.

Or maybe for you, even knowing what needs to change.

I don't know if it's me, I don't know if it's them, I I don't know even within me what needs to change.

Like, but you know something, something needs to change.

I cannot stay here.

I can't stay in this place.

Maybe you've been stuck, you feel stuck, and whatever I've got to do, I something needs to change.

I want to talk to you today out of a 4,000-year-old story that will be freakishly applicable to all of those with the courage to take a step of faith and to change.

Um, Genesis 11, at the end of Genesis 11, introduces uh maybe the most prominent character in the Old Testament is Abraham.

Uh, you probably remember that song, Father Abraham had many sons, right?

Well, Abraham was the father of the nation of Israel.

The nation of Israel did not exist until Abraham led that process and was tapped by God and called by God to do that.

But what I want to actually do is back up even before Abraham ever became aware of Yahweh, before he ever became aware of God's purpose and call for his life, and before the nation was even a thing, is actually to his origin story.

So we're gonna go to Genesis 11, verse 27.

Genesis 11:27

By the way, I'm gonna read this story to you.

There's gonna be names and it might be a little confusing.

Hang with me.

I promise you I will not lose you.

Okay, I promise you, I will bring this all together and it will all make sense, okay?

Okay, Genesis 11, 27 says, This is the account of Terah's family.

Terah was the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran.

And Haran was the father of Lot.

But Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, the land of his birth, while his father Terah was still living.

Okay, so Abraham's brother Terah, or sorry, Abraham's brother Haran died and was outlived by his brothers and his father.

Uh, verse 31.

One day Terah took his son, his still living son Abraham, his daughter-in-law Sarai, who would eventually be Sarah, and his grandson Lot, and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans and was headed to the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.

Now notice that.

The name of the son who died was named Haran.

And he was on his way to Canaan, and he stopped in a city called Haran.

Haran was Terah, so Abraham's father.

It was his hometown.

It's where he was from.

And he had named his son after his hometown.

Terah lived there 205 years and died while still in Haran.

It says he was on his way, he was headed for Canaan, but he never got out of Haran.

I know I just said a bunch of names.

This uh we're talking about ancient Mesopotamia.

And so let me let me make this, let me show you first a map.

Okay, bring up that first map real quick.

Okay.

Uh go ahead and yep.

Okay, so the uh you see Ur, okay, right here.

And this is where all of this goes down.

This is where Haran dies.

And so they decide we gotta leave, and they go up to Haran.

Haran's about 800 miles from Ur.

800 miles.

You see, Canaan, it actually is right here.

This is Canaan, which is another 400 miles from Haran.

Um, 800 miles, keep in mind the way they would travel, right?

They didn't have planes, trains, and automobiles.

Um, if you're going 800 miles, you're talking this is years probably of a journey.

It's gonna take a very, very long time.

And so what we see is that Tara ends up not being able to get past Heron.

Um, just to make sure 100% nobody gets lost, because I promised you, go ahead and bring up that next map.

This is Ohio.

Okay, so my name's Greg.

I was born in Marion.

That's a true story.

I was born in Marion General Hospital, July 15th, 1980.

Marion's right here.

At some point, God called me to Ur, also known as Toledo.

So I went up to Toledo, I was there for a while.

Imagine up in Toledo, I have some kids, and I name one of them Marion after my hometown.

At some point, God calls me from Ur after my child Marion dies, and I leave Ur and I'm headed to the promised land of Columbus, Ohio.

Come on.

God's chosen place for God's chosen people.

Come on.

But I'm on my way as I'm there, I'm on my way, I get stuck in Marion.

I get stuck in Marion.

What happened in Ur?

What happened up in Toledo?

Um, if you read Genesis 11, it tells us that Aaron died.

So we know that he died.

It doesn't tell us how he died.

Now let's let's get our bearings here in terms of world uh and human history.

Okay, so we have, think about history, the earliest times, you know, prehistoric.

Um at some point, people started writing stuff down and they started to have civilizations.

Some of the early, one of the early civilizations was the Mesopotamian, uh, the Mesopotamians.

So Ur is part of the Mesopotamian civilization.

And at this point, people are now starting to develop theologies or essentially beliefs or sometimes myths or superstitions about about gods or God.

The Mesopotamians, especially the people in Ur, worship the moon god.

And when you look actually at Abraham's father, according to we so we don't have in Genesis 11, here's exactly how he died and a ton about the family, it's very little.

But if you look at rabbinic tradition, which I want to be very clear because you don't even need to email me or get upset, I'm not saying that rabbinic tradition is on par with the scriptures.

I'm not saying that, but it's not wrong to read rabbinic tradition to understand some of these parallel texts or pieces of history to kind of help us better understand.

Within rabbinic tradition, there is actually some stories of how Aaron may have died or how they say Aaron died.

And this is the story.

Um, the rabbinic tradition says that Abraham's father, Tarah, was an idol salesman.

Okay, he was a vendor of idols.

Again, get our bearings.

Yahweh has not even introduced himself to uh Abraham at this point, but his father is starting to make these false gods and sell them, and so he has like a store or in the marketplace where people would come buy idols or they would come worship idols.

And it doesn't sit well with Abraham.

Abraham's like, this is dumb.

Like these are man-made things, and people are worshiping and they're developing superstitions around these statues.

And so uh he kind of calls bull on the whole thing.

In fact, at one point, this guy comes in and he wants to buy a statue, worship a statue, and he's like, My man, how old are you?

And he's like, 50.

He's like, this thing was made two days ago.

It's two days old, and you're 50 years.

Why is a 50-year-old man bowing to a two-day-old statue?

And the man left dejected.

It was hurting the family business.

At one point, a woman comes in and she wants to worship a statue, and he's just fed up.

And so one day, Abram, according to rabbinic tradition, took a stick and destroyed all of the idols except one, the biggest one.

And so he breaks them all with a stick and then takes the stick and puts it in the hand of the biggest idol, and he waits on his dad.

And his dad shows up, everything's destroyed, and there's one idol sitting there with a stick in its hand.

And his dad's like, What happened?

And Abram's like, the big idol.

Beat up all the little idols, you know.

What can I say?

And his dad said, You're a liar.

It was you.

There's no way that that idol could have done this to these other idols, he's just a statue.

And Abraham said, Now I'm really calling bull.

Because if your idol isn't powerful enough to destroy other idols, why is it powerful enough for you to bow down to it?

Didn't sit well with pops.

So now Abram and Tarah are having a conflict.

And instead of Tarah eating the humble pie, he goes and incites the powerful people against his own son.

And so now you have, go over here, Aaron, the brother, doesn't know what side to take.

Do I take my dad's side?

Do I take my brother's side?

He's a bit confused.

And within this, all of the collateral damage starts to take place.

These powerful people, do I side with my dad and the powerful people or my brother?

He's kind of like on, he's like a deer in headlights.

They end up taking Abram, they throw him in a fire, and he survives.

But then they take Aaron and throw him in the fire and he dies.

And so now you have Abram and his father who have had this conflict.

They both survived, but their brother was collateral damage.

And so, for one reason or another, what it does say for sure in Genesis 11 was that they had to get out of Ur.

They had to get out of Toledo for one reason or another.

Maybe they're running from the powerful people, maybe they just wanted to start over something new, but we can't stay here.

So they make a years-long 800-mile trek back to the hometown of Haran.

And of course, what happens is by the time the father gets there, he gets to his hometown, he gets around his ancestors, for some reason he can't leave Haran.

Why?

Well, probably a lot of reasons.

There's usually more than one reason why someone stays stuck.

Part of it might have been his age.

He'd already traveled 800 miles.

Do I want to travel another 400 miles?

I'm too old for this.

Too old for this.

I don't want to do this.

I'm just gonna stay here.

Also, he went back to his hometown, so his ancestors are there.

There's comfort there, there are homes there.

There, there's uh my people are here.

Um, there's probably fear around Canaan because he had never been to Canaan.

Canaan was a brand new place, and of course, we live in a day that if you're going to a new place, you can Google image it, you can go virtual tours, you can call someone else who's been there.

He didn't know anyone that had been to Canaan.

He he he had no he had no knowledge of Canaan.

So the idea of going and doing something this new at this point in my life, but probably what is also quite likely was he just couldn't get past Haran.

Couldn't get past what happened with my son.

And and and the the irony of the name and the city and all of his grief.

He's he's stuck in his grief and he's stuck in his fear, and at some point he just decides even though I have a vision for Canaan, I've gone as far as I'm gonna go.

And so he decides to stay stuck and ultimately to die in Haran.

That's the last verse in chapter 11.

If you flip over to chapter 12, the first verse of chapter 12 is then the Lord said to Abraham, this is after his father dies in Haran.

The Lord said to Abraham, Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

Notice, when he says, I'll make you famous, he's not, that's not a superficial thing.

This is, I'm I want to make your name great, not just so you can have a great name, but so that look, why?

So that you can be a blessing to others.

I want to not just make your name great, I want to make you great, and I want you to do great things.

Verse 3, I'll bless those who bless you, and I'll curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the families on the earth will be blessed through you.

I I want to I want to give three observations that I think is worth us noting for anyone who's trying to change.

That I think even though this is this message is 4,000 years in the making, I think it becomes very, very relevant.

The first observation is that Abraham refused to be limited by what happened in his first 75 years.

Genesis 12, verse 4 says, after God told him to go, Abraham departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him.

Genesis 12:4

Look at this.

Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran.

75 years old.

Even though he was 75 years old, he refused to be stuck in his ways.

He refused to allow all of the activity, the dysfunction, the pain, the drama uh around the family heirlooms and the family business and the failed idol business and the hard feelings maybe that he may have had with his father, and the personal responsibility that he had at the death of his brother, and and the 800-mile journey, and and and all of it, he refused to allow that to cloud what God could still do in his life.

And so at 75 years old, at 75 years old, he continued to take steps and he was willing to go to a place he had never been.

Um, it says in Hebrews 11, 8 and 9, so this is now a New Testament text where the writer of Hebrews is ultimately trying to help us to learn from and actually be inspired by, encouraged by Abraham's example.

And it says in Hebrews 11, 8 and 9, it was by faith that Abraham obeyed God when he called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.

He went without knowing where he was going.

Look at this, verse 9.

And even when he reached the promised land, he lived there by faith, for he was a foreigner living in tents.

Um I was thinking about I was thinking about uh the feelings that people have sometimes when you have a complicated first 20 years of your life.

Um often it's something that it creates negative feelings.

You're going, man, you know, I wish I wish I wish I had been born into a healthy family.

Wish I had a good relationship with my parents or my siblings or my community.

Um, one of the things about life is if you keep taking this stuff and iterating in a positive direction and growing in wisdom, and okay, you keep your head up and all this, throughout life, you get older, you get wiser, and you can't help yourself but to look back a little bit and go, you know, I wish somebody would have told me this when I was 12.

Somebody should have talked to me about this when I was eight.

Why am I learning this at 40?

And so we can't help ourselves sometimes but to look back and wish maybe that we had been born into a different environment, or or um, and to sort of hold on to those feelings.

And I want to say, I hope you'll actually think differently about that because I actually think that part of what caused Moses to be willing to not be stuck in Aaron was probably some of the pain and some of his bitter taste in his mouth from his first 75 years.

Like, let's think of it like this.

Let's pretend like you were in this family that was like the dream.

All right, like, I mean, it's all sunshine and roses.

Picket fence, lots of nurture, lots of great relationship, your family, your parents, and your aunts and uncles, and uh, the leaders, you're surrounded by good leaders and loving individuals, and and and it's all great.

And your great relationship with your your brothers and sisters, and and now you've been tasked with the family values, and now we want you to carry this on, and so they give you all the heirlooms, and and now you're in charge of protecting the heirlooms, so now you have to build a case, and you've got to build a closet, and you've got to build a protective structure to protect all the family heirlooms.

But what if the family heirlooms are idols?

And what if you have actual warm, fuzzy, comfortable feelings and nostalgia around idols?

Would you even question the idols?

What sort of bad feeling would you have to fight through to take a stick to an idol?

If that idol is grandma's china, it's a family heirloom.

And so like the the visceral reaction, the the negative feeling would probably keep you, well, you'd probably end up doing it even if it made your kids sick.

You'd probably keep it, even just based out of how healthy it was, even though you you perpetuate the lie because the family was so healthy.

Look, you can have a healthy family that still has idols.

And so the idols just keep getting passed down generation to generation, cycle after cycle.

And so there's something about if you grew up in dysfunction, you have pain from your past, and you have a bitter taste in your mouth, sometimes gives you the courage, sometimes gives you the gumption to go, you know, I'm not gonna stay inherent.

I'm gonna hammer these idols.

I'm calling bull.

And so, for some of you, you've kind of been stuck in what it could have been and what it should have been, and what others had that you didn't have and all this.

You know, some of your pain is an advantage because it might just give you enough courage to go look at this thing and see it for what it is, and be willing to go and be a foreigner in a land you don't even know about.

Look, we read that stuff is no big deal to us because we're in our context.

Um, it's very common to meet somebody.

Where are you from?

Oh, yeah, I'm from Southern California.

Where are you from?

Uh I'm from Puerto Rico, where are you from?

I'm from Russia.

Okay, you people people from all over the place.

We relocate all the time.

How'd you get here?

Oh, the job transferred me.

This this was not normal back then for someone to go to a land they knew nothing of.

So he he leaves and he goes to this place, and and and I think the distaste of of the the idle business gone bad, the trauma of my brother, the tension with my father, as much as those are unpleasant, sometimes those become the catalyst to get you to say, I will not stop here.

I'll give my dad grace because I understand you know, I'm I didn't walk a mile in his shoes.

I, you know, I see where he's at.

I understand why he didn't want to leave Haran.

I understand.

He felt that he was too old, he was too tired, he felt he was afraid of Canaan.

He he he was he was stuck in his grief, and he chose, even though he had a vision for Canaan, he chose to stay in Haran.

I'm gonna give him grace, I understand, but not me.

Not me.

I'm gonna examine this stuff and I'm going to follow God.

And what it says is ultimately he goes and he's a he's a foreigner and he's living in tents.

If you read on in Genesis, Abraham's a very flawed human being.

And it gets really clunky.

It's not happily ever after, it's not smooth.

Okay, he goes from houses in Haran to tents and feeling like a foreigner.

In fact, if you read on very quickly, uh there's a famine that hits the land, he ends up having to go to Egypt.

So I was in Canaan, I'm trying to figure out these Canaanites, and now I'm going to Egypt, I'm trying to figure out these Egyptians.

And he goes into Egypt and immediately he's around people he's never been around before, and he's misjudging people, he's misunderstanding people.

This is a new place and new people, and I don't know what I'm doing.

And so he goes in and he makes assumptions about people he doesn't know about because it's foreign.

He's a foreigner, he's not he's afraid, he doesn't know what to do.

So he goes in when he goes into Egypt, he has his wife with him, and he's like, his wife's beautiful, and he's like, you know what?

These Egyptians, you know, I don't know what I don't know what to think of these Egyptians.

I'm a foreigner.

What are they gonna do?

They look at my wife, my wife's beautiful, they're gonna kill me.

So he tells his wife, hey, just say you're my sister.

So they go in, and Pharaoh in Egypt was like, who is that?

He's like, Oh, it's my sister.

He's like, your sister looks good.

I want to marry your sister.

And so he marries his sister.

And then Pharaoh at some point finds out that's his wife.

The man he thought would kill him went to him and said, Bro, why'd you lie to me?

What'd you lie to me for?

He's like, I thought you'd kill me.

He's like, What?

Because I'm Egyptian.

You think I'm just gonna kill you?

You don't know me.

Get out of here.

You didn't kill him.

Boots him.

Get out of here.

Get your wife and get out of here.

He makes a whole assumption about these Egyptian people and what they're it's clunky, dude.

It's messy.

And so he didn't go from Haran all into happily ever after.

He went to Haran to feeling like a foreigner, to being intense, to being in an uncomfortable place, to feeling like a stranger in that place.

There were all kinds of mistakes that were made, okay?

And yet in the process, God was doing something bigger.

He had to be willing to say, I will not stay stuck in Haran.

I will take on the unknown and the fear and even the negative feelings.

Today I just want to encourage you for those of you that have a complicated relationship to your feelings about the way you came up and the things that would have been better if it had been that way.

Don't allow yourself to get stuck in those feelings.

See those feelings as part of the courage for you to be willing to open up your eyes and ultimately go to a new place.

So Abraham refused.

He refused to be limited by what happened in his first 75 years.

The second thing is, and we kind of already talked about this a little bit, but Abraham's purpose, this second observation, Abraham's purpose required him to go beyond his family and everything familiar.

One of the things to understand about the way people thought at that point was they had a cyclical view of history.

Basically, they felt like nothing new happens.

So everything that's happened with your ancestors will eventually happen to you, and then someday will happen to your descendants and your and your kids.

And because people stayed generally in the same geographic region and they were locked into the same uh groups of people, this is how they saw it.

So they think you we're all gonna just live and die in the same cycle.

So when you look at the Bible, by the way, and this is where this really starts to get good.

The Bible, let's go to the right altitude, let's fly up high.

1,500 years is what spans the writing of the Bible.

It was written over 1,500 years, over 40 authors, three continents, and it was all brought together to show a story arc of over 1,500 years what God did, what God was up to.

And so with Abraham, what we see is the first time God calling somebody out of the cycle.

Somebody who lived in a day where people believed we are hopelessly connected to the cycle.

And we see in the first few chapters of Genesis what happened not only in the garden, but what happened with Noah and the flood, what happened at the Tower of Babel.

We see what was happening is the violence of Cain and Abel.

People were starting to oppress one another.

They were starting to, again, it was becoming more violent.

And God said, Abraham, I'm going to do something and I'm going to make your name great, but don't think it's about your name being great.

I'm going to bless the entire world through you.

And we're going to start a nation, a people, and I want you to do it different.

I'm going to give you an opportunity to step out of the cycle.

And we're going to have to go to Canaan because Haran is it's it's there's too much going on there.

It can't happen in Haran.

Haran's too comfortable.

I got to bring you out of the grief and the comfort.

I gotta bring you out of the boredom and the comfort into faith and adventure.

But I'm inviting you out of the cycle.

And it leads me to the third observation from this story is that what God did with Abraham is what God is still doing.

What God did with Abraham is what he's still doing.

When he said, I'm gonna bless all people through you, ultimately what he was talking about was not just what he would do with the nation, but what he would do with Jesus.

And so look at this in John 8, as Jesus is trying to help people understand the context of his life.

And he saw it and was glad.

In other words, when when God was saying to Abraham, hey, I'm gonna make a great nation, I'm gonna bless those who bless you, I'm gonna curse those who curse you.

But what I'm gonna do is ultimately through you, through your line, I will bless the world.

What he was doing was foreshadowing ultimately to Jesus, and Jesus was saying, I'm the fulfillment of that.

Okay, let's get our full bearings on this thing.

Hebrews 11, 8, and 9, it was by faith Abraham obeyed God.

He was willing to leave home, go to another land that would be given to him as an inheritance.

He went without knowing where he was going, and even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith, for he was like a foreigner living in tents.

And look at this, and so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.

So because Abraham refused to stay stuck in Haran, he did not allow his brother's death and his relationship to his father and all that that contained to limit what God was going to do with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob.

And because he was willing to leave and he was willing to be a foreigner in the land, and he was willing to live in tents, and he was willing to walk by faith.

And by the way, that's what the writer of Hebrews is trying to help us see.

It says, Hey, this guy, Abraham, he had less evidence than you do of God's faithfulness.

It said, but he walked by faith and it was counted to him as righteousness.

It was counted to him as righteousness.

It was like, dude messed up a lot, but his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

And so today I just I want to encourage you, wherever you are.

I want to encourage you.

Uh man, don't you know it's not about Aaron, it's not about Tarah, it's not about Abraham.

These things speak to us about us.

Take them out of the story and put yourself in.

What is the area in your life?

What is the area of your life that you need to refuse to let the first 75 years, everything up until now, however old you are, to refuse to allow that to limit what God can do next?

What God wants to do next.

What does this mean for you to leave behind old stories, smash up some idols, to be willing to go somewhere where you feel like a foreigner?

I don't even know.

I've never been here before.

I don't know what, I don't know what to do here, to go into that uncomfortable place, to leave behind the the houses and take on the tents, and to go out of that, out of that comfort zone into one step of faith at a time to where God is taking you.

And today, the same God that beckoned Abraham to leave Aaron is inviting you to step out of your cycle and to not fall into the belief that everything that's done was just gonna be done again and nothing can be new.

No, God makes new things, He makes new things, He opens new doors, and so there's a whole lot of life left to live.

In fact, they really started documenting Abraham's life once he left Aaron.

There's just a few verses before, several chapters after.

And for some of you, because you're 75 years in, you think all your life's behind you and you're actually about to start living, but you're gonna have to take that step of faith.