God Calls Abram

Good morning. Let's begin with prayer today.

Jesus, I thank you for bringing us here. I thank you that we get to look to you this morning.

God, I pray that you would speak to our hearts, that you would speak to our minds.

God, you would give us clarity today to hear what it is that you are speaking

to us. I pray that we would see in your word what it is that you want us to see.

I thank you, Jesus. I thank you that we get to come and worship you today.

I thank you that you are the healer of hearts, the restorer of souls.

God, you are our great redeemer.

I thank you, God. What a gift you've given to us today to be here.

In the name of Jesus, amen.

So, several weeks ago, Ron Lynch got up here for an announcement,

and he said some things about me that I feel like I need to clarify a little bit.

Maybe we got off on the wrong foot, but I am a fan, and I did attend the vastly

superior school of Florida State University.

Just wanted to clear that up this morning. So, no, I actually became a Christian

at Florida State because that's where the Lord is. And...

No, but seriously, I actually did become a Christian at Florida State.

And so it's always been a place that's very near and dear to my heart.

There was a guy there named Andy, and Andy evangelized me for over a year and

a half before I became a Christian and trusted Jesus with my life.

And once I did, he took me under his wing and just began to teach me and show

me, I mean, how to read the Bible, how to pray, how to worship,

all these different things. and we would pray together.

We would get people together and we would go pray on campus.

We'd find people and pray for them on campus.

And we'd just go praying in different parts of campus. And a lot of times we

would end up at Westcott Fountain.

Westcott Fountain's one of the main fountains on campus, kind of near one of

the main entrances there.

And Westcott's kind of famous for the drunken revelries that happen around it.

It is not uncommon in the evenings to find drunk people in the fountain doing

whatever they're doing.

And so when we would be around that, we would oftentimes pray,

God, we would love to see people baptized in this fountain.

That would just be amazing to see that. And we would pray that quite a bit.

I keep up with Andy, probably not as much as I should, but I keep up with him.

And last year he texted me and he said, you're probably aware,

but just making sure you had seen this news.

And he sent me an article. And in the article, it talked about an event that

was held on campus. all the ministries at Florida State had come together for one event together.

And when they came together, over 5,000 people came and they got to hear the gospel.

And a number, a lot of the students believed that night in Jesus for the first time.

And after that event was over, they went out and they marched down the street

from the Civic Center directly onto campus and right there is Westcott Fountain

where over 400 people were baptized that night.

I mean, it's amazing, right?

And I want to be clear when I'm saying this, I don't believe that's because of me.

You know, that's the work of God at work there on that campus at that time.

But what I do believe is when I read the Bible, when I read this book,

what I see is that God is sending his followers out to a people in a place with

a purpose. He sends them out to do that.

If we look here in Ocala, there's this church here in Ocala.

It's called Good News Church. You might've heard of it before.

It was started a little over 14 years ago when Marty, wow, Mario and Heidi,

just combine their names, it's amazing.

Mario and Heidi came here and planted this church here. We were in that building next door.

And here we are in a bigger building with more people.

And we don't advertise. We don't advertise.

It's people inviting other people to come here.

As a church, we sponsor an organization, Share the Love, Ocala,

who puts on Royal Family Kids Camp and Teen Reach Adventure Camp each year.

And a little over a week ago, I got to sit in a room with some 14-year-olds.

And one of them said, if it wasn't for camp, I wouldn't even know that God existed.

It's because of camp that I even believe in God.

Followers of Jesus being sent to a place for a people with a purpose.

We're picking up our story this week in Genesis, in Genesis 11.

And it's the second half of Genesis 11. And really we're moving at this point

into part B, if you will, or the second part of Genesis.

Scholars look at Genesis in two parts. You have 1 through 11a,

or the first half of 11, and then 11b through 50.

Two different sections, and it's going to feel a little bit different.

I heard a pastor one time describe it, that 1 through 11a of Genesis is kind

of like the roots of the tree.

And then you have 11b through 50, which is like the stem or the trunk that's there.

And then all of the leaves and the branches and the fruit, that's the rest of

the Bible that's there for us.

So we've really got this great foundation that's been laid for us in Genesis.

And we've been given this really high level view of God up to this point in time.

We've seen a couple of characters here and there, but at this point in the story,

God kind of takes a step back in the story and is not leaving the story at all,

but he's introducing, he's bringing to the forefront, Abram,

this man Abram, for us to learn about.

And with Abram, more than any other character we've seen so far,

we're going to get into his life a little bit. We're going to hear emotions.

We're going to see his thought processes on different things.

We're going to get into his life more than we've been able to get into any other character so far.

And while he's not the biggest character in the Bible, there's other characters

that get more airtime than he does.

He's actually one of the most pivotal humans in the history of the world.

It's kind of amazing when you think about it. I have a chart here for us that

shows us just the impact that Abram and his life have had.

He eventually becomes Abraham in our story, and I probably will mess that up

all morning. I'm just going to interchange those names all the time.

But Abram or Abraham, we see that it's through him, we have three of the most

influential religions in the entire world, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

And today, you can turn on the news and see the impact that's having in our

world from this man today.

It's still impacting us right now, his story.

Incredibly pivotal man in history. And so we're going to be jumping into him

in the next several weeks here, over the next, actually probably several months

here, as we talk about him and his impact in the world around us.

But this morning's message is, and text for us, is really kind of like Star Wars, if you will.

It's the beginning of Star Wars, where we're shown, you have all the stars that

are there, and then all of a sudden, what happens?

Text starts scrolling across the screen, right? You guys know what I'm talking about?

And so, that's the text this morning, is we're given the backdrop.

We're being given the foundation for his life. Who is this man?

There's some foreshadowing that's going to happen here in our text,

and it's giving us the story, the beginning of the story that we're about to

be in for the next several weeks.

So, let's begin here in Genesis 11, 27.

These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram,

Nahor, and Haran. And Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans during his father Terah's lifetime.

Abram and Nahor took wives. Abram's wife was named Sarai and Nahor's wife was named Milcah.

She was a daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Sarai was unable to conceive. She did not have a child.

So, we learn a little bit about Abraham here. He's the son of Terah. He has three brothers.

His native land is Ur of the Chaldeans. And this is, we talked last week about

the Tower of Babel or the Tower of Babylon that's there. That territory has expanded since then.

Ur of the Chaldeans is in Babylon.

And Ur is actually a place where they worship the moon god.

This would be a pagan place, if you want to call it that, at that time.

And even Sarai and Milcah's names, their roots are in the pagan worship of their

time. That's the names themselves have roots in that pagan worship.

And we're even told in Joshua 24 that Abram's family, his family was worshiping

other gods when they lived in this land.

So, we see just right off the bat here a little bit about Abram.

We find that he's experienced a loss of his brother, Haran, who had a son before he died named Lot.

And like Genesis up until now, names have meanings. We've been talking about

this pretty much every week. Names have meanings.

And interestingly, Interestingly, Abraham's name means exalted father,

exalted father, but they can't have kids, we're told.

Maybe some foreshadowing there. And we know that kids are extremely important part of this culture.

Your child is the one who carries on your family name and your lineage going

forward. So, it's so important.

Kids are so important. So, to not be able to bear children is a very,

very, very big deal, and it's a big deal today.

Then it had implications for generations is the way you would look at it.

So a little bit about Abram there. Let's continue in our story. Genesis 11, 31.

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, Haran's son, and his daughter-in-law

Sarai, his son Abram's wife.

And they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.

So a quick side note on this name, Haran. We see it now in one of the brothers

that's there, but we also see this town of Haran.

There is absolutely no connection at all. In the Hebrew language,

they don't even sound the same. They don't translate the same.

It's just in our wonderful English language, we decided to make them sound the

same. But there's no connection there at all.

So, don't look at that and don't kind of trip up with that one there.

But we see right off the bat that these two paragraphs are covering a very large amount of time.

This would not have been days or weeks or probably even months.

This would have been years of preparation and traveling into this new area and

then settling there. They're stopping there.

And what's interesting about this stop, Terah, his father, his name in the Hebrew actually means delay.

Delay, pausing. Again, maybe something's being said here about this man.

And we have to kind of look at this story and in our text this morning,

we have to kind of take a back step again and look at it a little bit different

because we tend to read things very linearly in our Western mindsets.

This happened, then this happened, then this happened.

Genesis isn't necessarily written that way. So we read Genesis 12.1,

the Lord said to Abram, go out from your land, your relatives and your father's

house to the land that I will show you.

And we go, okay, he's left Ur of the Chaldeans, he's gone to Haran.

And now that he's in Haran, he is given this word from the Lord to go out from that land.

But if we keep reading, if we go on to Acts later in the Bible,

Acts chapter 7, we have Stephen, and he says this to us in preaching to the high priest at the time.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

Brothers and fathers, he said, listen, the God of Aghori appeared to our father

Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran and said to him,

get out of your country and away from your relatives and come to the land that I will show you.

Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran.

So the call of Abram seems to happen before he gets to Haran when he's in Ur

of the Chaldeans still and says, go out from this country, leave away from your

relatives to the land that I will show you.

He doesn't leave his relatives though. He takes them with him when he leaves Ur.

Interesting. So, and then they stop.

So, they're on their way somewhere. And then this word, but in this phrase implies

to us that they weren't supposed to stop there, but they do with delay.

So, a picture of Abram is being painted for us here in these opening paragraphs

as we're introduced to him.

He's the exalted father, but he can't have kids. He loses his brother.

He's born into the pagan realm of Babylon, and it's in his family as well.

He's not just born into this land, it's part of him. It's who he is as well.

And when God's call comes to him, he obeys, sort of, but not really.

And as a result, now they've stopped with delay in an undesirable place along

a trading route where they set up camp for who knows how long.

And so we see this man that's going to impact all of human history.

And I got to go like, God, did you really pick the right guy?

He's pretty underwhelming overall.

He might have had success. We do have evidence that he had some successes in

his life, but the guy that's going to really impact the whole world in human history?

Okay, let's keep reading a little bit.

Chapter 12, the Lord said to Abram, go out from your land, your relatives and

your father's house to the land that I will show you, and 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. I will curse those who treat you with contempt

and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

So the Lord speaks here to Abram. And the opening line doesn't really convey

to us all that well what it's actually saying here.

Because when we translated it into the Hebrew language, it says,

he's saying, get thee out.

Abram, get yourself out. Not just, hey, you should leave. No, this is a command.

Flee from this place. Abram, you have to go now. It's time for you to go.

Stop hanging out. Go, Abram.

It's a command that's happening here that he's saying, get out of this place.

This place is not for you.

And we struggle with this a little bit. We struggle really understanding this

because in our modern context, in our increasingly transient society that we

live in, it's hard to go, okay, like, leave, man.

That's fine. Go for it.

In his book, The Life We're Looking For, Christian author Andy Crouch helps

us, so I think, understand our culture a little bit better and why we struggle

with this passage in particular.

He says, by almost every modern definition, success requires leaving the people

who know you best, the place where you are most deeply known,

and the community that could truly hold you accountable.

Success usually requires leaving home.

For me, growing up, I grew up in the panhandle of Florida, and I was always

looking beyond that. Where am I going to go next?

So I went to Tallahassee, which was great. Then I went to Atlanta.

Oh, that was better. Then we moved to New York City. Oh, now we've made it.

And people were just affirming that in us as well.

Oh, wow, you guys are doing great. New York City.

When I was in college, I went on a mission trip, and I could choose from a bunch

of different places. So, I chose China.

Literally, the reason was because it was the furthest place that I could go.

That was the reason. It wasn't spiritual.

I didn't pray about it. It was like, oh, how far can I go? China,

that's where I want to go.

Culturally, we're told to get the out, but it's not for the same reasons.

We look at it as baggage is back here. So, we've got to go.

Get away from your family. They're holding you back from who you really need to be in this world.

We don't look at it the same way. And moving for us is also relatively easy.

Now, I know moving is stressful. I'm not saying it's not stressful.

We bought our house a couple of years ago and we moved in. I looked at my wife

and I said, I hope you like it because we're never moving ever again.

I hate moving. But we don't have the same implications to us picking up and leaving like Abram did.

When we leave, we have a backup plan of some kind, usually.

We pack up, we go to a different city because we have a job lined up there or

the prospect of work or money in the bank that's going to get us through for a little while.

Abram was different. To pick up and leave was extremely risky.

You're risking everything, especially to go out on your own away from your family.

I mean, now you're going to go into a land where they don't know you and probably

look at you as a hostile presence there by yourself, there's a good chance you're

gonna lose everything if not your life.

This was not an easy thing for him to do.

And in the midst of that, God says, go. And Abraham says, where?

And God says, I'll show you.

And he goes, that's not helpful. Where are we going? Can you be any clearer?

And God says, well, how about this?

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. I will curse those who treat you with contempt.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

He gives Abram seven promises here. And it's interesting when we look at how

some of these promises parallel with what he's already been told.

Go out from your land and your relatives, God says.

And then he says, I will make you into a great nation.

Leave your father's house. Leave

your identity. Leave everything you've grown up under and who you are.

And I will make your name great. If you remember the Tower of Babel,

do you remember what their goal was?

Let us make a name for ourselves. Let us make a name for ourselves.

And here we have God saying, no, I'm the one who makes names great.

I will do it. That's my job.

I will bless you, God says.

And what is God saying here? And I wonder what was going through Abram's mind

when he says, okay, I'm gonna bless you.

What goes through your mind when you hear this word blessing?

We like it, right? We like blessing because it's about us, right?

We hear blessing and we think of homes and land and money and wealth and prosperity. Blessings for me.

We like to look out for ourselves because we want it all. We want control.

We want security. We want comfort. We want power.

Blessing, right? That's blessing. That's the way we think about it so often in our culture.

We see somebody who has a lot of money and we say, oh, they're blessed. And they are.

But I can't help but wonder if the materialism and the consumerism of our culture

has clouded our judgment, that we can't see that the person with less is not

experiencing any less of God's blessing.

What's our view of blessing? We're gonna come back to this in just a little bit.

But what's God's view of blessing?

He says, I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you.

I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.

The blessing isn't for him. It's for others.

To be a blessing to others.

He continues, I will bless those who bless you. This is pretty straightforward here.

He's gonna bless those who bless Abraham and we're gonna see this come true

in a couple of chapters from now.

And then he says, I will curse those who treat you with contempt.

We're gonna see that come true in a couple of chapters in a couple of weeks from now.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

All generations, from generation to generation, will be blessed.

Future tents will be blessed through you.

Abram's not gonna get to see all of the blessings and all the promises that

God's giving him here, but he'll get to see a couple of them.

We'll get to see one coming up right here.

Genesis 12, four through nine. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. He took his wife Sarai,

his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people he had acquired in Haran.

And they set out for the land of Canaan.

When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the site

of Shechem at the Oak of Morah.

At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram

and said, 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 moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent

with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

He built an altar to Yahweh there and he called in the name of Yahweh.

Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

Get out of this land, says the Lord. And Abram finally goes to this ambiguous

land that God is gonna show him.

He's 75 years old. He's not a young man anymore. He packs up all of his things,

Lot, who he's kind of taken in as his own, goes with him, packs up his wife.

They, packs up all that they have, the people that he's acquired.

He's been successful in Haran.

And they head out to the land of Canaan, where they originally had it at the beginning.

Now, do you remember Canaan from a previous story that we read about with Noah, right?

So you have Canaan's father, Ham, who is disobedient and Noah curses, not Ham, but Canaan.

This is cursed Canaan. And this is the land that Canaan has gone into.

This is where his descendants have gone since that time.

And they've taken over this land. So the land that he is heading into is not

a land that has followed God.

And when it's said here, that he goes to the Oak of Morah, that God appears

to him and he says, I will give this land to your offspring,

the land that I will show you. He's there.

This is going to be yours, but it's not that easy.

Because as we're just told, there's Canaanites in the land. So yes,

Abram, this land will be yours. This is the promise I'm giving you this land,

but there's people here that think it's their land.

So what are you going to do? He's there next to this oak of Morah,

which translates to the oak of the oracle.

We know that this was a pagan Canaanite place of worship.

This is where they went. This is a shrine essentially to them where they would

go and worship and their own gods.

And so you have Abram right here. And so what does Abram do in this land that

isn't his next to this shrine, he builds an altar right there.

And how do we picture altars? So, maybe we look at altars and we go,

well, they're piling up rocks on top of each other, or they're building something

there where he can kneel and pray to God. And I'm sure he did that.

But when we talk about altars and when we're talking about what Abram's doing

here, he is here and he is claiming this land now for Yahweh.

This is the land that God has promised me, and therefore I am claiming it now.

It's not that different, and when I say this, a lot of you will know exactly

what I'm talking about, but there's a battle in American history called the

Battle of Iwo Jima, and we have a statue that kind of came out of that with

soldiers who have an American flag,

and they're planting that American flag with great effort into the ground.

And what they're saying at that moment is we are claiming this land as ours.

We have fought for this land. We have battled for this land and we have conquered

the people that are here and we are now claiming this land as ours, as our own.

That's what Abram is doing here as he's building an altar.

This land belongs to Yahweh. This is his land that's here.

And he does it again as he travels on and is between Bethel and I,

he builds another altar.

And then he travels around in this region, serving essentially this promised

land that God is giving him.

We're told later in Genesis and in Romans and Galatians, Abraham believed God,

and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Abram is acting in faith here. God has spoken.

God has said, this is the land and therefore I am claiming this land right now.

I can't see it yet. It's actually for my offspring, for a future generation,

but I am claiming it right now.

I may not see it in my lifetime, but I believe this to be true.

So what does this all mean for us?

What is this story saying to us? I want to highlight two things here that God

is doing here, but also seems to do throughout history.

Even as Kenan was reading the list of scriptures this morning,

I was going, man, he really, he does this throughout all of history.

Number one, God calls us out.

So that he can, number two, call us to.

He calls us out so that he can call us to. A place for a people with a purpose.

Calls us to a place of promise, calls us to a place of blessing.

But first he has to call us out. He's calling Abram out of his land from his

relatives and his father's house.

But when we look at that, what he's essentially saying there is God's calling

him out of security, his comfort, his religion, his worship,

his identity, his idolatry, his disobedience.

He's saying, Abram, you've got to get away from these things.

1 Corinthians 10 echoes this when it says, therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.

Get away from it. Get out from there.

Run away from it.

But how do we know what we're supposed to run away from? Abram's just living in a land.

And until God shows up and speaks to him, how does he know he's even supposed to leave?

How do we know what we're supposed to flee from?

A few minutes ago, I asked the question, what does it mean to be blessed?

What comes to your mind when you think about that?

I think the way that we think about blessing can oftentimes be a good indicator,

of what it is that God is calling us out from.

What's the first thought that comes into your mind? Our first instinct is usually

what's first in our hearts.

What is it when we talk about blessing? What's the first thing? Is it stuff?

Relationships? Careers? Salaries? Wealth? Success?

Is it God and His presence? We know what it should be, but is it?

What comes to mind? And even as I'm reading this list, this can be good and

bad things. Not all of these things are inherently bad things.

There can be some bad things that we need to walk away from and give up.

But the question is, what are

we putting our trust in? What is our security in? What is our faith in?

What are we looking towards?

There was a study done of Americans in which they were asked,

how much would be enough for you to be secure, for you to feel like, okay, we are good.

We're good at this level. And the answer was always, I mean,

across the board, it was the socioeconomic class right above the one that I'm in.

If we can get there, we're going to be good. That's where security is.

So a number of years went by, and they did the study again.

And they went back to the same people who had now achieved that socioeconomic

class that they had said they needed to be at previously.

The same question was asked, and the answer was exactly the same.

That socioeconomic class right above the one we're at, we'd feel a lot better if we were there.

We never get there. We never arrive. When is enough enough?

What do we need to get away from? What are the cultural identities that we need to step away from?

What are the things that we are putting our security in that are other than Jesus and His ways?

But another question then comes to mind as we find those things,

as we begin to discover those things in our lives, how do we actually get out?

How do we do it?

If you're like me, so often, brokenness, sin, whatever it is in my life that

I'm trying to get away from, I don't seem to be able to get away from it.

I can try and I can try and I can try and I can fail and I can fail and I can fail.

So the big question is, sure, yeah, let's get out of this place,

but how do we actually do that? How do we get out?

I want to remind us here of who we're talking about. We're talking about pagan,

hopeless, aimless, disobedient Abram.

Earlier in Genesis, if you remember, we talked about Noah. Do you remember how

Noah is described? Righteous, righteous Noah, blameless Noah.

Abram isn't described that way. He's Abram, Terah's son.

He's not notable. He's a sinner. He's broken.

And yet God sets his sights still on him.

We see that God's call is not based on Abram's worthiness or his credibility or his righteousness.

Luke 5, 31 and 32, Jesus says, the healthy don't need a doctor,

but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

His call is not based on our worthiness.

It's quite the opposite. Do we

see what's being communicated to us here right now in the life of Abram?

It means that our obedience to God is not the prerequisite for his love and his calling.

Our obedience to God is the result of His love and His calling to us.

He absolutely calls us to obedience, but He loves us first. He calls us first.

And the reward of that obedience is a greater intimacy with Jesus,

a greater relationship with Him.

Theologian Arthur Pink, I like how he says it. It is not until there is real

separation from the world that fellowship with God is possible.

First, the obedience of faith and then communion and worship.

It isn't until Abram finally leaves his land, his relatives,

his father's house, that God appears to him and calls him into greater fellowship with him.

That's how we get out. So Jesus,

Galatians 3, eight through nine says,

Now the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith

and told the good news ahead of time to Abraham saying, all the nations will be blessed through you.

So those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who has faith.

He's told ahead of time. What is he told ahead of time, that all the nations

will be blessed through him. How does that happen?

It's through his future relative, Jesus, his descendant, Jesus,

who John 12 tells us came for the whole world, the future blessing of all people through Abraham.

And here we find that like Abraham or Abram,

God calls us out of where we are as well,

so he can call us into promise and blessing so we can be a blessing to others

to go to a place for a people with a purpose,

and like Abram, God sends us to campuses to set up altars there,

to claim it for him, to cities and nations who wouldn't be able to hear without a preacher,

to workplaces that are aligned more with world systems than they are with God and his ways,

to orphans who wouldn't know that God existed without a people going to them,

to the cities we live in, to the neighbors that we live next to.

He calls us out of so that we can go too.

Because we have a savior that came down as well to a place for us with his great

purpose of telling us some extremely valuable news.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you. Thank you for what you show us here.

God, we may not see everything in our lifetimes that we wanna see you do.

But you're still working here and now.

God, you've placed us here in this moment. You've placed us in our jobs.

You've placed us in Ocala. You've placed us in these different places of our

lives with family, with friends.

To show a better way.

God, I thank you that you bring wholeness to this land.

And God, we know it takes time,

but we get to walk with you as we do. The God of heaven coming down to be with us.

What a joy and what a gift you are.

We thank you, Jesus. We ask for your true blessing today on our lives so that

we could be a blessing to others around us.

In the name of Jesus, amen.

Matthew 28 says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and remember,

I am with you always to the end of the age. That is good news.