Abraham Pt 1 – Call and Fall
Readings: Genesis 11.27 – 12.20, Matthew 4. 18-22
I’m calling this sermon series Origins: Abraham, because this is the beginnings of God’s salvation plan, this is in some sense the beginning of the Gospel as Abram receives the Gospel promise. So far in Genesis we’ve heard of Creation, Fall, Noah and his Ark, the Tower of Babel, but now the narrative slows down and zooms in, we’re meant to dwell with Abraham for a while. Here with Abraham begins God’s plan of salvation, and here with Abraham we’ll discover more of what our God is like, and more of what we are like as we perhaps see ourselves a little in Abraham, and more of what it means to stumble along with God as we try to follow his will and purposes for us.
The story starts pretty unremarkably, there’s this little family: Terah and his three sons, they live in Ur of the Chaldeans, which is in modern day Iraq. And after they’re all introduced with a little family history we’re told that Terah decides to move, along with his son Abram with his wife Sarai, along with his grandson Lot to Canaan, but they never make it, they arrive at a place called Haran, which is in modern day Turkey, and they settle there instead. So far this is an ordinary family doing ordinary stuff. You wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a lineup of families in this area 4000 years ago. That is until God enters the scene.
It reads like it comes out of nowhere right? We have this little unremarkable family and suddenly God appears and tells Abram to up sticks and move. He’s to leave everything behind, the place he has known, his Father’s household and the security that comes with that, leave behind friends and neighbours, and go to, where? To a land I will show you. That’s not a lot to go on is it? Leave behind everything and I’ll take you to a new place, I’m not going to give you the postcode so you can put it into your sat-nav, maybe check it out on Rightmove to see if it’s a good place to live, I’ll show you the way as we go. But with that instruction comes the most astounding promise: ‘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’. It’s a wonderful promise, an astonishing promise, it feels far too good to be true right?
And this is where we hit our first question: why Abram? Why this little family and not their neighbours next door? Why not his brother Nahor? If we look at the passage we only know three things about Abram at this point, we know his immediate family, we know where he’s living, and we know that they can’t have children. So that’s two bits of context and one big reason why perhaps God shouldn’t choose this family to turn into a great nation. We have no qualifications, nothing of his character, nothing of his holiness, in fact before the chapter is even finished we’ll see he’s certainly not a picture of moral perfection. So why Abram? We could ask the same question of Jesus in our Gospel reading today: why those disciples? They will soon prove themselves to be just as reliable and messy as Abram does, and yet Jesus chooses them. And it goes for us too right? Why me? Why did God call me to follow him? Why am I a Christian but my neighbour or my friend who seems to be a much better person than me isn’t?
Jonathan Griffiths in his book Strangers and Exiles gives the most wonderful answer to this question: why did God call Abram, those disciples, me? Because he is kind, it’s simply that, he is kind. God’s blessings come at his own initiative, without regard to our achievements or record or moral purity, they come simply because he is kind and gracious. God calls us to follow, invites us into life with him, at his own initiative. And that may be wonderfully comforting for some of us, God chose you for you, called you into life with him because he chose to. It should be rather humbling for all of us, God didn’t call you because he needed your skills or abilities, he didn’t call you because you’re better than anyone else. But for some of us it will also be a deeply unsatisfying answer, we want they why, a bigger reason, something we have some sort of say or input into. But it’s an important reminder for all of us that God is God and we are not, that he chooses to bless whom he chooses, and delights to do so, and should also drive us into prayer whenever we are sharing our faith because it reminds us that it doesn’t all rely of us to bring them to Jesus, it is God who calls, God who blesses.
And what a blessing it is right? Abram will become a great nation, God will bless him, will make his name great, and Abram doesn’t have to do a thing here, yes he needs to follow where God is going to lead him, but all of these promises are things God will do: I will do these things says God. This is what I’m going to do for you. But it’s also a blessing that’s bigger than Abram, it’s not solely for his own sake. Look again at verses 2-3, ‘I will bless you…and you will be a blessing…I will bless those who bless you…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’. Abram is blessed yes, but he’s blessed in order to be a blessing to others, a blessing to the whole world.
Because here with this call of one man and his little family begins God’s plan of salvation. Here at this moment is the beginnings of God’s salvation plan, it’s a Gospel promise Abram is receiving here. Because this little family will become a nation, the nation of Israel as we find it in the Old Testament (not to be confused with or equated with the modern nation state) a nation set apart to reveal God to the world. And out of this nation will come a man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh through whom all the nations of the earth are blessed, because through him our sins are forgiven, through him we are brought back into relationship with God and become part of that great family. This is the beginnings of God’s salvation purposes, all leading to the coming of Jesus around two thousand years later. God has set Abram apart for him, in order to create a people who are set apart for him, in order to join us in our world, and to bring us back to him. But Abram doesn’t know any of this yet, all he has is this promise. And it all sounds too good to be true, impossible given his wife Sarai can’t have children. But Abram goes, Abram takes God at his word ups sticks at the age of 75, and goes.
In Jesus God has given us so many promises, the forgiveness of sins, a new relationship with him, eternal life, to never leave us or forsake us, to bring us through death into a renewed and perfected universe. And we may feel a little like perhaps Abram did, it all sounds too good to be true, how can any of this happen? And it’s all happening at God’s initiative, these are all things he promises to do for us. He calls us, will we respond in faith like Abram? Will we answer his call and step out in faith choosing to trust his promises? Abram had practically nothing to go on about this God, we have all of Salvation history stretching from Abram to Jesus and beyond to see God’s character and reliability, will we step out in faith that his promises to us are true and go a different way to the one we were perhaps planning to go? Will we leave behind our security and what we know, and go to a new place in our trust, lifestyle, security and perhaps even where we live to follow God’s call?
Abram starts so well doesn’t he. God calls, Abram responds and goes to the land God has promised, he starts walking around the land, claiming it for himself and for his descendants, starts placing altars, claiming the land for God. He’s quick to obey, but very quickly trouble comes. A famine strikes the land, Abram was promised blessing, but what it seems to quickly have turned to dust in his hands. Have you ever found that? You start following Jesus and think it’s going to be amazing and suddenly troubles come, challenges appear. Or you’ve sensed God calling you to do something, to a new place or role and you go and very quickly it becomes really hard. And you start to question why. Why have you let this happen Lord? I’m doing what you asked. As trials come will we trust God, or will we fail to trust? Will we endure or will we buckle? Abram buckles. He immediately leaves the land of promise and heads to the fertile lands of Egypt around the Nile and falls into sin.
And whilst we may forgive him for doing the practical thing, perhaps we may want to defend his actions as not being a failure to trust God, we find as soon as he arrives Egypt that at this point he certainly fails to trust God. He arrives and panics because Sarai is beautiful and someone may attack or kill him to take her as their wife instead. So what’s his solution? He gets her to pretend to be his sister. That’s bad enough right? ‘Hey Sarai, I’m worried I might be killed, so if you could just pretend we’re not married that would be great, and sure you may get taken to be someone else’s wife but, and I quote ‘I will be treated well for your sake’’. It’s an utterly cowardly move, rather than defending and protecting his wife, rather than protecting his marriage, he immediately is thinking only of himself. Is this really the man God is going to make into a great nation? Is this really the man through whom the promised salvation is beginning?
And of course Sarai is beautiful, and Pharoah hears about her and brings her into his hareem and Abram simply lets it happen. It’s one thing to pretend she’s not his wife, it’s quite another to allow her to be taken as someone else’s wife with no hesitation to save your own skin. The way it reads sounds like Sarai has no say in this, Abram hands her over and she becomes Pharoah’s wife. We rightly may feel angry for her, weep for her. And perhaps be even more angry because Abram is gaining greatly off the back of this, growing very wealthy from this deception. And if we feel angry about this, if we weep about this, how much more does God? And so God brings suffering to Pharoah and his household. We may wonder why Pharoah and not Abram, Pharoah has been tricked, Abram is knowingly sinning, why does Pharoah suffer? Partly it seems it’s to open Pharaohs eyes to his unwitting sin, because he soon somehow works out what has happened, summons Abram and throws them both out of Egypt. Abram doesn’t get away with this, he doesn’t go without consequences, they just arrive in a different way.
I wonder how quickly we fail to trust God when things get hard, how quickly we turn to saving our skin and leaving others behind with the consequences. I wonder how easily we hide the truth in order to protect ourselves or our reputations. But as Jesus himself says: there is nothing hidden in the dark that will not be brought into the light. I wonder how easily we fail to trust the God who has called us into life with him, and turn instead to sin to save us and end up in a mess.
God doesn’t shield Abram from the consequences of his actions, but neither does he give up on him, it’s going to be a long road of learning for Abram, but God is committed to the work and to the journey, and it is much the same with us. When we fail to trust, when we fall into sin, or run headlong into it, God may not shield us from the consequences, but he will not abandon us in it.
Because through Abram all the nations are blessed, through Abram’s line comes the Saviour to deal with our sin, to carry it to the cross to be nailed up with him there, so that when we, like Abram, stumble and fall, we can know the forgiveness of God, the loving kindness and mercy of our God, and begin again, and how many times will Abram have to begin again.
The core message of this first chapter of Abram’s story is simply this: God calls sinful messed up people. He calls us because he chooses to in his goodness, and he will not abandon us in our sin but will continue to use us and grow faith in us, in other words we cannot put ourselves outside of his grace. And he blesses us, in order that we might be a blessing to others. So may we, who know the promises of God and his blessing, go out to share that blessing with others, that they too may receive for themselves those same promises.
Amen.