Since the beginning of our story, a pattern has emerged between humanity and God that looks something like this:
God provides a blessing to His cherished creation… like a garden, a partner, a place to live and be sustained, a means of survival for us. Each of those loving gifts testify to uniquely to God’s attentive love for us and our value to God.
Then humanity sins… we eat what we should not while blaming each other for the choice. Accountability is pushed away for our choices; it was some else’s fault. We kill those who God has given us. The effect of these choices is harmful to our relationship with God who suffers deeply in these moments alongside of us.
Our choice to sin grows and grows until we do unspeakable things and we leave God little room in our lives or hearts.
The pattern continues until the moment where God steps in and God must reset His creation dramatically. Through expulsion from the garden, through a great Flood, and in the confusion of all spoken languages. God steps in. We can imagine God is sadden in each of these moments as the relationship breaks and God must intervene in these ways.
As I said, this is our story; one you are familiar with. The details change but the essence is the same.
Yet regardless of what we do, or how greatly we sin, the Lord does not give up on His Creation. This is also the message of the gospel. Why is that? Where does that statement come from?
It comes for the next step in our story…
Finally, God takes the last dramatic step, and the Lord does something that He had not done until now. It is the step of our text that we will consider together. God because He loves us so deeply the Lord will bind himself to us in a new way—a covenant. It is the covenant based on hope; it is the covenant that we call Abram’s call.
Today we will begin together by notice the context that sets up this covenant before seeing what helps Abram remain faithful to God. Finally I want to think about how Abram’s choice becomes our choice as well.
Move 1- the context
This choice of the Lord is the one that brings Jesus for us: the call of Abram and Sarai—for they went together at the Lord’s call. And while each of us are familiar with the words of Genesis 12, I wonder if we might hear it again from a new vantage point: the perspective of a called Hope.
First, we need to understand some of the context of this story because while you and I have the entirely of the canon of scripture to recall and look back on and know that in this moment Abram displays great faith, and as we read from Paul, it is credited to him as righteousness. As God spoke to Abram, none of that was accessible to the Patriarch.
Abram did not have the blessing of history to hold up his faith and to provide him hope that he heard God’s call correctly. Notice his story. It begins before we started reading in chapter 11.
At an age that we do not know, Terah, Abram’s father, began a journey with his son and his entire household. They travelled from Ur heading towards the land of Caanan. This would be a long journey that could cover approximately 1200 miles, but one that this family could sustain together. They could support one another: together. At this moment, their story looks like all the other stories in scripture that we have. . .
We do not know why they went. The Word of God does not tell us. But it is clear that something important in the history of humanity is about happen here. The family made it as far as Haran (which was about halfway roughly 600 miles) before stopping their journey. But they stopped.
We can assume that it was part of God’s call but even that is an assumption. Initiative takes us only half of the way. Hard work can build Arks and great towers up towards the heavens. It does not always create what is necessary though. In Genesis 11 and into Genesis 12, God brought Abram part of the way. Something else, something more, would call Abram to complete the journey with Sarai.
As Walter Brueggemann wrote once, “Faith is indeed the capacity to risk what is in hand for what is yet to be given by this intrusive speaker.”[1]
Move 2- Faith moment
Let’s continue the story. . . Life was well in Haran.
Surrounded by family and the blessings and security that a loving family can provide, Abram and Sarai could settle down and live together probably for as long as they wanted. Perhaps they could even begin to believe that this is what the Lord’s call in their life truly looked like. But God spoke to them further—and isn’t that is often what God does in each of our hearts and lives?
The Lord gently, but consistently, calls us further than we think we could go.
Whether that call is felt in the individual’s heart, the family’s heart, or the church’s heart. God calls us hoping that in the call we will hear the hope that lives in those words.
The “intrusive speaker,” that Brueggemann referenced, reached out to Abram and called him to continue his journey of faith without most of the remainder of his family. Abram might not have known where the Lord was taking him, but it did not matter. For two things would help him along the way. God provides two things that would help assist Abram in the next step in his journey.
Faith. And His relationship with God.
For the remainder of his life and His journey with the Lord, both would be essential.
Time and again Abram would return to his faith and his relationship with God when his life seemed out of control. Abram, and Sarai, would need to fall back on these two defining traits when the struggles of their daily lives made them wonder if God’s voice is truly what they heard.
And yes, they would do so in varying degrees throughout their lives. With a promise of a child to a barren mother, to the call to sacrifice that same child on the mountaintop, they would fall back on their faith and their relationship with God. They would succeed at times and fail at others. But ultimately, like us, their faith and their relationship with the Lord would be essential in this journey.
Even if the substance of that relationship was still be grown and nurtured in Genesis 12, Abram believed in what he heard and he went. You and I may know the Lord more fully, but we too are called often to go and trust in the One who believes and hopes in each of us.
God asks each of us to respond faithfully just as Abram did. At some point, when God speaks to you, you must lean in and take up your things, leave behind the comfort of what you know, and trust in the one whose voice called you and in whom you are developing a deeper relationship with.
Move 3- the blessing
This leads to the blessing of the call of Abram for the church. For because Abram believed, his life testifies to the truth that God did not, God will not, give up on us. His creation. God always hopes, always, believes, that we will find our way to the first call that God made in our lives even if we feel uncertain about the direction of that call. Our faith and our relationship with God will see us through.
God’s call in your life mandates a single response, a single choice. To find God’s voice, to listen to it and for it, and then respond to it.
In Abram’s case that response invited him to live into this hope as he journeyed with Sarai the remaining 600 miles, living in a promise that he likely did not fully understand, trusting in the promise keeper, whose voice was not yet fully clear to Abram.
That choice leads him believe in a destination, both spiritually and physically, that he cannot see as he leaves his family behind.
Conclusion
Each person who finds Abram’s story is asked the same thing. We are asked to wonder about the voice of the Lord calling to us. Because Abram responded in faith used that faith to build his relationship with God, a blessing that we now feel and live into, is felt by the church.
And while you and I are not going to be blessed in the same way, we are asked by God often to go to places, to spend time with people, who might make us feel like we are living far from home. In those places, God’s word stands strong for us. God hopes that we remember the steps that he took to call us forward.
DM
