GOD'S CALL TO ABRAM
Genesis 12:1-13:4 (11:27-32) Lesson 6
Key verse: 12:2
"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."
* ABRAM'S FAMILY (11:27-32)
1. Describe Abram's family. What was his problem? Where was his
original home? To where did he move? (Compare Acts 7:2-4; Josh
24:2,3)
* GOD'S CALL; ABRAM'S RESPONSE (12:1-9)
2. According to God's call, what was Abram to leave and where was he
to go? Think of what was involved in leaving; in going to an
unknown place. Why was it necessary for him to leave his past life
in order to receive God's blessing?
3. What did God promise Abram? How did his present condition make
this a difficult promise to believe? Think about each part of the
promise. What does it mean that "all peoples on earth will be
blessed through you"?
4. What was Abram's response? What do the words, "as the Lord had
told him" suggest about Abram's faith?
5. Where did Abram and his family go? Who was Lot and what was his
relationship to Abram?
6. When Abram arrived in Canaan what did he find? What additional
promise did God make? What was Abram's response? What did this
mean (7)?
7. What other altar did Abram build? (8; 13:3,4) What might be the
significance of this altar?
* ABRAM IN EGYPT (10-20; 13:1-4)
8. Why did Abram go to Egypt? Compare his motives in going to Egypt
with his motives in going to Canaan.
9. What plan did he make before entering Egypt? Why did he make such
a plan? What verses show how the plan worked out? Contrast his
life in Egypt with his life in Canaan. Why didn't he build altars
in Egypt?
10. How did God protect Abram's family? Why did Pharaoh rebuke him
and send him away? What can we learn here about God? About the
weaknesses in men of faith?
11. Read 13:1-4. How did Abram show his repentence? What can you
learn here?
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GOD'S CALL TO ABRAM
Genesis 12:1-13:4 (11:27-32) Lesson 6
Key verse: 12:2
"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."
The first eleven chapters of Genesis tell us that God created a good
and beautiful world and put man in it to be the ruler, shepherd and
caretaker of all things. God was pleased and man was happy (Ge 1,2).
Then man and woman disobeyed God and sin entered the world (3). At
first, disobeying God seemed to be very trivial. But it was not.
Because of sin, man lost paradise. Because of sin, death came; men were
alienated from God and from each other. A man killed his brother; then,
he lived in fear, expecting to be killed at anytime. He became a
restless wanderer who produced only bad fruit. As time went on, things
did not get better--they got worse. Men deliberately left God out of
their lives--especially out of their marriages--and became corrupt and
violent (6). The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth and
his heart was full of pain. So God judged the world and destroyed it
with a flood. But this did not solve the sin problem (8:21). Even Noah,
the one righteous man whom God saved out of the flood had sin in his
heart. He offered a blood sacrifice to God, and God accepted it. God
then made a plan to deal with sin in another way.
Beginning in Genesis 12 God called one man, Abram, and gave him a
covenant promise. And Abram believed God and obeyed his word. God
promised to make him a source of blessing for all people. God's best
blessing is salvation from sin and his kingdom.
In the New Testament, Jesus speaks of Abraham. He called him a man
of truth (Jn 8). He said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought
of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." (Jn 8:56) Paul said that
Abraham is our father if we walk in his footsteps of faith. (Ro 4:12)
He also said that those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham
the man of faith (Gal 3:9); and God "redeemed us so that the blessing
given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus..."
(Gal 3:14) In chapters 12-25 we will study about Abram's faith and the
God of Abram.
1. Abram's times
The times of Abram were godless times. People who live without God
are like orphans, children with no parents. They seem to have absolute
freedom, but they are bound by fear and fatalism. Freedom from God
means slavery to everything else.
First, Abram's world. Egypt was the most advanced civilization of the
times. But under the superficial veneer of culture, there was no
justice; morals and ethics were too corrupt to imagine. In Egypt, men
ruled over other men harshly and material things seemed to rule all
men.
The great cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were thriving in Abram's
time. They were located in the beautiful Jordan valley, which was like
the garden of the Lord and the land of Egypt (13:10). But the people
there were sinning greatly against the Lord (13:13). The men of Sodom
were homosexu- als. Their eyes were blinded by curiosity and lust. Men
abandoned normal relations and committed indecent acts with other men
and received in themselves due penalty for their perversion (19:4,5; Ro
1:27). In Genesis 14 we can see the unstable political situation of the
times. It was like the feudal age, with powerful kings and cities
seeking to exert control on weaker ones. There were continual wars.
Weak cities were plundered and their women and children taken into
slavery.
And what about the intellectual and spiritual climate of those
times? The creation order of God was turned upside-down. People served
idols. The Canaanites worshipped their gods with sexual orgies and
drunken feasts. The worst of the superstitious practices was the
practice of offering children as burnt sacrifices to idols. How
miserable a man must be if he resorts to burning his son to appease the
gods. This is not just an old story about other people. It is a direct
way of telling us how much people who live without God suffer in the
agony of fear.
But even though men abandoned God, God did not abandon men. He had
great compassion on mankind living in slavery to fear and to material
things. In order to save such men, God called one man, Abram.
Second, Abram's family (11:27-32). When God called Abram, he was 75
years old and his wife Sarai was 65. Abram and his 2 brothers, Haran
and Nahor, were born and raised in Ur of the Chaldeans. Haran, the
father of Lot, died there. This was ancient Babylonia, a region noted
for astrologers, sooth-sayers, and all kinds of practitioners of the
occult arts. Abram's family were also idol worshippers. (Jos 24:2)
God first called Abram to leave his country and his people when he
was living in Ur. (Acts 7:2,3) At that time, Abram's father, Terah,
took his 2 surviving sons and his grandson Lot and left for Canaan. But
when he got to Haran, he decided to settle there.
Abram was wealthy, but he had one great personal problem. His wife
Sarai was barren, so he had no children. To a man with a sense of
history, this is tragic, for it meant that he had no one to whom he
could pass his name and wealth, his intellectual and spiritual
heritage. His line would end with himself. He may have found some
comfort in his nephew Lot, whom he looked upon as a son, but there was
still a fatalistic element and a deep sorrow in his heart.
2. God calls Abram (12:1-3)
Genesis 12:1-3 says, "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your
country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I
will show you...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.'" This call contains a
command and a promise. The command is, "Leave your country, your people
and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. God's
call to Abram was specific. Abram, a man immersed in his times and in
his family, was already 75 years old. For such a man to leave the
security of his homeland, his family and friends--to cut these precious
ties and go into an unknown world was indeed difficult. But if he was
to become a man whom God could bless and use, it was necessary. God
wanted him to become independent of his idolatrous family. He wanted
him to be the pioneer of a new history. He wanted him to depend on God
alone--not on family, friends, or on past experience or his habitual
ways of thinking and acting.
When we begin the life of faith, we must break away from our past
lives. Family, home, my own country are not necessarily bad. But when
we depend on these human things, we cannot wholly trust and obey God.
For some people, to go from our own country and our father's house is a
spiritual decision which results in a new and better relationship with
our human families. We become independent by becoming dependant on God.
For others, it means actually leaving physically, breaking human ties.
In every case, however, the earthly things which we once trusted and to
which we once clung for security and help must be surrendered as we
take hold of God's word and begin a new life of obedience to him.
When our hearts and feet are deeply caught in the sinful world, God
calls us to repent and leave a life of sin and turn to God.
God did not call Abram in order to make life miserable for him. God
said to Abram, "I will bless you and you will be a blessing." "I will
make you into a great nation." "I will give you this land." (7) God
called Abram to bless him. God's blessing is a covenant promise, for
God is a God of promise. When we become Christians, we take hold of
God's promise and enter into a covenant relationship with God. God
promised Abram--in spite of his childlessness--to make him a great
nation. This means that Abram would have many descendants. He promised
to make Abram's name great. This was a promise to train him until he
could become a truly great man. A man's greatness is found in his inner
character. He is great because of what he is--not because of what he
has. God would make Abram great. A great name also implies honor. Abram
would be honored and respected by all men. But the greatest blessing
that God can give a man is to make him a source of blessing to others.
God promised Abram that he would be a blessing--that all peoples on
earth would be blessed because of him. He would not live and die a
useless old man whose family line would end with himself. Through him
and his descendants God would pour out the greatest blessing God can
give. God's promise to make Abram a source of blessing for all mankind
was finally fulfilled in Jesus, whom God sent to die for our sins and
be raised to life so that all who believe in him might be saved from
sin and destruction. (Acts 3:25,26)
God calls us into a covenant relationship with himself in order to
bless us and make us a blessing. Each of us can become a source of
blessing to others when we accept God's salvation and his calling to
participate in his redemptive work in our own times by sharing his
gospel and his word and his love with the people of our own time. If we
hold our faith and blessing for ourselves alone or for our own families
or people, then something is fundamentally wrong. Such believers among
the Jews were the ones who nailed Jesus to the cross. When our faith is
based on God's covenant, not only are we blessed, but we become a
source of blessing for our families, our neighbors and for the world.
God promised to protect Abram from a hostile world. Those who cursed
him would be cursed; those who blessed him would be blessed. He
promised Abram's descendants the land of Canaan as an inheritance--even
though the powerful, war-like Canaanites were already there.
God's promises plant hope. Hope is like the bright sunlight that
dispels the dark clouds of fatalism and despair. Or it is like the
morning star that rises in the sky in the darkest hours just before
dawn.
Genesis 12:4 says, "So Abram left as the Lord had told him..." We
don't know about Abram's theology. All we know is that he believed the
word of God and that he showed his belief by obeying God's command. In
the New Testament, when Peter received Jesus call, "Follow me", he left
his boats and nets and followed Jesus. James and John left their father
and servants in the boat and followed Jesus. (Mk 1:16-20)
When Abram arrived in Canaan he looked around and saw the
Canaanites. They were strong and war-like. They lived in walled cities.
But when the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will
give this land," (7) Abram believed God and built an altar. It was an
altar of thanksgiving. It was like a flag planted to claim the new
land. He did not own even a foot of land, but in his heart, he claimed
the whole land because God had promised it to him.
Abram's life in Canaan was an altar-building life. He went to a
place between two of the most powerful cities and built another altar.
There he called on the name of the Lord. "Whoever calls on the name of
the Lord will be saved." (Ro 10:13) He had no army and no walled city.
But he trusted the Lord. The Lord God was his shield and his
protection. So he could live by faith, without fear, in the land of the
Canaanites.
3. Abram in Egypt (12:10-13:4)
Abram was not sent to Egypt by God. He did not pray about going. He
went to Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan. He had a material
problem. He had to survive. It was the reasonable thing to do. Because
he did not go by faith, he was full of fear. So before he entered Egypt
he made a plan for survival. It was a brilliant plan, and it worked.
When he lied to Pharaoh about his beautiful wife, Pharaoh indeed took
her into his harem and Abram was treated well for her sake, and his
life was spared because of her. (13) But it was also a very dumb plan,
for it cost Abram his wife and his slender hope of having a son and
heir. Abram became rich and miserable and more hopeless than ever. He
did not build altars in Egypt and he did not pray. But God helped him
anyway and inflicted diseases on Pharaoh and his household. Pharaoh
rebuked Abram and sent him away with all his possessions and his wife.
Abram returned to the altar he had built between Bethel and Ai. He
again called on the name of the Lord; the altar became an altar of
repentance and an altar of a new beginning. Abram, God's servant, must
live by faith, not by human calculations.
God who called Abram is a God of hope. In Abram's time, the world
was full of sin and there was no hope of salvation. But God called
Abram and made a plan to save all the people of the world through him.
Abram himself was a hopeless old man; but God had hope for him and
called him. God called one man, but he wanted to make of him a holy
nation and a kingdom of priests. He wanted to bless all people by
bringing them back to himself through them. He is the God and Father of
Abraham's offspring, our Lord Jesus Christ. He purchased our salvation
through Jesus' blood. Still, Jesus' people are called to be a holy
nation and a kingdom of priests for the world.