The Church in the Days of Abram (1), Genesis 12:1-9

The last time we looked at this part of the Bible we considered the church in the days of Terah. One of the things we noticed was that God had called Terah to go into the land of Canaan but that, while he made a great deal of progress, he did not ultimately fulfill the calling. Terah brought his family 800 miles to Haran and stopped. We can imagine that God prodded Terah a few times to keep going, but after Terah lived in Haran for a while, God replaced him in his calling with Abram.

Abram’s call

Genesis 12:1, “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.”

Notice that God does not wait until Terah dies before he sends Abraham in his place. God tells Abraham to “get from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house.” From the genealogy that can be constructed, we learn that Terah lived about 27 years after the time that Isaac was born, so we know that Abraham left Haran in the presence of his father and his brother Nahor.

He may have gone with their blessing—we don’t know. Perhaps they were offended at Abram taking up the call. They may have said to him, “You must think you’re something special. You are being too fastidious about these directions you say God has given you.” That’s entirely possible—it’s often the case that a person’s family and friends are offended if the person seeks to follow the Lord fully. It was part of the reason Joseph’s brothers hated him. On the other hand, as I said, Abram’s family might have sent Abram on with their blessing. They would maybe have said something like, "We wish you well. It’s a hard, dangerous journey you’re taking. We can’t find it within us to continue with you, but God go with you.” It would have been a painful parting in any case—the one portion of what seems to be the remaining church in the world dividing from the other.

Abram takes this call to depart from his father’s house very seriously. At one point he leaves the land of Canaan to go into Egypt, but he never returns to Haran again, even to find a wife for his son. He sends a servant there instead.

A second part of this call concerns the place to which he was called. God says that it is a land “that I will shew thee.” Abram had only a vague idea of what he was being asked to do. God knew, of course. God had a firm plan, but Abram knew only as much as necessary to follow God’s direction. This is always the case with creatures following their creator. We aren’t given the full picture ahead of time. We know enough to obey, and sometimes there is a little more information, but God expects us to do what he says and not stay in a place like Haran, even if part of the church might remain there.

Despite the difficulty of the journey, God gives Abram some encouragement. He elaborates a promise to him, and he does not send him out alone.

Abram’s encouragement

Abram’s promise

Genesis 12:2–3 “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

This is an expansive promise. God will make a great nation of Abram. God will curse those who curse him. The whole world is going to blessed through him. There is a lot of magnificence in that, so much so that it may have seemed like something of a letdown when God later says, in v. 7, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” The land of Canaan, as beautiful as it may have been in those days, was not, after all, nearly so large as the expanse of territory that Abram’s family had crossed in trying to reach Canaan. It could be crossed in a few days. Often, the progress of the church is made in very small steps, steps that seem insignificant in comparison to the promise as a whole.

And it was probably even more discouraging when Abram and Sarai had no children. This was the specific avenue through which the greatest part of his blessing was to come, and it did not seem as if there were any possible way it could happen. We’ll probably discuss that at more length in a future study.

But at the beginning, anyway, God gives Abram a broad overview of the grand scheme, and it is a glorious promise.

We have that same broad overview of the destiny of the church. We, as students of scripture, even have the “Puritan hope,” the knowledge that God will one day bring on such a revival that most of the world will be converted. These things should fill our hearts with joy and encourage us in our service to God, even if we have to serve him in a troublous time beforehand.

Abram’s company

The second way that God encourages Abram is by sending him with a company of faithful people and providing for his needs. Genesis 12:4–5, “And Lot went with him.... And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran.”

We don’t need to elaborate much on this, but we can say that God is good in surrounding us with family and faithful friends in Christ. Have we met with discouragements? Perhaps so. Have some friends forsaken us? Maybe they have. But there are replacements and reinforcements. Jesus says, Mark 10:29–30, “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” We should look around us and take comfort in the provision of such things—the rich sustenance the Lord has given us, and especially brothers and sisters in Christ to share our persecutions.

Abram’s obedience and Abram’s danger

We only have time to take brief notice of this. Genesis 12:4, “So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him.” Abram obeyed in faith. He took up the call and went to this unknow place at the behest of God. He was fully dependent on the Lord, because we notice that in addition to the well-watered plane, the fruitfulness of the place, and the ability he had to increase his wealth there, v. 6 says, “And the Canaanite was then in the land.”

These were the people of the curse of Ham. It would have been well-remembered in the days of Abram. We know that they were not only cursed but that they eventually became so wicked that God gave them over to a general slaughter in the generation of Joshua. Even now they were not God-fearing people. Abram had adversaries of whom he was afraid.

Abram’s God

One response to the fear of adversaries is to curl up and die, or retreat. But Abram does not do that. His response, as our response should be, was to build an altar to the Lord and worship him. This is how we cleave to the Lord, this is how we gain his blessing. This is what the Lord desires of us. It is how we please him and honor him.

This is the task that we are about in seeking to build this church. Despite the danger or scorn of enemies, despite the trials and persecutions that we know will come, some of which we have already experienced, we want to be identified, with Abram, as the Lord’s people. It is ultimately not a dangerous thing. In the words of Jesus that I quoted from Mark 10, the end of it is, “in the world to come, eternal life.”

Our last sight of Abram in this episode is described in v. 9: “And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.” Perhaps you remember where Abram came from. To get into the land of Canaan he had come from the north. In this short passage we find Abram building two altars, one near Shechem, and another further south near Bethel. Now he continues on to the south. It is as if he is walking the length of the land and claiming it in the name of the Lord, building altars wherever he stops for a time.

This is our duty as well—we want to leave monuments of God’s grace, in the form of churches, wherever we go. You remember that later in the book of Genesis, in chapter 26, that it says, “And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father.” These wells were a sort of heritage that Abraham left to his children. It says that Isaac called these wells “after the names by which his father had called them.” In much the same way, these altars would have been remembered by Israel in time to come. It’s not for nothing that their locations are mentioned here. We want to pray that the work we do in planting this church will be a memorial to our children of the work of God in our day.