Don't Stop Half-Way Series

And like I said, God chose Abram, who would later on be called Abraham… but that doesn’t mean that God has forgotten about the rest of the world, and it doesn’t mean that God isn’t concerned with the rest of the world. Abraham was chosen in order to bless the rest of the world. In Genesis 18 God says that all the nations of the earth will be blessed in Abraham. In Genesis 22 God says to Abraham, “In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed…” That Seed of course is Jesus Christ; so God is very much concerned with all of the nations, and Abraham himself is called out of these nations. He’s been called out of idolatry, and the reason for that is so that God can bless all nations, and so that God can reconcile all the nations back to Himself.

And we all know the story, God called Abraham, and Abraham left his father’s house and it seems like this is the story we always talk about... About how Abraham was called out of his father’s house and how he stepped out in faith. In-fact we’re going to be talking about that next Sunday, but look at our text… Verse 31 tells us that it was Terah, Abraham’s father, who took Abraham and Lot and Sarah out of Ur and headed towards the land of Canaan. Verse 31 says that Canaan was where they were headed, but then something happened. Terah stopped in the land of Haran. Now don’t get confused here. Haran was the name of Lot’s father, but it’s also a place in what is now modern day Turkey. So Terah was headed to the land of Canaan, but he pulled up short.

Now this is important.

We aren’t told why Terah was headed towards Canaan. We aren’t told why he decided to go there, but we do know that Canaan is where God wanted Abraham. We know that because God leads Abraham there later on. All we know is that for some reason Terah was trying to get there, or had set out to get there.

Now in the Bible Canaan is sometimes referred to as The Promised Land, and it’s used as a typology of heaven. And here we have Terah and his family, and he fully intends on getting to Canaan, but for whatever reason he comes up short. Maybe he got to a point where he was content and he felt like pressing on towards Canaan just wasn’t worth the trouble… you know, he liked where he was at in life, things were going good, and hey, you know… “I’m out of Ur where all that idol worship is going on… I think Haran’s just fine.” Maybe he thought going half-way was good enough. Maybe he didn’t want to get too far from what was familiar to him. Or maybe; maybe he thought, “You know what? I’m too old for all this stuff. I’ll just settle where I’m at. I’ve done enough and gone on far enough.” Whatever the reason, Terah didn’t make it, and I think all of us here can see how that can be applied to us in our lives today.

If God’s calling you to do something – do it! If He’s calling you to go somewhere – go! If He’s calling you to be something – strive for it with all your might! Never stop fighting the good fight of faith! Never stop serving the Lord. Never stop sharing the Gospel!