Don’t Stop at Half-Way (Genesis part 22)
Text: Genesis 11:10-32
By: Ken McKinley
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Up to this point, we’ve been shown a picture of what God was doing amongst the nations, and His concern for the nations. But now we are coming to the point where the Bible is going to focus on a specific line. It’s the line of Shem down to the line of Abraham, and then Isaac, and then Jacob, and their descendants.
Now we need to understand something right up front before we go much farther; and that’s this: This line was chosen by God. They were chosen by God not because of anything they did, or because they were more holy or righteous than the descendants of Japheth, or even Ham… if you read through the Bible, you’ll see that the descendants of Shem are just as prone to sin, and just as likely to fall short as the descendants of the others, and people will say, “Pastor Ken; how can you say that the descendants of Shem weren’t more righteous than the descendants of Japheth and Ham? It’s obvious that they were?” And my answer to that is: If they were more righteous, then it’s because God chose them, not why God chose them. They lived more righteous lives because God chose them, and then God revealed His will to them, and then God revealed His Word and His Law to them. Had God chosen the line of Japheth and then revealed His will to that line of people, and His Word and His law to that line, then they would’ve no doubt lived more holy lives. This is why we see the line of Shem serving God, because of God’s sovereign choice. And that’s exactly what happened; God sovereignly chose the line of Shem, down to Abraham, and down to Jacob and his descendants, and its because of this, and because God revealed His will to them, and gave them His Word and His Law, that we see them live more upright lives than the others. In-fact; it’s not even all of Shem’s descendants who are going to receive these things from God… It goes from Shem to Terah, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And so we see that not all of Shem’s descendants are going to end up living the way that the Hebrew people did. Many of Shem’s descendants are going to remain in a polytheistic religion.
Something else you might notice when we read that, was that the life spans of man were decreasing. I mean; you still get some pretty long life spans, but they are getting shorter as we go along. Abraham is going to live for 175 years, his grandson Joseph is going to live for 110 years. When we read about Moses, we’ll see that Moses lives to be 120, but Moses also says that the average life-span in his day is 70 or 80 years. Some folks say that’s because man was becoming more and more sinful, because after all, the wages of sin is death… but I don’t know that man was any more sinful than they were before the flood. Because we know man was pretty bad then… bad enough that God destroyed the entire earth. I personally think we see shorter lifespans because the world had changed and because one of God’s creation mandates was being filled. When I say the world had changed I mean that the flood had drastic effects on our world. I believe that it changed the world, the atmosphere, the environment, habitats, and who knows what else, and those changes meant that man would be incapable of living for such long times. When I say that God’s creation mandate was being filled, I mean that man was finally going into all the earth. God had told both Adam and Noah to fill the earth, and that was finally happening so it was no longer necessary for man to live so long and have 50 kids, and 500 grandkids and 5,000 great grandkids. Again, that’s just speculation on my part so take that as you will.
The point is; lifespans decreased after the flood, so we know that something was going on.
Ok… let me try to stay on track here. In our text we’re introduced to this guy Abram. And when we meet him, we don’t meet him as Abraham the patriarch of the Jewish line… we meet him as Abram, a pagan, living in the land of Ur of the Chaldeans. In-other-words, Abram wasn’t living in Israel. He was living in what is today modern day Iraq… just south of where the Tower of Babel was being built. And he wasn’t living the life of a believer, he was living the life of a pagan.
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!
You know, we see that in the lives of some people. They live sold out for the Lord until the day they die. I’ve been told that my grandpa did that, that even when he was in a nursing home, he was still telling everyone he could about Jesus as the opportunities presented themselves. And we can look at the great men and women of faith that we admire and see in their lives they preached the Gospel and shared their faith right up until the end of their lives. And I’ll just tell ya’, when I hear about preachers retiring from the ministry, I kind of just laugh… you never retire from the ministry.
So what about us? When you and I look at this do we see ourselves more like Terah or more like Abraham? What we’ll see next Sunday (Lord willing), when we get to chapter 12, is that Abram goes on to Canaan. Abram was obedient to God’s call. He made his choice to follow and serve the Lord, and yes he has a lot of problems and yes he makes a lot of mistakes, but he presses towards the mark of the prize. Turn with me to Joshua 24:1-3 (Read). Now this is near the end of Joshua’s life, and he’s charging the Israelites to be faithful; and Joshua is referring to that instance when Abraham obeyed God and stepped out in faith to follow Him, then he goes on to talk about Moses and a few other points of Israel’s history where God had called them to faithfulness, and then in verse 15 he says, “… choose for yourselves this day, whom you will serve!” You see; the Bible always equates faithfulness with obedience; Paul said, “Faith without works is dead,” and Jesus Himself said, “If you love Me, keep my commands!”
So God called Terah and Abraham out of Ur. He called them to forsake their idols and false religion. And let me just tell you… idolatry isn’t just an ancient problem. It’s just as prevalent today as it was 4000 or 5000 years ago. You don’t have to have a little statue sitting in a secret room. Today idolatry is worldliness. When God says to us, “Come out from among them and be ye separate.” That’s what He’s talking about. He’s not talking about going to some monastery like we talked about last week. He’s talking about not being like the world. About thinking differently, about speaking differently, about living differently. Abram was called away from his homeland, away from what he knew, away from a way of living that he was used to. Sometimes that’s what it takes. Sometimes we have to break away from people, places and things in order to follow after God – we have to step out in faith.
When we look at the entire chapter of Genesis 11 what we’re seeing is all of man’s religious history. In the story of the Tower of Babel; we see man’s wicked efforts to glorify himself without God – its works based religion. Then we see man’s feeble efforts at following God in our own strength in the story of Terah – that could easily be someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, but has fooled themselves. And what we see here is, on our own, we can’t do it. But it’s God’s grace that brings Abram to Canaan. It’s God’s grace that causes the line of Abram to become the line of Abraham. The difference between Abram and his father Terah is the grace of God.
But also; when we read this it should give us hope. We might look at people and see the kind of lives they are living, and think to ourselves, “There’s no hope for them.” But then we look right here in Genesis 11 and we see Abram, a man who lived in a land of idolaters and who was himself an idolater. We see Abram who lived just a few miles from where the Tower of Babel was being built and for all we know, he might have at one time been a supporter of Nimrod and his efforts to build the tower. But then we see God calling him out of that. We see God change him, and mold him and make him into something special. And we say “Look who God has called, and from where He called him from.” But if you can’t see that in the story of Abraham, then look at David, or look at Peter, or look at Paul, or look at your pastor, or look at yourself.
No Christian should ever look down his or her nose at a sinner, because the only reason we’re where we are is because of the grace of God, and here’s the thing… God’s grace is available to them as well. You and I can’t know who God is going to call, that’s why we preach it to whomever. The only way we should be looking at the lost is with a yearning to see them saved. And I hope and pray that’s exactly what we do
LET’S PRAY
