There’s a children’s Bible song called “Father Abraham.” The words speak of Abraham having many children, and also speaks of you and I being Abraham’s children. It reminds me of a couple back home. They adopted two children because they believed they couldn’t have any biologically, but then they had three. Our families were at a gathering together, and the father of the family was wearing a T-Shirt someone had given him as a joke in reference to our Bible lesson this evening labeling him as “Father Abraham.”
The story of how Abraham becomes father of us all begins with our Bible story tonight. Tonight we read of Abram and his wife Sarai. Together with his father, his brother and his brother’s family, and his nephew, Abram’s household gathers all their belongings and move from the place known as Babylon today and migrate towards the land we now call Israel.
At one point in this journey, the family would settle in an area nearby, called Haran for a time. There, God spoke to Abram, later to become “Father Abraham.”
There God gave Abraham a promise. Abraham and his family were called to follow God to a place Abraham would be shown. These are the words God used to tell Abraham what would happen to him there.
“This is the country I’m going to give to your descendants. 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.
God’s promise is one of land - something very important to the Hebrew people, in a way I don’t believe we can truly grasp today. God’s promise was also one of many children to carry on the family name - something else that was very important to Hebrew culture. In a later story, God shows Abraham the stars:
“Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens.” Abraham is told.
Together, the promise of land and of children constituted a promise of prosperity for Abraham and his family. It was a promise of a future for Abraham.
It was a promise of hope.
As a girl, I envisioned what my family would look like someday. I pictured what my husband would be like, how many children we would have, how we would get along together. I envisioned what the future held for me.
Abraham’s future wasn’t a child’s daydream. Abraham’s future is a vision and promise from God. Tonight we read of the calling by God of Abraham, the giving of the promise, and the start of the journey Abraham and God began together.
These words at the beginning of the 12th chapter of Genesis tell us the beginning of the journey Abraham began with God. In some ways tonight’s story seems to be a historical record, an incedental account of what happened to Abraham as he responded to God.
But there is more happening here than just the story of one man’s travels across a desert land.
What are we to make of one man’s journey across a wild and primitive countryside? What are we to do with the vision Abraham received from God, projecting his fortune into the indefinite future? In what way is Abraham’s story our story?
What does Abraham’s story tell us about us?
As I reflect upon this, the following statement comes to mind:
God calls ordinary people.
It contains three very important elements to Abraham’s call that I believe speaks directly to us. Lets look at each of these and lets turn our attention now to the first point our story makes.
God calls ordinary people.
God is the active agent in this story. Abraham wasn’t searching for God - God called out to Abraham. God began the interaction. God reached out to Abraham and called him to a greater future than what Abraham could provide for himself.
Why did God do this?
Because God wanted to have a relationship with Abraham. God wanted to know him and be a part of his life on a deep and personal level. But more than that, God wants to have that relationship with each of us.
When God shared his dream and plan for Abraham’s life, Abraham wasn’t the only one to be affected.
In the promise God made to Abraham, several things are happening.
God’s promise in an unconditional one. The prosperity promised to Abraham doesn’t have stipulations to it. Abraham wasn’t told he would receive the land only if he behaved a certain way or followed certian rituals. It wasn’t a promise made because of some great act Abraham had performed or because he was such a great person.
It was a promise made unconditionally, out of the love God had for Abraham, and that Abraham received through faith and belief in God to be faithful to what God promised.
It was a promise for made for the future - and not just for Abraham’s future. At the moment he was called by God, Abraham was 75 years old and childless. Yet God’s promise was that his decendants would be as numerous as the stars.
Abraham’s descendant wouldn’t and couldn’t become a nation in his own lifetime.
Abraham wasn’t the only one effected by this promise. It effected his family members for generations to come, and it effects you and I too.
Why did God give this promise to Abraham? Because God was seeing to the redemption of the world. The interaction of God with humanity in a new and unique way with a special purpose, began with Abraham, continued down through his descendants, and came to its fullest completion in Jesus Christ.
In the story of Abraham, we see the beginning of a relationship between God and a person, that leads to the salvation of himself, and for the rest of the world.
Abraham’s story is our story. In the beginning of this relationship, we can see a reflection of the beginning of our relationship with God, as well.
It begins with a promise, unconditional and unmerited, with God seeking us first before we even are aware God is there, and the fulfillment of the promise in Jesus Christ for our salvation - our hope - our future.
God calls ordinary people.
Lets look at the second element of our story.
Abraham and his family had left the land of Babylon and had settled at Haran. Why they stopped there, we don’t know. How long they stayed there, we don’t know - we only know that Abraham’s father died there. If they ever intended to leave Haran, we don’t know. What we do know, is that while they were there, Abraham received a calling from God.
Now, notice what God didn’t call Abraham to do. God did not call Abraham to enter the ministry. Abraham wasn’t called to attend a seminary somewhere, become an ordained pastor and begin a new church.
What did God call Abraham to do?
“Follow me.”
That is the only directive God gave.
“Follow me.”
The rest of God’s call to Abraham was a promise - what God would do for Abraham, not what God expected Abraham to do for God.
All that was required of Abraham, was to gather his family together in faith, and to follow God to the place God would lead him.
In the same manner, the invitation is given to each of us to follow God where God wants to lead each of us.
Much later in history, following the resurrection of Christ Jesus, Paul would write to the Christians in Ephesus:
“As a prisoner for the Lord, I urge you to live a life worhty of the calling you have received.”
Now who is Paul writing to? The pastors, the priests of the church in Ephesus? No. Paul is writing to each and every one of the Christians there and Paul urges for them and for us to live the kind of life each and every one of us has been called to.
Each one of us as Christians have been called. We have been called to be the children of God. We are called to be brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. We are called to claim God’s promise of love, eternal life, forgiveness, and wholeness for ourselves. We are called to have a relationship with the living God.
And just as God’s call to Abraham led him to travel on a journey that covered unfamiliar and new territory for him, we too are called to begin a life that is different than our past.
We too are called to begin a journey that will be unfamiliar to us, to step out in faith, as Abraham stepped out in faith. There is no promise that following God will be easy. How hard it must have been for Abraham to follow God not knowing what he might encounter. But remember God’s promise was ever before him:
“I will bless you and through you I will bless the world.”
God didn’t call out to Abraham to leave him alone on this journey. God called out to have a relationship with him. It was a calling that Abraham experienced - a beckoning.
God is beckoning to us too.
Each of us are called, and as Paul wrote, called to live the life to which we are called as Children of God.
Lets look at the last element of our story statement.
God calls ordinary people.
Have you stopped to wonder, why it was God chose Abraham? What was it about him? Abraham didn’t come from a devout family that was faithful to God. Abraham’s parents were, in fact, pagans. They worshipped idols.
Abraham was just an ordinary person living an ordinary life. Abraham really wasn’t anyone special or different.
What made him different and noteworthy, was the action of God in his life. What made Abraham different, was that God called, and Abraham responded, believing in the promises of God.
God called, and Abraham responded.
As Abraham stood in Canaan, looking as far as the eye can see, God told Abraham, “I will give this land to your descendants.”
How did Abraham respond?
He built an altar. He worshipped God. Abraham recongnized something so fundamentally important to his relationship with God. Abraham spent time in church, so to speak. Abraham knew how important it was for him to be in worship and as he traveled, Abraham continued to worship God.
From where he was, Abraham moved south, and at the spot of Bethel, Abraham built another altar to God there.
Abraham was continually and regulary in worship.
Through Abraham’s continued worship of God, another important element of his relationship with God comes to light. Abraham became an example to other people. There was no question as to who Abraham followed. Everyone he encountered in his journies knew Abraham followed God, and everyone he encountered knew how important his relationship with God was to him.
Abraham was just an ordinary person, the same as you and me.
He didn’t do anything spectacular.
In fact, before God entered his life, we don’t hear anything about Abraham.
What made Abraham a well known individual, was that God was active in Abraham’s life, and that Abraham responded in faith and in worship to God, and his relationship with God was visible to the world.
God calls ordinary people.
These words make such a simple statement. There’s nothing spectacular about them. They don’t, within themselves cause a tugging at the heart strings.
They don’t cause fireworks, or even emphatic responses.
It is a simple statement.
And yet, this simple statement changed the life of one man so much so, that he has come to be known as the father of a nation, and as the song says,
we are the sons and daughters of Father Abraham.
A simple statement that changes lives.
What these words mean for us is that:
no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, no matter what you might accomplish or fail to do,
you are somebody, because God is calling you.
God is beckoning to you, to be an active part of your life,
to fulfill his faithful promise in you.
Hear these words:
“Leave your old self and old life behind, and follow me where I will lead you. My eternal promise I will give you. I will bless you and make you great in Christ Jesus - and through you, I will bless all the world.”
This is our invitation in Abraham’s story.
God is beckoning:
“Follow me.”
