November 11th, 2007 [The new departure ] Genesis 12:1-9

1. The Call of Abram and his departure

While awaiting Christmas, we have turned to the book of Genesis. This book teaches that humans, though created by God with every blessing, sinned, became unfaithful, and eventually slipped away from God. However, God did not abandoned them, rather, He created a plan in which to save humans through the heritage of a man chosen by God, Abram ( later Abraham ).
Reading today from Genesis, we witness God’s call to Abram, and see just how this story relates to our own lives. Commencing with chapter 12 verse 1: “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”.
Abram was a nomad who lived and traveled from place to place, seeking fresh pastures for livestock. So his lifestyle was limited by the possibilities of getting water and grass. Originally, his father Terah set out for Canaan: “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there” (Genesis 11:31).
Ur was the cradle place of Mesopotamian civilization, located near the mouth or rivers (at the time), where the Euphrates and the Tigris meet. Ur’s people worshiped the goddess of the moon. Though the sun and the moon were objects created by God, there were civilizations which considered them as divine, forgetting about the Lord’s Creation. Thus God ordered Terah to leave that city of idolatry and seek a new place in which to keep his faith. Obediently to God’s word Terah went to the north along the Euphrates river to Haran, where he died.
Then God’s call to Abram came: The Lord 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” (Genesis 12:1-3).
The land mentioned in this reading meant Canaan. From Ur to Haran, a distance of some 1000 km, where water and grass was available, because the route went along the Euphrates, which assured nomads’ the means and resources to survive. But now the time had come for him to change course, by leaving the river, and attempting to cross the desert. That chosen course was unfamiliar to Mesopotamian nomads. Supply of water and grass was uncertain, savage animals and robbers dominated everywhere. Despite all of that, God’s call and promise remained clear (Gen.12:1).
Abram was then 75 years old, childless, and his wife Sara was unable to give birth. There seemed little hope for him to expect the prosperity of his own offspring. God called him seemingly at an inappropriate time of his life. Yet Abram, without a word of objection, being faithful to God, commenced the journey to Canaan.
That first step of Abram changed World history. Isaac was born from him, from Isaac came Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons, who became the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus Abraham is the founder of the Jewish people. And their religion, Judaism, gave birth to Christianity. In this way Christians also consider Abram as the father of their faith. Islamists also trace their heritage back to Abraham through Ishmael, son of Hagar (Sarai’s maid servant), and Abraham. Ishmael’s name means “God will hear” (Genesis 16:11). He had twelve sons with an Egyptian wife. Descendants of Ishmael are the Arabic peoples according to both Jewish and Arab tradition. All of this commenced with Abraham’s first step out of Haran.

2. What Abraham saw in the promised land

Abraham set out for Canaan with all of his family and arrived at Shechem, a fortified city in Canaan, where the Canaanites already lived inside ramparts. But the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land”. So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him” (Genesis 12:7). Abram had no armed forces to conquer the original inhabitants. but he did have God’s promise (Gen. 12:1).
The letter to the Hebrews gives praise to Abraham’s faith: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God"¡ÊHebrews 11: 8 -10).
It is true that Abraham was a man of great faith. But when he arrived at Shechem, he must have wondered if this was really the promised land. I suppose he doubted. Because he soon left Shechem and continued to go south until he reached Bethel. Perhaps he was thinking positively about obtaining the land. However, there was no place for him in Bethel. So he temporally settled in the desert of Negev, where he could avoid the danger of attacks from other tribes.
Contrary to God’s promises there was a famine in the land. No grass, no water to feed the animals, and resources for survival were minimal. So Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while. According to the Scriptures Sarai was then 65 years old however, considering the different lifestyles and the environment of today, we must imagine she looked about 30. Abraham was afraid for his safety, because she was a very beautiful woman. If she provoked Pharaoh’s desires, Pharaoh would kill her husband in order to take her. Such incidents were not uncommon in that era. Thus Abraham decided to lie: As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you” (Genesis 12:11-13).
And his suspicions were justified: ”…..when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake,…” (Genesis 12:15-16). Thanks to Pharaoh’s favor Abraham became very rich. Some might find Abram’s lies deceitful and even shameless, similar to Adam when he said: ” . . . . The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."(Genesis 3:12).
Adam blamed his wife to avoid his own sense of responsibility and Abraham gave his wife to Pharaoh to preserve his own life, and to become wealthy. But, despite all of this, God rescued Abraham with Sarai: “But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai” (Genesis 12:17). Pharaoh was informed that the diseases were caused by his act of taking Sara who was actually Abram’s wife. Thus he summoned Abraham and orderd him to leave Egypt immediately with Sarai and everything he owned. Abram returned to Canaan, where he again worshiped God: “and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the LORD (Genesis 13¡§4).

3. Hesitation in faith of Abraham and his repentance

Now I invite you to read together, Hebrews 11 verse 1, for today’s invocation: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Though Abraham was a man of great faith, he was not a saint. As we have observed through our readings today, he was a human like us, who sinned and made mistakes. Perhaps we can see some correlation between his life and ours at that point in time.
Abraham’s first departure was the day when he set out from Haran. After his involvement with sin in Egypt, he went back to the promised land, to the altar he previously built, and called on the name of Lord. That very act was his real departure.
In fact the Biblical characters are not necessarily guiltless people. David, for example, was infatuated with another man’s wife and married her after having her husband killed. When Jesus was arrested, Peter denied his guilt tree times, and later, out of the house of the high priest, he wept bitterly. As for Paul, before becoming a preacher and a teacher, he was a persecutor of the Christian believers. But, he was changed by the phenomenon on the road to Damascus.
Some say the tears of Peter was his baptizing water. As long as we are confident about our own force and ability we can’t see God. We call upon the name of our Lord, only when we have sinned and feel destroyed by guilt and remorse. Then God shows Himself to us, and we recognize His invisible hands were always working in our lives, so we give thanks to God. Now we see that: “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). The time of repentance is the time of our new departure, which Abraham’s story teaches us.

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