Genesis chapter 12. And I want to speak a little
bit about a man called Abraham. So we are speaking particularly
to the young people who may be listening in today. I know there's
a few there in Great Falls. I know there's a number in different
places also. And there's a few here with me
today also, as you know from the singing. So this is thinking
today about Abraham and particularly about the call of Abraham. Abraham has been called the father
of the faithful and it's a lovely name that he has. He is spoken
of with great respect throughout the Bible and when we first meet
him his name is not Abraham but Abram. Abram. And Abram means
exalted father. Later on in his life, the Lord
gives him a new name, which is Abraham, and that means the father
of many nations. And Abraham is spoken of in the
New Testament as the father of all who believe. So even although
he may not be our natural father or grandfather or great-great-great-great-grandfather,
nevertheless there is a spiritual link because he is the father
of all who believe. Paul calls him that. And therefore
he has spiritual children from amongst every nation and kindred
and tongue and people upon the face of this earth. Abraham is
a man whose history we should know from an early age. So I propose to spend a number
of weeks opening up some of the aspects of the life of this great
man, Abraham, for the children and the young people particularly,
but also for others of us who might benefit from rehearing
some of the things about Abraham and his life. We first hear of
Abraham and I will use his new name as I speak all the time
because that is how the New Testament does it as well. Even although
they're speaking about him when he was called Abram, they call
him Abraham. And the first time we hear of
Abraham is in Genesis chapter 11 and verse 27. So it's right
at the very beginning of the Bible, as it were. Here is this
man, Abraham. And we learn there that his father
is called Terah and that he has two brothers, a man called Nahor
and a man called Haran. They live in Arr, which is a
city in Chaldea. It is called Arr of the Chaldees
and I have a little map which I can show you, which is here. So for those of you who like
to see these little maps, this is showing us a map of the ancient
world. And as you can see in the bottom
right hand corner there, it speaks about the journeys of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob. We're only interested in Abraham
at the moment, not his son or his grandson. but there in the
right-hand corner you can see Ur in Chaldea and that picture
actually is quite interesting because you can see the green
crescent and that's called the Fertile Crescent and that is
recognised as the one of the early cradles of civilization. This was a very important part
of the world because it was very fruitful and it was where farming
began and where cities were first formed and founded and lots of
technological things happened in that fertile crescent which
is there. It covers quite a lot of Quite
a lot of nations are there. We know, for example, that it
covers Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt,
some parts of Turkey and Iran, and even the island of Cyprus
is sometimes brought into it as well. So right down there
in that in that corner, that right hand corner is where R
of the Chaldees is thought to have been. It's always a little
bit uncertain in these matters whether we're looking at exactly
the right place. But we think that R of the Chaldees
was there. And then this fertile crescent
was there sort of geographically and it seems as if that Abraham
went all the way up so he's following this red line from Ur of the
Chaldees up through Babylon all the way up along the Euphrates
River to Haran right at the top centre there and then he goes
back down the other side of the Green Crescent and that's him
dropping into Canaan. So that's the area, this big
part in the middle was a desert land and this is the area in
which Abraham was living and the journey that he made to go
from Ur of the Chaldees via Haran down into Canaan which was the
land that God had spoken to him about. So that's just to give
us a little bit of a picture and allow us to see some things
with respect to the journey that he went on. He had been born
in Ur of the Chaldees, and it seems as if his brother Heron
died there before Abraham left that city, and he left a son
called Lot. So Abraham had a nephew called
Lot, and Terah, his father, together with Lot and Sarai, his wife,
and Abraham, they all left out of the Chaldees and they travelled
to Haran. They moved to Haran, that's in
Mesopotamia, modern-day Turkey, and there Terah, that's Abraham's
father, died. So we're going to read in Genesis
chapter 12 and we'll read from verse 1. Genesis chapter 12 and
verse 1. Now the Lord had said unto Abraham,
Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from
thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. 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. So Abram departed
as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him, and Abram
was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
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, and they went forth to go into the
land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came. And
Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sikkim, unto
the plain of Moreh, and the Canaanite was then in the land. And the
Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give
this land. And there builded he an altar
unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence
unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent,
having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east. And there he
builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the
Lord. And Abram journeyed, going on
still toward the south. So what we can see here is that
God called Abraham to leave his home and his family and to follow
him, to follow the Lord. And it's interesting, I wonder
if you saw there, that Abraham was in his 70s, at least 75 we're
told here, when God appeared to him. You know, it's a wonderful
thing when God appears to old people and gives them faith to
follow him, despite their age and being so set in their ways. If ever you hear about an old
person being converted, that I think is one of the greatest
evidences of sovereign grace that you can possibly have. It's lovely when young people
get converted, but it's good to see old people having the
Lord appear to them also. And Abraham was 75 years of age.
Stephen the first martyr, he spoke of
Abraham's call and so does the writer to the Hebrews in chapter
11 verse 8 because we're told there that by faith Abraham,
when he was called to go out into a place which he should
after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. and he went out not knowing
whether he went. Now what's important about that
little verse telling us there's something of the history of Abraham
is that the writer to the Hebrews tells us by divine inspiration
that Abraham was a believer. Abraham had faith, he left, he
went out by faith. These New Testament references
give us important information by which to understand the Old
Testament histories and narratives. We know Abraham was a man of
faith. He believed in the one true God. Now this may have been through
the preaching and teaching of Noah and Noah's legacy, but also
personal knowledge because God had appeared to Abraham personally
and God had spoken to Abraham personally. Abraham knew that
God must be worshipped and he knew that true worship required
a blood offering. And he knew also that despite
the practical aspects of the altar and the offering, that
he had to look beyond the sacrifice to see the sacrifice of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So everywhere that Abraham went,
he built an altar and he worshipped God. Not simply by ritual, but
in spirit and in truth, because he was a man of faith and he
saw Jesus in the types and in the pictures, even although it
was so many years before the Lord actually came. Because verse
8 tells us something important also. It says, he called upon
the name of the Lord. Abraham called upon the Lord
for help. He called upon the name of the
Lord for mercies, for direction, for protection. But we can also
read that little phrase another way. He called in the name of
the Lord. He called to God in the name
of Jesus Christ, his mediator. Now I'm not saying that he necessarily
knew as much as we know about the Lord Jesus Christ now as
far as names and ways to address him and the things that Jesus
did was concerned but yet that root of faith was present and
he called in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God seeking
the blessings upon the grounds of grace in the name of the Son
of God, the Mediator and Intercessor. And God gave Abraham promises. He gave him promises concerning
the land of Canaan, that his seed would inherit it, his children
would inherit that land. He gave him promises concerning
fathering many nations. And yet Abraham, we're told,
didn't have any children. Here was a man who was now more
than 75 years old and God was telling him that he would be
the father of many nations. It seems quite strange, it seems
quite impossible that that would be the case. and yet Abraham
continued to trust the Lord, though there was no immediate
evidence by which means the promise could be fulfilled. And that's
important because that reminds us that this is the essence of
faith. If we can see how something is
going to be achieved, if we can see how it's going to be done
and how it's going to be worked out, that's not faith. Faith
is trusting the things that we can't see. Now these promises that God had
given to Abraham were indeed fulfilled. They were fulfilled
naturally in that Abraham did have a son in his old age called
Isaac and so his own children Ishmael and Isaac, they gave
birth to nations who sprang from them and they did possess the
promised land. But most importantly, the promise
was fulfilled through the example he gives to all of God's children
who, like Abraham, are called to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
and brought into faith in Christ and call upon the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ for grace and mercy and help in time of need. So, as we begin thinking about
Abraham, as we get to say hello to this man for the first time,
we remember that he was a man of faith, a man who was called
of God to go out in faith, and a man who was obedient to that
call, and trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, and worshipped
God in spirit and in truth. And may the Lord teach us to
have faith like Abraham, the father of all who believe, and
may the Holy Spirit call us to follow where Christ leads and
may we, like Abraham, know what it is to worship the Lord God
in spirit and in truth. Amen.