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\nGenesis 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, \u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.\u201d So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Acts 7:2-6<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0And Stephen said: \u201cBrothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,\u00a0\u00a0and said to him, \u2018Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.\u00a0\u00a0Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.\u00a0\u00a0And God spoke to this effect\u2014that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Hebrews 11:8<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Abram would certainly become a giant of faith, even being the father of the believing (Galatians 3:7<\/span><\/a>); yet he did not start as a hero of faith. We see Abram as an example of\u00a0growing\u00a0in faith and obedience. More important than Abram\u2019s faith was God\u2019s promise. Notice how often God says\u00a0I will<\/b>\u00a0in these verses. Genesis chapter 11 is all about the plans of man. Genesis chapter 12 is all about the plans of God.\u00a0Genesis 12:1-3<\/span><\/a>\u00a0explains how God promised Abram a land, a nation, and a blessing. (Guzik)<\/p>\n
Historically speaking, nations that have treated the Jewish people well have often been blessed. \u201cWhen the Greeks overran Palestine and desecrated the altar in the Jewish temple, they were soon conquered by Rome. When Rome killed Paul and many others, and destroyed Jerusalem under Titus, Rome soon fell. Spain was reduced to a fifth-rate nation after the Inquisition against the Jews; Poland fell after the pogroms; Hitler\u2019s Germany went down after its orgies of anti-Semitism; Britain lost her empire when she broke her faith with Israel.\u201d (Barnhouse)<\/p>\n
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, \u201cIn you all the nations shall be blessed.\u201d So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham\u00a0(Galatians 3:8-9<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 <\/span>In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed<\/b>: Not only was Abram promised blessing, but God also promised to\u00a0make him\u00a0a blessing, even to the point where\u00a0all the families of the earth\u00a0<\/b>would be blessed in Abram. This amazing promise was fulfilled in the Messiah that came from Abram\u2019s lineage. God\u2019s blessing to Abram was not for his own sake, or even the sake of the Jewish nation to come. It was for the whole world, for\u00a0all the families of the earth<\/b>\u00a0through Jesus Christ. (Guzik)<\/p>\n
We stand here at the well-head of a great river-a narrow channel, across which a child can step, but which is to open out a broad bosom that will reflect the sky and refresh continents. The call of Abram is the most important event in the Old Testament, but it is also an eminent example of individual faith. For both reasons he is called \u2018the Father of the Faithful.\u2019 We look at the incident here mainly from the latter point of view. It falls into three parts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
The divine voice of command and promise.-God\u2019s servants have to be separated from home and kindred, and all surroundings. The command to Abram was no mere arbitrary test of obedience. God could not have done what He meant with him, unless He had got him by himself. The vagueness of the command is significant. Abram did not know \u2018whither he went.\u2019 He is not told that Canaan is the land, till he has reached Canaan. A true obedience is content to have orders enough for present duty. Ships are sometimes sent out with sealed instructions, to be opened when they reach latitude and longitude so-and-so. That is how we are all sent out. Our knowledge goes no farther ahead than is needful to guide our next step. If we \u2018go out\u2019 as He bids us, He will show us what to do next.<\/p>\n
The obedience of faith.-We have here a wonderful example of prompt, unquestioning obedience to a bare word. We do not know how the divine command was conveyed to Abram, setting the example of faith as unconditional acceptance of, and obedience to, God\u2019s bare word. Observe that faith, which is the reliance on a person, and therefore trust in his word, passes into both forms of confidence in that word as promise, and obedience to that word as command. We cannot cut faith in halves, and exercise the one aspect without the other. Some people\u2019s faith says that it delights in God\u2019s promises, but it does not delight in His commandments. That is no faith at all. Whoever takes God at His word, will take all His words. There is no faith without obedience; there is no obedience without faith. Either our faith will separate us from the world, or the world will separate us from our faith and our God.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 <\/span>The life in the land.-The first characteristic of it is its continual wandering. This is the feature which the Epistle to the Hebrews marks as significant. There was no reason but his own choice why Abram should continue to journey, and prefer to pitch his tent now under the terebinth tree of Moreh, now by Hebron, rather than to enter some of the cities of the land. Observe, too, that Abram\u2019s life was permeated with worship. Wherever he pitches his tent, he builds an altar. So he fed his faith, and kept up his communion with God. The only condition on which the pilgrim life is possible, and the temptations of the world cease to draw our hearts, is that all life shall be filled with the consciousness of the divine presence, our homes altars, ourselves joyful thank-offerings, and the peacefulness of communion with Him. otice that the life of obedience was followed by fuller manifestations of God, and of His will. (MacLaren)<\/p>\n
\u00a0This call of Abram is an emblem of the call of men by the grace of God out of the world, and from among the men of it, and to renounce the things of it, and not be conformed unto it, and to forget their own people and their father’s house, and to cleave to the Lord, and follow him whithersoever he directs them. (Gill)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, \u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a … Continue reading “36.a. “By faith Abraham obeyed””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4083,3972,1878,16001,10593,313,2243,76,16006,8284,16008,3390,7550,16007,7545,790,14093,16005],"class_list":["post-148233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-prayers","tag-abraham","tag-appeared","tag-bless-you","tag-canaan","tag-chaldeans","tag-curse","tag-earth","tag-god","tag-god-of-glory","tag-god-spoke","tag-haran","tag-inheritance","tag-lot","tag-mesopotamia","tag-sarah","tag-sojourners","tag-stephen","tag-terah"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148331,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148233\/revisions\/148331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}