'Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy
country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's
house, unto a land that I will shew 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 Sichem, 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 Beth-el, and pitched his tent,
having Beth-el 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.'
GENESIS xii. 1-9.
I
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 'the
Father of the Faithful.' We look at the incident here mainly from the
latter point of view. It falls into three parts.
1. The divine voice of command and promise.--God's 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. So Isaiah
(li. 2) put his finger on the essential when he says, 'I called him
alone.' God's communications are made to solitary souls, and His voice
to us always summons us to forsake friends and companions, and to go
apart with God. No man gets speech of God in a crowd. If you desired to
fill a person with electricity, you used to put him on a stool with
glass legs, to keep him from earthly contact. If the quickening impulse
from the great magnet is to charge the soul, that soul must be
isolated. 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy
of Me.'
The vagueness of the command is significant. Abram did not know
'whither he went.' 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 'go out' as He bids us, He will
show us what to do next.
'I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.'
Observe the promise. We may notice that it needed a soul raised above
the merely temporal to care much for such promises. They would have
been but thin diet for earthly appetites. 'A great nation'; a divine
blessing; to be a source of blessing to the whole world, and a
touchstone by their conduct to which men would be blessed or
cursed;--what was there in these to fascinate a man, unless he had
faith to teach him the relative importance of the earthly and the
heavenly, the present and the future? Notice that the whole promise
appeals to unselfish desires. It is always, in some measure, elevating
to live for a future, rather than a present, good; but if it be only
the same kind of good as the present would yield, it is a poor affair.
The only really ennobling faith is one which sets before itself a
future full of divine blessing, and of diffusion of that blessing
through us, and which therefore scorns delights, and for such gifts is
content to be solitary and a wanderer.
2. 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. We simply read, 'The Lord said'; and if
we contrast this with verse 7, 'The Lord appeared ... and said,' it
will seem probable that there was no outward sign of the divine will.
The patriarch knew that he was following a divine command, and not his
own purpose; but there seems to have been no appeal to sense to
authenticate the inward voice. He stands, then, on a high level,
setting the example of faith as unconditional acceptance of, and
obedience to, God's 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's
faith says that it delights in God's 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.
We have already said enough about the separation which was effected by
Abram's journey; but we may just notice that the departure from his
father's house was but the necessary result of the gulf between them
and him, which had been opened by his faith. They were idolaters; he
worshipped one God. That drove them farther apart than the distance
between Sichem and Haran. When sympathy in religion was at an end, the
breach of all other ties was best. So to-day, whether there be outward
separation or no, depends on circumstances; but every true Christian is
parted from the dearest who is not a Christian, by an abyss wider than
any outward distance can make. The law for us is Abram's law, 'Get thee
out.' Either our faith will separate us from the world, or the world
will separate us from our faith and our God.
The companionship of Lot, who attaches himself to Abram, teaches that
religion, in its true possessors, exercises an attractive influence
over even common natures, and may win them to a loftier life. Some weak
eyes may discern more glory in the sunshine tinting a poor bit of mist
into ruddy light than in the beam which is too bright to look at. A
faithful Abram will draw Lot after him.
'They went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of
Canaan they came.' Compare this singular expression with chapter xi.
31, where we have Terah's emigration from Ur described in the same
terms, with the all-important difference in the end, 'They came' not
into Canaan, but 'unto Haran, and dwelt there.' Many begin the course;
one finishes it. Terah's journeying was only in search of pasture and
an abode. So he dropped his wider scheme when the narrower served his
purpose. It was an easy matter to go from Ur to Haran. Both were on the
same bank of the Euphrates. But to cross the broad, deep, rapid river
was a different thing, and meant an irrevocable cutting loose from the
past life. Only the man of faith did that. There are plenty of
half-and-half Christians, who go along merrily from Ur to Haran; but
when they see the wide stream in front, and realise how completely the
other side is separated from all that is familiar, they take another
thought, and conclude they have come far enough, and Haran will serve
their turn.
Again, the phrase teaches us the certain issue of patient pilgrimage
and persistent purpose. There is no mystery in getting to the journey's
end. 'One foot up, and the other foot down,' continued long enough,
will bring to the goal of the longest march. It looks a weary journey,
and we wonder if we shall ever get thither. But the magic of 'one step
at a time' does it. The guide is also the upholder of our way. 'Every
one of them appeareth before God in Zion.'
3. 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. He dwelt in tents because he looked for
the city. The clear vision of the future detached him, as it will
always detach men, from close participation in the present. It is not
because we are mortal, and death is near at the furthest, that the
Christian is to sit loose to this world, but because he lives by the
hope of the inheritance. He must choose to be a pilgrim, and keep
himself apart in feeling and aims from this present. The great lesson
from the wandering life of Abram is, 'Set your affection on things
above.' Cultivate the sense of belonging to another polity than that in
the midst of which you dwell. The Canaanites christened Abram 'The
Hebrew' (Genesis xiv. 13), which may be translated 'The man from the
other side.' That is the name which all true Christians should deserve.
They should bear their foreign extraction in their faces, and never be
naturalised subjects here. Life is wholesomer in the tent under the
spreading tree, with the fresh air blowing about us and clear sky
above, than in the Canaanite city.
Observe, too, that Abram's 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, and ourselves joyful thankofferings. Then
every abode is blessed. The undefended tent is a safe fortress, in
which dwelling we need not envy those who dwell in palaces. Common
tasks will then be fresh, full of interest, because we see God in them,
and offer them up to Him. The wandering life will be a life of walking
with God, and progressive knowledge of Him; and over all the
roughnesses and the sorrows and the trivialities of it will be spread
'the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration' of God's
presence, and the peacefulness of communion with Him.
Again, we may notice that the life of obedience was followed by fuller
manifestations of God, and of His will. God 'appeared' when Abram was
in the land. Is it not always true that obedience is blessed by closer
vision and more knowledge? To him that hath shall be given; and he who
has followed the unseen Guide through dimly discerned paths to an
invisible goal, will be gladdened when he reaches the true Canaan, by
the sight of Him whom, having not seen, he loved. Even here on earth
obedience is the path to fuller knowledge; and when the pilgrims who
have left all and followed the Captain of salvation through a deeper,
darker stream than Abram crossed, have touched the other side, God will
appear to them, and say, as the enraptured eye gazes amazed on the
goodly land, 'Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in
the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.'