I invite you to open your Bible with me to the
book of Genesis and today to the 12th chapter
of Genesis. I'm going to begin reading in chapter
11, verse 31, to pick up the flow of things.
It says, Sarai, his daughter -in -law, his son
Abram's wife, and they went out together from
Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land
of Canaan. And they went as far as Haran and
settled there. And the days of Tyra were two
hundred and five years, and Tyra died in Haran.
Now the Lord had said to Abram, Go forth from
your country. and from your relatives, and from
your father's house, to the land which I will
show you. And I will make you a great nation,
and I will bless you, and will make your name
great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I
will bless those who bless you, and the one who
curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the
families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram
went forth as the Lord had spoken to him. And
Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy -five
years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram
took Sarai his wife, and Lot his nephew, and
all their possessions which they had accumulated,
and the persons which they had acquired in Haran,
and they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus
they came to the land of Canaan. And Abram passed
through the land as far as the site of Shechem
to the oak of Moray. Now the Canaanite was then
in the land and the Lord appeared to Abram and
said, To your descendants I will give this land.
So he built an altar there to the Lord who had
appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there
to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched
his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the
east. And there he built an altar to the Lord
and called upon the name of the Lord and Abram
journeyed on. continuing toward the Negev. The
panorama of Genesis chapters 1 through 11 provides
for us the historical origins of our world and
its early history. From that historical, sweeping
worldwide perspective, the focus of Genesis now
comes to one lone figure in chapter 12. And that
is, of course, Abram. You might ask the question,
why Abram? There is only one answer that I know
to that question, and it is this. It is God's
gracious choice to focus on Abram. From among
the nations, all of whom were under his judgment,
God calls a man to salvation. and he calls that
man to know him and to walk with him. It is somewhat
reminiscent of Noah who in the days before the
judgment of the flood it is said found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. That word grace in Genesis
chapter 6 comes from a root that means to bend
or to stoop over. Thus it shows the condescending
or unmerited favor of a superior person to one
who is inferior. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. Abram is an idolater according to
Joshua 24 verse 2, but God appears to him nonetheless
in this place that is called Ur, Ur of Chaldea.
And Abraham obeys what God says to him. Stephen
talks a little about that in his great sermon
in Acts chapter 7 when he says, We may think
that Abram would have been glad to leave the
deserts of Mesopotamia and go to the land of
Canaan. But friends, we need to understand what
Ur of the Chaldeans was like. Ur was a very civilized
area. The excavations from Ur revealed to us
that it was a place of great artistry, jewelry,
and art treasures. China, an exquisite crystal,
have all been found in the ruins of Ur. Musical
instruments and other crafted objects that are
particularly exquisite. Archaeology shows that
Ur was in a state of high civilization 500 years
before Abraham lived there. In the ruins, they
have found thousands of clay tablets that reveal
that Ur was a place of a thriving economy. It
was a great and prosperous city with perhaps
360 ,000 people living in this city and its suburbs.
Francis Schaeffer talks a little bit about this
city in his book entitled Genesis in Space and
Time. He says the excavations show us that Houses
were made of brick and were whitewashed for aesthetic
purposes. They stood two stories high. In the
larger houses, there were up to 10 to 20 rooms.
They had wonderfully equipped kitchens, a good
plumbing system, and sanitation. From the evidence
that's been found, some people have thought that
perhaps they taught cube root in their schools.
God called Abram to leave what was the most civilized
place in the Near Eastern world to go to a land
that he did not know. But Abraham obeyed. And
calling Abram, God is hereby creating a new beginning
for his plan to bless all mankind. In Genesis
chapter 1 and verse 28, God says, Be fruitful
and multiply fill the earth and subdue it and
in saying those words God blessed man This is
the third time however that there has been a
beginning Adam failed God started over with Noah
and his sons and that led again to failure And
so the third time, God starts again a new beginning
with Abram. In responding to God's call upon
his life, Abram becomes God's alien, God's refugee,
God's pilgrim, if you please. And he begins a
lifelong pilgrimage or walk with God, an adventure
in following God. What I hope that we will glean
not only this morning but in the coming weeks
as we study our way through the life of Abram
and others in Genesis is this, that God calls
us to be pilgrims too and to follow Abram's example
in an adventure of faith. There are three actions
that I see in our text this morning which are
actions of God's pilgrims. Throughout the ages,
we see them exemplified in Abram. In the first
place, God's pilgrims leave their past. While
in Ur, God had called Abram to leave his country,
his people, his father's household. This involved
a complete break with everything that tied him
to his idolatrous past. When God calls you and
me to Himself, It is a call that is also away
from what has enslaved us before. As Paul writes
to the Thessalonians, you turned to God from
idols to serve a living and true God. And as
he says in Acts chapter 14 in the city of Lystra
when he and Barnabas were declared by the ignorant
populace there to be gods. He says, men, why
are you doing these things? We're also men of
the same nature as you and preach the gospel
to you in order that you should turn from these
vain things to a living God. God's pilgrims leave
their past. God calls us to Himself and away
from what we were. God's call is a sanctifying
call, setting us apart to be His own. It is a
cleansing call that washes us of our past, previous
associations of sin. It is a call to separation
from the idolatrous culture and its values. For
Abram, it meant physically leaving these things
and people to go to the promised land. We may
physically remain where we are but our relationships
are called to be different We are called to be
a holy people Response to God's call means just
this that we place Him in our lives as our highest
love Whereas before we may have loved many things
and did When we respond to God's call it is away
from those things that our love must go and to
God Jesus says if anyone comes to me and does
not hate his own father and mother and wife and
children and brothers and sisters Yes, and even
his own life He cannot be my disciple Now you
know there that Jesus is not saying that we must
literally hate them, but he is saying that our
love for him as our master must be so strong
that earthly affections in comparison are like
hatred. The point that I'm making is that a pilgrim
dares not allow his past to dominate him. Heron
left Ur along with his father and other relatives,
and they stayed in Heron. The word Heron means
delay. And it became that for Abram's complete
obedience. It was a delay for him. In chapter
11, verse 31, we see that Terah, his father,
and Lot, his nephew, accompanied him. This delayed
his pilgrimage in this city and later created
trouble for him in his pilgrimage in Canaan.
But when his father had died, he left Heron and
continued his journey. It may be that there is
some delay also in your following the Lord? What
is it that holds you in your heron instead of
going on and being in that place where God wants
you to be? God's pilgrims leave their past. Secondly,
God's pilgrims receive his promises. Some think
it foolish to leave the certainty of what one
has. for what one does not have. But the pilgrim's
faith, you see, rests upon the promises of a
trustworthy God. In Hebrews 11 we read, now faith
is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen. By it the men of old gained
approval. Abram had never seen a travelogue film
or video of Canaan. He had never seen a satellite
picture of it. He didn't know what was in Canaan,
but he went there. Because that was the place
where God had promised to bless him. Just very
quickly, Abram's promise of blessing involved
several things. First of all, this land that
God would show him, this land of Canaan. Secondly,
we noticed it involved a nation that God would
make him. a nation of people, which would in
turn then bless others. Third, we notice that
it involved an identity that God would give to
him. God says, I'm going to so identify with
you, Abram, that those who bless you, I will
bless. And I will be so identified with you,
Abram, that those who curse you are cursing me
and I will curse them. God says to Abram, I'm
giving you a new identity. It's with me and Fourthly
it is a blessing that God would give to all the
families of the earth through Abram. That's what
his promise was He says Abram. I will bless all
the families of the earth through you You and
I who today 4 ,000 years later believe in Jesus
Christ or among those included in Abram's promise.
As it says in Galatians chapter 3, and the scripture
foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles
by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham,
saying, all the nations shall be blessed in you.
You see, in this promised to Abraham, there is
this message encrypted. It is hidden to Abraham's
eyes at this point and to succeeding generations
until after Jesus. But it was that the Gentiles
too would be blessed through the seed of Abraham.
And so Paul concludes, so then those who are
of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer.
You and I are embraced in these promises that
were made to Abram. And like him, we as pilgrims
too are to live by God's promises. We need not
live by God's explanations. God doesn't owe us
any. But we are privileged to live by God's promises.
Even when we can't see the outcome, we have the
promises of God. And when we believe and obey
the promises of God, God will take us to that
place that He's promised to us. Pilgrims leave
their past. Pilgrims receive God's promises.
And third, pilgrims perceive their prospect.
It says regarding Abram that he went forth. He
went forth. Why? because his faith grasped what
God said and he envisioned its fulfillment. As
I said before from Hebrews 11, faith is the assurance
of what is hoped for. Abram had a hope, an expectation,
and he was assured that he would receive it.
He had a conviction about something he had never
seen. with his eyes. What was it that Abraham
had not seen with his eyes, but which he did
see with the eye of faith? Well, again, Hebrews
11 tells us, by faith he lived as an alien in
the land of promise, as in a foreign land dwelling
in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of
the same promise. For he was looking, listen,
he was looking for the city. which has foundations
whose architect and builder is God. Abram had
left a city of the world behind, believing somehow,
envisioning in his heart that God had another
city for him, a city that God himself would build.
Like Abram, we too must look beyond our immediate
circumstances of the pilgrimage to what lies
before us. And what lies before us? The very
same thing that was before Abram, a city whose
builder and maker is God, the New Jerusalem.
That is what is before us. Again, Hebrews says,
here we do not have a lasting city, but we are
seeking the city which is to come. Some of us
were born and reared in the country and we don't
like cities. Got bad news for you, if you're
like me. There is a city in your future. It is
the city of God. Pilgrims leave their past. Pilgrims
receive God's promises and pilgrims perceive
their prospect. What keeps us going through the
pilgrimage? Is it the things that we gather along
the way? God forbid. For those things become
as heron to us. What is it that motivates us
and inspires us and keeps us going? It is the
prospect of the city that God has promised us.
Abram was God's pilgrim. It says in Hebrews chapter
11 that he confessed he was a stranger and an
exile on the earth. It has been long noted that
Abram's pilgrimage is noted for two things in
particular. And you see them in the text we read
this morning. An altar and a tent. Those two
things. The tent. Abram was loosely affixed to
this world with his hope fixed on the next. Loosely
attached to this world, his hope fixed on the
next, and thus he did not mind living in a tent.
We don't know what kind of a home he may have
lived in in Ur, but he moved out of the home
into a tent for the rest of his life, because
he was confident that God had prepared a place
for him. And then the altar. Wherever he went,
Abram built an altar where he worshipped. He
was loyally devoted to God and sacrificed freely
for him. That's what the altar represents. His
loyal devotion to God, his willing sacrifice
to the Lord. W. H. Griffith Thomas writes, and
by the tent a stranger and a pilgrim. The altar
and the tent together sum up the believer's life.
Pilgrim, does the altar and the tent sum up your
life? Peter writes to his readers and he says
to them, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to
those who reside as aliens scattered. Is that
not you and myself? Do we not reside as aliens
in this world? Oh, but how it beckons. How our
Chaldean culture beckons us to be a part of it.
With its toys its entertainment, its attractions,
its values, its materialism, how it beckons us
to settle down and to be at home and to get out
of the tent and to make ourselves comfortable
here and to lay aside the altar for that which
is a more convenient religion. But I say to you
that your pilgrimage and mine must be characterized
by the attitudes of Abram. We, like him, must
be loosely attached to this world and fix our
hope on the next at the coming of Christ. And
like him, we must be loyally devoted to God and
sacrifice freely to him. Realizing that in this
world we are pilgrims. This world is not my home.
I'm just a passing through. My treasures are
laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels
beckon me from heaven's open door. And I can't
feel at home in this world anymore. As we come
to this table of the Lord, it is a reminder that
we're pilgrims, that we're moving toward a city
where Jesus is inviting us to come, where he
has prepared the marriage supper of the Lamb.
These elements remind us that we are a purchased
people, that we are called like Abram was to
be pilgrims, to leave our past. to receive and
live on God's promises, to keep the prospect
of the New Jerusalem before us. This is a strange
way to live. I may even say it's a foreign way
to live. It is a way that is uncomfortable in
the Church in America. It is a way that calls
upon us to sacrifice the now that we might lay
up treasures in heaven. It goes against our Chaldean
culture. Are we able to leave it behind and save
by partaking of these elements, Jesus? I am walking
on in my life as a pilgrim. I don't know, Lord,
what that may mean for everyone here. I know
what it means for me. But as we partake of this
bread this morning, convict our hearts. Show
us what you want us to do. Let us hear your voice.
continue on in the pilgrimage toward that city
that you've prepared for us. Amen.