The Call (Part Four)

“Now the Lord had said to Abram:

‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
(Genesis 12:1–3)

God called Abraham (1) to leave and (2) to follow, and He promised (3) to bless him and (4) to make him a blessing to others. These are God’s call and promises to us.

Much of the time, however, we get focused on #3 to the exclusion of the others. It is not wrong but altogether right for us to look to God for His blessing. “Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights,” and God wants us to look to Him for every good thing and to give thanks to Him for every good that comes to us. (That is the essence of “prayer” and “thanksgiving.”)

But it is inextricably woven into the woof and warp of the universe that the blessing of God is all tied up with loving and leaving—loving God above all else and with all your heart, loving your neighbor and desiring his good as much as you desire your own, and walking away from your own sin, the world of sin, and the devil who keeps calling you back to it.

Adam’s eldest son Cain is one who desired the one without the other. He was all about the blessing of God. And when he saw it falling on his brother Abel and not himself, he responded with anger and envy. “How come—he got—why didn’t I—?” God’s answer was simple: If you do well, if you do what is right, the blessing will come—trust Me. Cain was called to leave his sin behind, including his anger and envy, to seek the pleasure of God (“find out what is the will of God and do it”), and to love his brother as himself—to rejoice in his blessing as much as he would rejoice in his own. Cain resisted, however, and blessing eluded him the rest of his long and lonely life.

Certainly God has blessed us without our having to do a thing, just as Cain had been blessed prior to his own downfall as well. And God is gracious and merciful to offer us forgiveness and second chances when we get off track. For these things we give thanks, and without the grace and mercy and initiative of God, there is no blessing and no expectation.

But Abraham would never have received what God had promised—blessing to him and through him—if he had not responded the way God calls us to respond, namely, through repentance and faith, through turning from idols to serve the living and true God, through giving up all to follow Christ. But thank God he did, and thank God for the grace He gives for us to do the same.

“Grant us Your blessing, O Lord, and make us a conduit of blessing to others. Lead us not into temptation but into your paths of righteousness, and grant to us a persevering faith and a thorough repentance. We give thanks to You for all good things, dear God, and we look to You for all blessing and happiness and goodness in this life and throughout eternity, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

The Call (Part Three)

“Now the Lord had said to Abram:
‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
(Genesis 12:1–3)

So does God promise us everything He promised to Abraham? Well, in one sense, of course, these promises are Abraham-specific. God does not call every single individual Christian to be the father of many nations, the father of all the faithful, the progenitor of the race that produces the Messiah. But in another sense, there are some general observations that are applicable to us.

For one thing, as has been pointed out, those who follow Christ, to the extent they follow Christ, have a tremendous impact for good, for blessing, not only on their own direct descendents but on the countless others their lives and the lives of their descendents touch. In this way, by either following Christ or not, we choose to be either more or less a blessing or a curse to our family and the “families of the earth.”

This is easily seen, but it goes down hard for the atomistic, individualistic, taking-care-of-me-and-nobody-else culture and society we have inherited in the West over the past century or so. Abraham’s example shows what one man’s faith combined with the blessing of God can do to affect not only the course of history but the salvation and redemption and restoration of the whole world. We are called to be faithful, and the measure of our faithfulness, by God’s grace, shows up down the line.

Another general principle we see in Abraham’s call is the fact that, while God pours out blessings on His followers in abundance, there are always going to be those who pour on the curses as well (fortunately without the same effectiveness!). Jesus told His disciples that if the world hated Him (and it did for the most part), then the world was certain to hate those who walked closely in His steps. This “enmity” all comes by degrees, but no matter the opposition, no matter the persecution, no matter the sin-full treatment received by the followers of the call of God, you can count on God to take care of it—somehow, some way. Those who pray for the blessing of God’s children will be blessed themselves, God guarantees. Those who call on God to curse them will not only have their prayers turned aside but they will receive back on themselves the very curses they send out. Like the apostle Paul said, if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

God is going to take care of His own. Our part is to trust the One we follow, obey the One we trust. If all the world stands against us, seeks on the one hand to lead us down paths of unrighteousness and then just as passionately seeks on the other to make us pay in spades for walking down any other, God will stand by us and help us to stand in the face of temptation and trouble from any quarter. He who calls is faithful and will do it.

“God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we call upon the God of our fathers, asking that You make us faithful fathers in our turn. Help us to be faithful to You, to this generation, and to the ones following by following ourselves Your call and in Your steps. Protect us from our enemies, dear God: keep us from falling into temptation on the right hand or the left, keep us from following the world itself as well as from fainting under its rejection of us when we don’t. Thank You, heavenly Father, for the greatest blessing of all, salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we pray for His kingdom to come in might, blessing all the nations of the earth to the great glory of the Trinity, in Christ’s name. Amen.”

The Call (Part Two)

“Now the Lord had said to Abram:

‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
(Genesis 12:1–3)

The call of God comes to a person where he is. Abraham did not go out to meet God and introduce himself, looking for a job or a place in His graces. God went looking for Abraham, and He found him sipping tea alongside a bunch of idol-worshipers at Ur of the Chaldees. And we like this part of the call, because we want to be taken as we are, where we are, with the clothes we have on, “just as I am,” nothing I have to do to receive the grace of God—except receive it, that is.

The catch is, the call doesn’t leave us there. That is exactly what the call is all about—it is a call to leave, to go out, to change, to do something, and to do something different from what we have been doing. Abraham had to leave the tea sitting on the table and follow God into the unknown, “a land that I will show you,” a land he had never seen before. Yes, God came to him first, and God is going to take him where he needs to go. But Abraham cannot follow the call of God and also stay where God found him.

Some who thought they wanted to follow Christ got snagged on this part of the call. “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Seems like a reasonable request to us—“honor your father and mother,” and all that. But Jesus replied, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” This man wanted to stick around and take care of business when the call of God led him across the lake. On one side were the spiritually dead; on the other was Life Himself.

Abraham had his choice, and we have ours. Will we follow or stay? We cannot have it both ways. Following Christ means leaving a lot behind—pet sins, “innate” personalities, long-held relationships, otherwise justifiable loyalties, comforts, and identities. But what an exchange! Following Christ also means becoming a son of God, inheriting the blessing of God, becoming a blessing to the rest of the world, and living as a citizen of the truly Eternal City. It means radical change from who we were to what God calls us to be, from a life that is doomed to a life full of never-ending love and joy and peace and holiness.

God calls. We follow. And the blessing of God follows us!

“God, we give thanks for Your call on our lives, and we pray we would be faithful followers. Do not leave us where we are, dear God, but take us where You want us to be, make us what You want us to be, mold us and shape us into the very image of Christ. Grant to us the grace to leave behind the world and our sins and whatever else that keeps us from following You; and grant to us the blessing You promise to all those who follow You, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”

The Call (Part One)

“Now the Lord had said to Abram:

‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
(Genesis 12:1–3)

The call to Abraham was a specific call, but, as we can see clearly, both God’s call and Abraham’s answer had an impact, direct and indirect, on countless others, including you and me. Because God chose Abraham, because God honored His word, and because Abraham obeyed and followed God, your family and my family and all the world have received the blessing given in this one call.

God calls each one of us in a similar way. God may not call each one of us to leave our native land—especially at age seventy-five when most folks are thinking more about settling down! But God does call each of us, at least in one sense, to “leave his father and mother” (Genesis 2:24), begin to live his own life responsibly before God, and leave his own mark on the world. And we will, you know, one way or another. Whom I marry, how I raise a family, how I respond to life as it comes to me, what I do with both the little things and the big will all have an incredible effect on those whom my life touches in some way—those around me now, my own descendants, and all of the others (a lot more than one might think) who are affected indirectly by my obedience and disobedience, my maturity or lack thereof, my living-by-the-grace-of-God and faith.

God also calls each one of us to leave “the world” behind in following Him, just as He called Abraham to do. Abraham left behind a lot more than relatives. When he chose to answer the call and follow Jehovah, he left behind his gods. And he left behind an entire culture shaped by those gods. He left behind a life lived by faith in gods who cannot and will not deliver and began to live by faith in a God whose blessing reaches not only his life but throughout the world and throughout eternity.

As I said, this is our call as well. God has obviously called us to live in the physical world—that is the one He has created and the one in which He has planted us—so that is not the world from which He calls us. Rather, God calls us out of the world of sin/the flesh/and the devil that we might live in the world as citizens of another Country, blazing lights shining in what is otherwise darkness, citizens of the New World for which Christ has died and risen again, members of a New Family, a New Humanity, with Jesus Christ as our New Adam and faithful Father of All Nations.

Answer the call as Abraham did: by faith and in obedience. You have answered the call by following Christ and being separated from the world. Be a faithful follower, travel the course, plant yourself in the new land, lead your own family as those who inhabit a new culture and a new world, and look for the blessing of God not only to be poured out on your own family but to overflow to the whole world.

“Great and heavenly Father, we thank You for Your call to Abraham, for Your choosing him and blessing him, which blessing has reached to us. We give You thanks for Abraham’s faithfulness and obedience, and we pray You would make us like him, answering Your call to us, following You into new worlds, leaving behind the gods who do not satisfy. Thank You above all for our faithful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who also answered Your call with faith and obedience, resulting in our salvation and the salvation of the world; and we pray gratefully in His most holy and wonderful name. Amen.”