Called

Called
August 1, 2011 5:30 AM -0500
Manuscript
Outline

Abram jabbed his staff into the hard, rocky soil and stopped, leaning upon it and looking about. To his left, the mountain path they had been climbing all morning ended abruptly in a sheer cliff that fell probably five hundred cubits into a ravine below. To his right, the slope angled sharply upward toward what looked to be the top of the mountain, but Abram had thought - hoped, really - they were near the top three times already that day. At nearly 76 years of age, Abram simply was not as sprightly as he once had been.

Mountain climbing was for young people.

As he waited, catching his breath for just a moment before pushing once more toward that next plateau, where he figured they could break for lunch, livestock of every shape and size meandered past him, the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep joining together in some sort of marching anthem. Their hooves kicked up the dust, which presently stung Abram’s eyes and stuck to his sweaty brow. He raised the one arm and wiped his face against the sleeve, which was not much cleaner.

As he did, he heard human footsteps approaching and looked up and squinted into the bright sun to find his nephew Lot. “Everything alright, uncle?” the younger man - who was still well into his fifties - wondered.

“Yeah,” the older man answered. “Just catching my breath for a minute.”

“Good idea,” Lot grunted, opening his cloak to reveal a moon-shaped leather pouch which was swollen with wine and dangled on a leather thong looped around his neck. Pulling the cap from the skin, Lot lifted the bladder to his mouth and tipped it up, taking a quick swig. Then, extending it toward Abram, he asked, “Want some?”

“Sure,” the elder accepted, moving just closer so he could get his own drink. The warm wine which met his lips was not bad, but it was a far cry from the crystal clear streams of chilled water which flowed from the mountains surrounding his father’s home in Harran. How many times had he hiked in the hills and stooped to scoop up a refreshing draft of that stuff! Here, though, even the streambeds which snaked through the deep wadis were mostly dry, and whatever water could be found there was warm and stagnant.

Abram handed the skin back to his nephew, and the younger man tucked it away again, under his cloak so that at least it would be shaded from the sun. For a moment, they simply stood there as the livestock continued to stream past, pushed by the two faithful servants that had accompanied them along the way and Lot’s children who were just coming around the last bend in the trail. At last, though, Lot wondered, “How much farther do you suppose it is?”

“Well,” Abram answered, looking into the distance as he tried to calculate as best he could. In the days leading up to their departure, he had made a point of seeking out and inquiring of all the traders and anyone else who had made the trip he and his family were preparing to make. One man had said he had made the journey from Harran to Canaan in six weeks. Another reported it had taken him three months. But neither of them had been traveling with flocks, herds, and family.

Abram had figured before they left Harran that it would take their caravan four months to make the journey.

They had been walking now for four months and a week.

Abram shook his head and shrugged. He admitted, “I thought we’d be there by now.” Then, looking up the hill, he said, “It really can’t be far now. We’ve been following the river for more than a week.”

“Yeah,” Lot acknowledged, “but it’s so hot and dry. I thought this Canaan was supposed to be a land like no other.”

“Me too,” Abram agreed.

For a few minutes, the men watched the herd passing in silence, simply resting, until Eliezer, the esteemed head of Abram’s household, reached them and paused as well. “We should stop for lunch soon, sir,” the man hailed. “The herd’s been climbing all morning.”

“We were just talking about that,” Abram responded. “How about this next plateau coming up?”

Eliezer glanced on up the trail to where it seemed to widen out and level off. A few tufts of grass could be seen jutting out of the crags between their resting spot and there, but really, they were not high enough to see the majority. At the very least, there would be space there to water the flocks and, with any luck, maybe enough grass for them to at least get a few bites down while the two-legged members of the party broke out some bread. “Sounds good,” the servant nodded, lowering his head and pressing on after the livestock.

For the first part of their journey, Eliezer had been able to guide them. He had been in his twenties when he had been brought from Damascus to Harran, where Abram had met and bought him. But now they were well past where he had ever traveled as a youngster, and navigation had been left to this God that had told Abram to come. It had been days - weeks, even - since God had impressed upon Abram which way he was to go, and the man was growing more impatient with each step. Because Lot and the rest of the family were growing more impatient with each step.

In the tents at night, Abram had overheard Lot’s kids asking how many more days it would be before they reached Canaan. And he had overheard Lot telling the kids that he didn’t know, but if they didn’t arrive soon, he would either stop and set up camp wherever they were or, more likely, turn and head back for Harran.

Abram completely understood.

In fact, he felt the same way.

As he stood there, resting still, his mind raced with doubts. Perhaps he had missed a turn back along the path somewhere. Possibly, he had misunderstood what God had said back in Harran.

Maybe he had been imagining this whole God thing anyway.

Abram’s wife Sarai was coming up the hill now. At the front of the bulk of the family, she was riding the donkey which Abram had purchased just for this trip, and as she neared, he caught a glimpse of her flirtatious smile behind her veil. As many miles as they had covered, her smile had always been there to encourage him during the day and welcome him at night. It was not so much that she was completely on board with the whole God thing; rather, she was completely on board with Abram.

He knew she followed out of a sense of loyalty and love for him. He wished that she could have heard - well, felt, really - the direction of God as he had; it had been like nothing he had experienced ever before. But he figured that, sooner or later, God would impress Himself on her as well. Until then, Abram knew that he just had to press on.

“Hello, my love,” he hailed as she approached. Then, tugging his staff up from the soil, he turned and pushed onward. “How are you holding up?”

Sarai cocked her head and answered, “I’ve been riding this donkey for four months, Abram. How do you think I’m doing?”

Abram chuckled. He completely understood; in fact, he had forgotten what it felt like to not be sore.

And to make things worse, now, as he started climbing once more, the heat and utter lack of any breeze seemed all the more acute. Oppressive did not even begin to cover how terrible it was, and yet he pressed forward.

Then, beneath his feet, some rocks slipped, and he stumbled toward the edge of the trail and the sheer cliff beyond. Lot reached out and grabbed Abram by the arm to steady him, and Abram brought his staff down to keep himself from falling. Just above him, he heard Sarai gasp as he and his nephew lurched dangerously close to the ledge, and yet he pressed forward.

His lungs were burning, his chest heaving, and his heart pounding as they started up the final, steeper slope toward the plateau just above now. His entire body screamed at him to stop and rest, and yet Abram willed himself forward.

And then, in an instant, the trail opened, and they all found themselves standing not just on a plateau, but on a ridge which stretched for miles to the left and, to the right, ran headlong into a city no more than a thousand cubits away.

There was grass here which seemed to go on forever, down the far side of the hill which they had just ascended and back up and down, over and over again as far as the eye could see. On a hillside across a wide ravine, he could see flowers of absolutely unmatched splendor. And just across the wide, well-beaten crossroad on which he now stood, Abram saw Eliezer leaned up against a tree - a real tree! - while the flock and herd grazed eagerly about him.

Stunned at the majesty of the place and the view, it seemed - or was it real? - that even the temperature dropped a handful of degrees, back into the bearable range, and a gentle, cool breeze brushed upon Abram’s cheek. And as he looked around, he realized that even Sarai was perched atop the donkey with her arms spread wide and her face tilted toward the sky.

“Wow,” Lot marveled as they all wandered across the road and into the shade - real shade! - of the tree.

“Wow indeed,” Abram whistled. In the nearly six hundred miles they had traveled, Abram and his family had seen some amazing vistas. There had been the majestic mountains south of Harran, with their snow-capped peaks raking the sky. The golden desert, with its spectacular sunrises and sunsets. The sparkling lake from which flowed the river they had followed. The river valley in the morning, when the steam was wafting off the water.

None of them compared to this.

And now, as Abram stopped under the tree and his eyes picked out villages and farms, fields and herds, dotting the landscape all the way to the horizon where he thought, maybe, he could catch a sliver of glare off the Great Sea, he just knew that this had to be the place.

“Isn’t that something?” a voice asked as, together, the entire traveling company simply stared.

“You can say that again,” Abram grunted. A heartbeat passed, and realizing that the voice was not one of the familiar voices of his companions, he turned to see a man in clothes which gleamed like lightning standing just behind them all. No bleach could get clothes that white, and Abram’s heart swelled as he recognized the voice at last. It was the same which had been present in his head and heart since that day in Harran when the Lord had spoken to him and said, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram was standing in the presence of the Lord, the God who had spoken to him - who had called him - so many months ago, and instinctively, he fell prostrate before the God who had introduced Himself and guided him and provided for him and...

Without having to be told, Abram simply knew that he was not worthy to be right here. A simple man, grimy from weeks on the road, exhausted, and filthy with sin...

Sin.

Somehow, Abram didn’t even need to be told that, though he was a good man, and all of his family were good people, there was not one of them that was worthy of this God.

There was not one person alive who was worthy of this God. Such was the magnitude of His holiness now that Abram was actually in His presence.

Slowly, with a great and gentle smile on His face, the Lord drew near to Abram and knelt beside him, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Remember everything I said back in Harran,” God said. “You are called to be blessed and to be a blessing. That whole sin thing? I’m going to use your family to take care of that once and for all. And to your offspring, I will give all of this land.”

A long moment passed in silence before Abram realized that the hand had left his shoulder, and when he finally looked up, the Lord was gone. Slowly, silently, he rose once more to his feet, and as he did, Lot and Eliezer were suddenly there, helping him.

“Are you okay, sir?” Eliezer was asking.

Befuddled, Abram met the man’s eyes and realized, as they looked at one another, that he had neither seen nor heard the Lord. As he finally reached his feet, the patriarch coughed, “Yeah, I’m fine. But I’ve just seen the Lord. And we’ve got work to do.”

Thesis: God calls us to be used by Him to make an impact on the world despite our sinfulness.

Objective: Call believers to acknowledge that they are not only loved by God, but they’re called to be used by God.

  1. We’re called (1-3).
    1. We're called to go (“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (1 ESV); We need to be prepared to make everything and everyone, etc., secondary to God and His call. In other words, we need to be prepared to leave our comfort zone far behind.).
    2. We're called to be made great (“I will make you a great nation” (2 ESV); We need to set our own pride - our own sense of greatness - aside so that God can make us truly great.).
    3. We're called to be blessed to bless (“I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (2 ESV); We need to be obedient so that God can bless us - not for the sake of getting blessed, but so that we can be a blessing to others.).
    4. We're called to rest in God (“I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” (3 ESV); We need to rely on God to take care of us. He will bless those who ally themselves with His people, and He will curse those who oppose us.).
    5. We're called to bless all nations (“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (3 ESV); We need to live our lives expecting that God can and will change the world by confronting sin and providing a means of salvation through us.).
  2. We must be obedient (5-6).
    1. We must obey God’s call (“And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions... and they set out to go to the land of Canaan” (5 ESV); It’s not enough to be called by God. We need to be obedient to that call.).
    2. It won’t be easy (“Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem” (6 ESV); Shechem was located on the high road from Jerusalem to the northern territories. This meant that, no matter how they got there, Abram and co. had to climb. We need to understand that obedience is not going to be easy.).
    3. It won’t be without opposition (“At that time the Canaanites were in the land” (6 ESV); Not only was it uphill to get to Shechem, but there were already people living in the land that God had promised to Abram! They were not about to just let Abram take over! We need to realize that there will be people around to challenge our obedience and obstruct our progress.).
  3. We must worship (7-9).
    1. God meets the obedient (“Then the Lord appeared to Abram” (7 ESV); The Lord spoke to Abram back in Harran, but He didn’t actually appear to Abram until he was obedient to actually go to Canaan. If we want to truly know the presence and power of God, we need to be obedient. And when we are obedient, we will experience the presence and power of God!).
    2. God promises victory (“To your offspring I will give this land” (7 ESV); The Lord promised ultimate - not immediate - victory when Abram got into His presence.).
    3. We must build an altar (“So he built an altar to the Lord” (7 ESV); “And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord” (8 ESV); Our response to God’s promise for, and work in and through, our lives should be worship.).
    4. We must keep going (“An Abram journeyed on...” (9 ESV); Our continued obedience, continued perseverance, must be itself an act of worship.).
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4025 Lower Beaver Rd
Des Moines, IA
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