Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends, all around the world,
I wonder if you remember your younger days and times when you might have been on a long trip with your family. Regardless of how comfortable or difficult the journey, no matter how long or short, do you remember this question: “Are we there yet?” And how did the adults with whom you were traveling answer… either telling you how much longer the journey would be, or that you had finally arrived? Remember how you felt if either the journey would be much longer or you were finally arriving at your destination?
We’re traveling with Abram, Sarai, nephew Lot, many animals and herdsman across a hot, rugged landscape. We’ve been traveling for weeks, moving slowly with the animals. Abram is the leader of this caravan and we all trust him, but the truth is he doesn’t know where he is going! He says he’s following God, and God will tell him when we have arrived. Night after night as we sit around the fire beginning to rest from a long day’s walk in the hot sun, the questions are always the same… “so how much further do you think Abram? How will you know when we’ve arrived?” And Abram’s answers have remained unchanged since we started this journey… “As soon as I hear a word from God, you’ll be the first to know.” But the sand and scrub bushes stretch as far as the eye can see in every direction!
Be honest with me friends, have you found yourself in such wilderness places in your life? Times when you feel like you’re lost, or you’re wasting your life, or you can’t figure out which direction to go next? What did you do? What did God do? For Abram, the record simply says “…and they arrived there.” (Gen. 12:5) It means they arrived in the region of Palestine known then as Canaan. They had traveled about 400 miles from Haran. The record continues: “Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So Abram built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. (Gen. 12:6,7)
Exactly how God spoke the long awaited words to Abram, the Bible doesn’t tell us. Was it a daytime vision, a night time dream, an audible voice? What we do know is Abram understood they had finally arrived! He understood it so well he gathered rocks and built an altar in that place, and called his family together for worship of God. Worship of thanksgiving that they had arrived safely after a very long journey; worship of amazement as Abram contemplated the message God had just given to him. The land on which he stood was being given to him by the God who created that land, and it was intended to be passed on as an estate inheritance to his descendants!
The only problem with that wonderful promise from God was that Abram and Sarai were both old and they had no children, nor had Sarai been able to conceive in all the years they had been married! Do you see what God was doing here? God had been faithful to His first big promise… He had led Abram safely to their destination, and thus God was now challenging Abram to trust Him to do a similar miracle… provide him with descendants who could inherit this land! As Abram and Sarai worshiped, a battle raged within them. The same battle that rages in you and me. How much can we trust God for, and how much of our life journey must we figure out on our own? How does our agenda, our ambition, our abilities, balance with God’s sovereignty, God’s unlimited knowledge and power, and the purposes of God which He intends to accomplish as He involves us?
Did you notice the name of this first place of arrival and worship and God’s promises? Shechem. There likely was not much there at the time. Perhaps an oasis of water for caravans like Abram’s, for great trees don’t grow out of rugged dry earth without water! We don’t know exactly what ‘the great tree of Moreh’ was. Some Bible scholars think it may have been a grove of great trees, others that perhaps it was a tree worshiped by the Canaanite peoples of the region, as is done in many parts of the world today. If so, was the altar Abram built, and the worship he offered up to his God there a beginning of the contrast between true worship of the living, Jehovah God, and the worship of trees or man made statues which happened everywhere else? In the long story of Abram and his descendants, this place Shechem would become very special, as we will see in days ahead. In fact here’s one glimpse: look ahead 700 years or so to Joshua 24. As Joshua calls the people to make a choice as to which God they serve, he says the famous words you’ve heard, you may even have it on a plaque in your home: “Choose you this day whom you will serve, as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15) That famous moment of challenge to choice happened here at Shechem!
The record tracing Abram’s journey continues: “From there (Shechem) Abram went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There Abram built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.” (Gen. 12:8) Do you see a very important pattern developing with Abram? When he arrives at a place of significance, he builds and altar and worships God! What do you think that meant to him, to Sarai his barren wife, to Lot his nephew, to the herdsmen and other servants traveling with them? Do you see Abram is taking his role of spiritual leadership in this family and business seriously? Do you see Abram is working on developing a unique relationship with God, unlike any other person in the world had at that time, as far as we know? So… what in your life spirituality can you see as similar to what we are seeing with Abram?
If you have some familiarity with the Bible you perhaps recognize the two towns mentioned here in Genesis 12:8. They later became famous in the story of God and His people Israel. Bethel is the place where Jacob rested as he ran from his brother Esau, spent the night, and had a dream of the ladder and angels ascending and descending. The stone he had used as a pillow, Jacob stood up and anointed in the morning and named this place “Bethel”, meaning ‘the house of God’, because of his dream in which God had spoken to him renewing His covenant with Abram, Jacob’s grandfather. (Gen. 28) Ai, you may recall is the second town Joshua and the Israelites conquered in the promised land after Jericho. (Joshua 7,8)
But now as Abram arrives here for the first time between Bethel and Ai, like any newcomer, he of course knows nothing of the history here nor how he and his family will be integrated into the future history of these places. May I urge you to let that stir in your heart an understanding of God’s perspective on YOU and the place where you live now? Your town has a history, LONG before you arrived there. How much do you understand of that history? Your town is now being touched by your life as you live there… how are you affecting the story of your town? The future of your town will be influenced by YOU, no matter how long you live there. So… step back a moment and consider what God has done to bring you there, what God is now doing with you there, and what God might have in His mind for the future of that place with you there? Have you discovered that PLACES are important to God?
Did you notice the record says Abram “…called on the name of the LORD”? Now that’s really interesting to me. We have no record that anyone had ever taught Abram about God, nor that God had spoken a name for Himself in the times God has thus far spoken to Abram. So I think this means Abram is worshiping and calling out for God to make Himself known to Abram in a personal way, with a distinctive name by which Abram will know God as unique among all beings or things worshiped by all the Canaanite people around him. This tells me Abram is developing a hunger to KNOW God, not just receive a rare word from God.
May I ask… do you have a hunger to KNOW God? Not just know ABOUT God, not just hear what other people tell you about God, but actually have a vibrant relationship in which you come to really KNOW God personally? Can you grasp how well God knows you? I think Abram was overwhelmed by how much interest God is taking in him, his family, his future… and oh how Abram longs to know God as much as God knows him. Do you and I have that same hunger?
So I’ve found a wonderful worship song that fits so well right here for all of us. Would you believe this YouTube song has been opened more than 100 million times in the past three years, maybe because it’s the heart cry of so many people around the world…
Today’s Scripture is Genesis 12:6-9.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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