Abram Obedient to God’s Call
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
5/20/2018 PM
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Text:
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Genesis 12:1-4
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Psalters: |
82, 354, 381, 152 |
- The setting.
- His history is approximately 400 years after the flood, and almost 200 years after Babel and about 1900 before Christ.
- Abram was called of God twice, once out of Ur (11:31), and once out of Haran (Acts 7:2-4).
- Abram was called by God via a revelation of some kind; such that Abram was assured that God had spoken to him.
- This call of God came with promises of rich blessings.
- What is God’s purpose for taking Abram out of Ur and bringing him into Canaan.
- Could not be only to separate him from idolatry.
- This was a separation from other descendants of Shem and was another step is the revealed development of the covenant.
- God’s call comes to display divine grace like never before.
- God identified Canaan as the land (already full of inhabitants) God would show him (7).
- “By faith Abraham when he was called to go out…obeyed; and he went out” (Heb. 11:8).
- Only faith empowered Abram to leave Ur for an unknown land and to do so at his age, contrary to his nature at 70/75.
- Faith looks up at God and what He promised ahead and does not look at what is left behind (family and the known).
- Grace is the only cause for such faith.
- As a part of his obedience, Abram “builded an altar unto Jehovah, and called on the name of Jehovah” (8).