God Calls Ordinary Men

Genesis 11:26-32 HCSB Terah lived 70 years and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. (27) These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. (28) Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans, during his father Terah's lifetime. (29) Abram and Nahor took wives: Abram's wife was named Sarai, and Nahor's wife was named Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. (30) Sarai was barren; she had no child. (31) Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran's son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. (32) Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.

I. Abraham was not born “somebody” but became “somebody”. (Romans 9:7-8; Galatians 3:29)

Here in a long list of inconsequential names we find slipped, as it often happens, almost indifferently, the name of a man who is destined for greatness. In the endless succession of human births, one particular birth may seem at first to be indistinguishable from the millions of others. In every appearance, it is just like all the rest. Only to the immediate family is a particular birth of any real import. However, every once in a while, mysterious and initially invisible spiritual quality lifts one person above the milling masses.

Abram (later to be renamed Abraham), was destined to become one of the supreme human figures in religious history. He is the human progenitor of the Jewish race and the spiritual father of Israel’s seed. Even false religions like Judaism and Islam regard Abraham with respect and try to claim him.

· Romans 9:7-8 HCSB Neither are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants. On the contrary, in Isaac your seed will be called. (8) That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but the children of the promise are considered seed.

· Galatians 3:29 HCSB And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.

As spiritual children of Abraham, Adonaists are proud to claim him, the more because of the character he portrays.

Derash: No one is born a believer. We become co-heirs with Christ through faithful submission.

As Abraham was not born into greatness but became great through faithful obedience to God, so we too are not born believers but become co-heirs with Christ through faithful submission.

II. Abraham was not perfect. (Genesis 12:10-13; 17:15-17)

Obviously, I am not claiming that Abram was perfect! No mere human is. There is only one who is good.

· Matthew 19:17 HCSB "Why do you ask Me about what is good?" He said to him. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments."

The fact that the Scriptures do not portray Abraham as possessing saccharine sweet holiness, is one of the reasons I (as a former atheist) came to respect the Bible and began to consider it to be superior to all other supposedly sacred texts. The Bible is unflinching in portraying its characters, even its heroes, with complete, utter, brutal honesty. Both their redeeming qualities and their tragic flaws are shown and from this clarity we can learn much.

At one point in his life, Abraham was considerably less than honorable.

· Genesis 12:10-13 HCSB There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine in the land was severe. (11) When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are. (12) When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' They will kill me but let you live. (13) Please say you're my sister so it will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared on your account."

He demonstrated a lack of faith in Yahweh’s ability to provide for him, relying instead on worldly Egypt’s rich Nile valley. He was cowardly, preferring to risk the honor of Sarai’s virtue rather than possibly lose his life. And he not only lied but enlisted Sarai’s aid in lying and defrauding the Egyptians.

Later yet Abram was skeptical of God.

· Genesis 17:15-17 HCSB God said to Abraham, "As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai, for Sarah will be her name. (16) I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will produce nations; kings of peoples will come from her." (17) Abraham fell to the ground, laughed, and thought in his heart, "Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, give birth?"

However, who among us has not sinned? The fact that Adonai can sovereingly use such a man is a never-ending source of comfort and encouragement to me. These ugly facts do not lessen the inspiration we can draw from our ancestor Abraham. Instead they make his example seem more real and attainable because he was not some other-worldly saint that achieved some unattainable spiritual plateau.

There was once a godly tzaddik who cheerfully went about his ministries in his congregation, in orphanages, old folks’ homes, hospitals, and jails. His simple and cheerful faith was natural and attractive. One day, while he was preaching in a jail, he made a remarkable statement that would probably cause many an eyebrow to raise in most cultural Christian churches.

He told the prisoners before him,

“What with their polygamy, slavery, lying and deception, even the patriarchs, were they alive today, might have been in the penitentiary. But God regards man’s times and circumstances and his opportunity or lack of opportunity for full knowledge. The important thing is that a man’s face should be turned in the right direction – toward goodness when he sees what that is, and away from sin, when he knows what that is.”

The convicts understood what he was saying – that

Derash: The mercy of God reaches out not only to the good man but to the man who is actively trying to be better.

Eugene Peterson describes this principle as “a long obedience in the right direction.”

So far, we have looked at what Abraham was NOT, but what was it that led the Lord to call the particular man instead of the millions of others He could have chosen?

III. Abraham looked toward the future. (Hebrews 11:8-10; Numbers 24:7-9; Isaiah 31:4; Matthew 13:52; Hebrews 11:1)

The first great fact about Abraham is that he was constantly looking toward the future.

· Hebrews 11:8-10 HCSB By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and went out to a place he was going to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was going. (9) By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise. (10) For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

This provides a course correction for those who feel that religion is integrally tied to the past; that it is meant to inculcate a satisfaction with what has already been achieved; that it entails life without risk.

Unfortunately, weak and sinful preachers frequently present righteous living as negative and dull, and they have turned God’s Kingdom into a tame and passive construct. Please turn in your Bibles to:

· Numbers 24:7-9 HCSB Water will flow from his buckets, and his seed will be by abundant water. His king will be greater than Agag, and his kingdom will be exalted. (8) God brought him out of Egypt; He is like the horns of a wild ox for them. He will feed on enemy nations and gnaw their bones; he will strike them with his arrows. (9) He crouches, he lies down like a lion or a lioness--who dares to rouse him? Those who bless you will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed.

Here the pagan prophet Balaam, under the inspiration and utter control of the divine Holy Spirit, is speaking of Israel; our people; the nation of God; God’s kingdom. Do you notice that no weak and tame creature is portrayed here. This is the Holy Spirit’s vision for us. By the way, our King is certainly superior to weak, sinful, and superstitious Agag; for our King is no less that Yahweh Melek Himself! Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, the Lion of Judah.

Oh! Do you hear that? Again with the lion theme! Consider the prophet Isaiah’s description of the Lord God:

· Isaiah 31:4 HCSB For this is what the LORD said to me: As a lion or young lion growls over its prey when a band of shepherds is called out against it, and is not terrified by their shouting or subdued by their noise, so the LORD of Hosts will come down to fight on Mount Zion and on its hill.

The Kingdom is no dull matter. It is not a passive matter. It is not something one can partake in half-heartedly without injury. Would you seize a lion with a weak grip? Then why would you seek to wrestle with your sin nature, a far more threatening creature, with a feeble and anemic effort?

Cowards urge people “guard the faith” but by this mean to guard against too much questioning.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing proclaim strict, dead dogmas that are locked in spiritual rigor mortis.

Hired men, false prophets who treat religion as a career move, will present God’s Covenant as a sort of title deed that must be locked up in a safe which is formed of cautious orthodoxy. They seek to fossilize your faith.

Listen to me:

“Theology should be consistent but not static.”

Listen to the Master if you don’t believe me.

· Matthew 13:52 HCSB "Therefore," He said to them, "every student of Scripture instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who brings out of his storeroom what is new and what is old."

Every day your personal time of devotion to God should be not only reinforcing the traditions as passed on to us by the Apostles, but each generation of believers should be bringing out of infinite God’s limitless storeroom new, relevant, powerful, life-changing truths.

Religion, even in the hands of ordinary sinful men like father Abraham, if properly exercised, will shortly become a great adventure. Every hiker, mountain climber, and sailor instinctively understands the following passage:

· Hebrews 11:1 HCSB Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.

The hiker moves forward, burdened by his load but looking forward to the sights he has not yet seen.

The mountain climber begins his climb, enduring shuddering muscles and bleeding fingers for a chance to gain a height he has not yet seen.

The sailor throws off the ropes and casts himself onto the high seas in the hope of seeing a port he has never visited.

Faith is not an anchor but a hoisted sail. Faith is not a ship tethered safely to the harbor’s dock but a ship pushing boldly out to sea.

Derash: Faith is not holding on to something that already is but an exploration and adventure toward something vast that lies yet ahead.

THIS kind of faith is what Abraham typified and THIS is the faith that will characterize every tzaddik.

IV. Abraham believed regardless of short-term consequences. (Daniel 1:8; Hebrews 11:24-27)

I also want you to notice that, with few exceptions, Abraham kept on believing in God’s ultimate purpose, even when doors shut in his face. As we said before, he tried to go down to Egypt. This was a natural thing to do. Egypt was where all the food was. Egypt was where all the culture and education was. Egypt was where technology was. However, God turned him back to the apparently barren backwaters of Canaan.

We each are daily faced with the same dilemma, aren’t we? Our Egypt, the world system and ethos, keeps proclaiming to us that it has the answers; the solutions we need. The Kingdom of God, with its disciplined lifestyle and its rejection of the “King’s delicacies” (to use Daniel’s decision as a metaphor [Daniel 1:8]), can often seem, at first glance, to be just as barren and inhospitable as the land of Canaan. However, just as Canaan turned out to be Abraham’s life’s fulfillment, the Kingdom of God will end up being the delight of our hearts.

In Egypt, Abraham would have been lost among polytheistic people that he would have been completely unable to affect. In Canaan, he became the founder of a great nation. Thus, Abraham’s simple faith made the empty ground of Canaan the single most influential real estate in the history of the world.

Similarly, it was not until Moses rejected Egypt and led us from that deceitful and enslaving land and struck out for Canaan that he became a person of historic influence.

By the way, I believe the Pharaoh that Moses confronted to be, not Ramses II (as is generally held) but Ahmose, who became king in 1570. Nevertheless, the fact that his identity is in question is revealing. The Pharaoh of Moses’ day has been, by far and large, relegated to the dust bin of history. However, who has not heard of Moses? The difference? One sought glory in Egypt. The other disregarded Egypt and cast his lot toward Canaan.

· Hebrews 11:24-27 HCSB By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter (25) and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the short-lived pleasure of sin. (26) For he considered reproach for the sake of the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since his attention was on the reward. (27) By faith he left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king's anger, for he persevered, as one who sees Him who is invisible.

Derash: The justification of a man’s life is not in any immediately disclosed accomplishment but in the fact that he simply, obediently and faithfully followed the call of God until his trust in God was vindicated.

Abraham built nothing; wrote nothing; conquered no people. However, by simply plodding along, setting up his tents at night and taking them down again in the morning, day after day, week after week, year after year, Abraham opened a whole new realm of spiritual possibilities for all future generations to realize.

We are apt to grow boastful about what we have done…or discouraged about what we have failed to accomplish. However, it is not merely what a man does that exalts him but what a man would do, given the right opportunity. The man who is ultimately vindicated in Hashem’s eyes is the man who has obeyed what enlightenment he has been given regardless of the temporary results he may see.