Abraham No.1 Take the High Road

This is the account of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Neher, and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot. While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.

Abraham and Neher both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Neher's wife was Milcah. She was a daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Now Sarai was barren, she had no children. Terah took his son Abraham, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran. The Lord had said to Abram, leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into 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. So Abram left as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. 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 he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.

From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel, and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord, and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Amen. Well, our subject for this, these next few Sundays here at the Tab during the summer months in the evening is how to be a friend of God. We're making our way through the life of Abraham.

If you don't have one of these programs, then we suggest you get one from the welcome desk, certainly from the foyer area as you leave, and that will give you an idea as to where we're going from week to week. But why study on a fairly warm summery evening a man's life who lived a couple of thousands of years God bless me, before Jesus Christ? I mean, what is this? A sort of academic society for the delivering of lectures on ancient history. And why take such a racy title as You Take the High Road or Taking the High Road as a introduction to this particular series, or at least to this first session in this series? Well, you'd have to be a very uneducated person, someone who's been like the proverbial ostrich with your head in the sand all your life if you didn't know that three of the major world religions have common ground as far as the tent of Abraham is concerned.

What do I mean? Let me unpack the sentence. Well, the Islamic faith traces certain aspects of its history to Abraham. Abraham is a revered figure, read the Koran.

You take the Jewish religion, and of course they claim as the founder of the nation, none other than Abraham. You take the Christian religion and read the epistles of the apostle Paul, especially the Roman epistle and the Galatian epistle, and you find that he refers to Abraham as the father of all the faithful. In fact, the New Testament says that to be a Christian, there has to be a common denominator between you and Abraham.

The example that he gives in the way that he believed God is the fashion in which you make your own commitment to God in these days. What's more, I argue that you should study Abraham, you should be aware of him because he is one of the very few men in Scripture who is actually called the friend of God. It's good to have influential friends, but for an influential friend to actually acknowledge that you are his or her friend, that's really saying something.

You see, I do know the queen. I mean by that our cause once passed. I know where she lives, I have got a good idea of her family background, and I could convince someone who came from planet Mars that I have a sort of relationship with the queen because I know her.

Alas, she doesn't know me. You see what I mean? Abraham is called by God his friend. What's more, Abraham is a man who pleased God.

If you've got a grain of sense in that brain within your skull, then surely assuming as every intelligent person must do that there is the being of God, that God exists, the most important thing in your life, think it through. If I am illogical, stand up right now and tell me. If God is, then to please God must be the prime goal of your existence on this earth.

You say, but it was easy in Abraham's day. You see, we're in the 20th century. I go to the sixth form college in Worthing, that bastion of academic studies.

I go to Durrington High. My father is a scientist. I read a bit, you know.

It's easy for someone like Abraham and that fisherman fellow, what was his name, Peter, that they could believe because, well, in those days it was fashionable to believe. Let me unhook your wrong conception. Abraham wasn't a caveman.

Neither indeed was Peter. Do you know in the day when Peter lived, there were two groups of religious categories in the land of Palestine. One, the Pharisees, two, the Sadducees.

Do you know what the Sadducees were? The biggest skeptics that there were in the holy land. They didn't believe in the resurrection. They didn't believe in miracles.

They were the cynics. They were, if you like, if not the atheists, the agnostics of their day. And to say it was easy for Peter to believe betrays your knowledge of biblical history.

Abraham, he came from a place called Ur of the Chaldees. That's sophisticated, if not more so than worthy. One quarter of a million people were spewed around that metropolis.

It was a place that was at the center of the camel trail and the merchants came from all over the world. And sometimes the ships came in the harbor from India. I don't know what the camel equivalent is of a car boot sale, maybe a hump sale.

But they're not just every Saturday or Sunday. Every day, the merchandise was arrayed for people to see. The jewelry, the gold, the silver, the mother of pearl necklaces.

As for academies, they had their own university. As for religious edifices, they had a ziggurat, which was 180 foot from surface level at its highest point. As for gods, at least 300.

As for major gods, they worship the sun and the moon. They could have out-astrologized all the astrologers, even that the tabloid press have today. Incidentally, did you read of the editor of one of the tabloids in the 20th century, in actually last year, dismissing the paper's astrologer, sacking him? Dear, as doubtless you already know.

And to live in this particular land, which was not only rife with polytheism, but also with prostitution and practices which were bestial, to live in that land and to surrender to a higher impulse and to believe that God had a great revelation of himself that he wanted to gift to you, returning you back to the religious convictions of Noah and before. It really needed a clear-cut decision to move away from the environment in which you are in. And I want to tell you that whether you are dealing with times in Genesis or in the Gospels or in the 17th century or in the 20th century, God in his grace, when he moves in the heart of an individual, always calls that person to belong to him.

There is a clarion call for him, for her, to be prepared to get up from the circumstances in which they find themselves and to move away, certainly morally, certainly spiritually, and sometimes geographically. And we are told here that Abraham, who if you like sets the role, sets the example of an early disciple of the Lord God Almighty, receives this call to get out of Ur and to move away from this metropolis with all its thriving industry, with all its paganism, with all its pollution. There's an English poet by the name of John Oxenham and he says this, to every man there openeth a way and ways and a way.

The high soul treads the highway and the low soul gropes the low and in between on the misty flats the rest rift to and fro. And I ask you, with the potential of a modern day Abraham, do you respond to take the highway, to live at a more noble level, to move out in faith, believing that as you move God will reveal himself in your life more clearly and use you more wonderfully in his service. A disciple is prepared to leave all.

Elijah the Tishbite receives the call. Amos from Tekoa receives the call. Matthew who's a civil servant receives the call.

George Verver receives the call. Stephen Alfred, a man who I will be with tomorrow, one of the most remarkable men I've ever met, certainly in the last decade, received a call to do what? To leave a job in Carlisle General Hospital as the leading or one of the leading cancer specialists in the north of England and bury himself in a slum in Bombay in order to establish Bethel Hospital, the only hospital that will be ministering amongst the wretched, pavement, sleeping Indians in Bombay. You see, God calls in the 20th century as he called Abraham thousands of years before Christ.

But the problem for Abraham was and the problem for us here is that we might settle for what I would call the danger of the halfway. You see in this 12th chapter, or rather in this 11th chapter, we're told that Abraham moves away from Ur of the Chaldees. Acts chapter seven gives you further information.

He is told to do this by the Lord. He is told to move to a land that God will give to him. And so he and his father and his household, they go along the easily trod trail alongside the river Euphrates and they come to a place called Haran and they settle there.

Haran or Karan is not part of the land that God will give to Abraham. In one sense, it was the nearest accessible town where one could agreeably move from Ur of the Chaldees. It's not as big as Ur.

Possibly though, I'm not sure. It's paganism wasn't as rife. Maybe Abraham should not have taken his father with him.

The call came to Abraham on his own. You read Isaiah, I called Abraham alone. And sometimes my dear young friend and my older friend for that matter, you have to be careful who you go along with in life.

If you have not at the moment selected your partner, then take great care because the people that you associate with, your partner, your loved ones, your fellowship, your kith and kin, the people who you have a sort of David and Jonathan relationship with, they can make you or break you spiritually. You called to Turkey. You received a call, you heard Verver or somebody break his heart about Turkey at Worthington, and you knew in your very belly that this was the voice of God speaking to you.

You heard of the needs of India, and you knew that God was speaking to you. There you were on your own, unfettered with any other relationship. Somebody else comes alongside, and you fall for them.

And you didn't put up the prior question. You have the same sense of call. And as a result, as you go ahead with the relationship, though you leave earth, you never get to what should have been your ultimate destination.

You're satisfied at the halfway stage, the danger of the half measure. I often wonder how Abraham got along with Sarah. There are two women who I particularly feel sorry for in history.

One lived at the beginning of time, Sarah, or nearly the beginning of time. And the other, her name was Dorothy, Dorothy Carey, wife of perhaps the greatest missionary that the West has ever sent to Southeast Asia. In heaven, it's gonna be wonderful to be able to talk to these ladies and just see how they worked it out.

I have every sympathy for Sarah. You see, the Bedouin sort of life, as I'll come on to in a moment, that Abraham was to live, that was not his, or it would not seem to be the case. You see, far from being a caveman, far from being a primitive, far from being a person I speak with respect who just wandered around the streets without any proper job, if Jewish tradition is right, Abraham is a man who comes from a household of great standing.

Abraham, the very word means something like excellent father. And that might have been a title that was given to his own father, denoting the influence. Or even more happily, it might have been given to Abraham because of the friendship that he cultivated with the heavenly father.

Be that as it may, Jewish tradition, which could probably be right, indicates that Tira and Abraham were men of great substance in Ur of the Chaldees. They'd made it. You see, this was not just a primitive man moving from cave to cave.

Here is a sophisticated person. Here is a man with wealth, with stamina. He's got his American Express card and all the other Express cards.

Sarah, we're going. Where? Well, Sarah, I don't really know. Well, show me on the map.

I don't have a map. Tell me what it's gonna be like. I don't know anyone who's ever been.

Now, there you have, if our household is typical, the makings of a squabble. I use the kindest word that I can find at the moment. In my native Yorkshire, we would say a real humdinger.

I call Abraham alone. So now he settles at the halfway stage. And the same inclination comes Abraham's way.

We're moving. Dad is dead. The timely death of Abraham's father frees Abraham to explore more the purposes of God.

But will Sarah understand? You see what I mean? The close relationships that you have can make or break you spiritually. Do you know the founder of this church was advised, you'll not believe it, I'm gonna confess this right now, was advised by Charles Spurgeon not to come here. I don't know what Charles Spurgeon had against Worthing.

You see, Douglas Crouch, he'd done a good job in Shoreham. He'd established the church there and it was a growing concern. And he writes to his mentor, this great London preacher, Spurgeon, and he says, I'm gonna move just a few miles away.

I'm going to Worthing. And I found actually a facsimile of Spurgeon's letter to Crouch. And Spurgeon says, don't go.

Why not? Well, enjoy the fruits of your labor. Why move on? And Crouch, in effect, says, I'm moving on because Shoreham was just a halfway stage. I'm moving on because, Mr. Spurgeon, I see more of the personal leading of God in my life with respect than you do for me.

And Spurgeon writes him a complimentary letter for being so daring in his faith. Have you ever thought of moving on and moving out? You say you're in your mid-50s? You're settled? You know, I rejoiced when a dear brother and our elder came to me one day and said, Tony, I think God is calling me and my wife, Jean, away from Worthing Tab to immerse us in the work of the out-of-world ministries. And I was so glad.

Though missing his expertise and his wisdom on our elder, I'm glad that here were people in their early 50s prepared to surrender what they had of security in order to move to where God would place them. There's an old-fashioned expression about being settled on your lease. I think it's a nautical expression.

Biblically put, it's, in the Old Testament, it's those who are at ease in Zion, who've moved from Ur, but they've never got to the promised land. They have, in effect, stayed at the halfway measure. Abraham was the first of the pilgrim fathers.

This voice that he heard so many years ago in Ur of the Chaldees speaks again, Abraham, I will make you into a great nation. 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. And Abraham listens, and he believes. Has that same voice spoken to you? You read in verse four, he left.

In verse five, he set out. In verse six, he traveled through. In verse eight, he went on.

In verse nine, he went and continued. Abraham is given by God not only commands, but also promises. God's commands are not always followed by his reasons, but always by his promises.

We can understand his promises, even when his reasons are beyond our own comprehension. Abraham, you go into this country. Why, Lord? I'm not telling you that, but you go, and here are the promises.

I will make you a great nation. Lord, you can't. Why not? Because Sarah, my wife, is barren and well beyond the age of having a son.

Abraham, I will make you a blessing, not only to a people who shall come from their loins, but I will bless the whole world through your obedience, Lord. You can't do it. Why not? For the same reason, that I can't father a child.

Do you know why Abraham pleased the heart of God? Because Abraham believed God. God gave him commands. God gave him promises, but God did not give him reasons.

And you read in the Hebrew epistle that when a man, when a woman uses faith, then that warms the heart of God. When the Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that is a command. When it says, thou shalt be saved, that is a promise.

When the Bible says, confess your sins, that is a command. When it says, he is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness, that is a promise. You may not understand, and I don't, and I've been working at this for many a year, why it is that Jesus Christ went to the cross of Calvary for you.

But the fact of the matter is that God's heart has its reasons. And we are asked by God to believe. And Abraham believes God, and he moves into the promised land.

And as a result, he knows fellowship with God. You say, I haven't been to college. I haven't had a Christian background.

I can't do this. I can't do the other. I am not one of these specials that you read of in the Bible and in church history.

I want to tell you, God does not have favorites. God has intimates. He doesn't have favorites.

And intimacy with God is left within your discretion. Not his. You say, unpack that.

All right, I will. God is pleased with Abraham and draws alongside Abraham because Abraham is responsive to the commands of God. How do I know I am a disciple of Jesus Christ? Says the Lord Jesus, you are my disciples.

You are my friends. If you do what I ask you to do, Abraham, though thou art childless, I will make of thee a great nation. Though thou art the youngest son, I will bless thee and make thy name great.

Though thou art to be torn from thy family, in thee all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Let me close up. If Abraham is the example par excellence of a pilgrim or the disciple, there is something that you've got to know about Abraham to understand the secret of drawing close to the Lord.

I don't know where that expression on tap comes from. But the word tap or the letters tap actually give you a hook on which to hang these particular points that you deduce from the life of Abraham in the 12th chapter. And they are this, first of all, T. Abraham was a man who started to live in tents.

He took his wife with him. They came to Canaan. Abraham traveled through the land, verse six, as far as the sight of the great tree of Morah at Shechem.

So he built an altar there. From there he went on toward the hill east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west. Abraham, who was promised by God to inherit a land that would be remarkable and to be the one who would bless all the nations of the world, lived all his life from the age of 75 to 175 when he died, not in a permanent structure, but ever in the tent made from the hair of a camel.

What does a tent speak of? The life and the attitude of a man who does not cling onto this world, who does not look for permanence here, but is prepared to go on and on and on in the purposes of God. This tabernacle, this name that we're inflicted with to describe our church has a connotation with the word tent, for a tabernacle in biblical times was a great cathedral tent in which the Hebrews used to come and there they worshiped the Lord. And Abraham was a man who, though he could, according to the writer of the Hebrews, have gone back to Ur of the Chaldees at any time on the fastest moving camel and reinserted himself in the lifestyle of that metropolis, he decided that it was better for him and for the purposes of God through him to live the life of a Bedouin, moving from place to place in a land that he had been promised, but a land that he never lived to inherit for himself.

T, tent, A, altar. He built an altar in Canaan. Look at verse seven.

The altar stands for the place where God makes his presence felt. The altar is the place where communion with God is experienced. The altar is the place of prayer.

The altar is a place where an animal is taken and blood is spilt. As you realize, the sin that you have done and the holiness of God and an atonement is made whereby God can feel comfortable in your presence. And at the cross of Calvary, that's what happened.

In terms of the forgiveness of our sins, a lamb was slain, God's own son, and the possibility is that you and I can have, indeed should have, an altar, so to speak, in our hearts, a quiet time, the reading of the Bible, a sense of the presence of God, not just in church, but when we are on our own. And this is the genius of Abraham. He pitched his tent and into his tent would come his household, not one or two people.

It was a magnificent household was Abraham's. Many, many people, sometimes he could muster 300 of his household in order to put out the marauding tribes who would have attacked him. Therefore, this is a man, not just with three or four people traveling to this promised land, but with hundreds of people and he will bring those people to his tent and there he will lead them in prayer.

There he will worship God. And one of the marks of successful discipleship is to assume that you, or rather to work at your own. Your altar to assure that your quiet time with the Lord is in time.

And P, that stands for the promises. His oath, the oath of God, the word of God. He by his oath has sworn.

He swore to Abraham that Abraham shall father a child and through that child shall come one of the most remarkable nations that this world has ever known. And from that nation shall be born God's own Messiah. And God could not go back on that promise for there is one thing that God cannot do and that is break his word.

Tap, tent, altar, promise. In the last analysis, the promises of God are the only thing that you've got. I've just been with one of my dearest friends.

Her mind now be clouded as a result of the drugs that are in her system. The time in this world, well hardly any left. One of the most sterling, loyal members that we've ever had of our church.

And knowing that the moments I spent with her could be the last rational times when I could have a conversation or the last time when she could be rational in conversation, all I had got for her were the promises of God. And they were enough. Hillary, you confessed him as your Lord and your Savior.

He's never let you down. Your body can't cope with the disease that ravages it. Hillary, it's been a pilgrim life.

But I commit you to the God who called you. Into his grace, 30, 40, 45 years ago, his love in times past forbids you to think he'd leave you at last in trouble to sink. Each bold Ebenezer, each bold answer to prayer confirms this great view that God, each bold Ebenezer confirms that God will keep you.

Right to the end of your life here and take you into his presence safely. Could I have said that to you in a similar circumstance? Have you become a friend of God? Do you know what it is to be a Christian? To live the sort of life that Abraham lived, abandoning yourself to the will of God on your life. You can do it.

As intimate with God as you want to be. The tent, the altar, the promises, the secret of being God's friend. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that your grace is sufficient for us, that our Lord Jesus has made it possible for the likes of us to become followers of him. We thank you that ours is a pilgrim life and though our sojourn here is uncertain and relatively short, we have this confidence. The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, he will not, he cannot desert to its foes.

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, he will not, he cannot, he must not forsake. Help us to know the blessings of being a friend of God and living a life similar to that of Abraham. Amen.

I ransacked our book for an appropriate hymn and came up with number two in the supplement. A pilgrim was I in a wandering in the cold night of sin, I did roam. Number two.

Let's stand. A pilgrim. ♪ Mercy shall follow me ♪ ♪ Everlasting peace and mercy shall follow me ♪ ♪ Savior, joy, goodness and mercy shall follow me ♪ Father, there's a sense that it's been good to be here.

We thank you for the remarkable illustration of your grace that we have heard and seen in the testimony of our sister, Jean. We praise you for her. We thank you that though one beloved in our fellowship is at the point of death, we can with encouragement look beyond and see the remarkable entry that she will have into your immediate presence.

So we pray for her friend Eileen and ask your blessings to be upon her. Be with all of us here. Those of us who live carelessly, oh Lord, bring us up and stop as we pray and enable our lives to be lived in such a fashion that as we go through this world as pilgrims, we may have our eyes on our Lord Jesus, seeing him more clearly, loving him more dearly and following him more nearly.

Now may the blessing of almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest and remain with each one of us now and always. And the people of God said, amen. Good night and God bless you.

Thank you for coming.