1-2-2 The Call of Abram

So the family came to Haran. Again, " from thence...God removed him into (Canaan)" (Acts 7:4 R.V.). But if God had forced him to be " removed" , Abram's response to the promises would not be held up for us as the great example of faith which it is. The call of Abram is an essay in partial response being confirmed by God. God removed him through repeating the promises to Abram in Haran, and the providential fact that Terah died there. Again, the fact that Abram " dwelt" in Haran, despite his call to leave, with his kindred and father's house shows a slow reaction to the command to leave those things and go to the unknown land, which by now Abram must have guessed was Canaan- or at least, he would have realized that Canaan was en route to it. There are marked similarities between the record of the exodus from Ur, and that of the call of Abram to leave Haran: 

These similarities may mean that the same processes occurred in each move- a word of promise made, Abram struggling to show his abundant faith in that promise and call, and the providence of God acting to make his expression of faith possible. There may also be the hint that when Abram left Haran, he still had the same fundamental problem as when leaving Ur- he had still not fully left his kindred and father's house. 

Abram evidently found it so hard to sever the family ties, and move straight on from Haran. The call of Abram required breaking with family. Perhaps Terah was too old and ill to move on further (he died at 205, a great age by post-flood standards), and Abram found it hard to leave his old and ill father in a strange city. Or perhaps Terah's strong influence on Abram meant that he found it just too hard to go against him. How he must have wrestled with the pain of leaving his family and father! Yet he believed God's promises, and he knew that these things were necessary if he was to attain the promised land. Many a convert to Abraham's seed in these last days has been through the same process. The call to " come out" of mystical Babylon is surely rooted in the call for Abram to " come out" from Ur and Haran. Whilst this evidently occurs at the time of baptism, when these same Abrahamic promises are made to us personally, our whole lives are a process of 'coming out' from the world. As we do so, our appreciation of God's promises is progressively expanded, as God works with our faith. 

Immediately Terah died, Abram may have felt he had truly left his " kindred" and eagerly moved on towards the promised land of Canaan (so Gen.11:32-12:4 implies). It is likely that many of Abram's " kindred" would have come along with Terah, responding themselves to the call of Abram. Presumably they settled in Haran after Terah's death. It is even possible that the family were from this city originally, seeing that Abraham's brother was called Haran. We saw earlier that just before leaving Haran, Abram was further told to separate from his " father's house" too, i.e. all of his father's household. This must have included Lot.  Abram could understand separation from his idolatrous father and the rest of the family retinue; yet Lot was " a righteous man" ; Abram evidently rated Lot's spirituality (Gen.18:23,32). Again, Abram was in a quandary. He had left all but one of his father's house in Haran. Was he really intended to separate from his father's house to the extent of leaving Lot too?  It is likely that Abram often agonized about Lot. There he was in Canaan, knowing that his seed would inherit this land, which was then full of Canaanites (the record twice emphasizes, in 12:6 and 13:7). But Lot, part of his kindred and father's house, was still with him. We saw that the Hebrew for " kindred" implies one born in ones own country. A closely related word is found in Gen.11:28, describing how Haran, Lot's father, " died in the land of his nativity, in Ur" . If Lot's father lived and died in Ur, it is fair to assume that Lot was born in Ur. So Abram knew he must separate from Lot, his " kindred" - but how? What reason could he give Lot? Yet he had faith in what God had told him; therefore he wanted to leave Lot, but just found it hard to do. And so God made a way.  

Because the promises were to be made to Abram and not Lot, this separation was indeed necessary (although nothing should be inferred from this regarding Lot's spirituality or standing with God). It is stressed in the record that " Lot went with him" out of Haran (Gen.12:4), and that in Abram's subsequent passing through the land of Canaan, " Lot...went with Abram" (Gen.13:5; 13:1). Having been through so much together (they were together in the Egypt crisis, Gen.13:1), it is unlikely that they would suffer from a personality clash. Yet the great wealth of them both resulted in " strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle, and the herdmen of Lot's cattle" (Gen.13:7). Abram reasoned that it would be a shame to let this incident between their employees drive a wedge between them personally; " for we be brethren" (note Abram's intense awareness that they were of the same household), and close spiritual friends too, it may be inferred (Gen.19:8). Abram's subsequent concern for Lot indicates that they did not fall out personally over the problem. 

Abram would have noticed Lot's desire to settle down in the cities of the plain. Now he saw that providence was giving him the means he needed to separate from his father's house completely. He knew that if Lot chose, of his own volition, to separate from him, then there would no longer be the emotional agony of him separating from Lot. " Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me" , Abram invited Lot, knowing that now it was very easy and attractive for Lot to agree (Gen.13:9). " And they separated themselves the one from the other" (Gen.13:11). Yet a third time the record emphasizes their separation, and implies that as soon as this occurred, the full Abrahamic land covenant was made, featuring Abram's eternal inheritance of the land: " The Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him...all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever" (Gen.13:14,15). Again we see God's patience in the development of Abram's faith. 

It must have seemed impossible for Abraham to imagine that Lot would ever separate from him of his own volition, as earlier he would never have dreamed that leaving his own country could be achieved without major opposition from his father. But providence overruled that Terah actually became enthusiastic for this move! Abram's faith was presumably in being willing to make these moves. These experiences remained firm in Abraham's memory. Later in life, he used his own experience of how God had opened a way for the expression of his faith, to inspire his servant to have faith that God would somehow find a suitable wife for Isaac. It must be significant that Abraham told Eliezer to take Isaac a wife from " my country...my kindred...thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell" (Gen.24:3,4). It follows that there were none of Abraham's country or kindred, which he had been commanded to leave, living anywhere near him. He had truly and fully obeyed the command to separate from them! As with many Christadelphian youngsters living in isolation in the mission fields, the avoidance of marrying those in the surrounding world just seemed too much to ask. But Abraham knew that a way would be made: " The Lord God of Heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred...he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son" (Gen.24:7). As God had taken Abram from Ur and Haran and Lot, so God would take a woman from there, suitable for Isaac.  

Left to human response alone, our faith will not always result in the necessary actions. " How to perform that which is good I find not" , laments the spiritually frustrated apostle (Rom.7:18). God saw Abram's willingness, and  appreciated the difficulty he had in appearing to act unreasonably to his kindred and father's house. And so God made a way. At the time of each of Abram's moves, from Ur to Haran and from Haran to Canaan, and again after the separation from Lot, the promises were re-affirmed and expanded to Abram (Gen.12:1 cp. Acts 7:3; Gen.12:7; 13:14). His faith was first kindled by the promise made to him in Ur. That faith, encouraged by God's hand in his life, led  to action, which resulted in God revealing even more of His word to Abram. This stimulated yet more faith, more action, and an increase in appreciation of the faith-generating word of promise. This same upward spiral, in which the word is the dynamic, can be found true in the experience of all Abram's seed. For we have all received the call of Abram.