GOD CALLED ABRAM

Genesis 12:1-5 / Keywords 12:1

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.

12:1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

2 “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.[a]

3 I will bless those who bless you,

    and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

    will be blessed through you.”[b]

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Footnotes

a. Genesis 12:2 Or be seen as blessed

b. Genesis 12:3 Or earth / will use your name in blessings (see 48:20)

 

1. Abram was called by God when he was 75 years old. He was living in Haran, a major city in upper Mesopotamia (southern Turkey). God called Abram at a dark time. There had been no one to carry the lamp of God since the time of Noah and the Great Flood. God’s call to Abram was a two-sided covenant promise. Abram’s part was to leave his family and his country. He had to painfully separate from everything he knew and go to an unknown land. God’s part was multi-faceted. God would transform the childless Abram into a great nation; God would bless Abram; God would make Abram’s name great; God would bless anyone who blessed Abram and would curse anyone who cursed Abram; and God would make Abram into a blessing for the whole world. Quite a promise to someone from an idol-worshipping family who didn’t know God!

2. How did Abram respond? He followed God. He did exactly what God told him to do and left his family and his nation and went to the land where God showed him. God had planted faith in Abram that he would make this dead man into a great blessing for the whole world.

 

Prayer Father, thank you that you call ordinary, sinful people to follow you and obey your word. Help me to follow you all my life.

One Word I will make you into a great nation