I wanted to write a bit about the common phrase “God meets us where we are.” The phrase is often used to mean “you’re good enough” and “you don’t need to change.” Now obviously that is not a biblical position to take. If Him “meeting us where we are” was the whole of God’s plan we would still be destitute. Thankfully He has promised to take us somewhere better. The Psalmist can say “ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me,” because God is with us through the hard parts of life. Yet that’s not his hope any more than it is ours, as he ends that Psalm with “.. I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” We can have this hope, obviously, because of the finished work of Christ. With that in mind I’d like to turn to the first of our main passages this afternoon in Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 - 3.
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Here we see God meeting Abram where he was and calling him to someplace better. However, even though he left Ur of the Chaldees, we know from the end of the previous chapter and Acts chapter seven that he did not immediately go to that land to which God had called him. He tarried in Haran until his father passed away. “The influences of nature are ever hostile to the full realization and practical power of ‘the calling of God.’” (CHM Notes). Abram was told to go to the land God would show him, but he allowed himself to be distracted by his earthly ties (admittedly something very natural and seemingly ‘right’) which prevented him from entering immediately and fully into the blessing God had in store for him. But, in the same way a natural death broke his link with Haran, here representative of stopping short of where God had called him to, we have first the death of Christ and then Romans six reminding us that we are to reckon ourselves dead as well. Only once that disconnect occurs can we move closer to our heavenly calling of fellowship with the Son. The cross that unites us to God also separates us from the world.
Abram had stayed in Haran with his father, and graciously God waited for him to continue on. He waited for his full obedience before giving him anything new. “We must remember that God will never drag us along the path of true-hearted discipleship. … He does not drag, but draw, us along the path which leads to ineffable blessedness in Himself;” (CHM Notes). So Abram went into the land in verses four through nine:
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
The Lord showed Abram the land that would be his offspring’s after him and so Abram worshiped Him again in the land. The Canaanite still being in the land is noted because Abram’s land was an earthly one and would still have earthly problems. His faith was real but that does not mean that it would not be tested. The path of obedience is not free from trial for him or us. Abram’s solution was to pitch his tent away from them in the land of Bethel (which means House of God). The tent being pitched also showed Abram’s faith in that he was not building a house. He was a sojourner in the land and was reliant on God to keep him. Yet in the second half of the chapter a famine comes into the land and he chooses to leave and go to Egypt rather than suffer in the land God had given him. Again, this seems like the ‘right’ thing to do to care for his family, yet we see no indication that God had given him leave to go. Mackintosh writes, “It is better to starve in Canaan, if it should be so, than to live in luxury in Egypt, -- it is better far to suffer in God’s path, than be at ease in Satan’s, -- it is better to be poor with Christ than rich without Him.” By leaving the land of promise Abram left the altar and his communion with God. May we trust God better even when our paths get rough.
Abram does, however, return eventually “ to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.” (Genesis 13:4). He comes back into obedience, into the land God had for him, and almost immediately has more trouble, this time with his nephew Lot. And here again we see that Abram is trusting God. He sees not with the eyes of nature but with the eyes of faith that the land promised to him will be “good.” Genesis 13 “14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. 17 Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” 18 So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.” Abram builds another altar to continue his communion and worship.
I want to briefly mention here that Lot, though he left Ur of the Chaldees and Haran with Abram, did not do so in obedience to God and so was not part of the blessing Abram received. He was entrapped by the worldliness of Sodom and slowly moved his tent from “pitched towards Sodom” to then living in the city itself. Those we bring along with us on our journeys aren’t guaranteed anything unless they themselves are in faithful obedience to God as well.
Going back to Abram we have, in the next chapter, him receiving more blessing from Melchizedek for trusting God in how to handle Lot again, this time his capture. There is a lot in these next few chapters of Abram receiving the sign of the covenant with God, Abram trying to fulfill that covenant in his own strength and God correcting him and finally with Isaac being born to his wife Sarah and Abraham realizing the blessings God had promised him in the land.
I know the story of Abraham is a familiar one to a lot of us so I appreciate you letting me go through it at a bit slower pace and focusing in on some moments of his calling and coming into blessing. Hebrews 11: “8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” So God met Abraham where he was, but called him to something better.
Now to bring this forward to today. God meets us where we are too. There is a phrase called “The Great Condescension” that speaks of God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ. He left the eternal glory He had always known from eternity past to be born on Earth. Galatians 4:4-5 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” He meets us where we are and has promised to take us somewhere better. John 14:1-6 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Christ has promised those who believe in Him a heavenly home. The worries and distractions of this life won’t matter there. We can even agree with Paul when he writes, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18). So, no matter what is going on in your life, I encourage you to remember the hope that we have because of Jesus Christ.
