“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. 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. 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.’” Genesis 12:1-3
It is good to be back from the 50th General Assembly of the PCA where we were reminded over and over again about our core principles: “True to the Scriptures, the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.” These core principles are as old as time itself, and these are in no way passive. God commanded Adam to “work and keep” the garden which is the seed of the command captured in the PCA core principles.
We see this clearly in many places but especially in the call of Abram, I distinctly remember in my continuous studies in Genesis that the KJV (King James Version) captures what’s going on here better than even the ESV above. Abram is to “get thee out!” from his country to go to a land shown to him by the LORD our God…his God. Abram’s call is not a suggestion. It isn’t tame. Yet it also comes with a promise: Abram’s offspring will grow into a mighty nation, but more than that: the whole purpose of this of this blessing upon Abram would be to be a blessing to the entire world. Abram is blessed to be a blessing.
We have heard this many times, but we forget. “A call to go is a call to leave.” Abram is to leave behind his pagan gods and follow Yahweh. A call to go is also a call to listen to God’s step-by-step leading. Abram doesn’t know where he is going and yet God promises that He will show Abram the way. A call to go means that Abram will be renamed and this Abraham is sent as a blessing. Ultimately, the call to go, to follow, and to become mighty, happens through the ordinary and often painful process of death to self. Gone are Abram’s plans, his comforts, and his gods; the life of faith means going and giving up what is behind.
Ultimately, Abraham’s call points forward to Jesus’ call. Jesus is our true and better Abraham. Jesus’ call meant going for Him as well: leaving heavenly glory to rescue and redeem His people. No distance was too great for Jesus to seek and save the lost. (In our study of John’s gospel we see Jesus going to places that don’t often make sense to meet up with THE person that most needed Him.)Also, Jesus’ call was lived out in a step-by-step communion with the Father and the Spirit. We see in the Gospels how Jesus’ earthly ministry was directed by the Father through the power of the Spirit as He walked the way, as He healed, as He taught, fulfilling the will of His Father. Likewise, Jesus’ whole ministry was a blessing — a blessing extensive enough to include not just the elect of Israel, but also the all the elect of the world — so that every tribe and tongue and nation would be grafted into a new body of belonging, the Church.
We are recipients of the call of Abraham and the call of Jesus. “Go (As you go on your way) therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”(Matt. 28:19-20) We who, through Christ’s atoning work, now wear the blessing, are also called to go…to be obedient to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. We become the hands and feet of Jesus: poured out; we are blessed to be a blessing. As Christians in the PCA in the twenty-first century, how might we then live?
I know it is easy to see God’s call to go to be one of retreat. While we must retreat from the pagan gods of our day, to renounce the gods of therapeutic deism and the gods of comfort and convenience, the call to go often looks like what one author calls “faithful presence within” the places God has put us in. In our comings and goings, in our neighborhoods and households, in our work to listen and see those at the margins of society, we are blessed so that we can be poured out. The call for us today in a world rapidly becoming more and more secular, is not to retreat but to move towards the broken and the hurting. We are to be the hands and feet of Christ, poured out to be a blessing, always moving in step with the Spirit, so that in both how we declare the gospel and how we live it, we not only point back to Jesus and to Abraham but also point forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the one who was broken to be a blessing. May we follow humbling in His steps…remaining “True to the Scriptures, the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.”
God Bless y’all.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
Gaudete in Domino Semper
(Rejoice in the Lord , always!)
