Genesis 12:1

THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. -- Genesis 12:1-9.

GOLDEN TEXT. --. will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be. blessing. -- Genesis 12:2. TIME. --About B. C. 1921. PLACE. --In Haran, east of the Euphrates, in Mesopotamia. HELPFUL READINGS. -- Genesis 11:22-32; Genesis 26:24-26; Acts 7:1-8; Galatians 3:5-29; Hebrews 11:8-16. LESSON ANALYSIS. --1. The Divine Call; 2. Pilgrims Seeking. City; 3. The Altar of God Built.

INTRODUCTION.

The name of Abraham looms up as one of the great representative men of the world. Like Adam and Noah he belongs to mankind rather than to the Jewish race. Paul bases an argument on the fact that he was yet uncircumcised when he was called and approved of God. Three of the great religions of the earth venerate him as. great spiritual father, the Jews who are his fleshly descendants, the Mahometans who cherished his name as the "Father of the Faithful" and the ancestor of the Arabian tribes to which Mahomet belonged, and the Christian world who are made children of Abraham by faith and heirs of the promise.

Abraham was. descendant of Shem, and the son of Terah, born in "Ur of Chaldees,". city or district whose locality is not certainly known, but somewhere in the valley of the Euphrates. His kindred were nomads, like the wandering Arabs, with great flocks of sheep and cattle which they drove from pasture to pasture. The earth was not yet densely inhabited, the whole human race being estimated at about thirty millions, and there was abundant room, even in settled lands, for the pasturage of flocks. Though society was primitive and simple there are indications of. sad apostasy since the days of Noah. The glimpses given of society in Canaan and, Egypt indicate that idolatry prevailed, that licentiousness existed, and the depravity of certain cities in the valley of the Jordan brought upon them an awful destruction.

1. THE DIVINE CALL.

1. Now the Lord had said to Abram.

The translators are in error in giving the verb the pluperfect form. It should read, "said," and probably refers to. call given in Haran. Stephen, in Acts 7:2, speaks of. call received in Ur of the Chaldees. This probably caused the migration of Terah and his family, including Abraham, to Haran, but there the tribe paused for. season and Terah never went farther. This second call directs Abraham to leave his father's family behind and to push on.

Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred.

The fact that Stephen declares that. call came to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, and that Genesis 11:31 says that "Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, wife of Abram his son, and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan," indicate that Terah was at first leader in the movement, but from some cause be never went farther than Haran. It was probably because he had abandoned the purpose of removing to Canaan that Abraham is commanded, not only to leave his country, but "his kindred and his father's house." By "thy country" is meant Haran, which was. part of the great valley in which Abraham had been reared.

To. land that. will show thee.

Of Canaan Abraham could personally know nothing. In that remote age nothing was known of the geography of the world,. desert separated Mesopotamia from Palestine, what lay beyond the desert was unknown, and in seeking. new country he would go forth into. dark, mysterious world, walking by faith instead of sight.