by Pastor Glenn Layne

October 5, 2002
This Week's Message:

First Message in the Series
Catching God's Vision for the World
Genesis 11:27-12:8

God's Worldwide Purpose

I'm from a common family. My standing joke is that I came from one step above trailer trash. My mother was born and raised in a place you'll not find on any map, a place the locals in Lawrence County, Ohio called Possum Hollow. My dad was raised in town, the sooty little industrial town of Ironton, Ohio.

On Mom's side, the Hazeletts and the Webbs had been in the country for a long time. The family tradition says they migrated to Virginia from England, then to West Virginia and finally across the Ohio River to southeast Ohio. Dad's side is a little clearer: I know my great-grandfather came from the area around Cardiff, Wales to Ironton to do the same work he'd done back in Wales: mine coal. They also kept dairy cows and eventually got out of the mines and into the factories.

Glenn, the son of Roy, the son of Elmer… That's as far I know the names. My father's parents both died before I was born-even before dad was married-so I never knew them. All I have of them is one faded old black and white picture.

The people of the generations before us treasured the memory of their ancestors much more than the average westerner. Our Asian and Hispanic members can teach us whites a lot about family and the memory of ancestors. The ancient Hebrews also remembered. They saw in the story of the people the story of God's hand.

That's why we have all those "begats" in the Bible! They form a kind of cord of God's purposes that you can trace.

I come from an ordinary family. I want to tell you the story today of an ordinary family, and how God's purposes intersected that ordinary and how he put something extra in their ordinary to make an extraordinary difference in our world.

Does God have a purpose-in everyday lives? Oh yes!

Prologue (Family) (Genesis 11:27-32)

27This is the account of Terah.
Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

And Haran became the father of Lot. 28While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.

29Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 30Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.

31Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

32Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.

• Who was this man Terah? All we know is that he is from "Ur of the Chaldeans" and the facts about his family we have here. We know that he moved his family from Ur to Haran-a city with the same name as a son who dies young. We also know that he was not, at least initially, a worshipper of the Lord. Joshua says that Terah and his family worshipped "other gods." This is consistent with the fact that the name Terah is related to an old Babylonian moon-god.
• We believe that he was from a small tribe that had a family connection through an ancestor mentioned in Genesis 11:14-17: Eber. Eber gave his name to that little tribe, the Hebrews. These Hebrews accommodated their lives to the culture, morality and religion of the Old Babylonian era. They were compromised. The knowledge of God was uncertain.
• It says that they lived in "Ur of the Chaldeans." There are two places that could be that Ur: in the extreme south end of the Fertile Crescent, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers empty into the Persian Gulf-very near where the Gulf War of 1991 was fought-or another location in southeast Turkey, very near the Syrian border. There remains to this day a city there called Urfa, where the local population will be glad to show you what they call the Pool of Abraham. All in all, there may be just a little more evidence for this Ur than the traditional Ur.
• But, as I said, nobody at the time knew that they were making history-or that the Lord God had a special plan for them. This brief prologue to Abraham's story reads like a real family history, complete with a family tragedy: the death of Haran. Terah lives to see one of his sons die: Haran. There's hardly anything more unnatural than to bury a child, as some of you can attest. The Hebrew says that Haran died "in the face of Terah"-what a graphic way of saying it!
• So we have these men, Terah, Abram and Nahor, as the leaders. They set out for Canaan. Why? We'll see in a minute. But they were like millions of people before and since: on the move. We can relate to them as a nation of immigrants. From time immemorial, people have moved from place to place to try to make their lives better. But the move comes with a twist.

Promise (Flashback) (Genesis 12:1-3)
HERE

• When did God say this to Abram? (See Acts 7:2-3)
• Command: leave and go (12:1)
• Promise, Part 1: (the Deal/the "top line"): Blessing (12:2-3a)
• Promise, Part 2: (the Big Deal/the "bottom line"): Blessing all the peoples on earth (12:3b)
• Theology as seen by a dog and a cat!
• The Big Deal repeated (Psalm 47:4, 9; 72:17; Isaiah 49:6; Jeremiah 4:1-2; Matthew 4:13-16, 23-25; Galatians 3:14)

Progress (Faith) (Genesis 12:4-8)

• Abram's "tribe" migrates to Canaan (12:4-5)
• The altar at Shechem; the promise repeated (12:6-7)
• The altar at Bethel-Ai (12:8)

The altars we build…to be blessed? Or to a blessing…?

© Copyright 2002, Pastor Glenn Layne, www.templecitybaptist.org