Call of Abram - Striking Out In Faith

What if we don’t follow a call from God? I tend to wonder about this on occasions where I am faced with hard choices. We must pick up the slack for those that don't. Gen. 11:30-12:1-9

God is getting ready to do a new thing. We are going to journey with Abram and Sarai along their faith walk. Today we will look at some pivotal links in Genesis that ties their story with new creations and promises.

Genesis 1 is the beginning. The creation story. In verse 22 God blesses the creatures telling them to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” An invitation not an order. They responded with gratitude and joy that their creator has created them.

In verse 26 on the sixth day God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…” In verse 28 a separate blessing is then bestowed, and an invitation is given to humanity: “go forth, be fruitful, and multiply”. In joyous compliance and in gratitude the created beings made in God’s very image responded. The whole of creation was spoken into being out of nothing and out of the chaos of the waters of the deep. There was now order and peace where there had been nothing. And humanity ‘walked with God in the garden’.

It is with a sense of partnership and joining together as helpmates that God mandates humanity with the care of creation. A responsibility to help the earth flourish and grow and to enjoy what was and is still being created. The relationship between God and humanity was vastly radical. Relationship was not part of other religions or cults. It was not a part of any other people’s creation story.

There were many creation stories, but they were filled with angry or power-hungry gods that put humanity into slavery. Not relationships. Not with responsibilities to help care for the created world. But in service to the earth without choice. This creation story holds a promise. A promise that God will nurture creation and be in relationship with it all. To help the entirety of creation to flourish. Not if they do what they are supposed to do, but because they were created with the intent to bring joy to both Creator and creature.

Creation went on about its mandate and people became numerous… With sin in the world the relationship that God had intended was broken. The sinfulness of people grew as people grasped for more. More power, more control, more dominion over creation, and dominion and power over each other. This was displeasing to God. Something needed to be done. To start fresh.

Noah came along, a glimmer of the relationship that God yearned for, Noah “walked with God” as the first people had. This new creation that God crafted from the chaos of water and flood. Water that washed the world clean of sin.

God blessed Noah and his sons. Another invitation is given by God now for ALL of creation to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Gen. 9:1) This is again an invitation to flourish. Noah and all the new creation are given a promise from God that they will not be destroyed or wiped out by flood again. They go forth in faith that God will hold to the promise to nurture and care for creation once again. The warrior God and his archer’s bow were not needed now that peace had been restored. The image of the archer’s bow was hung in the sky to show that the weapons of war were not to be used again against creation in the same way. The first mention of a covenant is made as the bow is set high in our sky.

The generations and nations descended from Noah are recounted all the way to Abram which is where our text takes us today. God is getting ready to do a new thing.

I want you to note that in each new creation there is an invitational mandate, to be fruitful and multiply. God created and now respectfully becomes involved but not as an overlord or an authoritarian ruler. The new creation in each story simply joyfully responds in gratitude to comply. Doing the will of God is a pleasure. The promise from God is to care for creation and help humanity flourish into their fullness. Faith is at the heart of each call and response. God encourages, and creation has the faith to respond, knowing that God will keep the promise to care for and nourish them. Abram and Sarai are no different. And yet this is a new thing.

Genesis 11:30 is a very blunt statement, “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” In Hebrew when a phrase or word is doubled it means this is important. “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Abram and Sarai are an older couple beyond the normal age for having children. Creation for this family has hit a stopping point. This is the end of their fruitful multiplication. They have ceased to flourish.

There are other stories woven around Abram and Sarai’s story that describe this world as, yet again, fallen into sin. Those that are faithful to the one true God, are diminished. The genealogy and list of nations that extend from Noah to Abram is vast. People have spread far and wide but suddenly the wide scope of humanity does a hard focus onto this couple in their barrenness, childlessness, and most likely hopelessness. It is stated so that the readers’ attention is drawn into their story. It is stated so that everything that comes next can be understood with the perspective that God can do anything. Creation out of nothing, out of barrenness.

Genesis chapter 12 starts much like the creation stories. “Now the LORD said.” When God speaks things happen. God invites Abram to leave his country and family. To leave the comfort and stability of his father’s house and go where God will show him. There is no destination listed when the invitation is given.

It is gutsy for him to go out on his own. Especially in Abram’s culture. The center of every family revolved around the father with each son taking a wife and continuing the family business. It was unusual to leave. It was crazy really. No Best Western or Holiday Inn Express around. No Applebee’s or KFC to drop in for a quick bite to eat. No Food Lion or Piggly Wiggly to get some last minuet groceries. No farm stands to get their livestock a good meal. Water was scarce. A well or spring if you could find one would certainly be protected and claimed… They were all in very real danger if they didn’t find a habitable stopping point.

I know when I get in a car for a long road trip or go to an unfamiliar place, I turn on the GPS. And when you turn on the GPS, you have to input a destination or it doesn’t work. I remember several years ago when the GPS systems were separate little screens that you mounted to the window or dashboard. I had one because I had to drive to meetings sometimes all over Charlotte. Not to date myself but this was well before smart phones. There was this one particular time that I set it up ready to go but didn’t put anything in it yet. I had to drop my boys off at school first. While driving the GPS decided to pick a destination all on its own. And out of nowhere it would spurt out directions and then try to redirect me as I drove them to school. It was pretty comical and a little annoying. But since I was mid trip and driving, I just left it to go on and on. One of my sons from the back seat said, “that computer lady sure is crazy”.

Maybe Abram’s journey seemed like that? Setting out in a direction and then getting directions in little bursts. Wandering the wilderness to find ‘home’. A home that God has appointed you to go to if you listen and follow. One of my favorite quotes from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is, “Not all who wander are lost”. He is wandering in faith, towards God as God is reaching out towards Abram. There is a call to be in relationship with God.

Sometimes faith can only be felt or seen when we use it. When we use it in our most uncertain of times. In the book Literature and Theology by Ralph C. Wood, he explores free will and our faith journey. “Christian liberty..., is the choice to give up all other choices- and thus to live a life of trusting obedience.” (pg. 27) Abram had to give up all other choices of comfort and safety, in order to show his faith in action. To follow the one true God. To let God, lead the way and be his only GPS even if he didn’t know where the destination would be.

There are many metaphors for living out a life in faith. A GPS system, a journey that you wander about not lost but following God. One of my favorites comes from my favorite musician Neil Finn from Crowded House. In the Crowded House song, Love this Life, it likens faith to pedaling a bicycle. It is hard work that if you stop doing will end in a crash? Some of the lyrics speak to loving the life you have so that one day there will come a day, “When you'll never have to feel no pain”. It goes on to describe the difficulties of relationships. “There's something that you can do, Even if you think that I hate you, Stop your complaining, leave me defenseless.” Complaining for Finn sits in the anti-gratitude spot. If we aren’t grateful for the life we have from God how can we have faith that God may add blessings to that same life?

What if Abram didn’t take on God’s call? What if he didn’t have the courage to go against the majority, the grain, the expectation?? It was highly irregular to leave your family in his time as I stated earlier. So, what if Abram took a pass? He decided to stay where it was relatively safe. Food for them, take over for his father, marry another and have children there?

An invitation is given for Abram to go out to a place God will show him and it comes with the promise that God will make Abram into a ‘great nation’. To become a nation, you have to have descendants… “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” (Gen. 11:30) This promise meant that he would have a child. Abram went. Without hesitation or complaint. No questioning… Utter faith in what God has planned. Abram gets his stuff, wife, and even his nephew, Lot, and departs without a final location picked. I’m wondering how many ‘recalculating’ messages he may have gotten along the way?

Abram in faith takes God’s promise and moves forward. God does not invite him to simply be fruitful and multiply, instead God promises that a mighty nation will be multiplied out of Abram. God will do the multiplying and growing of this nation. God will provide the heir. A child that will become a great nation. But it doesn’t stop there. God’s promise goes beyond Abram and Sarai. God’s blessing is that “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those that curse you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This is a multi-generational multi-national blessing. Through Abram a blessing will come to all in all times in all places. God is doing a new thing. The promise of land can only come if there is an heir. So, the promises are joined together and cannot be separated. So, throughout Abram and Sarai’s story there is an underlying current that at their advanced age they must have a child in order to realize the fullness of the promise. The rest of the text gives his journey through different lands and is given an even more specific detail that the land of Canaanites will one day be given to his offspring. Note that it is a future promise now. The offspring, the heir has to happen first, Abram is not the one to ultimately lay claim to the promised land. It is a long journey as he continues to age. If Sarai was barren before… She is considered even more barren as they travel and the years tick by.

We must be reminded that creation came out of nothing and out of chaos. God can bring life just by speaking it into being. Can breathe the breath of life to create something new out of nothing. The breath of God blowing back the chaos of the flood for the new and improved creation. It is emphasized that Sarai is barren to highlight the miracle that must take place for the promise to be fulfilled. God is greater than the chaos that must have been created when they packed up and started to wander towards faith. Wandering but not lost.

Faith is what recons Abram to righteousness. Faith. Not actions, not merit, not good deeds, not his sacrifices or built altars. Just getting up the courage to step out in faith. When we step out in faith, God will do a new thing. The promises and blessings of God are there as we respond in joyful obedience. We must be willing to strike out on our own faith journey using God as our GPS not knowing the end destination. It may seem like you get a lot of recalculating messages or even take a U turn at the next life choice, but it is the journey that helps us grow, see, and feel our faith.

What if we don’t follow a call from God? I tend to wonder about this on occasions where I am faced with hard choices. If I do what I think God wants, I am setting off on one of those wandering journeys. Making the choice to give up all other choices. Or even more frightening, stepping off a cliff that seems to go nowhere! It is one reason I like the bike metaphor because it somehow softens the act of faith as a gradual stride towards the Spirits seemingly never-ending re-calculating messages. But really it isn’t ‘safe’. This is a radical God who sent a radical Jesus who made sure we were given a constant guide in the Spirit. If society or popular themes seem to be the very opposite of what you feel you are called towards, it is probably because God doesn’t think like human society. We were made in God’s image, but our thinking is clouded by sin.

Both congress and senate republicans refuse to go against their peers even when it’s clear they need to act against an authoritarian government that is unfolding right in front of us in real time. A government that is choosing to cut services and care for our most vulnerable. The Big Ugly evil bill that is circulating would cut Medicaid, Medicare and other vital resources for our elderly and our children. Death is a very real possibility that could happen as a result. I thought they were pro-life? James 4:17 puts it, “Anyone, then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins”.

Why were they complacent about bombing someone we were not at war with that made no aggressive threat to us? Killing random civilians along with military targets seems to also go against our mandate to “love God and love our neighbor”. We live in a global society so neighbor means everyone in every country.

Why do ICE agents wear a mask if they are enforcing a legal action? When they take people off the street who they think are ‘illegal’ because their skin is brown? Is that following Leviticus 19:33-34 “Do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, but treat them just as you treat yourselves…” I mean they keep quoting Leviticus, did they skip that section?

Why are judges being arrested for doing their job? Why do they now have to fear assignation for doing what is right? Faith is hard.

Living out a faith in the moral goodness of God is dangerous. Trying to DO the things Jesus taught is dangerous and scandalous. If it wasn’t, these things wouldn’t be happening. The Congress and Senate would respect the rule of law. They would use their powers to take care of and respect the rights of all people living in the United States of America and in other countries we were at peace with. Because that is what the law states. Judges would be able to block actions that hurt our foreigners, elderly, and children. Laws that build people up and protect rights should not be ignored and discarded because it makes you some money.

Speaking up for others and yelling until you are heard is the right thing to do. Using your faith in ways to help those most in need is something we are all supposed to be doing but it seems some have lost their way. We may have to fill in the gaps left by those who reject Jesus’ teaching even if it’s risky. Even when they say they are Christians but do and vote for harmful policies and actions to others. We must take up the slack together as the Church universal, trying to meet the community’s needs.

If you sense a call to do something that may seem like being asked to build a boat on a sunny day, it may be a chance to do God’s will in your life, that may even bless others around you. If you feel called to leave your safe family home so you can better help those in need, it may be your invitation to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply by making disciples of all people. Faith is radical and sometimes it calls for radical action. Have courage to go and do because as Psalms 33 puts it, “The word of the Lord is right and true, God is faithful in all promises.” Amen.

Bibliography

Barlett, David L., Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Feasting on the Word YC Vol 1-4, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Kindel Edition.

Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, January 1, 1986.

DeHaan, Peter, Women of the Bible: The Victorious, The Victims, The Virtuous, and The Vicious, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Rock Rooster Books, 2020.

De La Torre, Miguel A., Genesis: Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Eisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, San Francisco, CA.: HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1988.

Gregg, Robert C., Shared Stories, Rival Tellings: Early Encounters of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Keck, Leander E., Editor, The New Interpreter's® Bible Commentary Volume I: Introduction to the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, October 20, 2015.

Richards, Sue Poorman and Lawrence O Richards, Women of the Bible, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003.

Reich, Robert, Office Hours: WTF do they tell themselves?, robertreich.substack.com, June 25, 2025.

Wilcox, Ashly M. The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible Throughout the Year, Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2021. Kindle Edition.

Wood, Ralph C., Literature and Theology, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008.