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1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. 9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. (Genesis 12:1-9 NIV)
I have been blessed to live in many parts of the state, and once out-of-state for school, and all have been wonderful in their own regard. Some areas have struck me as places where not all the kids want to stay in, and kids that would never ever ever consider living any place else. Among those are kids who have never left the area. I was so amazed to take university students from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio or Hunt, Texas, that had never left the Valley. Their excitement was awesome! I myself, considered Kingsville back in my day, as a paradise of sorts. I had a creek to spend my days; family members near enough to see on a regular basis, especially the only grandmother I ever knew and both of my grandfathers. When the economy in Kingsville went south and my Dad was unemployed and trying new job after new job, when he finally got a good job in Houston, Texas, it was not a complete surprise that we were having to move from paradise to the evil empire of the north. This passage introduces us to Father Abraham, who is invited by God to move. Away. From his country. From his people. From his father's household. To an unknown land. v There is an argument to be made that Genesis 12:1 is the most consequential sentence in all of human history. Not because of its length — it is a single command with a single destination that is not yet named. But because of what hangs on it.
Everything that follows in the biblical story — the covenant, the exodus, the prophets, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, Pentecost, the church reaching to the ends of the earth — hangs on this moment. One man. One call. One act of obedience in response to a promise he could not yet see fulfilled. And through that one man, all peoples on earth would be blessed.
It begins with a word that God has been saying to his people ever since: Go.
Leave What You Know
The call God gives Abram has a shape that is worth sitting with, because it is the shape of almost every genuine call God gives. He does not begin with the destination. He begins with the departure. v “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”
Three things are named in what Abram must leave, and each one is more intimate than the last. His country — the geography that has shaped him, the land he knows how to read. His people — the community that has formed his identity, the faces that have always been there. His father’s household — the inner circle, the family, the root system that holds a person in place in the world.
And the destination? The land I will show you. Not named. Not mapped. Not explained in advance. Abram is being asked to release his grip on everything that has given his life its stability and shape — and to walk toward a place God has not yet described, on the strength of a promise God has not yet proved.
This is the grammar of faith in every generation. God rarely gives us the whole map. He gives us the next step and the promise, and asks us to move. The call always costs something. It always involves leaving something behind. And what it asks us to leave is almost always the thing we were most holding onto for security.
Abram was seventy-five years old. This was not a young man’s adventure. This was the uprooting of an entire established life, at an age when most people are settling in rather than setting out. And yet: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.” No argument recorded. No negotiation. He went.
The Promise That Makes the Going Possible
The call would be unbearable without the promise. And the promise God makes to Abram is staggering in its scope.
I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And — the line that reaches all the way to Pentecost and beyond — all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Seven times in these few verses the word bless or blessing appears. The God who calls Abram out is not a God who takes and takes and takes. He is a God who gives — lavishly, expansively, with a generosity that runs further than Abram could possibly imagine standing in Harran at seventy-five. The blessing that begins with one man is designed to flow outward until it reaches every people on earth.
This is the great missionary promise of the Old Testament, and it is the promise that Jesus tells his disciples they are standing inside when he sends them to the ends of the earth in his name. Paul quotes it directly when he argues in Galatians that the gospel was announced to Abraham in advance. The blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost on all flesh is the fulfillment of the promise God made to one man on one day in Harran.
Abram could not see any of that. He could not trace the arc from his departure to Calvary to the upper room to the ends of the earth. He only had the promise. And the promise was enough — because the one who made it is the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
For Reflection
The passage ends with a quiet and beautiful detail. As Abram moves through the promised land — still occupied by Canaanites, still not his — he builds altars. At Shechem, where God appears to him and renews the promise. At Bethel. He pitches his tent and builds an altar and calls on the name of the Lord.
He does not build a house. He pitches a tent. He is a pilgrim in the land he has been promised, and he knows it. The altar is not a claim of possession. It is an act of worship in the middle of not-yet — a declaration that the God who called him is present and worthy of praise even before the promise has been fully delivered.
That is the posture this passage leaves us with. Most of us are living in some version of the not-yet. We have heard a call. We have received a promise. But the land is still occupied by other things, the destination is still only partially visible, and the distance between where we are and where God is taking us is still real and sometimes long.
Abram’s answer to that in-between space was to pitch a tent and build an altar. To keep moving and keep worshiping. To hold the promise of God in one hand and the reality of the not-yet in the other, and to call on the name of the Lord in the gap between them.
That is still the faithful response. Go, as the Lord has told you. Build your altar in the not-yet. And trust that the blessing promised to one man in Harran is still flowing — through you, toward all peoples, all the way to the ends of the earth.
PRAYER: Lord, give us the faith of Abram — to go when you call, to leave what you ask us to leave, and to build our altars in the not-yet, trusting that your blessing is already flowing further than we can see. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one step God has been calling you to take that you have been holding back from — one “go” you have been postponing — and this week take it, as Abram did, on the strength of the promise rather than the sight of the destination.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Like Abraham, go to where God leads you!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
