It happened in the 21st century BC. I think it gives us a sense of proportion to recognize that the context for our passage this morning, the time in which this took place. I can't pinpoint it within decades, but was the 21st century BC as many years before the fullness of time when Christ was born as we are living after that period. That the Lord said to Abram, leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. At the time the Lord spoke, Abram was living in a region of the world in North Mesopotamia. At this point in the city of Haran, which is in the south-eastern most part of modern day Turkey, almost on the border of Syria, there Abram was located living in a world that was extremely congenial, 60 miles up, great Bali tributary, which feeds into the Euphrates River, well-watered, comodious situation, a place that was so habitable that in fact it had nourished civilization already for more than a thousand years and has been continuously occupied. This city of Haran, still known by the same name, continuously occupied from a thousand years before Abraham, all the way down to the modern era. It's crucial for us to appreciate, in terms of the context Abraham's life, that Abraham who here is still known by his earlier name, Abram was not just a young man setting out to make his mark on the world. This was not the point at which he was thinking of career choices, hoping to find his fortune. Rather, the text, as Leconic as it is, makes the point explicitly that Abraham is 75 years of age and from what we know later on in the biblical record, that makes his wife 65. This is a couple who are really poised to join the retirement set, not looking for adventure and travel, at least nothing beyond a bus tour arranged for golden ages. Humanly speaking, Abram had no reason to leave Haran. If you had been one of his neighbors and caught wind of the fact that he is beginning to pack his bags and collecting his goods and getting set to leave, if you'd love him, you would have tried to talk him out of it. This is a nutty idea. Why would you ever want to do such a thing to yourself or to your family? Of course, the response would have been, I assume, from Abram, that it wasn't his idea. This was not the climax of a lifelong ambition. I know this was the obedient and necessary response to the Word of God. The Lord said, leave your country, your people, your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I just want to focus on that cost this morning that was required of Abram, the father of our faith, the paradigm for the believer, for Israel of old, for the New Testament Christian as well. Leave, leave the universal requirement of discipleship. It wasn't just simply, you know, leave town or leave Haran, or even continue this trek that began back in the ear of the caldians when your father left with you. In Iran and Genesis 15, we discover that actually the call that is recorded in our text is part of a movement that began apparently back in the Lord, the Lord identifies himself as the Lord who brought you out of the caldians to give you this land. So it all began then, whether God spoke explicitly at that point or only through his father's era's decision to move the family to this next stop. But God could have said, you know, let's continue the pilgrimage, your fathers died, now it's time to move on. But instead we have in this most amazing verse, chapter 12, verse 1, an almost inexplicable repetition. I mean, how could you miss the point? Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. Look at all the repetition, the elaboration that seems so unnecessary. But if we read this in the light of the rest of the book of Genesis, we'll recognize that this is a just-appointment literary device that is meant to help us to see how feelingly God enters into this requirement that he imposes on the disciple Abram. The same kind of repetition appears again later on in Genesis chapter 22. There it says, God, again speaking to Abraham, take your son. Your only son, Isaac whom you love, and leave to the land of Mariah in offering him up as a sacrifice there on one of the mountains I will tell you about. Notice the situational parallels, God is telling Abram in another occasion here at the end of his life, to once again leave and to go to a place that isn't specified as yet. God doesn't give you the full map right up front. You've got to follow him every step of the way. I'll show you which mountain it's going to be. And notice the repetition. Take your son, your only son, Isaac whom you love. You don't need all of that, all you need is take your son and that would be enough. Well, you say, well, but wait a minute, Abraham had two sons at Ishmael. And maybe in fact, if Abraham had had a choice it might have been Ishmael that he would have offered up. Not necessarily for lack of love, but because already the promise had been given that it would be through Isaac, that all the promises would come to fulfillment. So surely, God would not want me to put his life in peril. And so maybe we could say, well, that explains why Isaac. Okay, so find, take Isaac and go. That would have been enough. But instead you have, take your son, your only son, Isaac whom you love. You see, God is assuring Abraham by this means that he knows the cost of discipleship. In fact, we who are able to read this text in the light of the entire context of scripture understand that God and are feeling into the price that he is requiring because he himself has paid the price when he gave his only begotten son using the very same vocabulary, by the way, as is found in the Greek Old Testament in the New Testament to describe Jesus in his relationship to the Father. Giving his only begotten son Christ, offering him up as the sacrifice for our sins in a gift that is unfathomable in its love and its costliness. God identifies with his disciples for we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go. First, leave your country. Leave those familiar surroundings, the mountainous, burdened valley of the Bali River that is so lush in its growth, so well-watered as I say, continuously occupied from well before Abraham's day down to modern times. Leave the high water mark of ancient civilization, the great urban centers of North Mesopotamia. I recognize that when we read this passage going through the book of Genesis, here in chapter 12, we are at the foreshorten in our kind of mind, the chronology that this represents, that here the entire span of human history prior to Abraham has been compressed into 11 chapters. And so you read this in chapter 12 and you are wondering, well, maybe Abraham is being really asked to kind of come out of the cave that this is going to be a cultural advance for him, because after all, mankind has just begun to walk upright virtually. It is so early in the course of human history. The reality is, of course, completely otherwise. At the time when the word of God came to Abraham, already some of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen were now a thousand years old. The great culture of the Sumerians, a thousand years old, a millennium before Abraham, they had invented writing. A millennium before Abraham, they had invented detailed understanding of astronomy and mathematics had worked out ways of computing cube roots of numbers. There aren't many even in this congregation that could pull off a cube root very quickly. The Sumerians who in linear measurement had devised a system of sex-agessimal numeration, a base 60 number, that's why we still measure degrees of a circle as 360 or the clock in terms of 60 minutes to an hour. It all goes back to the Sumerians, they figured it out. There are architectural advances, they are the ones who invented the arch and the vault. If they didn't invent the wheel, they perfected it and they perfected it not only for the use of carts, but also to throw pots on. Pottery began with them. They are the ones who invented inlay in stucco for surfacing of buildings and a thousand years before Abraham, five hundred years before Abraham, the pyramids had been erected in Egypt. Abraham is not coming out of the dark ages. He's really more coming out of a brilliant renaissance culture of great attainment being called into something that is bear existence. The nearby city of Mari, which a little later on would become the capital of this entire region including Haran. Mari, in this century, worked on in terms of archaeological discovery. They found a remnant of a vast library, 22,000 tablets still survived from Mari from the great library there. In those tablets are descriptions of Haran as a great cultural and business crossroads. In fact, the name of the city means business capital or intersection or crossroads because the great north, south highway and east, west trade routes all went right through Haran. That's where Abraham was being called to leave, where he lived. They had imported goods from as far west as Cyprus at Haran and as far east as India. In other contemporary cities where we have more archaeological remains in Italy, Haran because of continuous occupation, there's very little really there available for us to discover from Abraham's time. But from adjacent cities and further south from the great city of Or once and by still today, by many believed to be the original hometown of Abraham, I'm not sure that's the case, but there are 100,000 clay tablets have survived from this period of time. Or a quarter of million inhabitants lived in that city and it's immediate environs. The imported raw materials from all over the world, one firm of weavers at Or produce 12 grades of cloth. I mean, that's better than you can do at filings. They had artisans working jewelers in gold and silver, mother of pearl, lapis lazuli, carpenter's, copper worker, shipbuilders, potters that we can read about. Material culture, such as we can scarcely imagine from this distance, Abraham was told to leave your country and to go where? Well, whatever Canaan was, it was not home. So right away it's going to be a come down, but we're still, it was no prize, at least not in the parts that Abraham was going to be inhabiting. Perhaps in the cities of the plain that lot would take for his inheritance, but in the central highlands urbanization hadn't really begun at this point. That's why the text makes it explicit in verse 8. It was between Bethel and AI where Abram pitched his tent. Away now from luxurious accommodation in permanent dwellings to a life of an outsider at that, a pilgrim. The New Testament tells us that by faith, Abraham when he was called to go a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise in Hebrews chapter 11. I know there are some in this congregation who can well identify with this cost. Not all of us, some of us, we read a story like this and we don't get it because we love travel. We got the bug, we got that adventurous spirit, the moment we feel our lives are settling into a routine, we start putting out the resumes. We can't stand still. In order to understand the cost that's intended for us to appreciate here, you've got to read Genesis chapter 12 through the eyes of a home body. You have to be kind of a Hugenberger really to get it. I hesitate to mention this again, I've shared it with others and it confirmed there were suspicions about me and I'm sure it will for you as well, that I was born just a half an hour from here in the house where my mom still resides. I've spent my entire life within an hour up here other than when I was in graduate school. I mean it's disgusting. So parochial, am I? But it's by choice. I love home wherever that home is and every time we've moved, one time we moved literally just the distance of about four house lots. It was catastrophic for us. We were just filled with emotion when we went up Washington Street and turned to write to Leveritt Street. I can enter into this. You can't. Many of you. The cost of having to leave that which was so familiar. Not just leave your country. We were still leave your people as some text translated. You say, well, how could it be your people? It's a little bit of problem here because it's Haran wasn't born and or in Hebrew it's even worse because actually the word here is your birthplace. It's a very same word you get in chapter 11 verse 28 when it says about Haran died in order of the caldians in the land of his birth. Birthplace. And I won't lead us into the entire scholarly controversy but one of the issues is where was or of the caldians? Is it the or that many think of which is right on the Persian Gulf? 700 miles to the south of Haran? Is it that or or is it another or another or that we now know of for sure that was in the region of Haran actually mentioned in one of the eblog tablets or in the region of Haran? My preferences for that northern or it were from somewhere in the neighborhood of Haran that that really was his birthplace. He's being asked to leave his roots not just his country in the familiar geography and setting but home his roots where he was born. Leaving a culture with all of its familiar customs its gestures its business practices its whole legal framework all of that thrown out the window. Leaving even its language the language presumably that was spoken at this point in Haran and its regions would have been some form of maybe of old the caldian or maybe a dialect similar to eblog which we have evidence of. He would then leave that language group going to canin where they spoke a completely different language ammarite or proto caninite and by the way leaving from a culture where you have been writing for a thousand years to a culture where there was no literacy but where they didn't write they couldn't write their language. Think of a modern equivalent of that going from your home country to a country where they just don't write. That's not just a little dip in the in the standard of living that's like going on to another chart that's what Abraham is being asked to abandon all his natural connections. The text in chapter 11 that I read mentions some of Abrams family we read about his great grandfather Sarah grand father Nahor father Tara every one of those individuals has a city in northern Mesopotamia that bears the very same name. Abrams a man with connections Sarah's name her name means princess she may well have been royalty later on the a bimolec identifies Abram as a prince as royalty the promises given to Sarah that kings would come from her. It's not at all unlikely based on this heritage that we read about these this ancestry that Abram and Sarah were extremely well connected. They would have been like the cabits or the lodges or the Kennedys here in Massachusetts a name that just you know zoos old wealth and power and connection business establishment. And so on that's the price that God is exacting of Abraham and a price again that many in this congregation I know of paid I I've talked with students that came from other countries from families that were part of the aristocracy the cultural elite of their community they come here to Boston and well they're lucky if they get a job flipping hamburgers. It's a this is the kind of cost God is requiring of Abraham leaving a situation where your upper class to one where you're an out class where you were a somebody and now at some level you're a nobody. And then the Lord said to Abram leave your country your birthplace and your father's household here's the most painful cost of discipleship that any of us would ever be called to pay leaving family. Of course already Abram and Sarah I have had some involuntary losses of family separations we read about the death of her and the brother of Abram back when they were in war. In fact it's because his brother died presumably that Abram now is responsible to take care of his lot who is an orphan now is nephew. When they moved on to Iran which coincidentally is spelled the same in English but it's not the same word in Hebrew but they moved on to the city Iran there it was now or now it was a terror the father of Abram who died. That's painful whenever you have deaths of close family members you know how families then usually respond by bonding even more tightly to one another becoming even more close. And it's in that context now that the most painful separation of all is being required one that to all the rest of the family must have seemed very voluntary and therefore more excruciating Abram is voluntarily leaving everybody. Though we know it isn't entirely voluntary this wrenching a part of the family that would mean leaving behind Nayhor's brother and Milka and Iska and who knows how many other dear friends cousins family members why why all that cost. Why is God so disruptive of our lives why does he deserve that title that David McCann used to give him the great interrupter. The great interrupter who stops us in our tracks and turns us around who knocks us off balance just when life seems to be going along in neutral and so smoothly. Why is he the great interrupter is it to punish us that he speaks like he does to Abram here and says leave everything or is it rather to protect us. Is it is it really to deprive us of the creature comforts that it would mean for Abram to leave this home or is it rather to prepare us for eternal comfort something much better. I think negatively we have to say the purpose of this call this practice of God with respect to our discipleship is surely on the one hand for our protection to pry loose our grip a death grip on the things of this world. In Abram's case including breaking up the patterns of security the network of friendships and so on that would undoubtedly have just confirmed him in his idolatry. The Bible talks about that idolatry in Joshua chapter 24 that long ago your forefathers including Tara the father of Abram and Nayhor lived beyond the river and worshipped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from that land beyond the river and led him through Canaan and gave him many descendants. The implication here is that that extraction of his people that unsettling of their foundations is impart a protection against the former idolatry for saking those idols, extricating himself from past temptations, even perhaps from the peer group that might have kept him locked into those patterns, false security at best, at worst idolatry and immorality. The Bible says do not be misled bad company corrupts good character and so there is that rescue operation that seems to be behind this purpose of leaving. But it's more than that there's a positive purpose and the positive purpose is really too full surely it's to teach faith first and foremost go to the land I will show you. You'll leave in order to go to a land I will show you going into the unknown into unknown territory without a map is a formula either for disaster or for faith because you got to walk by faith and not by sight. Abraham is being called here to prefigure the experience that Israel later on would have as we discover elsewhere in Genesis 15 for example Abraham's life is a model. Moses writing this for his generation couldn't possibly read this without thinking of their own experience leaving the comfort of Egypt where they had been for 400 years worshipping idols. Wrenched out of that by the word of God and now brought to the Lord at Sinai and into the wilderness where they would learn how to walk by faith and not by sight and not know the way forward. Deuteronomy chapter 8 remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these 40 years to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart whether you would keep his commands. He humbled you causing you to hunger and then feeding you with mana which neither you nor your fathers had known to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but by every word on every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. It was a same for Abraham he comes to the promised land and the first thing we read about in the very verse following the ones I read is there's a famine in the land. Oh this is great you know I left all my security our retirement plan we abandoned it all we follow God for what for the life of blessing and what is the life of blessing consist of we come to a land the canonites are still there in fact I'm not even get it for another 400 years long after I'm dead and buried. And then not only the canites there but well look at the land text ends by the fact he's in the negab desert dry useless land for all intents and purposes and then a famine hits and shortly after that his wife is kidnapped now would you conclude if you had been Abraham that God sure knows what he's doing but it's teaching a life of faith. Depending on the Lord every step of the way trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your past rate and ultimately yes actually is for the reward of blessing you pry loose your grip on the things of this world that you can receive a better promise with open palms. A better hope a better hope that is only symbolized by the material promises that are mentioned in the verses that will look at another occasion. But the better hope is ultimately an eternal hope the blessing should never be confused with the evidences that are material of that blessing of course the benefactions we often see as part of God's handiwork but. But don't confuse the good fortune the prosperity with the blessing and God promises to bless us it may or may not include prosperity. His blessing is his bond of favor with his people and when you have that you have everything whom have I in heaven but you an earth has nothing I desire besides you my flesh and my heart may fail. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever brothers and sisters the father of our faith Abraham when he was called to go a place to a place he would later receive as his inheritance obeyed and went and you to had better obey even though he did not know where he was going by faith he made his home in the promise land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise had God made a mistake no for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect in builder is God he was holding out for the better promise let us pray. Our father in heaven we ask that we might see in this account of the father of our faith not only a reflection of the experience of your people Israel who were called to walk in those very same footsteps to learn very difficult lessons of letting go of the comfortable secure prosperous life they knew in Egypt even though they were slaves. In order to experience the true freedom for which you set them free in a walk of faith depending on you. So we pray Lord for ourselves that we might imitate the father of our faith may we live for that better city whose builder and maker is God pry loose our grip shake our foundations set us free from every idol tree. Cause us to leave and follow you we pray in Jesus name come in.