Genesis 12:7-9

Hey friends, and welcome back to the daily Bible study as we jump right into the middle of Abram’s story
because things get very interesting very quickly,
as it does in the Old Testament.
Yeah, things move fast, and Abram has left his home,
and he is on this journey to which the
Lord has called him.
He is traveling, and really a lot of the Abram story,
probably the journey metaphor is apt.
I mean,
he will settle at some point,
but particularly this early part of the story.
In fact, we’ll hear a really interesting phrase today in the context of that.
So let me read a few verses,
and then we’ll talk here.
“Then the Lord appeared to Abram,
said to your offspring, ‘I’ll give this land.’
So he built there an altar to the Lord who appeared to him.
From there he moved on to the hill country on the east side of Bethel,
and pitched his tent
with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.
And there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked
the name of the Lord.
And Abraham journeyed on by stages toward the Negev.”
So a couple of interesting things.
The second interesting thing in the text is that there are
these altars.
We saw an altar with Noah,
and it continues throughout the book of Genesis and
throughout the Old Testament to be a sign of thanksgiving.
There is some confession-type
stuff that gets associated with it later in the Old Testament.
In this part of the story,
it’s primarily an offering place,
a place of sacrifice,
a place of thanksgiving.
And here,
on two different instances in this story,
Abram gives thanks for the promise that God is with him,
of
observance, of worship, and gratitude.
That’s a really interesting point,
Clint, and I want to maybe dig into that a little bit,
because there are some things in Scripture you only understand when you’re willing to look at it
backwards,
when you’re willing to bring with you some of the history and traditions of the people that bring it.
This is true in lots of areas,
but this is an example par excellence.
Because think about Cain and Abel.
That’s the first moment where we have the idea of sacrifice introduced in Genesis.
What’s interesting about that story is how little it says about the actual act of sacrificing.
In other words,
Genesis doesn’t seem interested in really teasing out why there should
be a sacrifice or what a pleasing sacrifice would be and what God’s expectation or what the outcome
of sacrifice is for those who do it.
That is the kind of thing that you really only have when you
bring that backwards with you and understanding later of the very much more mature and filled out
theology of sacrifice that we see in the people of Israel.
That is seen pre-imaged here.
I mean, we see it in its undeveloped form,
but when we come to a text like this and we see
that Abram is offering sacrifices to the Lord both as a response to what God has done and surely
in hope of what God will do in light of that promise,
it’s fascinating because we’re not told
the details of why or how or even really to what end.
I think that that’s striking because it’s
good to be reminded that that’s not the point.
The point isn’t necessarily that this is connected to
the Levitical tradition and the exact way that sacrifice should happen,
though that’s clearly,
it hangs over stories like this.
One of the ways that we make sense of the scriptures then
is to actually look back with the whole story in mind and then we begin to see
how this is all flushed out.
I think that’s a really interesting aspect of text like this.
Yeah, I would agree.
The other thing,
and I would say this is the first thing we encounter in the text,
it’s always been fascinating to me that God tells Abram as he goes through this land,
“This is the place.
This is the land I will give your ancestors.” And it seems to me that Abram
must have thought, “Oh,
well, that was a quick trip.
That was an easy journey.” And yet,
Abram continues to go.
God calls him on further because there is this wonderful interplay here
between the destination and the journey itself.
And Abram is going to take a rather circuitous
route
to end up where he needs to be,
but it’s always been fascinating that the first place he
travels through is ultimately the place God has selected,
but it’s not for him the end of the journey yet.
He still has things to do,
and I think we see this summarized really well in verse 9.
He journeyed on by stages,
which in the text is just telling us that he went from place to place.
It really is just a logistical verse,
but from a preaching perspective,
from a devotional perspective, the idea of journeying by stages as a way to understand our own faith journey,
as a way to understand our own life,
is really rich with meaning and is deep.
It is a fun place
in the text, I think a meaningful place in the text, to dig around.
Yeah, certainly in terms of interpretation,
but wouldn’t you also add to that, Clint?
I mean, that’s an important historical cultural element for us to understand texts like this.
Ultimately,
we have a sense of what it means to own a house and to be planted in a place or to have some
sense of stability, but not so when you’re living in tents,
when you’re very much living based upon
the ability of the land to support you.
I mean, we have stories here coming up with
Lot and Abram having to negotiate over whose animals are going to be in what place because
the land can only support so much.
This is a
kind of subsistence living that,
especially if you’re in the United States,
you probably don’t have in your daily experience.
And it’s important to know
that when we hear God tell Abram,
“Go to this place,” and then Abram responds,
that act of faith is substantial.
I mean, that’s a real deep entrusting of your life and your family
and your ability to live on God’s command because it’s not as if that’s assured or that you know
exactly where you’re going on the map or that when you get there,
that there’ll be enough to sustain you.
So I think it intensifies,
that’s my point, it intensifies our experience of the text when we
realize the extent to which
this is in some cases life and death sort of situations.
Yeah, and again, I think
it
undoubtedly,
Michael,
the text of Genesis has in some ways a deeper
connection to the idea of land and location than we do.
Most of us feel some connection with where
we live, particularly maybe it’s home,
maybe we grew up there.
You know, I recently with my dad’s
funeral had an opportunity to be back in my home area and
even having not really been there for
maybe decades in some real sense other than visits,
there’s still a connection, there’s memories,
there’s still a tie to those places.
Having said that though,
those who are nomadic,
those who are living off the land,
those who are traveling through the land,
aware of where people live,
aware of threats are,
aware of where oases and opportunities to rest are,
this idea of journeying by stages from a physical perspective is really rich.
And then again, from a spiritual perspective,
the idea that we live our life
kind of a stage at a time
that we move into a place and that we offer thanks and that we worship and that we gain
what we can in that place.
And then we move through it because we’re not ultimately at our
destination yet.
And each stage of the journey becomes for us an opportunity to learn more,
an opportunity to worship more,
an opportunity to be deeper in relationship with God and others.
And it’s just…
This is a phrase that preachers and Bible study people have loved.
He journeyed on by stages.
It becomes a rich way to think about how the text intersects with our own life.
And I think it’s really good.
Just should probably point out a few language things,
Michael.
I’m casting way back here,
folks, so be gracious with me.
Bethel or Bet-El is the house of the Lord.
Bet is house.
El is short for Elohim,
one of the ways that God is referred to in the story.
So God’s house is literally…
And then you know the word Bethlehem,
which is a play on that,
but that means house of bread.
So it helps a little bit to know some of the language here,
if not the geography.
Yeah, I was just gonna say,
I think this does transition really well
until verse 10 in the story about to come here,
Clint, because you have the reality of that nomadic lifestyle and
the reality that what happens around you has direct impact for the
life that you live,
because we were talking before we started today.
This is actually a little bit
of a tough story to start with when we really get to know the character Abram,
because he’s gonna make some choices here that really are going to twist us around a little bit.
And I think that
if we’re gonna have empathy for him and his choices,
we need to recognize that because of
the famine we’re about to come into,
he feels great need.
He feels pushed to the edge,
and so he’s gonna make some really certainly difficult,
if not poor choices here.
Yeah, I think maybe we
leave this story for tomorrow other than to say in this story we’re going to encounter a lot of
themes.
This is a strange story.
I feel like in some ways nobody knows exactly what to do with
this story, and one very much like it that is it happens again.
And it’s the first time that we’re
going to get a foreshadowing of the nation of Egypt,
the people,
the Egyptians,
the Pharaoh.
That’s not contentious yet,
though by the end of the story there is a seed of discord that kind of happens.
Egypt is not the enemy of Israel at this point,
nor the enemy of Abram,
and yet we see that
there is a kind of friction in the relationship even from the very beginning.
Yeah, that’s an interesting facet of these scriptures is that they are accomplishing multiple purposes at the
same time.
They’re introducing us to the father of Israel while simultaneously giving us a view of how
the ancient world gets shaped into the way that it did.
I mean the previous story,
right, even answering that simple childhood question,
why do people speak different languages?
We’ve experienced lots of different aspects of that story,
which once again makes it so abundantly clear if you’re
willing to slow down and look at these stories,
clearly these were well thought through.
They weren’t just jotted down,
sort of passed down.
They were carefully constructed and they intend
to be a prism through which you see multiple different things.
This is a simple example.
Even the naming of these places,
Clint, you’re right to point out that these names have significance and meaning.
Well,
not only do the names have meaning,
but the places themselves
have reputations and they will only add in reputation as you go.
The prophets will make
references to some of these places and they’ll speak negatively about how the people have
desecrated them or they’ve lost the memory of what that place should have meant.
All of these are just real life examples of how this really sets up the foundation of the story and then
future tellings of it in the prophets and then and even in the New Testament will play off of
that and sort of call upon it.
And so understanding this adds so much color and life to the rest of
scripture that follows it.
Yeah, that’s a really good point, Michael.
Sometimes in the Old Testament,
geography is just geography.
They’re just telling you where they are on a map and other times
they’re telling you more than that by the locations or the names of the locations that are mentioned.
And so again, we’ll try to keep that in mind.
We will try to point that out when it happens.
But sometimes when the Bible gives you a detail,
it’s doing more than just the detail.
It’s providing some context of the story itself.
And I think as we go through this story,
places like Egypt,
places like Sodom, Gomorrah,
those things mean more than just where they’re located.
So yeah, I don’t want to,
you know, put out too much of a leader on this one.
Don’t miss tomorrow.
I think it’s a really interesting story.
And I think if you haven’t heard it before,
it may even surprise you.
So don’t miss it.
Lots of layers.
We will see you all as we reconvene tomorrow.
Thanks, guys.