LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

[Genesis 12:1-8]

          Introduction to the Scriptures: The book of Genesis reveals the foundation of who we are and what we are called to be, so we often come back to this area of scripture. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are pretty much pre-history. They lay foundations of the earliest beginnings; they tell us what God had in mind and what He was doing. But here in the 12^th chapter we meet a man we can trace in history, and we begin to see God’s very personal care for the people that He calls His own. The call to Abraham, or Abram as he was known at the time, is ultimately our call as well. The New Testament suggests that we who have faith in Christ are the true children of Abraham.

          So these words apply to us, and I begin with Genesis 12, verse 1: “The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” Now Abram and his family lived in a very advanced, wealthy area of the world at that time, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

[Continue reading verse 2-9]

          It goes on to talk about a famine in the land and all kinds of things that he began to face. We are going to explore those verses together.

Prayer for Illumination – Father, in the remainder of this worship hour I pray that you would speak to us from your word, which is a living word. May your Living Spirit move among us. Keep our minds alert and focused. Let us know that we are hearing your voice reflected in the revelation of your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Message

          By any measure, the continued existence of the modern land of Israel as a nation is an absurdity. It occupies an impossibly thin and virtually indefensible corridor of land, on average less than 50 miles wide, in some places as narrow as 28 miles, crammed between the vast Arabian desert and the Mediterranean Sea, and surrounded now, as it has been throughout nearly all of it’s 4000 year history, by hostile enemies. It has few natural resources. Most of what it has could be classified as dirt. (Merrill Greenlee and I spent some time in the dirt in Israel – on an archaeological dig.) I “googled” this and here are the things that are listed as the primary resources in Israel – phosphate, bromide, potash, clay, sand, and sulphur – Dirt! – And very little of this dirt is arable because there is so little water! The entire country is smaller than the state of New Jersey, and only 17% of it is arable. Sixty-six percent of the land is virtually unusable. You are telling me this place is going to survive? Can you imagine New Jersey, even with all it’s resources, surrounded by hostile enemies? How long might it survive? New Jersey is certainly a Garden State in comparison to this.

          Israel has no major rivers. The well-known Jordan River is little more than a winding stream that you could wade across in most places. It would be lucky to have a name in a more fertile country. The barely adequate rainfall during the winter months in the north tapers off to less than 4 inches per year in the arid south. As a result, the slightest shift in climate regularly plunges the area into severe drought or famine.

          And the real estate we call Palestine or Israel is a tortured accordion fold of land, formed by fracturing tectonic plates which lift the land to nearly 3000 feet before plunging down to the lowest spot on earth in the Rift Valley, that great crack in the earth’s crust where we find the Dead Sea, some 1300 feet below sea level. That is six times deeper than Death Valley, California! You travel for probably 25 minutes up from the Dead Sea before you come to a sign with a blue line that says “Sea Level.” Virtually nothing grows in the Rift Valley, and because it has no outlet and the water evaporates faster than the Jordan River can fill it, the saline and mineral content of the Dead Sea is about 25%! That is five times greater than the ocean. Fish swimming into the Dead Sea from the Jordan delta die within minutes. There is a reason it is called the Dead Sea.

          Even Palestine’s 100 miles or so of coast along the Mediterranean Sea does Israel little good. The reason for this is that silt, carried down the Nile River from the rugged African interior, floats out into the sea and settles along the coast of Palestine, thus straightening it and eliminating any natural harbors.

          These geographic features conspire to keep any nation which attempts to occupy this spot small, tenuous, and vulnerable under the best of conditions – and the conditions have never been anywhere near what’s best. To make matters worse, Israel’s single asset has again and again been the source of it’s downfall! For Israel’s only real asset is its strategic location at the cross-roads of two entire continents, and as a result, every great, ambitious, and military nation or empire within a thousand miles has wanted to control the area. Africa and Asia meet here in this tiny place. Because the Arabian Desert is so dramatically inhospitable to travel, essentially the only link between Asia and Africa is this tiny, little corridor of land which is not much more than a wide highway, and any commerce between those two continents is going to go, historically, through the land of Israel.

          The great empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia lay to the north, while the powerful kingdom of Egypt lay to the south. As a result, down through the centuries, the armies of this ancient world marched regularly along this highway en route to attacking each other, regularly ravaging the land and the people of Palestine in the process. Because it lay at a crossroad, whoever could control this land could control a vast, worldwide trading empire which included not only the lands we have mentioned, but Europe’s trade, plying the waters of the Mediterranean, and connecting it to the exotic Arabian products from the East, or even Indian and Chinese trade from the Far East. So every major army or govern-ment was drawn to conquer this tiny land.

          Of course this situation gave Israel about as much safety as a flock of sparrows trying to build their nests in the middle of a superhighway. And I think that is just about how it has felt throughout most of their history. Furthermore, as Israel lay at the intersecting boundary lines of the various empires, she was always desirable as a buffer, absorbing the impact of the blows various nations threw at each other. Rome, for instance, began early on to covet the land of Palestine as a buffer between the Roman Empire to the west and the Parthian (or Persian) Empire to the east. And so Israel’s history continues. This, you will remember, is what God called, “the promised land!” . . . Don’t make me any promises.

          By contrast, other nations seemed to have all sorts of natural advantages. Abraham himself had come from the city of Ur, a very civilized and affluent place. Egypt, whose history intersects with Israel regularly, built its magnificent 3000-year civilization around the consistent rise and fall of the Nile River, which always provided a more than adequate water supply, and in addition brought with it new deposits of rich and fertile soil every year from the African highlands, all kinds of natural advantages. The Nile served also as a singular and peerless highway for carrying goods and people and services linking the cities of ancient Egypt, from the African heartland to the Mediterranean, a simple and quick way to travel and to carry on their own commerce. Egypt also was protected geographically by a vast, uninhabited desert to the west, and by virtually impassable mountains to the east. Egypt therefore could pursue its own desires without interference or threat from anyone else; and Egypt indeed thrived for their 3000-year history – much different conditions than that of nearby Israel.

          It’s really no surprise that, upon leaving Egypt, the Israelites traveling with Moses through the stark wilderness which lay on the southern boundaries of this Promised Land began to complain that slavery in Egypt was preferable to freedom in this apparently God-forsaken place. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost [maybe the cost of their lives at times, but at ‘no cost’ it seemed to them] – also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic,” they complained. “But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” – the very simple fare, you will remember, that God provided for His people in the wilderness. And we really, in all honesty, sympathize with their complaints.

          So why was it that God called the descendants of Abraham out of the great land of Egypt and led them to this profoundly difficult and nearly worthless piece of real estate? What was up, there? Indeed, why had He called Abraham there in the first place, more than 400 years earlier, in that memorable passage from Genesis 12 which we read? “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household,” God had said, “and go to the land I will show you.” Well, this was that land. If Abraham had any sense, one would anticipate that upon seeing it, he would have turned right around and traveled back home.

          But Abraham didn’t do that. “Abram left, as the LORD had told him,” our text tells us in verse 4. “He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.” Furthermore, upon their arrival, Abraham had opportunity to scout out the land. “Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem, . . .” Now I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that if you have to point out a single tree you’re probably in trouble. But the fact is there wasn’t much there. Shechem, by the way, is smack dab in the middle of what is now known as the Palestinian West Bank. “At that time,” our text tells us, “the Canaanites were in the land.” [verse 6] Well nothing much has really changed, has it? There are a lot of folks there who don’t want you there. Nevertheless I want you to go there, God says; I want you to displace this bunch of people who really don’t want to go away. But of course none of the current residents were about to give them the land then or now. Yet God promised in verse 7, “‘To your offspring I will give this land.’” He made a promise against, it seemed, impossible odds. But Abraham took God at His word, and the text goes on to say, “So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.”

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. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

          Sometimes, knowing personally a little bit about the land of Israel, and knowing that Abram had never been there before, I wonder, as Abram traveled from the north to the south, if he kept thinking maybe things were going to get better the further he traveled. If you follow the route he took however, in fact every mile things got worse. And it just didn’t look real good.

          Abraham had to be one of those, “the glass is half full” kind of guys. In fact, his optimism is even more remarkable in that his glass wasn’t even half empty – it was bone dry! I’ve been in the Negev, as have some of you, and in Beer-sheva where Abraham settled, and I’ll tell you it is a parched and arid land. Whatever God said, it shows virtually no promise, very similar to the Badlands in which I grew up – and which I left many years ago, I might add. But Abraham trusted the LORD. He trusted God absolutely, so both now and later when God made even more outrageous demands of him, Abraham just did it. A couple week ago we said, “Just Do It,” remember? That’s what Abraham did.

          I’m so impressed, as I read the story of Abraham, that whether he is called to leave everything he had known and that was familiar and that looked good and promising, and go to a place that didn’t look promising at all; or whether he was called to sacrifice his own son, which seemed to be the devastation of all his hopes for the future, whatever it was, Abraham never argues. Did you notice that? He never argues; he just gets up and does it. The account of this latter event in Genesis 22 is astonishing. God tells him to take his son, then God kind of rubs it in – “Your only son, Isaac, whom you love,” and sacrifice him to the LORD. And we are told, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey . . . [took his son Isaac, and] set out for the place God had told him about.” There is a tremendous example here of what faith accomplishes. If Abraham is the father of the faith, that is the reason why – he took God at His word. Abraham understood something you and I need to understand. Abraham understood that however things looked from the outside, his safety and his success did not depend upon his assets or advantages. They depended exclusively upon whether or not he was doing the will of God!

          Now that’s a lesson you and I need to learn, and it is not an easy lesson to learn. We have been, for several weeks, looking at the secret of living a vibrant and successful life, and we have learned how to nurture body, mind, and spirit to accomplish this. Whenever I run across an insight like this, I think there is a little flutter of hope that maybe I can do it better this time. But then comes that debilitating doubt that anything is really ever going to change. The problem is we have a tendency to look at ourselves and our own resources or lack of resources. We look at what may be our own natural advantages or disadvantages, and we are just not sure that we are ever going to accomplish what we set out to do. Other people maybe make it. They seem to have advantages that we don’t have. That’s what makes them successful we think. We personally are at a disadvantage. We’re not really as smart as they are, we’re not as talented as they are, maybe we’re not as beautiful as they are, or as disciplined as they are, or as rich as they are, whatever their advantages are. They have advantages and opportunities we don’t have. Or maybe they are just luckier than we are. Whatever it is, their advantages seem clear enough to us. Our disadvantages seem to loom large for us, and so we say, “Well, what more could we expect? That’s the best I could do. I don’t know that I’m really going to accomplish all this because everything is stacked against me.”

          But the reason I have described Palestine this morning is because we need to see what God can do even without any earthly advantages whatsoever. You see, God had called His people to the Promised Land, but it wasn’t about the land, it was about the promise. He made it quite obvious that it was not about any imagined natural advantages, but strictly about the supernatural advantages which He intended to give them. He was the source of all they would need. In fact, if the truth were known, God wasn’t even promising to overcome all those disadvantages. Rather the things we often perceive to be our disadvantages are precisely the things God has arranged to bring about His will in our lives. They are the good things; we just didn’t recognize them.

          I would suggest from God’s word that those things may well be advantages in disguise. When God led Abraham to this land – this tortured, desolate, almost hopeless place – He didn’t step back and say, “Good grief! What was I thinking? I made a promise to this guy but it’s just not going to happen in this God-forsaken place. I should have left him where he had all the advantages, back in Ur or maybe a place like Egypt or some other richly endowed destination.” No, on the contrary, God revealed to His people in the midst of their complaints about this place that in fact He had done it on purpose, He’d done it with His eyes wide open, and that in fact what appeared to be a disadvantage to them was their advantage.

          Listen to God’s explanation of this choice from Deuteronomy 11:10 ff. God says,

            The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come [I’ll admit that], where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden [and you always had what you wanted.] But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today – to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

You hear that? “If you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you . . . – to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will . . .” make you prosper. I am the source of the resources. By the way, that is exactly how the weather happens in Israel. The autumn and spring rains sustain the crops there to this day, but they are always on the edge, always on the line. And they have to depend upon God or it’s just not going to happen. He goes on to say essentially, If you disobey me and depend on any false gods, whether that’s yourself and your own strength and expertise, or anybody or anything else, then, He says,

then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. [vs. 17] . . . [On the other hand], if you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow – to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him – then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you [nations with all the advantages]. [vss. 22-23]

          In other words, the great advantage of all these disadvantages was that it would force God’s people to depend upon Him for all good things, rather than upon their own resourcefulness – and God’s resources are of course boundless. If they would depend upon Him, their needs would consistently be provided for, and this is one the fundamental lessons each of us is called upon to learn.

          “Don’t worry about your life,” Jesus said in Matthew 6, “[Don’t worry about] what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” Don’t worry about those things. “Your heavenly Father knows that you need [them]. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and [he will prosper you,] all these things will be . . . [yours] as well.” Don’t worry about the circumstances of your life! God has called you. If you will trust Him, God will accomplish what He has set out to do. The things that appear to be disadvantages to you may very well be the very things God has brought into your life in order to accomplish the great things He has set out to do. Whatever it is you are facing, look at it and say, How might this be to my advantage?

          I’m not convinced that God is kindest to those who have abundant resources. We all ask Him for that. We would like to have an abundance of resources, but I’m not sure that’s how God reveals His grace. Again and again I see people who, because of their natural advantages, whether personal talents or opportunities or material assets, really don’t think they have any need for God (that is one of the biggest problems in our culture today). So they walk their own way, depending upon their own resources and their own resourcefulness, and that’s a way that leads ultimately to destruction. It is a way that leads us neglect the things that are truly important. If you are aware of the dis-advantages that surround you, and if, as a result of those things, you turn your heart toward the Lord – which is what you were created to do in the first place – you are always way ahead of the person who seems to have the advantages, because you know that your God is responsible to carry through on His promises. It’s not about the land; it’s about the promise. You will achieve success, you will find safety and security because you have come to depend upon God and not upon yourself, not upon the external circumstances of your life. That is the lesson Abraham learned; and he is the father of all the faithful.

          Besides, what appear to be disadvantages may well be advantages from God’s perspective. After all, just what was it that God set out to do there in Palestine? Was it not to reveal himself and His great grace to the whole world? So that you and I could come to know as well? To make sure that as many people as possible came to know His offer of salvation?

          And what better place than right here at this apparently God-forsaken spot at the crossroads of civilization? Here where Asia, Africa, and Europe met to trade goods and ideas. Here where no one could hide from the rest of the world. Here where all ideas were fair-traded, where no one could say anything, even a particular world and life view, was exclusively his own. Where a new faith could capture the attention of the entire civilized world within a generation! Where the most extensive and comprehensive world empire known to history, Rome, could carry the good news virtually to the ends of the earth about a Messiah who came not for any one particular race or tribe or people, but for all humankind.

          Who could have anticipated, when God called Abraham to this impossible place almost 2000 years earlier, promising, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” who could have anticipated that He had picked the very best location in the whole world for the good news – announced to a bunch of simple shepherds on a remote hillside – to be heard around the globe! You know the old adage about judging real estate: Location, location, location! God knows what He’s doing. He located His people at the right place and the right time in history.

          It’s not worth trying to weigh our personal advantages and disadvantages. It’s likely God sees them entirely differently from the way we see them anyway. The question is simply this: Do you trust God enough to do what He says, regardless of appearances? Abraham did. If He asks you to go someplace or do something, even if it seems foolish, even if you feel ill-equipped to do it, even if you feel you have no resources to do it, will you, like Abraham, do it anyway? With the confidence that God knows what He is doing, and can turn our greatest liabilities into our greatest assets?

Closing prayer – Father, I want to thank you for your eternally relevant story. We are so familiar with what we have just read and looked at; we know the story. But what a powerful lesson for us today! I pray that you would help us to see how it applies, because every one of us, every person in this place is facing some kind of challenge in our own lives. You have told us what we need to do, and likely we are a little skeptical. We would like to compromise that a bit or maybe ignore it. Unlike Abraham we are not willing, “early the next morning,” to get up, saddle our donkey and head out for whatever you have called us to do. But only with that kind of trust can we come truly to know life and all the rewards that you desire for us to enjoy. So teach us to be a people of faith and to see our lives as you see them, through Christ Jesus our Lord, AMEN.