Genesis 12:1-3 Now the LORD had said to Abram, Get you out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house… 1. The grace of it. There appears no reason to conclude that he was better than his neighbours. He did not choose the Lord, but the Lord him, and brought him out from amongst the idolaters. 2. Its peremptory tone: — "get thee out." The language very much resembles that of Lot to his sons-in-law, and indicates the great danger of his present situation, and the immediate necessity of escaping, as it were, for his life. Such is the condition of every unconverted sinner, and such the necessity of fleeing from the wrath to come, to the hope set before us in the Gospel. 3. The self-denial required by it. 4. The implicit faith which a compliance with it would call for. Abram was to leave all, and to go — he knew not whither — "unto a land that God would show him." If he had been told it was a land flowing with milk and honey, and that he should be put in possession of it, there had been some food for sense to feed upon: but to go out, "not knowing whither he went," must have been not a little trying to flesh and blood. Nor was this all; that which was promised was not only in general terms, but very distant. God did not tell him He would give him the land, but merely show him it. Nor did he in his lifetime obtain the possession of it: he was only a sojourner in it, without so much as a place to set his foot upon. (A. Fuller.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: |
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