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… The call and migration of the patriarch suggest two thoughts. I. THE RISE OF PERSONAL RELIGION. Piety may vary in its form in different persons and times, but in its spirit it is unchanging. 1. It takes its rise in God. Abram "was called." "Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country," etc. It was not poverty that drove Abram from his native country; it was not persecution; it was not that love of a migratory life which is natural to an Oriental: his journey to Canaan was wholly due to a spiritual inspiration. "God chose Abram" (Nehemiah 9:7) to be a child of grace — a justified sinner (Galatians 3:8). It was God who gave this son of idolaters all his grandeur of soul and his marvellous appreciation of the true and the eternal. The conversion of every believer is similar. Personal religion always takes its rise in God — in His sovereign choice (2 Timothy 1:9), in His Divine power (John 6:44; Philippians 1:6), and in His wonderful love (Ephesians 2:4, 5). No sinner has ever of his own accord quitted his native land of spiritual darkness and death. 2. It is the fruit of a Divine revelation. Jehovah revealed himself to Abram as the one living and true God, and in summoning him to emigrate to Canaan, made him a magnificent promise. The God of Shem is now the God of Abram. We are not to understand, indeed, that the patriarch's religious knowledge was at first either extensive or minute. But as each successive revelation was made to him, he learned more of the nature of God, and of the sublimity of his own destiny, until at length he was able to rejoice in the anticipation of the coming of Christ (John 8:56) and in the hope of a glorious immortality (Hebrews 11:10, 18-16). Had the God of Glory not appeared to him, the patriarch would in all likelihood have died a pagan in the land of his fathers. Religion cannot be generated in any heart apart from a Divine revelation of some sort. There must be some knowledge of the 3. It is the product of an earnest faith. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed." The truth that was made known to him would have had no influence upon him had he not believed it. Not reason alone is the basis of personal religion, for reason alone would lead to rationalism. Neither is it feeling alone, for that would develop into mysticism. The man of God is a man of faith. II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONAL RELIGION. Piety has its fundamental and formative principles, but it has also its developments of these. It has fruits as well as roots. Abram's piety developed in a complete renunciation of his old life; and the new life which he henceforth followed had at least three strongly marked characteristics. It was — 1. A life of implicit trust in God. Abram's first act of faith was followed by a confirmed habit of trustfulness. He struck the roots of his soul deep down into the invisible. 2. A life of conscious strangeness on the earth. Abram was content to be "a stranger and a sojourner" in the holy land. 3. A life which shall merge into a blessed immortality. Abram longed for a fatherland, but not for the land of his earthly forefathers. He might have re-crossed the Euphrates, but he never did so. The home that he learned with increasing eagerness to desire was the dwelling place of his Father in heaven (Hebrews 11:10, 14-16). How large the personal interest which the believer has in heaven! He shall yet dwell in it as his fatherland. (Charles Jerdan, M. A. , LL. B.) 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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