Clough Genesis Lesson 40

The sons of Shem; migration of Abram – Genesis 11:27-12:1

Genesis 1-11 gives us the whole foundation for the rest of our faith. And no one can trust in Jesus Christ with, any degree of confidence, unless that person has become personally convinced that this section of the Scriptures is valid. And this is why Sunday after Sunday, week after week, month after month I have gone into one thing after another, which I am sure some of you feel is very peripheral to the Scriptures, I’ll just defend it by saying that it isn’t peripheral to some people who ask questions and who are serious about grounding their faith in something other than feelings. History is not chaos; history is God’s story, His story. And this is why when we think of these four major events and just to review for a moment, we want to think about great pictures we can carry away in our mind’s eye.

For example, creation, the picture you want to carry away, the minimal picture you want to carry away from that event is the picture of God speaking and it happening; not a long extended process of millions of years but God spoke, as it says in Psalm 33, and it was done, an instantaneous fiat creation of God. And this instantaneous fiat creation of God shows clearly the difference between God as the Creator and man as the creature. That distinction, the Creator/creature distinction, is one that is not made in any religion except Judeo Christianity and say, Islam, its offshoot. Other than that the world doesn’t know any difference between the creature and the Creator. That is a fundamental basic distinction. There is only ONE Creator and man in no way is part of the Creator. So it starts out on a humble note for all of us, that we were not around when the universe originated, our glorious advice was not called for, asked for, we were not consulted and God did not need us to design His world and moreover to set His world on a historical track to a certain goal in the eternal future. That’s all God as Creation; it’s His prerogative and to Him be the glory for it.

The fall, the second event, the picture there you want to carry away is the horror of evil and suffering and sorrow, and make sure that in considering the fall you remember this: that the fall exempts God from blame in evil, that God, when He created the universe it left His fingertips pure. Therefore, if there are deformed children, if there are catastrophes on the face of the earth, they are not God’s moral responsibility. God sovereignly set up history and He set it up so that evil would come into existence but come into existence by means of creature choice. So sin, suffering and sorrow is not a product of our Creator; we, that is our contribution to the grand scheme of things.

Then the flood, the picture there you want to carry is the shattering destruction brought upon the human race in God’s judgment. And the preservation of eight people in the middle of a total cosmic chaos God was able to save out of judgment, so the picture there of judgment/salvation.

And then the fourth event, the Noahic Covenant, there you want to picture the picture of the rainbow and remembering that the rainbow is made up of two physical elements, both of which speak of the Word of God, light and water. And both light and water combine in the physical phenomenon of the rainbow and this gives you God’s signature, a signature that can be read by every race of men, in every language, on every continent. It is part of the grand universal revelation of God to all men.

That’s the foundation, but if we were to stop with just that foundation, and if we were to have nothing else in our repertoire, and history stopped there, we would face a number of questions if we just cut everything off with those four events. Here are some questions that would be left, questions that the rest of the Bible is all about, because remember, Genesis 11 and 12 we shift gears and we go into a new scheme of things. One question would be this: why did God preserve the fallen universe, because part of the Noahic Covenant is that Jesus Christ, by His death on the cross, mirrored in the blood sacrifice that instituted the Noahic Covenant, that Jesus Christ in His blood sacrifice in some way covered both the elect and non-elect and even the animals, and He covered them in order to preserve their existence. Now here’s the question: Why, if the universe is fallen, why, if every imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth, is the human race to be physically preserved; it doesn’t make sense. So the Noahic Covenant leaves us up in the air. It’s great to know that we’re being preserved; preserved for what? What good does it do to be preserved as a literally damned race?

Another question: why were the divine institutions of state and tribal diversity instituted if they are only to preserve? But most of all the picture that we want to see is that the Noahic Covenant leaves us with a human race that is infertile, a human race that has a sin nature and this sin nature has an area of weakness and an area of strength and can produce only… only out of this either overt evil or human good, either one, but both do not qualify in God’s sight. Biblical terminology, because God, again, is a very excellent teacher and He has designed the universe to reflect Bible doctrine, as we said earlier, the sign of human good is excrement in Scripture, that’s what the Bible constantly refers to because that’s the nearest thing in everybody’s experience to what human good is in God’s experience. So needless to say, God doesn’t have too high a view of human good either. So since the human race is capable of producing only overt evil and human good, then it would follow that the human race is going to go down in history, it can’t sustain itself, it can’t take any initiative to heal itself, and to save itself. The initiative must come from outside. Said another way, by the end of Genesis 11 we’ve got a preserved, but very dismal, future.

Now beginning at the end section, Genesis 11:27, we go to the seventh book of Genesis. Remember we’ve notice how, when you read the Genesis text carefully, you’ll see periodically appear in the text a statement, a sort of formula, and in verse 27 that formula greets us for the sixth time. “Now these are the generations of Terah:” every time we’ve seen that formula that is a signal that we have here a source, a source that is used by Moses when he compiled the book from previous sources, apparently kept alive or kept existing by passing them carefully down from Adam, probably to Methuselah, probably to Noah, and on down in history, and Moses simply scooped up these sources and used them when he wrote Genesis under the inspiration of the Spirit. So we now come and those who like to have fun with Biblical numerics, notice, this is the seventh book and this is going to be the book that introduces God’s grace.

Genesis 11:27, “Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot. [28] And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldeans. [29] And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. [30] But Sarai was barren; she had no child. [31] And Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldeans, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. [32] And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.”

Now the story of this migration is a story of the principle of Genesis 9. Ever since Noah’s blessing and cursing on his son the human race has been a story of three brothers, and these three brother’s progeny. We said this again and again: Ham is the father of the Hamitic peoples, the colored races of the world, including some whites, subsections of the human race such as the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Egyptians, and the Hamites wherever they have gone on the face of the earth have generally been the physically productive people. The Japhetics have been the organizers, they are the ones from whom we get science, they are the ones from whom we get law, the Roman Empire and so on. And Shem, wherever he’s gone he’s basically provided the spiritual resources for the human society.

Now beginning in Genesis 12 these two sons, Ham and Japheth, become obscure. The Bible, so to speak, leaves them to concentrate only on the sons of Shem. So we have restricted vision now closing in to concentrate on the new program of God, beginning with the sons of Shem. And this is why the genealogy in Genesis 11 leads us to Terah and from Terah we meet Abram.

Now the interesting thing about this section, verses 27-32, is that Abram is named Abram. Let’s look at his name first, for now we do want to pay very careful attention to Bible names because people in the ancient world named their children very carefully. Children’s names in the Bible were given and we don’t understand this process. I’ve never yet read any kind of research or scholarly work that really satisfies me that we know what’s going on. But we know in some strange way that old patriarchs had prophetic vision of their sons and they would name their sons based on future history. I have no idea where the old man learned this, but somehow God did reveal to fathers. This is one of the great duties of the fathers; on Father’s Day we might mention this, was the naming of their sons, particularly their sons. You know the Arabs even today speak of their children this way: yes, I have two sons and three children; they do not hold daughters to be of equal importance with sons and it’s not that they demean women or anything like that, it’s just simply to state that they honor the men as the leaders, the spiritual leaders, and I believe that’s a preserved Semitic habit.

But this word, “Abram,” in the Hebrew looks like this, and it’s Abrm, read from right to left whereas we read from left to right. This first word, the “Ab” is the Hebrew noun for father, and after this we have ram, which can be a noun, it can mean height, or it can be an adjective meaning exalted, and so we sometimes handle this as “exalted father.” Now the interesting thing about this is that Terah names his son by verse 26 at least, Abram, or the exalted father. Then the Holy Spirit in verse 30 injects into the text that his wife is barren. So at a very early point, even before his son marries, he’s called the exalted father. After he marries and his wife is barren he’s still called Abram, the exalted father. Well this shows you God’s pulling off something here and the old man is aware that something is working through this particular son because he doesn’t name his other sons this way; his other sons are listed in verse 26 and they don’t have that kind of a name. So in some way the father, Terah, did know of something God was going to do. Abram becomes the father of the Messianic line, the exalted father.

Well as this goes on we can plot what’s happening because all of it is given in terms of geography. Notice, it says that they left Ur. First let’s find a map and get Ur organized in our thinking. Ur is located on the north side of the Persian Gulf. Here’s the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, here’s Israel, here’s the Mediterranean. Now some of you who have the benefits of our public education in history and geography would do well if you once in a while turned to the maps in the back of your Bibles just to orient. I discovered the other day, somebody was sitting here and I’d been going through the Mediterranean, and they wanted to know whether that was in South America. No, it’s not in South America; this is in the eastern hemisphere located between Africa and Europe. This person happened to be a graduate of one of our foremost high schools. So we have the Persian Gulf located here and in the ancient times the shore of the Persian Gulf extended north a hundred miles. By the way, it shows you how fast the continents change. There are harbors built around the ancient city of Ur and they are a hundred miles inland today, which shows you the Persian Gulf is filling in quite rapidly and it’s filled in that much since the time of Abraham in Bible times. And the reason is the Tigris-Euphrates Valley is carrying down so much silt, thousands and thousands of tons of silt down the valley, just filling up very rapidly. Maybe by the time this century is over or a few more centuries if the Lord tarries there won’t be a Persian Gulf.

So we have Ur located at this point; that’s where the story starts in verse 26. Notice this, because it’s often used as a cliché that Israel, or Palestine is the heartland of three religions. Wrong! Palestine is the heartland of only one religion, Christianity. Islam did not begin in Palestine, it began in Arabia and Judaism didn’t begin in Palestine, it began in Mesopotamia. So Palestine is the cradle of only one religion in the world.

So Abraham starts out from Ur and the story goes that his father, who was alive at the time, moved all the way up to this place called Haran. Well, if they moved to Haran why didn’t they keep on moving to Canaan. The reason they take this route, by the way, and don’t cut right across, is this is all sand and desert in here and so they have to go up to Haran, and then come on down the coast to Jerusalem, down through the modern countries of Syria and Lebanon. Why, and this is the big problem of Genesis 11 at the end, why does this journey stop, and why do we have what appears to be an error in the Bible? And it’s been part of my policy from this pulpit when we come to a passage of Scripture and I know that if you’re a serious Christian you will want to be witnessing for Christ and you’ll want to be discussing things with people and from time to time in these discussions these questions will come up. So I bring them up ahead of time so when it does come up in discussion it won’t take the wind out of your sails too much.

There will be a critic who eventually come to you and say there’s a contradiction in the Bible here, because if you look at Genesis 11:27-32 obviously the scene of action is Haran, not Ur; they’ve already moved to Haran. Verse 32 says they’re dying in Haran. Now Genesis 12:1-3, God appears and gives the Abrahamic Covenant, and then in verse 4 Abram “departed out of Haran.” So for all the world you would read this text and look at Genesis 12:1-3 and swear that verses 1-3 took place in Haran, this little town up in northern Syria. There’s only one big problem. Turn to Acts 7:2-4 we’ve got Stephen recounting and quoting this Old Testament passage at his trial and he says: “Men, brethren, and fathers, listen to me: The God of glory appeared unto our father, Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,” “…before he dwelt in Haran, [3] And said unto Him,” and verse 3 is a quotation of Genesis 12, “And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show you. [4] Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans,” and then he went to Haran.

Now what are we going to do with this one? We’ve got an error in the Bible, because if we do we’re in trouble, because if you’ve got one error in the Bible the whole thing craters because the whole biblical thing is assumed and in inerrant authoritative revelation from God. So if we’ve got one problem like that we can kiss it off and just chuck it into the basket as far as I’m concerned. The problem then comes, is there another way of understanding this, a way which would even give us and reward us with better insight into Genesis 12, and yes there is. Turn back to Genesis 12 and notice something. Genesis 11:27 begins a section that lasts until Genesis 11:32. And this whole section deals with the story of Terah, not Abraham…Terah. Abraham’s story doesn’t begin, really until Genesis 12:4, when it has him departing out of Haran. Now Genesis 12:1-3, packed between those two sections, is a sort of sandwich. Verses 1-3 give you the covenant that was at stake all during the story. What you’ve got is in Hebrew you’ve got this as chronological, this is written in the order of time, then Genesis 12:1-3 is giving you the word that was at stake, and then Genesis 12:4 continues on with time. Genesis 12:1-3, in other words, is a sort of parenthesis; it’s telling you what the call of God looked like in that day. You see, the Bible is not written chronologically everywhere. It is written topically and this is why we have said again and again in the Genesis series, we’ll find some of these strange things that look like mistakes, they really aren’t if we just understand the way the writer intended them.

We notice several things about Genesis 11:27-32, this summary of Terah’s history. We notice it said that his wife, Sarai, is barren. Now in the Bible, fruitfulness of the womb is the key or the key picture that is used again and again in history for fruitfulness period, because one of the things that man is to do is to be fruitful and multiply. And therefore, being fruitful and multiplying is a sign of God’s blessing. Today a lot of couples think of it as a sign of God’s cursing. But where we have the Scriptures being respected, large families are a sign of God’s blessing. It is interesting that God has a system, a simple cause/effect device, that eliminates heathenism; where you have marriages break down and divorce you have an animosity that develops, young couples don’t want to (quote) “be bothered with children” (end quote). Fine, don’t have them; the irresponsible people won’t be propagated into the next generation. Those attitudes will be cut off. Take your homosexuals, they certainly aren’t going to have children, and so no more of them in the next generation. You see, there are corrective devices that God has built into the system that continue to function, and the people who are going to have the power and the voice in the next generation are the Christian homes with many children. They will have their voice and they will have their providers, don’t look to social security, you’ll never have it; having children will be your social security for the next generation, the system won’t last that long.

So we have that principle of fruitfulness of the womb as a mirror of God’s blessing. It was an awful thing for a woman, in the days of the Bible, to be unable to bear. And interestingly, it’s never said that the man’s at fault, and obviously in some cases he is but it seems like the woman always caught the blame for this kind of thing in history. But nevertheless, verse 30 is deeply significant. In fact, verse 30 is so significant that we’re going to use it as sort of a template and a commentary on the whole civilization in the time of Abraham. Let’s look at what happened.

From the time of the flood until the time of Abraham, several hundred years, we have the development of a civilization. That civilization became sterile spiritually. By the time of Abraham’s day there was danger that the Word of God would be obliterated; that generation, though it was fine in all of its techniques, though it had astounding physical development and we have studied just what some of that physical development looked like, we’ll review it at this point, let’s look at this civilization, what it produced, and then we’ll look at God’s sentence upon it. We know, to cite some spectacular things, that this generation, between Abraham and the flood, probably knew electricity. You say wait a minute, I didn’t know electricity was discovered before the 18^th century, Benjamin Franklin with his little kite deal, or back to Leyden and his jar. Well, the point remains that we have electroplating evidence on jewelry, from ancient Babylon. Now I suggest to you that you can’t electroplate jewelry unless you know something about electricity. Moreover, in the archeological finds of the Mesopotamian Valley we find minor batteries, batteries capable of giving off anywhere from 1.2 to 2.2 volts of electricity, made from simple citric juices. You can put one together yourself, with a little cup and a rod and some vinegar and you can produce and make a crude battery. Well those people did and they hooked them up in series and electroplated things with them. So this generation knew electricity.

This generation knew math; we have various mechanical computers that we’ve recovered from the floor of the Mediterranean Sea and on ancient vessels they could compute; they could measure latitude, they could measure longitude, these are sophisticated operations. If any of you have spherical geometry you know just how sophisticated it is. These people know, as we studied the Piri Re’is map that I’ve shown here several times, where we’ve measured Antarctica before the ice cap; somebody mapped all the rivers of the Antarctic continent before it froze. Who did that? Well, obviously it had to be somebody before the ice age. Well who was around before the ice age? The people right after the flood, and they went ahead and they measured it, and by the way, for those who have been told in school that the people in the Bible believed in a flat earth, just respond some time with this question: if the earth is flat why is it that the ancients measured its circumference at 25,000 miles. One does not have to be an astute student of geometry to know that it’s a little difficult to measure the spherical circumference of a flat surface. But nevertheless, the ancients had done this, they were well aware of the spherical nature of the earth. So there’s no such thing as the Bible written by a flat earth society.

Then we have, in addition to electricity and in addition to the obvious mapping, the geometry that is involved, we also have navigation. You can’t map unless you go there so you have to have navigational facilities. And now a real mindblower; back in about 1948 and 49 and Egyptologist was rummaging through some drawers; they had drawers in the museum at Alexandria of old stuff that had been dug out of the Pharaoh’s tombs and if you’re at all familiar with the field of archeology you know that this is not unusual to have stuff kicking around for a hundred years because the field is so poorly financed and so poorly organized that it takes the field of archeology sometimes a century to publish things out for National Geographic and make the public generally aware of what’s been found. But this man was pawing through all these drawers and he came on this drawer that had all these birds, statues of birds in them, and he looked at them and they’d all been taken out of Pharaoh’s tombs, no question about that. He began to paw through and he pulled this one statute out and he said hey, this looks odd, and it was a glider, a model airplane. And it had been evidently dumped in with the birds because this drawer hadn’t been opened since… I think it was 1895 and in 1895 we didn’t have airplanes and obviously whoever it was that had dug up in these early Egyptian digs didn’t know what it was so it looked like a bird and he dropped it in with the bird category. He pulls it out and they throw it across the room and it glides right across the room, perfect aerodynamic system. Now the question is, what is a glider doing out of the first and second dynastic Egypt? The most intriguing thing about this glider is that we do know from Egyptian engineering techniques that before they built the prototype they always build models, and the question is, where’s the prototype. Were the Egyptians playing with gliders? We don’t know, we just cite this as evidence of the advanced technology in Abraham’s day.

And then we could go to the monolith, like Stonehenge in England, like the great monoliths of the Easter Islands, you’ve seen those long drawn out faces, 60-70 ton solid rocks and Thor Hiadol [sp?] claims that he can move them around but he moved, in his experiments, only a very small one. It’s still not proved how these 50 and 60 ton rocks were moved over volcanic ash without scratching them. Now how are you going to do this? There are enormous things, absolutely enormous statues. Stonehenge is another place. Take the great pyramids of Egypt; multi ton blocks in that thing. And people have calculated that based on sand inclines and based on the production per unit man it would take 100,000 men twenty years to build something like the great pyramids. There’s only several problems with that; we know from notes the Pharaoh’s left that those pyramids were built within four to five years. It didn’t take them twenty and thirty years to build them. Well, how did they build it in two to four or five years? And the reason we know two to four or five years is because the rocks on the pyramids have the dates on them. And halfway up the pyramids you’ve got a rock that’s only one year older than the rock down below. What’s going on; these rocks had to be cut out of a quarry four to five hundred miles away; how did they cart these things, 30-40 tons apiece? Float them down the Nile, get them up the incline and get them all straightened out. This, by the way, as we’re always assured in history class, was done in the Bronze Age. Can you imagine cutting 40 ton piece of granite out with bronze tools? Try it some time.

So these things exist, there they are, you can argue about how they were made but there they are, they’re made. So that’s the final argument, they were made. And this was done by the group that lived in Abram’s day. Technology wise these people were astute, brilliant and accomplished.

Then we had another group of people, also in Abram’s day, which we’ve mentioned from time to time, and that is the so-called cave men. Now one of the things we want to review today, just to make the setting nice for the call of Abram, is these Stone Age people that we’ve referred to several Sunday mornings, and we think of the finds that you see, these skulls of men and so on, it’s very interesting, if you take a map some time, take a pencil, a crayon or something and you mark on this map, and you mark the places in the world where the primitive finds have been found and you’ll discover an amazing thing. In the places of the world where the most digging has occurred, which is in the Middle East, the most sites have been explored there, the best preserving climate has been there, why is it we don’t find primitive finds there? Why is it the primitive finds are always found on the outskirts of the major areas of civilization, so much so that now even there are anthropologists suggesting that the cradle of civilization isn’t the cradle of civilization because we can’t find any primitive finds in the cradle of civilization.

Well isn’t there another explanation for all this, a very simple one? Isn’t the explanation rather that the Stone Age man is but a step down, that as the Hamites, for example, shown on this map, as they expanded out into the continents of the world they simply drove the more primitive people out ahead of them and the people that wound up suffering in adverse climatic conditions experienced bone degeneration. Job 30:5-6 recalls the cave man and speaks very clearly of cave men existing in the times of Abram; very clearly. Moreover, one of the greatest epics of ancient history is called The Epic of Gilgamesh, and in The Epic of Gilgamesh one of the chief characters is a man by the name of Endiku, and Endiku was a cave man, he said, says the legend, he lived among the animals as an animal and he had hair all over his body. Now why is it that one of these legends, generated about the time of Abram, speaks of cave men coexisting with normal people? I suggest it’s because they did. We go to India and we find a similar thing, the Indian myth of Ramayana dealt with a race of eight men who aided the noble Rama in a war against the Ravana kingdom. It describes these people, hair all over them, they looked like animals but they wrote and they spoke human language. Who are these people? They are some sort of a freak degeneration that existed right after the flood, I say. In Rhodesia they dig up a skull of Neanderthal man and they find out one side of his skull has a hole in it for all the world that looks like a bullet because in the exit side his skull is shattered. If it isn’t a bullet it’s something that looked like a bullet. What weapon did that back in the times of Neanderthal?

Moreover, even in some of these Stone Age cultures there’s evidence of skull surgery. How do we know that? We dug up one female skull and it had a hole in the side of it and it was plugged with an animal bone. And you can say well, that was done later. No it wasn’t because the skull grew over the animal bone. Now who was doing brain surgery in the time of… maybe it was an irate husband but somebody was doing brain surgery during the time of the cavemen.

But then the report that takes the cake is this one: in the tenth century AD, that’s around 1000 AD, the Vikings fought with a race of cavemen and Stone Age people, and in this report of the Viking War along the coast of Scandinavia, it reports that all those people that they killed of this race that dwelt in caves had covered completely with hair and they looked like apes, but again they spoke human language and they wrote. So I think there’s sufficient evidence for those who are willing to look, there is sufficient evidence for the fact that Stone Age man is not a step up, from the banana on up to man; Stone Age man is simply some sort of a discordant degenerate type freak thing that happened after the flood, momentarily in history.

Now all of this was going on but it can be summarized with that little phrase in Genesis 11:30, Sarai was barren,” and what happened to that woman historically as an individual woman was also true of world culture at the time of Abram; it was sterile and barren. Why? Let’s look at it from theology once again. Here’s the old sin nature, the old sin nature cannot crank out anything except human good and sins and overt evil. That’s the only thing the old sin nature can produce. It can’t produce divine good; it can’t produce any righteousness that satisfies God. Even if the guy is a “good ole boy” he still can’t produce divine good. This is all the human race is, and that can be pictured in no better, more potent, powerful way than a woman who cannot bear children. What is the womb for? To bear children and if it can’t, it is useless. And so therefore this is a very significant note, and what happens to Abraham is happening to the whole human race. It is helpless at this point in history and now the initiative lies with the sovereign electing God. Let’s watch what happens.

Genesis 11:31, “And Terah took Abram, his son, and he started to go,” notice at the end of verse 31, “started to go to the land of Canaan.” Now we know by this time that God’s Word had come and had begun to call them. The call of God was being made because God did not want the human race to die childless, so to speak. He did not want all this high technology to be wasted. He wanted some spiritual production from that day and the call of Abraham was to bring this forth. But you notice in verse 31 he never got to Canaan; he stopped at this place called Haran. And that’s the question, why? Why does the story stop at Haran, and why do you have the tragedy of verse 32, with the old man dying? And Abram’s sitting there, marking time until his father died. He can’t move spiritually until his father dies because his father is the patriarch and his father is out of it spiritually. This is what often happens. Sometimes the church has to wait until its older leadership dies off until it can do anything, and this is what’s happened here. Abram has to sit and wait and wait and wait and wait until literally the obstructions are removed through death, and then he can carry on with the Word.

Now you’ll notice on the chart that I have drawn, around Haran I have shaded a small section, and by that shaded section you’ll see the word Ebla. Now some of you have recently spotted magazine articles, I know you’ve cut them out and dropped them in the plate and so on for me. Ebla is the site of the most astounding archeological find since the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1974 archeologists stumbled across a little mound in northern Syria and began to dig. Since 1974 seventeen thousand records have been removed from this one mound. What is the mound? It’s the location of the ancient city of Ebla. Now Ebla had been known in other historical documents as existing but nobody knew where it was. It was spoken of but very, very infrequently. And the astounding thing was, in 1974 when this was discovered, they not only discovered that Ebla was the name of the city, but Ebla was a name of a large kingdom that historians never even knew existed before. You remember this the next time a historian says something could not be that’s in the Bible. Well, here was a whole kingdom that they didn’t even know anything about. For anybody that took history before 1974, this was never taught. I was never taught about the kingdom of Ebla and I’ve taken courses in ancient history. Ebla is a new find. This kingdom extended all the way from the Mesopotamian Valley through Haran, the place where Abram was, all the way down to Babylon at one time, a large area.

Well so what? What’s important to this passage? Let’s look at it a moment. Ebla is dated at 2400 to 2200 BC by existing chronology. However, by the revised chronology, and if you want to go into why I refer you to the third framework pamphlet, by revised chronology by biblical historians, the 2400 date becomes an 1800 date which places it after Abram. Now I’m working to a point here and watch it. Ebla existed after Abram lived up in Haran. Now what would you expect? If Abram was coming from a powerful family of Semites that lived there, wouldn’t you expect that some of these seventeen thousand tablets would perhaps mention a few very interesting names, names with which you and I are very familiar? And indeed they do, for this is the shock of Ebla. Ebla mentions Jerusalem. Ebla tablets mention Hazor, a city in northern Canaan. Ebla even mentions all the five cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as existing. They had trade relations with them, these cities that were destroyed in the latter part of Abram’s life. So here we have direct empirical evidence of the existence of the cities in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We even have part of the transactions that were being done with the cities of the plain.

But moreover and more astounding that that, if you look back in Genesis 11, notice the fathers of Abram. Notice in Genesis 11:19 one of Abram’s forefathers was a man by the name of Peleg. We’ve talked of him before. Notice again in verse 22, another relative of Abraham was called Serug, and then of course, Nahor. Now I’m going to put up the names of the towns mentioned on the Ebla tablets. Paliga, there’s obviously Peleg being mentioned and the person’s name has become a place name. The next town, Sarugi, obviously named after Serug. Here’s a town, Turakhi, mentioned after Terah. Nahor, that one is even mentioned in the Bible. Later on Abram’s going to go to the city of Nahor, there it is, mentioned on the 17,000 tablets of Ebla. Haran itself is mentioned on these tablets.

But that’s not the only astounding find at Ebla. Let’s look at some of the names of the people who lived in that area. Abramu, there’s Abram. Now we’re not saying that is the Abram of the Bible. We’re just saying these are Semitic names. Look at them. E-sa-um (Esau). This is in the time of Abraham, so when the sons are being named later in the Bible they’re being named after the Semitic forefathers. Mi-ka-ilu, (Michael); Sha-u-lum, (Saul); Is-ra-ilu, (Israel); Ishmaelum, (Ishmael); and Da-’u-dum, (David). So here we have Bible names, Hebrew names, appearing over a thousand years before many of these stories in the Bible, showing you the conservative tight nature of the Semitic languages.

But here is even a more interesting thing. In the middle of the culture of history of Ebla there arose a famous king, and his name was Ebrum (or Ebrium). Now when Ebrium reigned there was a shift that occurred in all the people’s names, or a lot of the names on these name lists, according to at least one man who studied the text. Before the reign of this king, Ebrium, the names ended in the suffix, i-l-u, or ilu. Now ilu is El, for God, the word for God. And so we have Micha-el, Michael the god; Samu-el. So it was a common ending for a name, i-l-u, like Mikailu. But after the reign of King Ebrium the names changed with this ending: y-a, or ya, which is short for Jehovah, and the name, then is Michaya. Now the question is, who is this mysterious King Ebrium, who, when he ascended the throne, had peoples’ names subsequently changed and the name of the god index on the name changed? And not only did it change, but it changed to the Jewish name, Jehovah, which is not known anywhere else outside of Israel.

Well, obviously what we’ve got here is one of the most astounding discoveries that in years to come, you’ll see articles in the paper, from time to time. The debate over this will last the next 10 or 15 years as these scrolls and these records come out into the scholarly world. But we’ve got powerful evidence of Genesis 11:27-32 actually existing, actually going on, and here I might add this little tantalizing note.

Just suppose, and this is unlikely because of various phonetic problems, but just suppose this mysterious King Ebrium turns out to be none other than Abram? Then what have we here is not the call of Abraham, not the call of a lone camel driver who takes his hundred sheep flock and traipses across the sands of Saudi Arabia to a new home. No-no, it’s not that simple. The call of Abram is the call to a mighty noble king and his wife’s name is Sarai, and if the word Sar, which means the prince or the princess. In other words, when God called a man he called noble stock. He did not call just any person. Moreover, if that isn’t the solution to the King Ebrium, there’s another candidate from the Bible: King Eber. He’s also a father of Abraham.

So we go on now and look at Genesis 12:1. What was the call that started it all? Out of this sterile production-less generation, where the sin nature had no initiative by itself, and each one of you who’s a Christian here this morning, you know what I mean. By yourself, apart from the constant probing of God’s grace, you don’t want God’s Word. I don’t want God’s Word. We’re just playing games. It is only the grace of God working in us that calls us to the Word of God. By ourselves the Word of God is offensive. Now what usually happens is we like to blame this offensiveness to the Word of God on somebody in the church. We always like people to think well, I’ve got an excuse for why I’m not in the Word, because so and so is a hypocrite. That’s not your excuse… try it before the bema seat. It’s not going to work because that’s not an excuse. We’ve got all the excuses, but God isn’t going to take the excuses. What the issue is, we simply don’t want the Word of God. Now I know that better than most people because I have to study it every day and therefore my rebellion is much clearer to me, probably, than your rebellion is clear to you. And you say these are hard and tough passages—who do you think exegetes it word by word, vowel point by vowel point all week? So I know exactly where my heart is and I know therefore where all your hearts are, depraved and hell-bound, that’s where it all is. And that’s the natural Scriptural evaluation of our character. We can drop the façade and stop pretending we’re good ole’ boys because we’re not as far as the Scripture is concerned. We are rebellious sinners that hate and rebel against God’s authority. And were it not for the Holy Spirit’s grace none of us would be here this morning, period! It’s as simple as that.

Now this verse, Genesis 12:1-3, give you the invasion of the Word of God. Here is where God interfered in the life of Abraham and Terah. Terah didn’t like it and Abram didn’t like it, and Terah showed the fact he didn’t like it because he never fully obeyed it. “Now the LORD said to Abram,” and this occurs not in Haran, this occurs in Ur. Remember Stephen’s speech, we’ve got to be accurate here as to where this all occurred. It occurred over here in Ur, not up here in Haran. Terah went this far in obedience and then he flubbed it. He was a half-obedient believer and he never did make it and the result is Terah unfortunately, and sadly, never experienced the blessing of God. Abraham came down and he was fully obedient to the Scriptures and he came down here to Jerusalem.

Let’s look at some elements of this. We’re going to study it in detail later but this morning at least we want to get started on it so we can have something to take away that we can apply in our lives. The Lord said, “Get out of your country, get out of your kindred, get out of your father’s house.” The question is: Why is God so hostile to the home? With all due apologies to Bill Gothard, here is an obvious illustration of where Abraham could not be submissive to the authority of his parents and follow the Word of God. Now some of you have already found this, particularly some of you young people. I’ve watched over the ten years I’ve been pastor here, it’s very interesting. About once a year this little thing happens. It’s acted out in innumerable ways but it’s always the same song, second or third stanza. Some young college student will suddenly start studying the Scriptures, become convicted, trust in Christ, and start growing like a spiritual weed, just slurp, slurp, slurp, taking in the Scriptures like crazy, growing very strong-- making slips, yes, but basically growing and becoming quite strong spiritually.

Everything goes fine until one thing happens—they go home for vacation. The parents hear about it. You’d have thought in many of these cases I’m talking about that the girl came home pregnant or the guy came home on drugs or something else, some serious crime was committed. But you should see the letters I often get. I’ve been accused of being Hitler, misleading the people like the Hitler youth movement in Germany. Considering the source I considered it a compliment but nevertheless these are some of the cute little remarks parents have for children that get on the Word. Now if your parents were like that, you’d have to get out too to do anything. It’s just that simple. Treat them with respect but when you’re around those kind of people with that kind of attitude you cannot grow spiritually. It’s that simple. And I know many of you had to make the tragic exit from your home that you loved because it was the only place where you can get some fresh air spiritually. That’s too bad. That’s the way it goes. I had to do it and I’m fully in sympathy with those of you who had to make that break.

Well, this is what happens here and in a way, it’s a rather sad verse, that God has to call this man out and sever his relationship with his parents--sever his relationship not only with his parents, but it says his kindred, from his uncles, from his aunts, from his whole family he has to get out, and get 2,000 miles away from them so he can get his stuff together spiritually. Now that’s too bad but it has to happen in some places and you remember verse 1, some of you young people, that sometime you will have to make that decision. It’s not violating Scripture as long as it’s being made for that reason.

Well, then, God called him to do this and God promises him things we’re going to look at. But today we want to summarize this whole thing by looking at two things: God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. God, in His sovereignty, is going to demand certain things of us. His sovereignty, as C. S. Lewis says, interferes. It interferes with our plans, it interferes with our dreams, it interferes with what we want to do. But God’s sovereignty brooks no resistance from us. He calls and He expects us to respond. Now the sovereign call of God and the sovereign work that He’s doing in Abraham’s life does not exclude this human response, because God’s blessing doesn’t happen until what happens? Well, what does verse 1 say? “Get out,” get 2,000 miles out, to a land that I’m going to show you. And Abraham cannot experience any blessing of God until he personally responds to God’s sovereign call. Now that goes for you and for me. If you’re here and you have not personally accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, this applies in principle to you. God sovereignly tells you that you have nothing going for you that pleases Him. Your good works are a pile of excrement as far as he is concerned, and I’ll give you the Scripture references if you want to check it out. That’s exactly His evaluation of what you produce. And you are in trouble until you get things straightened out morally and spiritually with God, because Christ is going to be your judge. He offers to be your Savior but He certainly will be your judge. So before you can experience anything of the Christian life, you’ve got to do what Abraham did. It requires an act, an act of response on your part. Your father can’t do it, your mother can’t do it, your girlfriend can’t do it, your wife can’t do it. Only you can personally do that, and that’s believe on Jesus Christ.

Now those of us who are Christians, we can look at verse 1 and apply the same principle. God’s Word calls us and it interferes with our plans and our lives, and there’s only one thing to do. It says “go to a land I will show you.” Now how is Abraham going to know where the land is and how is God going to show Him? By His Word. And so the Christian has got to get to the point where he says the Word of God is number one. I am sitting here with my depraved old sin nature bigger than life and twice as natural, and all it can do is produce evil and human good, plus mental attitude sin and all the rest of the stuff. And out of that it is no more productive than Sarah’s womb. Sarah’s womb can’t be healed by Sarah and it can’t be healed by Abram. It’s got to be healed from outside. It’s got to be changed from outside, and your Christian life and my Christian life have to depend on that outside interference. God has to call to us and how does God call to us? Telephone? Lights on the ceiling? No, God calls to us through the canon of Scripture. That which you hold in your lap right now is the call of God.

Those of you who participated in the Pilgrim’s Progress discussion, you know the sobering, sobering aspect of Puritan theology, and one of the horrifying things that the Puritans saw and basically we’ve lost it in our own generation, it’s sort of a forgotten doctrine, the perseverance of the saints. And what it says is that if a Christian or the professing Christian fails to respond to the Scripture, he fails consistently to respond to the Scripture, there’s every reason under the sun to doubt he ever was a Christian. The Puritans knew that so well that it sounds like, when you read them, that they’re talking about loss of salvation. How could so and so be a church member for ten years and wind up unsaved? Same way Judas Iscariot could be a disciple for three years, inches away from the Lord Jesus Christ, and wind up an unregenerate, who as Christ warned in the Sermon on the Mount, get out of here, I never knew you. That’s how it can happen. There can be massive religious experiences with absolutely no regeneration… absolutely none!

And so test ourselves. Every one of you ought to test yourself. What is that which is inside? Do you see a work of grace operating on your sin nature, that calls out in hunger for the Scripture, and there’s at least some area where there’s a willingness to submit to the Scriptures? If there isn’t, as Peter says, watch it, that you are of the elect. God calls us and therefore He forces us to accept or reject, and this calling of God, this kind of a call of God is something that cuts across the whole sin nature; it’s something that makes spiritual things attractive. So to recall this we’re going to sing together in conclusion hymn….