3 ABRAM’S ALTARS

The leader’s family life qualifies him or her for fruitful public life. This is a lesson on family life.

One might have expected that Abram having had such an extraordinary call to Canaan that some great event would occur when he arrived or that he would have been introduced with all possible honor and respect, and that the kings of Canaan would have immediately surrendered their crowns to him, and given homage to him. But no, he comes with no recognition or notice and little if any attention is given to him. However, this is not a mere human or entertaining story, it is God’s Word and a true story. God was working an eternal purpose and teaching Abram an important lesson from which we too can benefit. God will have him to live by faith and to look on Canaan, even when he was in it, as a land of promise, not fulfillment. Not yet. We too experience God’s lessons to us about this very thing. God’s kingdom is invisible, future, eternal, non-material and can only be viewed with the eye of faith.

Upon arrival Abram had little comforts. Neither did he have the land to himself for “the Canaanites were in the land.” He found the country peopled and possessed by Canaanites, who were likely to be bad neighbors and worse landlords; and, from all appearances, he could not and would not have ground to pitch his tent on without Canaanites’ permission. The idolatrous Canaanites seemed to be in better circumstances than blessed Abram. That was a temporary thing, but it was a present reality, just as the appearance of our lack in the world is temporary and real to us now and requires a clear eye of faith to see through the dust and distractions of the world to our eternal and blissful existence.

It is still true today that the children of this world have commonly more of it than God’s children. Furthermore, Abram had no settlement in it. Verse 6 says that Abram “traveled through the land.” Verse 8 says he, “went on toward the hills.” and verse 9 says, he “set out and continued toward the Negev.” The Negev is dessert. He went to the dessert in the south.  Sometimes it is the lot of good men to be unsettled, and obligated often to move from place to place. The great celebrated king David had his wanderings as well when he lived as an outcast until the time came for him to possess what God had promised to him through Samuel. Our moves in this world are often into various conditions. Abram journeyed, first in a plain, then in a mountain, then in a dessert. None of those would be all that glorious and therefore very different than the impression Abram would have received from the glorious God.

We must consider ourselves strangers and travelers in this world, and by faith sit loose in it as in a strange country. So Abram, his son and grandson did, as is recorded in Hebrews 11:9. “By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.”

Christian leader, if you do not have eyes of faith to live in a temporary material world, sometimes opposing us with its evil and other times distracting us by its beauty, and keep our eyes on the heavily prize, how do you think your example can attract followers who value eternal things? While we are here in this present state, we must be journeying (in the material world), and yet still, yes  simultaneously, going from strength to strength (in the spiritual world), as having not yet attained, but assuredly aware that we will.

This kind of other-worldly lifestyle was only possible because of the comfort Abram had in the God he followed; when he could have little satisfaction in friendly relationships with the Canaanites whom he found there. He had abundance of pleasure in communion with the God who brought him to Canaan and did not leave him. Communion with God is kept up by the Word and prayer, and by these, Abram’s communion with God was kept up in the land of his pilgrimage. It was good training.

God appeared to Abram, perhaps in a vision or dream, and spoke to him good and comfortable words: To your descendants I will give this land. Neither place nor condition of life can shut us out from the comfort of God’s gracious visits. Abram is a mere traveler, unsettled among Canaanites; and yet here also he meets with Him that lives and sees him. Enemies may part us and our tents, us and our altars, but not us and our God.

For those that faithfully follow God in the way of duty, though He leads them from their friends, He will Himself make up that loss by His gracious appearances and visitations. God’s promises are sure and satisfying to all those who conscientiously observe and obey His precepts. Those who, in compliance with God’s call, leave or lose anything or even everything that is dear to them, shall be sure of something else abundantly better in its place. Abram had left his home land; the land of his birth: “Well,” says God, “I will give him this land,” In Matthew 19:29 Jesus says “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”

God reveals Himself and His favors to His people by degrees; before he had promised to “show” him this land, now to “give” it to him: as grace is growing, so is comfort. It is comfortable to have land of God’s giving, not by providence (plan) only, but by promise (stated intention). Providence produced the promise. The promise is more real than the providence. The promise included his descendants. Mercies to children are mercies to their parents. It was as though God said to him, ‘I will give it, not just to you, but to your posterity.’ It is a grant to his offspring, which yet, it should seem, Abram understood also as a grant to himself of better land in the future of which this was a symbol; for he looked for a heavenly country since Hebrews 11:16 says “. . . they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.”

Abram focused on and worshipped God in building alters everywhere he traveled. This was one of his instituted ordinances. “So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. ” (12:7) “he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord” (12:8). It seems that Abram did this often. Was this only on special occasions? Or always in the mundane hum drum of daily life? Either way, Abram built plenty of altars.

When God appeared to him, then and there he built an altar with an eye to the God who appeared to him. We can observe that he returned God’s visit, and kept up his communication in both directions with heaven, as one that resolved it should not fail on his side. He therefore acknowledged with thankfulness God’s kindness to him in making him that gracious visit and promise. In doing so he testified of his confidence in and dependence on the Word which God had spoken.

An active believer can heartily bless God for a promise even before the performance of it and can build an altar to the honor of God who appears to him, though God is not yet visible to him. He had a pattern, habit, a constant practice, that wherever he went He built an altar and worshipped. As soon as Abram arrived in Canaan, though he was but a stranger and traveler there, yet he set up, and kept up, the worship of God in his family. Wherever Abram had a tent God had an altar. Not only that but an altar sanctified by prayer.

Abram not only minded the ceremonial part of religion, the offering of sacrifice, but performed it out of  an internal, real, genuine, heart-felt spiritual awareness of his natural duty to seek his God. He called on God’s name with the spiritual sacrifice which pleases God. He preached concerning the name of the Lord, that is, he instructed his family and neighbors in the knowledge of the true God and His ways.

Earlier we noticed the accompanying group of people that Abram had possibly gotten in Harran. They would need to be further discipled and taught. Any Christian who wants to give evidence that they are children of faithful Abram, and desires to inherit the blessing of Abram, must keep up the solemn worship of God, particularly in their families and households, according to the example of Abram. The way of family worship is a good old way; is no faddish invention, but the ancient tried and proven pattern of all the saints. Abram was very rich and had a numerous household, was now unsettled and in the midst of enemies, and yet, wherever he pitched his tent, he built an altar. Wherever we go, let us not fail to take our altar and the worship of God along with us in our homes.