The Scriptures comfort us with the fact that even devoted men and women of God were not by any means exempted from the ‘military service’ of the trial of their faith. They were often pushed (driven) by God Himself to the very limit of their respective levels of endurance in places where ‘the test can break the best’! They struggled until they could endure no longer and were compelled to cry out to the ‘author and finisher of their faith’, who was keenly aware of their true limitations and who alone was able to deliver them from ultimate disaster.
Sooner or later we are brought to that point that is especially prepared to develop our spiritual fighting skills, so that we may be made ready to serve the Master better.
Consider the inner and untold wrestling of Abram (his name later changed by God to Abraham), the man who was called ‘the friend of God’ (2 Chron. 20:7; Jam. 2:23). He sought to obey the call of the LORD to leave his “country, kindred, and father’s house” in Ur of the Chaldees and go into a land he had never yet seen (Gen. 12:1-3). Scripture says he left (by faith) not knowing whither he went (Heb. 11:8)! This may sound easy to accomplish today, but remember, there was no “World News Today” to be checked on TV, or internet connections to be called up to assure him of the way! He was pinning his conviction on something in which there was no tangible evidence (Heb. 11:1).
One reason we may believe he did not have quite so easy a time, despite his trust in God, rests with the record in Genesis 11:31: “Terah took Abram his son… and went forth into the land of Canaan”, as though Terah was responsible for the migration. Perhaps this betrays the fact that even though Abraham was asked to “leave thy father’s house”, he simply could not bring himself to leave his father. Does this diminish the reputation of faithful Abraham? Certainly not! There is better reason to believe Abraham badly wanted to save his father as well, and daily preached the gospel of salvation to him while giving him the place of honor, as culture and custom demanded in those days, of leading the family out. Even if we today are aware of our loved ones’ reluctance to share our hope of the gospel, would we not do our best to save them from the impending disaster of the times?
We are told in Genesis 11:32 that Terah did not reach Canaan, as he died in Haran (a stop-off point along the fertile Euphrates trail), at the age of 205 years.
Was this because he was too old to continue the journey? That is unlikely. Let’s take another look:
Terah was at least 70 years old when he fathered Abraham (Gen. 11:26) and therefore at least 145 when Abraham left Haran at age 75 (Gen. 12:4). Since Terah was 205 years old (Gen. 11:32) when he died, this means that Abraham left him in Haran about 60 years before his death!
But if Abraham so cared for his father that he could not leave Ur without him, why did he leave him in Haran? This must have been a rather painful decision for him. Perhaps the answer lies in one or more of the following suggestions:
- Terah and his entire family had come out originally from Ur in the southern Euphrates region. Easton’s Bible Dictionary tells us Ur was “the largest city of Shinar or northern Chaldea, and the principal center of the country as well as the center of political power”. Therefore Terah would have been accustomed to a sophisticated city life and relatively high standard of living. The prospects of resuming a dangerous cross-country journey across the unknown, void of regular comforts, might have taken its eventual toll on his level of social tolerance.
- Ur, we are told in Scripture, was a land steeped in idolatry. Abraham was, no doubt, daily preaching a gospel of the one God of heaven and earth. There is no reason to believe Terah embraced this view. If Abraham had indeed tried for years to get his father to leave Ur in the first place, one can well imagine how much harder it might have proved to get him to accept that this one God Almighty actually spoke to him personally and gave him eternal promises! (Furthermore, this kind of thinking places a son above his father in spiritual importance — a concept stranger than fiction in those days.)
- Stephen, in his defence before the Sanhedrin Council (Acts 7:4), seems to complicate matters when he categorically states that Abraham moved on from Haran “when his father was dead”. Assuming that the age calculation outlined above is correct, how can this be accounted for? Some scholars have put this down to Stephen erring under the stress of the trial. However, this need not be so, for when Terah failed to resume the journey with Abraham, he was surrendering a share in the only hope (an inheritance yet unseen) by which he could be saved into God’s new world (Rom. 8:25). Therefore he effectively died spiritually in Haran when Abraham decided to move on without him! In any event, God had originally commanded Abraham to leave his “country, kindred, and father’s house”. God knew Terah’s heart beforehand, that he was not committed enough to completing the journey and was more likely to keep Abraham back from the Covenant He gave to him.
The lesson confronting us today is this: at some point we may have to face the heart-wrenching choice of moving on to complete our God-appointed journey to His Kingdom in the light of other temporary but compelling options. Our choice carved out of such struggles helps to define our true identity and ultimately our eternal destination!
In Christ, we burned our return tickets to Ur and Haran when we declared plainly at our baptism that we are seeking a better country — God’s coming Kingdom.
Therefore we will no longer stall, nor attempt to return to the world we have publicly forsaken. “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called our God.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One