Abram: The Father of Exile
He is referred to as the father of faith. Three faith expressions look to him as their founding father. Abram would eventually become Abraham with a sign of God’s covenant blessing. We could also call him the father of exile – at least the father of being on exile.
He is not the first in exile, nor on exile, in the Bible. Adam and Eve, and their anger-loaded son Cain, the first family, were in exile because of sin. As a result, we all begin in exile. However, even in exile, the original family found hidden expressions of God’s grace. The same is true for us.
Enoch was on exile – he walked with God (Genesis 5:22,24) and was commended for having pleased God (Hebrews 11:5). He exchanged being in exile for being on exile.
Noah and family were on exile. They were truly strangers to their peers. Their foreignness was a result of God’s calling to a better way and an outrageous act of faith. Their obedience led to release of grace for all humanity along with a meteorological reminder of God’s covenant promise.
Rainbow.
Abram’s exile appears abruptly in the text. We do not know much about his setting at the time of his calling. He originated in a place named Ur and his family had migrated toward Haran. His father was Terah. And we know from a later text that his family was idol worshippers (Joshua 24:2). Out of the blue with no other detail, God calls Abram into a different type of exile.
As idolaters they were in exile – to sin.
As called out ones – Abram and Sarai set out on exile – to blessing.
Their departure does not make practical sense. Haran was a place of wealth, sophistication, and cultural advancement in its day. Aarcheological digs over the past 100 years have unearthed to us that Abram was not a bumbling nomad moving through the land. He left a life of bounty in Haran and he trusted God.
His exile was quite daunting. God’s initial message to Abram was, “Go.” Leave your country, leave your household, leave your people, leave your family; you’re going to a specific place that I have for you, but I’m not going to show you until you get there. God is asking Abram to leave what is familiar, comfortable, and that which he knows, to go to that which is unknown.
God is always so gracious – he doesn’t send without giving something to assure him.
Promise.
“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
Someone has written, “When God commands, He rarely accompanies it with reasons, but most often with promises.”
Abram was given five clear promises - the five “I wills” of God. In the promises God was saying to Abram, I’m going to give you a legacy rooted in blessing – specifically land and people. And I will make your name great – legacy.
Hello! We are talking about this almost 4,000 years later. God’s promises are loaded.
And there is only one thing that breaks wide open. FAITH.
“So Abram went, as the LORD had told him….” (Genesis 12:4)
So when have faith it all goes well.
Whoops. Sorry. Who told you that? Ultimately yes. Immediately, it is not so obvious.
As challenging as the faith to leave was, the faith to continue would be just as daunting for Abram, as it took many years to realize the concrete nature of the promises. And there was lots of opposition along the way – some self-inflicted and some other outwardly initiated.
God is so gracious to us in his Word to give us clues throughout the story so that we do not go into exile with false expectations.
“At that time the Canaanites were in the land” (Genesis 12:6).
If you read the Old Testament closely, the people of God had significant national foes – one of those foes was the Canaanites. The minute Abram moved toward Canaan (the place of promise) where he was to experience God’s blessing, he immediately encountered enemies.
Opposition.
And there is the 1/8” principle in the Bible. Every once in a while the people of God experience a new chapter. In our Bibles, these transitions are represented by 1/8” of white space between narratives. In their lives the 1/8” represented 25 years. Or 40 years. Or even 400 years. That is a long time to wait when you are on exile.
It is in the waiting that obedience is so challenging.
“The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD” (Genesis 12:7)
Let me highlight two things:
Bethel didn’t exist when Abraham was alive. Jacob, one of Abram’s ancestors, met God at that place. Remember the story – he was in exile. He had a dream of angels going up and down a ladder. In the dream, God announced himself to Jacob as the God of his forefathers – Abraham and Isaac. And he repeated his earlier promises of his presence and blessing. So Jacob named that place “Bethel.”
In telling the story of Abraham, the biblical writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, identify Abraham’s exile as taking place between two cities.
Bethel, means “House of God.”
Ai means “Place of Ruin or Heap of Disaster.”
Even on exile you still need to sleep. So Abram pitched his tent between the Place of Ruin and House of God. The rest of his journey is about walking the line between the Place of Ruin and the House of God. As details of what in means to live in covenant relationship with God are unfolded in the biblical text (Deuteronomy 28) these polarities are named as a life of curse or a life of blessing.
Our father of faith comes pretty close to ruin a couple of times. He even tries to help God by bringing the blessing into place. The consequences are still felt to this day in a contemporary battle between two strains in the family line. But God’s mercy, compassion, and grace always preserve in the larger story.
Promise.
There’s another interesting image hidden in the text. Abram pitched his tent, but he built altars. That which was for him (tent) was temporary and always moving. Tent was not his legacy. His legacy was more permanent - he built altars to the Living God. Abram invested in his legacy by worshipping the Living God. It was in building altars that Abraham refused living in exile and embraced living on exile.
Called from living in exile to living on exile.
Abram didn’t refuse the temporal blessing that God poured into his life. He had favor. His commodity trading seemed to always be in a bull market. But the temporal blessings weren’t the most significant thing to Abraham. He wasn’t seeking blessings; he was seeking the LORD.
So today on exile – we too must build altars and pitch tents if we desire real legacy.
Real legacy begins with ruthless trust. Brennan Manning notes (I apologize that I do not have the reference):
“Ruthless trust is an unerring sense way deep down that beneath the surface of agitation, boredom, and insecurity of life it’s going to be all right. Ill winds may blow, more character defects may surface, sickness may visit, and friends will surely die or walk away, but a stubborn irrefutable certainty persists that God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful. When we build altars the fellowship of His presence becomes everything about us and gives us everything we need for every challenge that comes our way."
Jim Elliott, a missionary martyred by the Auca Indian tribe in Ecuador said it this way:
“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
His very physical and temporary life was a pitched tent. His eternal legacy is a people group restored to the creator, in part through the destruction of his tent. Wow. What an altar!
Does being on exile feel burdensome today? Don’t lose hope. God is telling a better story even when we do not see the full script.
On exile with you in a long tradition of exiles.
