The God who calls and finds

God speaks, Abram goes

“And the LORD said unto Abram.” That is how Genesis 12 begins. God speaks first. Only then do we read that Abram sets out. In the words Lech Lecha we hear the command: go. He must leave his country, his kindred, and his father's house, “unto a land that I will shew thee.” The road has not been mapped out in advance. God promises that He Himself will show Abram the land.

It is hard to imagine what it meant to leave everything familiar without yet knowing the destination. Yet verse 4 says: “So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him.” That order stays with me. God speaks and Abram responds. He goes, not because he can see the future, but because God has called him.

“I will”

With this calling comes a series of promises. “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.” The words “I will” keep returning. Abram is given a command, but God takes the fulfilment of the promise upon Himself. What Abram cannot yet see, God has already promised.

That is the ground on which Abram continues. And the events that follow show how difficult it can be for us to trust a promise when circumstances seem to say something else. More than once Abram will try to find security for himself. Yet God's “I will” remains.

Making a name, or receiving a name

Just before Abram's calling stands the account of Babel. There the people say: “Let us make us a name” (Genesis 11:4). They build a city and a tower to keep themselves together and establish their own name. Then God tells Abram: “I will make thy name great” (Genesis 12:2). The two statements stand close together and show a difference we can easily miss.

At Babel the people want to make a name for themselves. Abram receives the promise that God will make his name great. To do so, he must let go of what has given him security: his country, his relatives, and his father's house. He sets out with a word from God, not with a certainty of his own making.

In Genesis 17 God even gives him a new name. Abram becomes Abraham, for God appoints him to be the father of many nations. It is God who calls him and gives him a name. The promise reaches further than Abram can yet see in his own life.

Must I secure the promise myself?

Already in Genesis 12 a famine strikes the land and Abram goes down to Egypt. He fears that he may be killed because of Sarai. So he asks her to say that she is his sister. Abram seeks a way to secure his own life. We can understand his fear. But what happens when we try to secure our own safety while God has already spoken?

Abram's plan puts Sarai in danger. The LORD strikes Pharaoh's household with plagues, and Sarai is returned to Abram. God's promise still stands, even where Abram's actions cause harm. We see that faith does not mean he will never be afraid or choose wrongly. He still has to learn to live by what God has promised.

Choosing what you see, or receiving what God shows

In Genesis 13 Abram and Lot can no longer remain together because of their great flocks. Abram lets Lot choose. Lot lifts up his eyes and sees the well-watered plain of the Jordan, “even as the garden of the LORD.” He chooses the land that appears attractive to him.

Only after Lot has departed does God speak again to Abram: “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art” (Genesis 13:14). Lot looks and chooses. Abram hears God's voice and is shown the land. Once again we see where his security must come from. He need not seize everything for himself. God repeats His promise, and Abram builds an altar to the LORD.

From whom do you receive?

After the battle in Genesis 14 Abram meets two kings. Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, brings bread and wine and pronounces a blessing. The king of Sodom offers Abram the goods if he will return the people. Abram faces a very concrete choice: from whom will he accept something?

Abram refuses the goods of Sodom. He gives the reason: “Lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich” (Genesis 14:23). He will not allow the king of Sodom to be called the source of his prosperity. Melchizedek, by contrast, pronounces a blessing in the name of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. Abram receives that blessing and gives him tithes of all.

Genesis calls Melchizedek king and priest and tells of bread, wine, and blessing. Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7 later speak of his priesthood again. But even before that later connection, something important can be heard here: Abram does not owe his future to the king of Sodom. He lives by what God has promised.

Believing while you do not yet see

In Genesis 15 God speaks again: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Yet Abram still has no son. He voices his grief and his question: “Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?” He does not hide what troubles him. I find comfort in that. Faith does not require us to suppress the questions that arise as we wait.

God brings Abram outside and shows him the stars. His offspring will be that numerous. Then we read: “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). No son has yet been born. Yet Abram trusts the word God speaks to him again. Paul will later turn to these very words when writing about righteousness by faith.

Then comes the covenant between the pieces. The animals are divided, but Abram falls into a deep sleep. In the darkness a smoking furnace and a burning lamp pass between the pieces. Abram is not described as passing between them alongside God. The emphasis falls on God's own covenant action. What He promises ultimately rests on His faithfulness.

When the waiting lasts too long

By Genesis 16 more years of waiting have passed. Sarai still has no child. She gives Hagar, her Egyptian servant, to Abram in the hope of obtaining offspring through her. In Hebrew, Sarai says that she may thus be “built up.” The verb has the same root as the building at Babel. Again we see people trying to bring about for themselves what they are waiting to receive.

I recognise something of our own lives here. We can believe what God has spoken and still grow restless when the waiting lasts. Then we begin to search for a way to bring the outcome closer by our own doing. But Hagar is not a mere means in a story about Abram's faith. She is a person who must bear the consequences of this decision. And her own story reveals something of God's attention.

The God who finds

Hagar flees into the wilderness. She is pregnant, alone, and on the road, without knowing where she will end up. Then we read: “And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness” (Genesis 16:7). I find that remarkable. It does not say that Hagar found God, but that the angel of the LORD found her. Here, too, it begins with Him.

He addresses her by name: “Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?” Hagar can say where she is fleeing from: “I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.” But she gives no destination in answer to the question where she is going. She knows where she has come from; she does not know how her journey will continue. Yet she is not hidden from God.

Her son will be called Ishmael, because the LORD has heard her affliction. And Hagar calls Him El Roi, the God who sees her. God finds her, hears her affliction, and sees her. The LORD who calls Abram and gives him a particular place in His covenant also sees this Egyptian woman in her distress. Abram's election does not place Hagar beyond His care.

Found at the well

Hagar is found beside a real spring of water in the wilderness. That is where the account in Genesis 16 begins. When we read John 4 alongside it, we meet another woman at a well. These are two different events, yet they bring us to a related question: who sees the person sitting there, and who begins the conversation?

At Jacob's well Yeshua speaks to a Samaritan woman. He knows her history and speaks with her about living water. Later she goes to the people of her town and says: “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did.” With Hagar we heard the name El Roi, the God who sees me. In both stories women are addressed before they themselves have begun a conversation with God.

The spring in Genesis 16 is not the same as the living water in John 4. Yet the image of water takes on a special resonance when we read these passages alongside each other. Hagar is found by a spring. Yeshua Himself sits at a well and speaks of the water He gives, which becomes in a person a well springing up into everlasting life. Scripture thus shows us further how God seeks out and addresses people.

Walk before my face

Years later God appears to Abram again. He is now ninety-nine years old. The LORD says: “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1). In Hebrew we read hithallēkh lefanai wehyeh tamim: walk before My face and be upright, whole.

The parashah began with “go.” Now we hear: “walk before my face.” It is not only about the journey to a land, but about a life before God's face. Then God gives Abram and Sarai new names and institutes circumcision as the sign of the covenant. His word is not only heard; it also has a recognisable place in their lives and in the body of the covenant community.

Is my way hidden from God?

In the haftarah we hear Israel complain: “My way is hid from the LORD” (Isaiah 40:27). The complaint reminds us of Hagar, who did not know where she was going in the wilderness. But Isaiah points to the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who neither faints nor grows weary. “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31).

Abraham had to learn to go on God's word, but also to wait for its fulfilment. Now God speaks to the people descended from him: “But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend” (Isaiah 41:8). The LORD has not forgotten His promise. So in verse 10 we hear again: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee.” Abram had already heard those words while his future remained hidden.

Before Abraham was, I am

In John 8 Yeshua speaks of Abraham: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (verse 56). His hearers do not understand how He can speak of Abraham. Then He says: “Before Abraham was, I am” (verse 58).

Abraham was called by a God who went before him. John lets us hear that Yeshua places Himself before Abraham. This is the confessional horizon of this reading: in Yeshua we meet the One who is before Abraham. The God who called Abraham, found Hagar, and remained faithful to Israel did not begin with their history. His word and His faithfulness go before it.

What stays with me above all in this parashah is that it begins with God, again and again. He calls Abram and gives him a promise. Then we read: “So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him.” His obedience is an answer to what God has spoken first.

Along the way, however, we see how difficult it is to live by that promise. Abram seeks to secure his own safety in Egypt. Sarai sees the years passing and looks to Hagar for a way to have a child. Hagar herself finally flees into the wilderness, where the angel of the LORD finds her by a spring.

Here I recognise something of our own lives. We want to know what comes next. When God's promises seem slow to be fulfilled, we can become so busy searching for a solution that we barely listen to what He has already spoken.

Yet God remains the One who calls, sees, hears, and finds. His promise does not rest on what Abraham can make of it, but on His own faithfulness.

Perhaps that leaves us with a question: dare we live by what God has spoken, even when we cannot yet see how He will fulfil His promises?