Genesis 15:7 “And he said unto him, I [am] the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.”
Acts 7:2-3 “And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.”
I have been studying the life of Abraham and I am convinced he was a brown pigeon. We are often told that God called Abraham to take his family out of the land of the Chaldees and move to the Promised Land. But according to Stephen in the Book of Acts Abraham apparently made a stopover in Charran which was not the land of Canaan. He live for a while in Charran until his father, Terah died. It is a mystery to Jewish scholars as to why Terah took his family and left the land of the Chaldees as he was apparently a respected person, actually an idolatrous priest in the land of the Chaldees (Midrash Ha Gadol Bereishis 11:28). Jewish tradition also teaches he was a wicked man (Numbers Rabbah 19:1). He also earned his living manufacturing idols (Eliyahu Rabbah 6). Also in Jewish literature, Genesis Rabbah 38:13, Jewish tradition teaches that Abraham got himself into some hot water by destroying his father’s idols. His father took him before Nimrod who threw him into a fiery furnace, yet God caused Abraham to miraculously escape.
This is all tradition, of course, but we do get a picture that God brought Abraham and his immediate family which included his nephew Lot to the land of Canaan and the Promised land. Some Jewish scholars believe that Abraham did not leave until his father died so as to respect the tradition of honoring or caring for his parents in their old age. Some have made a point that there is a contradiction here because if you do the math Abraham’s father did not die until twenty years after Abraham left Charran. However, those who make such an argument do not consider that the Semitic culture is not hung up on exact dates like in the Western world. They go for time periods and epics. So I don’t come unglued when dates do not mesh.
God did not call Abraham to leave his family in Charran he was brought out of the land. He was hotsa’thika. This comes from the root word yats’ which simply means to go or more forward. It is in a Hophal form so Abraham was actually caused or motivated to move forward. We are unsure as to why Terah left the land of Ur. We know there was a great extended famine during this time so that might have been the motivation to leave Ur and then after a while Abraham realized that the idolatrous influences still existed among his people and so he was motivated to take his immediate family and move on to the land Canaan which was the Promised Land.
I tend to believe that Abraham left the land of Ur because he and his family were hungry for food and he left Charran because he was hungry for a pure faith and life in God. He had a taste of God, God most likely revealed himself to Abraham in Ur and he began a journey or search for the true God. When they left the total environment of idolatry in Ur, there was still idolatrous influences among his people in Charran and there came a time when he had to leave even that and set out on his own.
Yesterday, I had a couple cancellations on my bus run and so I parked in the parking lot of Sam’s Club and began eating an Egg McMuffin. There must have been over one hundred pigeons surrounding my bus and I began to share my Egg McMuffin with them. Just one piece at a time and they would pounce on it at the same time squawking at each until one arose victorious with the little piece of Egg McMuffin in his mouth. I noticed one pigeon just walking around bobbing his head and occasionally pausing to look up at me. He was different that the others, a distinct brown color different than the other grey and white pigeons.
In the midst of this feeding frenzy suddenly something scared the pigeons and they all flew off and scattered like my students used to do when the bell to end class sounded. I don’t know what happened but suddenly over 100 pigeons suddenly flew away leaving me with my Egg McMuffin which I was more than willing to share with them. I looked up in the sky and I saw one pigeon leave the flock and circle around and land by my bus. It was that brown pigeon who now had my Egg McMuffin all to himself. With my heart I heard him say, “You get fed more when you leave the flock.”
Do you sometimes feel like that brown pigeon among the grey and white pigeons within the Christian fellowship that you attend? Everything they say is the same, they all speak the party line and yet somewhere inside of you there is a growing hunger. Once a little morsel of new revelation enters your fellowship everyone pounces on it wanting to the first to proclaim their understanding of this new revelation as their own and hold it up for others to squawk at. Yet, you stand aside just feeling that “No I am not going to fight over that trivial little hunk of bread, there is more to this, much more.
Maybe like Abraham God is calling you to leave the accepted teaching of that flock over that little revelation, not to completely leave, not to disassociate yourself from them, but to just fly back to the source of that revelation and without the influence of the others to really search it out yourself. To be willing to leave the flock’s interpretation that may be a revelation on healing or getting an answer to prayer, and consider something out of the box, that is not the party line but that this Scriptural spin may be talking about your relationship with God or maybe it is addressing something personal for you. The fact is you ignore all the squawking and you go on a search of self-discovery. You begin to search the Scriptures yourself and let the Holy Spirit feed you that Egg McMuffin and not the party line.
Like my little odd colored pigeon friend said, “You sometimes get fed more when you leave the flock.”
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