Wandering: the Journeys of Abraham
“And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father.’”
- Deuteronomy 26:5
The liturgy prescribed in Deuteronomy 26 pictures God’s people launching into worship with an unflattering description of their heritage: “A wandering Aramean [Abraham] was my father.”
But Abraham is the father of faith! A great patriarch of God’s people (Heb. 11:8-12)! Three thousand years after Abraham lived, when Jesus heals and forgives, he refers to the faithful beneficiaries of his grace as “children of Abraham” (Lk. 13:16; 19:9). So why did God want Abraham’s descendants to remind themselves that their ancestor began as a wandering Aramean?
Humility in Worship
It seems that the main reason is that God wants us to remember that He is great and we are not. He wants us to humbly forsake all other things that we trust in (including our lineage), staking our hopes in Him alone. He wants us to approach him in worship with the attitude reflected in the song “Rock of Ages”:
“Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to the cross I cling.”
Wandering Sojourners
But there may be a secondary reason why it’s valuable for us, as children of Abraham by faith (Rom. 9:6-8), to remember ourselves as descendants of this wandering Aramean: many of us are wanderers ourselves. We’ve been called by God to walk a road we wouldn’t have chosen, navigating a journey filled with unexpected twists.
New Sermon Series
As such, North Suburban Church is going to spend the first few months of 2021 in a sermon series entitled “Wandering: the Journeys of Abraham.” We believe this return to the Old Testament, specifically Genesis 11-25, will provide us with riches to mine that are relevant to our own journeys (both individually and corporately) in 2021.
Here are just a few connection points between the life of Abraham and our own experience in 2021:
1) We’re a transient society. People move from place to place more frequently than ever, and at North Sub, we have a significant population in graduate school and the military who know they are only here temporarily. As such, we may relate to Abraham’s attempts to live faithfully in one new location after another.
2) COVID has disrupted our notions of “place.” It became even harder to feel “rooted” in a particular place once so many of our normal rhythms (e.g. shopping, worshipping, gathering) began taking place online. Abraham faces different challenges in different places, which asks us: what does it mean to live faithfully in the particular place to which we’ve been called at this moment?
3) There’s something biblical about “going local.” In recent years, there has been a trend toward purchasing locally sourced products, supporting local businesses, etc. – the world seems to be “going local.” This trend probably better matches the sort of church life laid out in the New Testament, one in which churches gathered locally with others who lived in a particular geographic location. By exploring Abraham’s journey leg-by-leg, we’ll see how he navigated local challenges along the way.
4) We aren’t always aware of how our culture is shaping us. The culture around us is like the air we breathe – we don’t always notice the messages in which it is indoctrinating us with every commercial, every pop hit, every social media promotion, and every must-have product or experience. As we see Abraham occasionally falling prey to the messages of his culture, we are reminded that it’s critical that we are cognizant of ways in which we are being discipled in a picture of the good life that doesn’t perfectly line up with the Bible’s picture of the good life.
5) We aren’t always aware of how we can best influence our culture. When a missionary goes across the world to minister the gospel to a different culture, he or she studies extensively, preparing to dress and relate and act and speak in ways that will connect with people in that culture. However, we aren’t always so careful to do that work in the neighborhoods where we live! In 2021, we will be intentional about the hard work of understanding what makes our neighbors “tick.”
6) Nobody lives a generic Christian life. When Jesus came, he was born to a particular family in a particular geographic location in a particular cultural moment. And it’s the same for each of us. Abraham’s life reminds us to seek wisdom regarding how to live faithfully in the particular places and times in which God has placed us.
Preaching the Old Testament
One final note (since it has been awhile since we preached from the Old Testament). There are different schools of thought among Christians about the usefulness of the Old Testament for Christians today. Should we take moral lessons from Old Testament figures? Should we look for pointers to Christ in Old Testament texts?
At North Sub, we believe that there is legitimacy both in preaching moral lessons from the Old Testament AND in looking for Christ in Old Testament passages. This approach can perhaps best be shown in Hebrews 3-4, where the author of Hebrews takes the same Old Testament narrative (which culminates in Psalm 95) twice, first making a moral argument (Hebrews 3 – don’t rebel like the Israelites did!) and then making a theological/gospel argument (Hebrews 4 – Christ offers true rest that even Joshua could never offer).
Therefore, we’ll do the same as we study the life of Abraham. Each week, we’ll study a different part of Abraham’s life and ask:
1) What do we see in Abraham? What is worth imitating? What sin should we avoid?
1a) Particularly, what do we see in Abraham’s attempts to wander faithfully in different cultural settings?
2) How does this passage point us to Christ and the gospel?
2a) Particularly, how does this passage point us in hope to the lasting city to come, “the city with foundations” on which Abraham had fixed his hopes (Heb. 11:10)?
For Further Study
(On Abraham)
A short primer on the journey of Abraham and his immediate descendants
A course from The Gospel Coalition on the life of Abraham
(On Culture and Living Faithfully in a Particular Place and Time)
Culture Making by Andy Crouch
Instead of merely condemning, critiquing, copying, or consuming culture, former Christianity Today executive editor reminds us of our call to create culture.
Christ and Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson
Former TEDS Professor provides his assessment of Richard Niebuhr’s five classic Christ-culture options, proposing a way forward as our culture gets further from its Judeo-Christian roots.
Part 5 of Center Church by Tim Keller
Particularly helpful in teaching us how to affirm and appreciate good things in the culture while firmly and faithfully applying the gospel to it.
Part 1 of Everyday Theology by Kevin Vanhoozer
TEDS Professor provides a model to help us think through how to be more conscious of the culture we inhabit every day so we can understand how it affects us and how we affect it.