Why did God choose Abraham?

Of grace: the people of Ur in Chaldee, including Abraham's own family, were idolaters (Joshua 24:1.2). Abraham was no better than others in himself. But God decided to call him and to bless him. Why him ? Because God in His sovereignty decided to do so. This makes the call even more wonderful because it makes clear that it was purely of grace.

The sovereignty of God was next seen in the call of Abram, and the miraculous birth of Isaac, spite of the deadness of his own body and that of Sarah’s womb. Why should God have called Abram? The only answer that can be given is that God chose to do so in His sovereign will.

Abraham, like the unbeliever now, was living in the midst of the evil of the old world, and his family worshipping idols, when God called him. What light may have been communicated to Abraham as to the state of things in Ur of the Chaldees, when the God of glory appeared unto him, we are not told, but now all was plain: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." Here he is called to separate himself from all that connected him with his natural position on the earth, and to obey the call of God, on the ground of faith in His word.

13 But, as I have just said, the universal influence of idolatry led to an intervention on God's part which stamped its character on His most important ways: He called Abraham, and caused him to come out from the surrounding corruption, in order to have him as the stock of a people that should belong to Him. In him, the father of the faithful, are shewn forth three or even four great principles: God's sovereign will, otherwise called election, then God's call, the promises, and continual worship by a man who was a stranger on the earth. This last circumstance, the possession of the promises with the non-possession of the things promised, drew out the affections and hope to that which was outside this world, though still indeed in a vague way; but other revelations were added. These principles have characterised the people of God from that day forth.

Abraham thus exhibits in his own history the lesson which afterward, for so many centuries, his posterity were set to learn. In his own person, he is the witness of sovereign, electing grace called out of the darkness of heathenism, as Joshua reminds the men of his generation — "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods." Here, "the God of glory appeared unto" him, and called him from country, kindred, and father's house, to be the special witness of His name and way.

There is no mention of idolatry amongst the evils that filled the earth during the antediluvian age. By the time of Abram the post-diluvian apostasy that started with Nimrod and Babel, had developed; idolatry was overspreading the peoples, and threatening to exclude the true knowledge of God. It had got amongst the descendants of Shem and even Terah, if not Abram himself, had been infected by it. To preserve a testimony to Himself God called Abram clean out of the evil, to become a pilgrim and stranger in the earth. Mankind was already divided into nations under the Divine government: it was now to witness a division of another kind — the separation of a godly seed from the mass of the ungodly. This was a division produced by Divine grace.

When "the God of glory" called Abraham, and revealed to him His thoughts (Acts 7:2) His purpose was to recover and bless all the nations by the instrumentality of his seed (Gen. 12:2-3; Gen. 22:18). When Abraham was thus called the whole earth was sunk in the darkness and impurity of idolatry; indeed, Abraham's own family "served other gods" (Joshua 24:2). It was sovereign grace therefore on God's part thus to bless Abraham, and then make him a blessing to others. The kingdom of Israel was established as God's witness in the earth; the people should have faithfully held aloft the lamp of divine truth for the enlightenment of all. When they descended to the level of the nations around them, their testimony was gone, and the blessing of the nations became impossible. It awaits the day of Christ. When He appears in kingdom majesty, all that has failed in the hands of Adam, Noah, David, Solomon, and others, He will take up and fulfil gloriously.

There was involved then in it the immediate favour of God, not in present comfort, but in personal calling. The personal revelation of Himself to Abram, as it were, identified him with Himself and with His purpose, and with the blessing of an appointed inheritance. This calling, however special and personal, however distinguishing in favour, necessarily involved obedience. The call of blessing to Abraham was a call to get out of his country unto a land which God would shew to him, and thus it necessarily involved obedience. Whatever the power which acted on his mind might be, obedience was the result; for in the very terms of the call it was manifest - no obedience, no blessing. He was (to use the words of scripture) "sanctified unto obedience," for there was nothing else now given but the command, "Go out" - "the Lord had said." It was not to gratify the present selfishness of Abram's nature, saying, "this is thy country," but it was "Get thee out of thy country" - to go where? "to a land that I will shew thee." It implied, therefore, implicit confidence in God for faithfulness, power, and love. Taking Him for the security and the portion (as the scriptures reveal it), he went out, not knowing whither he went. It is on this that the Spirit of God so specially tests as characteristic of his approved faith. By separation from the world, on the ground of implicit confidence in God, he lost everything, and got nothing but the word of God, scaled of course to his soul (for his faith rested in it) by the power of the Spirit of God. The God of glory had appeared to him in the matter, and God would shew to him the land. So Abram departed.

This introduces Genesis 12 on wholly new ground. It is evident that here we are entering a sensibly different atmosphere. It is no longer man as such, but a man separated of God to Himself, and this by a promise given to one chosen and called — a new root and stock. These are principles which God never has abandoned since, and never will. Let me repeat that it is no longer mankind as hitherto, nor nations only, but we have the call of God to Himself — the only saving means where ruin has entered before judgment vindicates God's nature and will by His power. For we know from elsewhere that idolatry was now prevalent among men even among the descendants of Shem, when a man was called out by and to the true God on a principle which did not change nor judge (save morally) the newly-formed associations of the world, but separated him who obeyed to divine promises with better hopes. Abram, it need hardly be said, was the object of His choice. I am not denying that God had chosen before; but now it became a publicly affirmed principle. It was not only a call known secretly to him who was its object, but there was one separated to God by His calling him out as the depository of His promise, the witness of it being before the eyes of all, and in consequence blessed, and a channel of blessing. For what might seem to man's narrow mind an austere severing from his fellows was in point of fact for the express purpose of securing divine and eternal blessing, and not to himself and his seed alone, but an ever-flowing stream of blessing which would not fail to all the families of the earth. God will yet shew this. For the present it has come to nought, as everything else does in the hands of man; but God will yet prove in the face of this world how truly and divinely, and in the interests of man himself, as well as of His own glory, He wrought in His call of Abram.

Abraham is the first sample of God's call as a public principle. Whatever the secret working of grace in all the saints heretofore, as in Abel, Enoch, Noah, no one had ever been called by God to quit his country, kindred, and even father's house, as Abraham was. It was the great and new fact of separation to God, and in a land which He would show, sustained by His promise of blessing to himself, yea, of blessing in him to all the families of the earth. It was the more remarkable, because after the deluge God had instituted government to repress evil; and in the days of Peleg the earth was divided by the sons of Japheth, Ham, and Shem, after their families and tongues, in their lands and nations. In Abraham's time even Shem's progeny served other gods — an evil most portentous, and unknown before the deluge. Out of this was Abraham called of God. The rest of the world was left to itself. God called the man of His choice not to attack or reform the evil, but to Himself and a land He would show him with blessing assured. Separation to God on the call of His grace we see in the man, the family, the nation in which He will be magnified for ever.

This, if believed, involved obedience at once; and so it is here written. The old relationships remained for all but Abraham, in the sphere of divine providence, as of judgment at the end of the age. But the separated man was to follow as God in grace led. He is the depositary of promise, and thus his faith was tested, not at the start only but continuously. The land to be shown in due time was as yet unknown, so as to cast him on simple-hearted confidence in God. He went out in subjection to God's promise, not knowing whither he went. God would show the next step when Abraham took the first. He did not ask, Whither? He trusted God implicitly. Thus his faith was unmixed with calculations of self, resting solely but fully on His word who loves and never deceives.