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Austin Seminary, good morning. Good morning. It is one of the foundational missiological texts in the Bible. Missionaries, both local and global, along with the Great Commission found in Matthew 28,

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often point to God's command to Abram in Genesis 12, verses 1 through 4. This sevenfold promise God gives to Abram is rich and well-known. That God would make him into a great nation, and God would bless him. God would make his name great, and he would be a blessing.

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God would bless those who bless him, and whoever curses him, God would curse, and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. Scholars across traditions identify this passage as the beginning of God's redemptive plan for the nations, the theological root of mission in the Old Testament, and the shift in the biblical narrative from a universal humanity to a chosen family. From the table of nations in Genesis 10, the camera will zoom in on Abram's family, and we will be with them all the way to Revelation. It is Missio Dei in seed form.

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that Old Testament scholar Christopher J.H. Wright states that the whole Bible's mission theology grows out of this passage. But the promises are not where I want to draw our attention this morning. In the seven days since Carolyn Helsel stood in this sacred space to preach last week, America has launched missiles into Iran, creating yet another international conflict with ripple effects for generations

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And there has been yet another mass shooting in this country, this time right here in Austin, Texas. And so I stand here this morning with a heavy heart. Like so many who have come before, I feel the pull, the desire, the hope, and the promises that God gives to Abram. But in order for Abram to receive the gifts from God, Abram and Sarai first had to leave some things behind.

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And if America is to survive these clear and trying times, we too must commit to leave some things in the past in order to step into a brighter future. It is not what Abram receives that speaks to me this morning, but when he leaves. It's not just that God calls Abram to something, but from something that has my attention. That's what I want to talk about this morning.

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Not just to, but from. Not just to, but from. Mic? There we go.

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Here again, God's command to Abram and the unnamed but equally necessary Sarai. Leave your country, leave your family, and your father's household. Three things, 3 spheres of influence moving from the broad to the specific. And I want to talk about all three this morning.

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First, God calls Abram to leave his country. God is inviting Abram to lifelong displacement. It is an invitation to be misunderstood. The majority of conversations Abram and Sarai will have for the rest of their lives will be cross-cultural conversations.

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The food will be different, the languages, the customs, almost all of it will be different from everything that they have known. To leave this country in the ancient Near East meant abandoning virtually every form of identity and security. Political protection, economic stability, social belonging, inherited land rights, and more. They are literally choosing to walk by faith and not by sight.

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And I can already hear you thinking, clutch the pearls. Why would anybody walk away from all of that? is what we are looking for. Who would leave those things?

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I'm glad you asked. Why would God call someone to leave all of those things behind? To answer that, we have to look at the end of Genesis 11, verses 27 through 32, give us the account of Abram's father, Terah. The Bible says that Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

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And then without much explanation, it simply tells us that Haran died. Abram and Nahor both married. And then verse 31 says, Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, Sarai, and together they set out to go from Ur of the Chaldeans to Canaan.

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Not in Numbers, not in Deuteronomy, not in Joshua, not after the Exodus. They were headed to the promised land in Genesis 11. But, the Bible says, when they came to Haran, they settled there. And then Terah lived to 205 years, and he died in Haran.

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Now, the text does not tell us why. Maybe the property value was nice in Haran. Maybe the Haranian stock market was flourishing and there was an opportunity for them to make some money. Maybe there were jobs that were available in Haran.

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Maybe they had family or cousins there. Maybe there were some fine sisters and fine brothers in Haran. And Lot was like, my boo thing is here somewhere. I want to stay right here for a while.

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Maybe after the loss of Heron, Tara lost a son, Abra lost a brother, and Lot lost his father. Maybe the grief was just too much. And so they were just tired.

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We don't know. The text does not tell us why they settled. All we do know is they intended to go one place, but decided to settle somewhere else. Where have you settled?

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What have you settled for? Where did you intend to go? And where did you stop? I know it's a Tuesday morning and it's a Presbyterian seminary, so not y'all, but if it was a Sunday morning and I was preaching back home at church, I'd say, I don't know, Maybe you set out for marriage but settled for living together.

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Batch on. I don't know, Maybe you set out to get in shape, but settled for a subscription to In Shape magazine. Maybe you set out to have a hard conversation, but settled for keeping the peace and called it grace. Maybe you set out to pastor an affirming, multicultural, multi-ethnic, missional church, but it got too hard, so you settled for a mission Sunday.

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Maybe you set out for a calling but settled for a job. I don't know where you may have settled in this room this Tuesday morning, but the Bible tells us we need to be careful where we settle. The text says that Terah lived 205 years and he died in Haran. We need to be careful where we settle because where we settle is where we will die.

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Our dreams will die. Our vision will die. Our ministry and relationships will die in Haran. And so when God calls Abram, he doesn't just call him to something.

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God calls him from something, from settling, from complacency. God says, Abram, your family may have settled, but you cannot. I have more for you to do. And so Abram leaves safety and security because his calling was to completion and never to his comfort.

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Before I move on, I need to pause here because leaving your country has direct application for us today, and I think that we need to sit in it. Most of the sermons, commentaries, and articles on Genesis 12 are written from the posture of citizenship. The promise of being Abram and Sarai, the ones sent out, the ones called, the ones bearing the promise. I don't hear nearly as much about what it means to receive Abram and Sarai.

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We are living in a time when those who are deemed as other, whether by nationality, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, or any other deviation from a cisgendered, heterosexual, Eurocentric norm, are increasingly deemed a threat to our society. And therein lies the danger of always reading scripture from a place of citizenship. It assumes that God is only with us and only works through us. We celebrate being sent to be a blessing, but we miss the blessings that are standing right in front of us from those who have been sent.

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The immigrants among us, the documented and the undocumented, they too are the Abrams and the Sarai's. They too have said yes to God. They too have left their homes and come to a land that God would show them. And if we are honest, we are more often the land that Abram enters than we are Abram and Sarai themselves.

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The fact is, too many immigrants come to this so-called Christian nation, but they do not encounter open-hearted Christians, but closed minds, closed hearts, and sometimes closed fists. To our seminary students, current events probably make you want to rethink what it means to be a citizen, to be an American. Let me say that this is right and true, not because we reject what it means to be an American, and do not e-mail me. That's not what I'm saying.

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Not because we reject what it means to be an American, but because we all must learn that God is bigger than the nations we call home. In Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis's second book in The Chronicles of Narnia, those four Pierovinski children, Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, return to Narnia after being away for one year. And after some dangerous situations, they finally encounter Aslan, that mythological, anthropomorphic adaptation of Jesus in the form of a lion that Lewis creates.

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And the text tells us that Lucy runs up to him, she's the youngest, she throws her arms around him, she buries her head in his mane, and she feels the warmth of his breath on her face. And after having not seen him for a year, she steps back and says, Aslan, you're bigger. He says, no, Lucy, I am not bigger. You are older.

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You will discover the older you get, the bigger I become. My friends, our faith is not rooted in a national identity, but in a theological certainty. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. If God only blesses us and no one else, if God only sends us and no one else, then to quote that timeless classic by J.B.

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Phillips, Your God is too small. Which brings me to this. If we are incapable of locating ourselves in the text, if we only know how to be Abram and Sarai and never receive Abram and Sarai, then I am afraid that is not a Reformed biblical theology.

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That is a Disney princess theology. A Disney princess theology, a phrase coined by my friend, the Reverend Erna Kim Hackett, is a theology where we only see ourselves as the princess in every story. We are always Esther and never Xerxes or Haman. Always Peter and never Judas.

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Always David, definitely not Saul, and most certainly not Goliath. Always the woman anointing Jesus, we're never the Pharisees. Always the Jews escaping Egypt, never Egypt during the oppressing. Erner writes, for the citizens of the most powerful nation in the world, a nation that enslaved both native and black bodies, to always see itself as Israel and never Egypt is a Disney princess theology.

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It leaves people in power with no lens for locating themselves rightly in scripture or in society. My friends, God is bigger than the United States, bigger than the Western world, bigger than our own individual cultures, nations, and families. And like Abram, in order to see the bigness of God and God's kingdom, we have to be willing to leave our small mindsets and sometimes our countries to embrace God's kingdom. And so first, God called Abram to leave his country, but second, God called Abram to leave his family.

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In leaving his family, Abram gave up both kinship and geographic identity, the intermediate layer between the nation and the household. Family in the ancient Near East was not merely relational, it was structural. It defined your alliances, your obligations, your place in the social order. To leave your family was to step out of that web entirely.

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And so I must ask us this Tuesday morning, what family systems What tribal loyalties, what inherited assumptions are we being called to step outside of? Not to abandon the people we love, but to refuse to let those loyalties define the outer limits of our obedience to God. God called Abram to leave his country.

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He called him to leave his family. But third and finally, God calls Abram to leave his father's household. And this is the most intimate departure of the three. To leave his father's house meant that Abraham would forfeit his rights to his inheritance and to his family property.

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He was walking away from security, from generational wealth, and the safety of legacy simply because God said so. There is something here for those of us who have inherited not just property, but theology. Not just land, but assumptions about who God is, who is in, who is out, who the church is for, and whom it serves. My friends, faithfulness sometimes requires leaving some things behind.

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And so as we conclude the first quarter of 2026, God's call to Abram is also a call to all of us, not just to something, but from something. From settling for less than the fullness of God's vision, from reading scripture as only the protagonist and never is 1 in need of repentance, from a national identity that has quietly become an idol, from inherited theologies that protect our comfort rather than liberate our neighbors. The question before us is not only personal, what national myths must we leave behind?

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What interpretive habits must we surrender? What institutional comforts must we be willing to walk away from? What does it mean for the church? This church, the one that you and I are

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a part of, to stop settling in Haran and start moving towards God's promises. Because Genesis 12 is not merely a story about self-improvement. It is a story about relocation, repositioning ourselves, our theology, and our institutions for the sake of the nations. All of the families on earth will be blessed.

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Not just ours. Abram went. Sarai went. They didn't exactly know where they were going.

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They just knew that they had to leave. Not just from something, not just to something rather, but from something. May God give us the courage to do the same. Amen.