Genesis 12:6

Genesis 12:6

This is one of the most comforting verses in the Bible. It is so simple and yet so sure. It tells us that the end is certain if the beginning is right.

I. The text is written from heaven's side of the question. It is the history put in short of all the saints who ever went to glory. They took a long journey, and at last they got safely home. The rest how it was, why it was, all that makes up the interval is the grace of God.

II. There were difficulties by the way: why are we not told of them? Because from the mountain top the way by which we have travelled looks level and easy. Things that were great at the time seem so small from that height that we do not care to see them.

III. What is it really to set out? It is to recognise and answer God's call. The great secret of life is to have a strong aim. All through his life Abraham had one single object in view. It was Canaan. The record of each antediluvian patriarch was, "He lived so many years, and he died." That is one side of the picture, but there is another: "They went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

J. Vaughan, Sermons,Eleventh Series, p. 221. Reference: Genesis 12:5. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 843.