In our last lesson, Abram had given Lot the choice concerning where he would live, and we saw that Lot chose for himself what appeared to be the best of the land—the well-watered Jordan plain. We also saw that there was a problem with his choice—the inhabitants of this area were very wicked. How does a person who walks with God respond when someone suffers from a poor choice? Does he say, “I told you so,” or is there a better alternative?
A WAR FOR POWER
Genesis 14:1-4 says,
“And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). All these joined together in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.”
In these four verses we are confronted with a lot of generally unfamiliar ancient names. Out of the first group of four kings, there are two names that can be traced back—Shinar is ancient Babylon (present day Iraq) and Elam is Persia (present day Iran). It would seem reasonable that the other two kings associated in this group would also be from the Mesopotamian area. The second group is comprised of city kings, and these cities were all located in the Jordan River valley/Dead Sea area. Recall that Lot had decided to settle near Sodom when he and Abram separated. Apparently Chedarlaomer is the leader of the first group and this group wages war and defeats the city kings and forces them to pay tribute to Chedarlaomer for twelve years.
Persia and Babylon are not located particularly close to the Jordan River. It has been estimated that to travel on foot or by camel or horse would take about four months from one place to another. Why would anyone living so far away want to conquer and rule over these cities? I think the answer is that they had a lust for power. History seems filled with men who wanted to dominate and control others—Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, etc. There seems to be a great fleshly satisfaction, rooted in pride, that comes from dominating others, but it is the exact opposite of the nature of God. Although He created man, He gave him the power to choose his own path. Jesus described Himself in Matthew 11:29 as “meek and lowly” and we find in I Corinthians 13 that “love does not seek its own way.” There is no place in the life of a believer for trying to dominate and control others for whom he has no responsibility from God. Naturally, a parent is required to exercise control over children and rulers, judges, and law enforcers must exercise control for the good of all, but this is not the same as a person who seeks to take control not rightfully his.
When the Scripture says that they served Chedarlaomer for twelve years, this means that they were forced to pay tribute, money and goods, to him. Tribute paid willingly, such as an offering to God, is a sign of true love and devotion. Tribute paid unwillingly is a humiliation. Not only does it place a burden on the resources of the payer, it is an admission of weakness.
OBSERVATION: I don’t think that one can truly humiliate a humble person. Only pride can suffer humiliation.
It says that the city kings served Chedarloamer for twelve years, and there is an interesting little idea with this. I had a chance to read a relatively new book on biblical numerology (Biblical Numerology, by John J. Davis) and apparently it is thought that in the Bible the number twelve symbolizes governmental perfection or rule. Perhaps after twelve years, it seemed time for the rule of Chedarlaomer to end. At any rate, the Scripture says that in the thirteenth year, the city kings rebelled, meaning that they would send no more tribute.
CHEDARLAOMER PICKS UP THE GAUNTLET
Verses 5-7 of Genesis 14 say,
“In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him came and attacked the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in the mountain of Seir, as far as El Paran, which is by the wilderness. Then they turned back and came to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and attacked all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who dwelt in Hazezon Tamar.”
Here we have a lot more ancient names, but after checking them out, it looks like the Mesopotamian kings attacked the people living on the east side of the Jordan River and then came south of the Dead Sea and around up into the area of Canaan, west of the Jordan River, attacking all the people groups who lived in these areas. They apparently saved the city kings for last.
I hope, at this point, that you will indulge me in a little allegorization. We have Abram and Lot, two believers, living in the Promised Land, surrounded by Canaanites. Abram is growing strong in his faith, but Lot is compromised and living too close to wickedness. As believers, we are also living in the Promised Land. The Lord has promised to return and rule over this earth absolutely, and it is our job to occupy the land until He comes. Some believers, like Abram, avoid wickedness and worldliness, but others, like Lot, are living carnal lives. The Canaanites represent unbelievers and they are forced to pay tribute to their enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil. Abram, though he lived in their land, paid them no tribute. In our world, unbelievers pay tribute to the world, the flesh, and ultimately the devil by following the world’s system of competition, fleshly gratification, and generally organizing their lives without genuine respect for God. But as believers in Christ, we are set free (John 8:36) and no longer pay tribute to our enemies. We are to live in the world, without becoming worldly (I John 2:15-17).
Returning to verses 5-7, we see that it was not until the fourteenth year that this attack force came into Canaan. Apparently, it took time to gather these forces and the necessary supplies, and we have already observed that it took a long time to travel the required distance. On the face of it, this must have been a formidable fighting force, because none of the people groups could repel them, not even the Horites who lived in the mountains. This group coming from the Mesopotamian area represents, I believe, the pride of man. The Tower of Babel, a monument to human pride, was built there and later the city of Babylon, also a monument to pride and worldliness, was founded in Mesopotamia.
OBSERVATION: It is absolutely impossible to defeat pride apart from the grace of God, and it is also impossible for the proud in heart to truly worship God.
IN THE PITS
Verses 8-10 say,
“And the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out and joined together in battle in the Valley of Siddim against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, Tidal king of nations, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of asphalt pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled; some fell there, and the remainder fled to the mountains.”
As mentioned before, we cannot defeat pride in our own strength, nor can we free ourselves from lust and the world’s ways. When the Scripture says “full of asphalt pits”, the Hebrew says, “pits, pits”. Repeating the word signifies that there were asphalt (bitumen) pits everywhere. The city kings’ forces fell into these pits as they tried to escape the stronger forces of the Mesopotamian kings, and those who escaped the pits and the enemy kings ran to the mountains to hide.
Returning to our allegory, we see that the asphalt was a useful thing. It could be used for waterproofing and building. I think these pits correspond to money and possessions. They can be very useful in life, but we have to remember that they come in a pit. If we fall into that pit, then our possessions will possess us. The mountains symbolize hiding in solitude from the world. So often when people get hurt, they seek refuge in solitude and withdrawal from the world. But it is the purpose of God that we trust in Him during each trial and thereby gain spiritual strength. Every “battle” in life is meant to be an opportunity for us to “score” from a spiritual standpoint.
CHOICES BRING CONSEQUENCES
Verses 11-12 say,
“Then they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way. They also took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.”
Notice in this verse that in the time between this event and the separation of Lot and Abram, Lot has made an even worse choice. When he first left Abram, he pitched his tent near Sodom. Now, he is actually living within the city. Initially, he made a poor choice, and it has led him to embrace wickedness.
QUESTION: How easy would it be to go from living with Abram to living in Sodom?
Now, Lot is caught. He chose to live in the carnality of the world, and he has lost everything except his life and even that is subject to the whims of an oppressor. Pride will leave you with nothing. It will drive away those who could have been friends and allies and leave you burdened with stuff that brings at most a temporary satisfaction.
A WARRIOR ARISES
Continuing in the Scriptures, we read,
“Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, for he dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner; and they were allies with Abram. Now when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants who were born in his own house, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He divided his forces against them by night, and he and his servants attacked them and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. So he brought back his brother Lot and his goods, as well as the women and the people.”
First we see that Abram is a well-known figure in the land. Somebody who escaped this battle and who knew Lot and his relationship to Abram, ran to tell Abram all about it. A little side note: this is the first use of the word “Hebrew” in the Scriptures and it literally means, “cross over.” I think that, not only had Abram crossed over from Ur to Canaan, but he had crossed over from pagan to faithful follower of God. We also see that Abram has made some allies in the land among the Canaanites. I think the implication here is that even though Abram is worshiping a God that the Canaanites know nothing about, his worship sets his life apart as righteous. These three brothers, Mamre, Eshcol, and Aner, are not ashamed of Abram because he worships a different God. They have chosen to ally themselves with a person whose worship is not self-centered or hypocritical. Thirdly, we see that Abram has 318 trained servants who have been born in his house. Because they were “born in his house”, they are absolutely loyal to Abram. Because they are “trained”, they are intelligent and equipped to fight. I think also they have been spiritually “trained” to follow the God of Abram.
How easy would it have been for Abram to reason, “Well, Lot asked for it!” Notice that these verses do not refer to Lot as Abram’s nephew, but as his brother. There is no attitude of “I told you so”, but a real willingness to rescue a beloved brother. As far as Abram was concerned, Lot belonged in the Promised Land, and he wasn’t about to sit by and let him be dragged back to Ur.
QUESTION: How far will we go to bring back a fellow believer who has wandered too near the wickedness of the world? Jesus said that when we see sin in a believer’s life, we are to confront him in love. (Matthew 18:15-17)
QUESTION: Do we have any allies? Are any “Canaanites” in our circles of influence being drawn to worship our God?
We see from these verses that this was quite a long pursuit. Abram’s forces chased the kings north of Damascus. They kept pursuing until they caught up with the kings. During that time, it would have been easy to grow discouraged with the chase or frightened at the prospect of engaging four armies in battle after they had defeated every other people group in the area, as well as the five kings of the Jordan cities. But we see that their pursuit paid off, because victory was theirs. Not only did they defeat their enemies, but they returned with all that had been lost.
Returning to our allegory, we see that believers must have a genuine care for others and a willingness to pursue those caught by the world. There is no place for just “letting them go.” Also, the one who walks in faith and worships God will find success against the world, the flesh and the devil.
LIGHT AND DARK
This story ends in verse 17—
“And the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley), after his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him.”
I have a feeling this must have been an interesting meeting. Abram, who is not a king, but a foreigner, has been able to do what the king of Sodom and all his allies could not do. While the king was hiding in the mountains and bemoaning his losses and salving his wounded pride, Abram has been fighting his enemies. Abram returns a victorious warrior with all the people and the loot.
OBSERVATION: God wants His people to be the faithful, worshiping people who are ready when the time comes to get up off the sidelines and engage the enemy. We can’t use knives, clubs, and swords, but we can use prayer and loving confrontation to bring back those who err and we can resist the encroachment of the world, the flesh, and the devil in our own lives. But we can only do these things as we remember each day to lay ourselves on an altar to God, giving our entire lives to Him in genuine worship. An altar is a place where we die that He may live in us, not a place where we manipulate Him in order to get what we want.
I realize that this isn’t really the end of the story regarding Abram and the king of Sodom, but the person of Melchizedek is so interesting that I want to save it for the next lesson. I hope you will join us to learn about this mysterious figure.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
ABRAHAM - THE PROBLEM OF POSSESSIONS
Welcome to Bible Study online. We are continuing to study the life of Abraham with special reference to his faith and worship. We have a few additional Scriptures to look up, so grab your Bible and let's look at Abraham.
ABRAHAM - THE PROBLEM OF POSSESSIONS
We have seen that when Abram left Egypt, he had attained great wealth through the generosity of pharaoh. While great possessions can assure our comfort in life, they also leave us burdened with maintenance, thereby encroaching on the very comfort we value and seek. Is there any balance in life between the freedom and the responsibility that comes with possessions?
A LOOK AT LOT
Let's review Genesis 13:1-4.
"Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, to the South. Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he went on his journey from the South as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD."
The passage that we are going to be looking at today really introduces us to Abram's nephew Lot for the first time. He has been mentioned earlier as traveling with his uncle from Ur to the Promised Land, but we have not yet had any further insight into his personality. From these verses we see that he traveled with Abram into Egypt and back out again. Up to this point, he has shown wisdom in sticking with Abram, both as a family leader and a spiritual mentor. Abram is the one to whom God has spoken and he is leading the family. Lot is respectfully following along. As a follower (learner, or disciple), it is important to pay close attention to the leader. You can learn a lot by watching, paying attention to their successes, failures, and personal habits and attitudes. He has seen Abram build altars to the LORD and begin to possess the land by his spiritual influence. But he has also seen Abram falter when perplexity came. In Abram's life, and I think in the life of every believer, there were times when God revealed Himself clearly, but there were also times when God was concealed, and perplexity was the result. Abram has just come through a time of perplexity as a result of the famine. He made a mistake in turning to Egypt for help and in forsaking his altar with God during his sojourn in Egypt. God intervened and Abram returned to the Land of Canaan, and originally went to the South, also called the Negev. Apparently, he still did not find the spiritual restoration he was seeking, so he traveled all the way back to the altar he had built between Bethel and Ai. Recall that the names of Bethel (House of God) and Ai (ruin) signify finding a balance in life between the spiritual and the physical. He has returned and found spiritual restoration, sacrificing self and the physical on the altar and beginning once again to proclaim the name of the LORD in the land. Lot has witnessed all these things in the life of Abram. The question is, "does he learn from his mentor?"
ALL THAT STUFF!
We are tested and proven in life and our character is formed by the problems we encounter and our ensuing decisions. Let's take a look at the first recorded problem in the life of Abram's nephew Lot. Genesis 13:5-7 says,
"Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents. Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. The Canaanites and the Perizzites then dwelt in the land."
First, I think it is fair to say that Lot had prospered largely because of his relationship with Abram. While pharaoh was busy lavishing stuff on Abram, he did not neglect to show generosity toward Lot as well. They both came out of Egypt heavily loaded with livestock, servants, gold, and silver. We will see in future chapters that Abram alone had more than 300 men in his camp, not including women and children. Imagine pitching all those tents and keeping all the livestock and finding water enough. Lot, we can imagine, had quite a number of people under his responsibility. Remembering that they did not come into a vast, empty land and stake a claim, but that the Canaanites were already in the land, we can easily see that it would have become difficult to find enough pasture to keep everybody together and still be out of the natives' way. Quarreling broke out, not between Abram and Lot, but between their herdsmen because they had been given a job to do without adequate resources.
OBSERVATION: As a wealthy nation, our chief problem often seems to be how to deal with all our stuff. I have traveled in the "high end" areas of some of our cities, and I am amazed at some of the homes that I see. They are huge--more like castles than homes, and I find myself wondering what it takes to keep the place up. One would simply have to hire help with it. I can easily imagine from looking at them that it would take most of a day just to vacuum, sweep and mop the floors. Even with a riding lawn mower, the yard work would eat up chunks of time. But on a smaller scale, the average American home has so much stuff that the closets are full, the drawers are full, the shelves are full, the outside storage is full, the vehicles are outside because the double-garage is full, and the final answer seems to be to rent additional storage space! Stuff gets to be quite a burden! I have found that Goodwill stores are a tremendous blessing for me because I can lay down some of the burden, and others can then benefit from it.
QUESTION: Since the acquisition of stuff clearly taxes our time, energy and resources, why are we so eager to get more? And if it really brought us satisfaction, would we need to continue to acquire more? Are we just so bored with life that we don't know anything else to do? And how often do we quarrel over our stuff, both among our own family members as well as our neighbors? Isn't this the root of a lot of our lawsuits?
QUESTION: What kind of a witness to the "Canaanites and Perizzites" in our lives is our quarreling over stuff?
THE EVIDENCE OF AN ALTAR
As the story continues, I think we will see that Abram's altar, i.e., his worship of the true God, has received the sacrifice, not only of Abram's personal self, but his stuff as well. As we read in verses 8-9, notice the following principles operating in Abram after his return to Bethel/Ai:
PRINCIPLE ONE: Less stuff = More freedom
PRINCIPLE TWO: Less of Me = More spiritual freedom
PRINCIPLE THREE: Abram's Altar = Freedom to let Lot choose
"So Abram said to Lot, 'Please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left.'"
The answer to the problem seems obvious. Sheep and cattle require sufficient grass and water, so more pasture is necessary. They will have to either sell off some of their stuff or find more pasture. As later events unfold, I think it will seem evident that Lot was not spiritually mature enough to separate from Abram and would have done better to sell some of his stuff. However, the decision is made to separate. Lot will leave and begin to demonstrate his own character through his decisions.
In looking at this passage, I am reminded of American history, when the westward movement began. The land in the east was filling up and more land was needed for the people to grow. As the people pushed further west, the natives were increasingly pressed for resources and wars broke out. I think the US government always had good intentions in their dealings with the Indians, but they just were shortsighted about it all. Treaties were inevitably broken because the land was needed for settlement and the natives were forced to adapt to the ways of the settlers or die. Competition is basically a cruel, selfish business, but it is hard to live in the world's system without it.
As the elder and the leader of the family, it was certainly Abram's right to choose what he wanted for himself, but he chose to waive his personal rights and show graciousness to Lot. I think in doing so, he also chose to leave the matter to God; he accepted Lot's choice as God's choice for himself as well. So often we want to fight and kick when others make choices that affect us, but God is in control of our circumstances. If the choices of others are not in line with His will for our lives, He will circumvent things Himself. The world teaches us that we must fight for our rights and that if we won't stand up for ourselves, nobody else will either. Faith teaches us that God engineers our circumstances according to His good pleasure and it is up to us to trust Him completely.
In verse 9, Abram tells Lot to take a look at the land and choose. I think that there is more in this statement than just a real estate appraisal. This is a choice that is about more than just finding pasture. The real question is, "Lot, where would you like to live? What will you choose to be influenced by in life?"
LOT'S CHOICE
Verses 10-13 show us Lot's character as he makes his choice:
"And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar. Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east. And they separated from each other. Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD."
These verses tell us that the Jordan plain was as lush and beautiful as the Garden of Eden itself. There was plenty of pasture for his livestock as well as the native dwellers. No more struggle to get what he needed. Who wouldn't want that? Do you suppose he felt a twinge of guilt at taking what obviously appeared to be the best? Or was it just a good business decision? From a physical standpoint, it was the best decision, and Lot apparently was standing solidly in the physical realm.
QUESTION: On what will we choose to depend--the physical or God? We absolutely cannot have it both ways, but there will be a constant tug-of-war between the two, especially living in a very materially-oriented society.
In contrast to Lot, Abram has kept tryst with God at his altar, not only in regard to his personal life, but in regard to his possessions as well. He graciously allows Lot to take the "best." The Scriptures tell us that Lot was a righteous man (II Peter 2:7-8), but he clearly does not exhibit the same faith as Abram. He is compromised in his faith, and it will eventually cost him everything that he has depended on. We see at the end of these verses that Abram has settled in the land, but Lot has settled in the cities. He has pitched his tent, i.e., settled his physical life, as close to wickedness as possible in the attempt to have abundance.
POINT: Jesus taught us that, "Life is more than an abundance of possessions." (Luke 12:15)
OBSERVATION: The first thing that Cain did after he killed Abel and was judged for it was to go out and build a city. (Genesis 4:16-17) While cities may be beautiful, they tend to be strongholds of the flesh. They operate on competition (basically, selfishness), love of stuff, and a dependence upon man rather than God. People who live in cities generally have a harder time maintaining an attitude of dependence upon God and detachment from things, while people who live close to the land tend to depend more upon God to meet their needs. It is a matter, I think, that requires a more close circumspection in the lives of believers who dwell in metropolitan areas. (Hopefully, I haven't offended any city dwellers too much. Obviously there are people in large cities who maintain a godly walk and growth, and I think the Brooklyn Tabernacle congregation would be an excellent example.)
THE LORD REVEALED
After Abram's graciousness toward Lot, God once again chooses to reveal Himself to Abram. Verses 14-17 say,
"And the LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: 'Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are--northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.'"
After Abram's spiritual detour in Egypt, he has returned to the Promised Land and has been reestablished in his faith. He has proven his trust in God by allowing Lot to choose where he will live. Consequently, God appears again to Abram and reaffirms His promises of the past. The Scriptures tell us that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29) We can't mess it up badly enough to cause God to "unbless" us, but He may occasionally have to change the manner in which He blesses us in order to get our attention. The blessing of God is not stuff, but Himself; when we give ourselves to God on the altar, He gives His own life, His Holy Self, in the form of the Holy Spirit, to us! (John 14:16-18) What a thought! And He will never take that away, even when we blunder from time to time. (John 6:37) He reaffirms to Abram that the land--all of it, including the land in the east that Lot chose for himself, will belong to Abram and his descendants. He also promises that Abram's descendants will be more numerous than the sand. These promises require faith--Abram doesn't own any land in Canaan and he has no heir as yet. Hebrews 11:13 tells us that Abram and other people of faith saw the promises of God from afar, but that the fulfillment came later.
POSSESSION WITHOUT OWNERSHIP
The appearance of God concludes with the instruction to Abram to arise and walk throughout the land. This isn't just a sightseeing tour. By walking through the land, Abram is taking possession of it morally. God has His hand on Abram and the inhabitants of the land recognize it, as we will see in later chapters. He never owns the land, but he possesses it through godly influence.
QUESTION: We may own property in this life, but is the influence of the Lord felt as we walk about in our land? Or are we like Lot--compromised because we are attached to our possessions?
WHAT IS WORSHIP?
Worship and faith are the two main characteristics that we see as we study the life of Abram. Chapter 13 concludes thus:
"Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to the LORD."
One of the main points that we can easily see in the life of Abram is that when he built an altar, his faith remained strong and he proclaimed the LORD to the land's inhabitants. When he neglected to build an altar (Egypt), his faith wavered. As we have said before, an altar is a place of death. The worshiper identifies himself with the sacrifice as dying to sin and self in order to live to God (Romans 12:1-2) As Christians, we identify ourselves with the death of Jesus. As Jesus took on our sin at the cross and died carrying it, God's verdict that sin must die is exhibited. It is important to understand that we cannot blithely pray and ask for salvation without the accompanying death to sin. (Repentance is the actual word for death to self and sin.) We are saved, not principally from hell, but from sin. Hell is the consequence of sin. Once we are saved from sin, hell is no longer a consequence to be faced.
POINT: Real Worship is not an emotionally moving service at church--it is a death that produces devotion to Christ.
Thanks for joining us. The next lesson will begin to reveal the consequences of Lot's choice. I hope you will join us.
ABRAHAM - THE PROBLEM OF POSSESSIONS
We have seen that when Abram left Egypt, he had attained great wealth through the generosity of pharaoh. While great possessions can assure our comfort in life, they also leave us burdened with maintenance, thereby encroaching on the very comfort we value and seek. Is there any balance in life between the freedom and the responsibility that comes with possessions?
A LOOK AT LOT
Let's review Genesis 13:1-4.
"Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, to the South. Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he went on his journey from the South as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD."
The passage that we are going to be looking at today really introduces us to Abram's nephew Lot for the first time. He has been mentioned earlier as traveling with his uncle from Ur to the Promised Land, but we have not yet had any further insight into his personality. From these verses we see that he traveled with Abram into Egypt and back out again. Up to this point, he has shown wisdom in sticking with Abram, both as a family leader and a spiritual mentor. Abram is the one to whom God has spoken and he is leading the family. Lot is respectfully following along. As a follower (learner, or disciple), it is important to pay close attention to the leader. You can learn a lot by watching, paying attention to their successes, failures, and personal habits and attitudes. He has seen Abram build altars to the LORD and begin to possess the land by his spiritual influence. But he has also seen Abram falter when perplexity came. In Abram's life, and I think in the life of every believer, there were times when God revealed Himself clearly, but there were also times when God was concealed, and perplexity was the result. Abram has just come through a time of perplexity as a result of the famine. He made a mistake in turning to Egypt for help and in forsaking his altar with God during his sojourn in Egypt. God intervened and Abram returned to the Land of Canaan, and originally went to the South, also called the Negev. Apparently, he still did not find the spiritual restoration he was seeking, so he traveled all the way back to the altar he had built between Bethel and Ai. Recall that the names of Bethel (House of God) and Ai (ruin) signify finding a balance in life between the spiritual and the physical. He has returned and found spiritual restoration, sacrificing self and the physical on the altar and beginning once again to proclaim the name of the LORD in the land. Lot has witnessed all these things in the life of Abram. The question is, "does he learn from his mentor?"
ALL THAT STUFF!
We are tested and proven in life and our character is formed by the problems we encounter and our ensuing decisions. Let's take a look at the first recorded problem in the life of Abram's nephew Lot. Genesis 13:5-7 says,
"Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents. Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. The Canaanites and the Perizzites then dwelt in the land."
First, I think it is fair to say that Lot had prospered largely because of his relationship with Abram. While pharaoh was busy lavishing stuff on Abram, he did not neglect to show generosity toward Lot as well. They both came out of Egypt heavily loaded with livestock, servants, gold, and silver. We will see in future chapters that Abram alone had more than 300 men in his camp, not including women and children. Imagine pitching all those tents and keeping all the livestock and finding water enough. Lot, we can imagine, had quite a number of people under his responsibility. Remembering that they did not come into a vast, empty land and stake a claim, but that the Canaanites were already in the land, we can easily see that it would have become difficult to find enough pasture to keep everybody together and still be out of the natives' way. Quarreling broke out, not between Abram and Lot, but between their herdsmen because they had been given a job to do without adequate resources.
OBSERVATION: As a wealthy nation, our chief problem often seems to be how to deal with all our stuff. I have traveled in the "high end" areas of some of our cities, and I am amazed at some of the homes that I see. They are huge--more like castles than homes, and I find myself wondering what it takes to keep the place up. One would simply have to hire help with it. I can easily imagine from looking at them that it would take most of a day just to vacuum, sweep and mop the floors. Even with a riding lawn mower, the yard work would eat up chunks of time. But on a smaller scale, the average American home has so much stuff that the closets are full, the drawers are full, the shelves are full, the outside storage is full, the vehicles are outside because the double-garage is full, and the final answer seems to be to rent additional storage space! Stuff gets to be quite a burden! I have found that Goodwill stores are a tremendous blessing for me because I can lay down some of the burden, and others can then benefit from it.
QUESTION: Since the acquisition of stuff clearly taxes our time, energy and resources, why are we so eager to get more? And if it really brought us satisfaction, would we need to continue to acquire more? Are we just so bored with life that we don't know anything else to do? And how often do we quarrel over our stuff, both among our own family members as well as our neighbors? Isn't this the root of a lot of our lawsuits?
QUESTION: What kind of a witness to the "Canaanites and Perizzites" in our lives is our quarreling over stuff?
THE EVIDENCE OF AN ALTAR
As the story continues, I think we will see that Abram's altar, i.e., his worship of the true God, has received the sacrifice, not only of Abram's personal self, but his stuff as well. As we read in verses 8-9, notice the following principles operating in Abram after his return to Bethel/Ai:
PRINCIPLE ONE: Less stuff = More freedom
PRINCIPLE TWO: Less of Me = More spiritual freedom
PRINCIPLE THREE: Abram's Altar = Freedom to let Lot choose
"So Abram said to Lot, 'Please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left.'"
The answer to the problem seems obvious. Sheep and cattle require sufficient grass and water, so more pasture is necessary. They will have to either sell off some of their stuff or find more pasture. As later events unfold, I think it will seem evident that Lot was not spiritually mature enough to separate from Abram and would have done better to sell some of his stuff. However, the decision is made to separate. Lot will leave and begin to demonstrate his own character through his decisions.
In looking at this passage, I am reminded of American history, when the westward movement began. The land in the east was filling up and more land was needed for the people to grow. As the people pushed further west, the natives were increasingly pressed for resources and wars broke out. I think the US government always had good intentions in their dealings with the Indians, but they just were shortsighted about it all. Treaties were inevitably broken because the land was needed for settlement and the natives were forced to adapt to the ways of the settlers or die. Competition is basically a cruel, selfish business, but it is hard to live in the world's system without it.
As the elder and the leader of the family, it was certainly Abram's right to choose what he wanted for himself, but he chose to waive his personal rights and show graciousness to Lot. I think in doing so, he also chose to leave the matter to God; he accepted Lot's choice as God's choice for himself as well. So often we want to fight and kick when others make choices that affect us, but God is in control of our circumstances. If the choices of others are not in line with His will for our lives, He will circumvent things Himself. The world teaches us that we must fight for our rights and that if we won't stand up for ourselves, nobody else will either. Faith teaches us that God engineers our circumstances according to His good pleasure and it is up to us to trust Him completely.
In verse 9, Abram tells Lot to take a look at the land and choose. I think that there is more in this statement than just a real estate appraisal. This is a choice that is about more than just finding pasture. The real question is, "Lot, where would you like to live? What will you choose to be influenced by in life?"
LOT'S CHOICE
Verses 10-13 show us Lot's character as he makes his choice:
"And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar. Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east. And they separated from each other. Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD."
These verses tell us that the Jordan plain was as lush and beautiful as the Garden of Eden itself. There was plenty of pasture for his livestock as well as the native dwellers. No more struggle to get what he needed. Who wouldn't want that? Do you suppose he felt a twinge of guilt at taking what obviously appeared to be the best? Or was it just a good business decision? From a physical standpoint, it was the best decision, and Lot apparently was standing solidly in the physical realm.
QUESTION: On what will we choose to depend--the physical or God? We absolutely cannot have it both ways, but there will be a constant tug-of-war between the two, especially living in a very materially-oriented society.
In contrast to Lot, Abram has kept tryst with God at his altar, not only in regard to his personal life, but in regard to his possessions as well. He graciously allows Lot to take the "best." The Scriptures tell us that Lot was a righteous man (II Peter 2:7-8), but he clearly does not exhibit the same faith as Abram. He is compromised in his faith, and it will eventually cost him everything that he has depended on. We see at the end of these verses that Abram has settled in the land, but Lot has settled in the cities. He has pitched his tent, i.e., settled his physical life, as close to wickedness as possible in the attempt to have abundance.
POINT: Jesus taught us that, "Life is more than an abundance of possessions." (Luke 12:15)
OBSERVATION: The first thing that Cain did after he killed Abel and was judged for it was to go out and build a city. (Genesis 4:16-17) While cities may be beautiful, they tend to be strongholds of the flesh. They operate on competition (basically, selfishness), love of stuff, and a dependence upon man rather than God. People who live in cities generally have a harder time maintaining an attitude of dependence upon God and detachment from things, while people who live close to the land tend to depend more upon God to meet their needs. It is a matter, I think, that requires a more close circumspection in the lives of believers who dwell in metropolitan areas. (Hopefully, I haven't offended any city dwellers too much. Obviously there are people in large cities who maintain a godly walk and growth, and I think the Brooklyn Tabernacle congregation would be an excellent example.)
THE LORD REVEALED
After Abram's graciousness toward Lot, God once again chooses to reveal Himself to Abram. Verses 14-17 say,
"And the LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: 'Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are--northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.'"
After Abram's spiritual detour in Egypt, he has returned to the Promised Land and has been reestablished in his faith. He has proven his trust in God by allowing Lot to choose where he will live. Consequently, God appears again to Abram and reaffirms His promises of the past. The Scriptures tell us that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29) We can't mess it up badly enough to cause God to "unbless" us, but He may occasionally have to change the manner in which He blesses us in order to get our attention. The blessing of God is not stuff, but Himself; when we give ourselves to God on the altar, He gives His own life, His Holy Self, in the form of the Holy Spirit, to us! (John 14:16-18) What a thought! And He will never take that away, even when we blunder from time to time. (John 6:37) He reaffirms to Abram that the land--all of it, including the land in the east that Lot chose for himself, will belong to Abram and his descendants. He also promises that Abram's descendants will be more numerous than the sand. These promises require faith--Abram doesn't own any land in Canaan and he has no heir as yet. Hebrews 11:13 tells us that Abram and other people of faith saw the promises of God from afar, but that the fulfillment came later.
POSSESSION WITHOUT OWNERSHIP
The appearance of God concludes with the instruction to Abram to arise and walk throughout the land. This isn't just a sightseeing tour. By walking through the land, Abram is taking possession of it morally. God has His hand on Abram and the inhabitants of the land recognize it, as we will see in later chapters. He never owns the land, but he possesses it through godly influence.
QUESTION: We may own property in this life, but is the influence of the Lord felt as we walk about in our land? Or are we like Lot--compromised because we are attached to our possessions?
WHAT IS WORSHIP?
Worship and faith are the two main characteristics that we see as we study the life of Abram. Chapter 13 concludes thus:
"Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to the LORD."
One of the main points that we can easily see in the life of Abram is that when he built an altar, his faith remained strong and he proclaimed the LORD to the land's inhabitants. When he neglected to build an altar (Egypt), his faith wavered. As we have said before, an altar is a place of death. The worshiper identifies himself with the sacrifice as dying to sin and self in order to live to God (Romans 12:1-2) As Christians, we identify ourselves with the death of Jesus. As Jesus took on our sin at the cross and died carrying it, God's verdict that sin must die is exhibited. It is important to understand that we cannot blithely pray and ask for salvation without the accompanying death to sin. (Repentance is the actual word for death to self and sin.) We are saved, not principally from hell, but from sin. Hell is the consequence of sin. Once we are saved from sin, hell is no longer a consequence to be faced.
POINT: Real Worship is not an emotionally moving service at church--it is a death that produces devotion to Christ.
Thanks for joining us. The next lesson will begin to reveal the consequences of Lot's choice. I hope you will join us.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
ABRAHAM - A SPIRITUAL DETOUR
Welcome to Bible study online! We have been looking at the life of Abraham, concentrating on the development of his faith and life of worship. There are plenty of Scriptures to check out, so be sure to grab your Bible, and thanks for joining us!
ABRAHAM – CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND MY CONTROL
Faith has trusted God and cut ties to all that would hold it back. It has journeyed to the appointed place and placed all on the altar to God. It has searched for and found balance living a spiritual life in the physical world and is a living proclamation of the true God. What next? Faith must be tested in order to be found precious to God. (1 Peter 1:6-7) What is the purpose of a test? It shows you where you are in your studies. Have you really got a grasp of what you have been learning, or not? The test reveals to us where we are…God is already well aware of where we are.
SPIRITUAL DETOUR
Genesis 12:10 says,
“Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.”
Things have been going quite well for Abram. He has been moving about, taking moral and spiritual possession of the land of promise by building altars and proclaiming the name of the Lord who brought him to Canaan. He has been doing exactly what God called him to do, but then suddenly, there is a setback. He is faced with the question of what to feed all these people and animals for whom he is responsible. Circumstances have arisen that are quite beyond his control and he must respond to them. There is no record that he consulted God about this famine or what he should do for his people. God had plainly told him to go to Canaan, and he did, but now he is perplexed. He looks the situation over and decides to go to Egypt to find food.
Throughout the Bible, Egypt is a symbol of the world. The use of the term “world” in the Bible refers, not to the planet earth, but to the system of so-called “civilization” by which man operates on earth. It includes economic and financial systems, religious systems, political systems, and social systems. All of these systems operate without any reference to God—even the so-called “religious” systems at best pay only lip service to the true God. So any time we see a reference to Egypt in the Bible, this is what it refers to symbolically. The “world” is always the enemy of the believer. (1 John 2:16)
So we see that when things got lean in the Promised Land, Abram headed for Egypt. Now one thing in particular to notice here is that, while in Egypt, Abram did not build an altar and call on the name of the Lord. Up until now, he has been boldly walking through a pagan land proclaiming the true God, but this never happens in Egypt. Perhaps he is perplexed because of his circumstances. Have you ever felt the need to “defend God” because He allowed circumstances that did not seem “good” to you or to others? God doesn’t “need” us to come to His “defense” when times are bad. Rather, trying circumstances are meant to show who we really are. Will we stand firm, like Job, and boldly proclaim that we will trust Him even if He kills us? (Job 13:15) Are we truly confident in God in dark times? The only way to find out is to walk through darkness. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Psalm 23:4) How often have we quoted these words, but are they really true?
Spiritual “dry times”, or famine, will come in the life of any believer and also in any church. Some signs of spiritual dryness in our nation, church, and personal lives are:
1. Biblical ignorance—the Spirit of God creates a great hunger for the Word of God; (1 Peter 2:2) Biblical ignorance indicates that that hunger has been absent and the people have not been reading the Bible
2. Lack of attendance at church—the Spirit of God creates a hunger for fellowship with other believers and for hearing the Word of God; (Hebrews 10:24-25) lack of attendance reveals a lack of hunger for these things
3. Lack of faith in the efficacy of prayer or in God—the idea that “if it is to be, it is up to me” replaces a dependence on God in prayer (1 John 5:14-15)
4. Restlessness and always seeking a new thrill—the idea that a life with God should produce a continued sense of excitement with bigger and better thrills, rather than godliness with contentment, 1 Timothy 6:6 (this sense of restlessness may lead to dabbling in cults or even the occult in search of something new and exciting)
5. Finding the sermon and Bible study boring while finding entertainment and sports intensely exciting—the craving for excitement is of the flesh; the craving for the “still, small voice of God” is spiritual
What do our churches do when attendance begins to falter and people show little interest in God or church activities? Do we return to the altar and pray, asking God to intervene in the lives of His people? Or do we assume that God hasn’t got the power to bring people to Himself and that it is up to us to find a way to bolster our situation? Are we willing to prayerfully trust and wait and continue to feed and disciple the ones who are left, or do we launch out with brand new exciting programs to stir up people and get their interest? Abram didn’t intend to make a spiritual detour; he just used his common sense, right?
THE PLACE OF SPIRITUAL INTIMACY
Genesis 12:11-13 says,
“And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, ‘Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it will happen when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, “This is his wife”; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.’”
She really was his sister, after all—that is, his half-sister, (Genesis 20:12) so he wasn’t really asking her to lie….was he? The intent here was clearly to deceive, though I don’t imagine he realized that denying his true intimacy with Sarai would lead to such consequences. Remember that up to now, Abram has been journeying all over the land of Canaan proclaiming boldly the true God to a bunch of heathen idol-worshipers. But as he approaches Egypt, he becomes afraid. Egypt was Abram’s solution, not God’s, so he has no confidence as he approaches Egypt. Also, the world is not the same as paganism. Pagans at least acknowledge a god of some sort—it is just the wrong one! The world is its own god and wants only to exalt self—the very opposite of the believer who has built an altar and sacrificed himself to God. No wonder Abram is uncomfortable and afraid—the world is a scary place!
QUESTION: Do we ever compromise with the world in order to “feel safer” among unbelievers? Sarai is the mother of the promise, but Abram is willing to deny his intimacy with her to save his skin. Are we ever ashamed of our intimacy with the Lord and His Church before the world? Have we ever been uncomfortable introducing our believing friends to unbelieving associates? Is our church sacrificing itself to worldliness for the sake of expediency?
QUESTION: Is there an area in your life where you cannot honestly build an altar and call the Lord your God? If so, that is your Egypt.
WHAT THE WORLD WANTS
Genesis 12:14-15 says,
“So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house.”
Oops! Talk about unintended consequences! Wonder how Abram felt as he stood there watching the royal entourage load his Sarai onto an ornate palanquin and cart her off to Pharaoh’s harem? When our faith wobbles, sometimes the rest of us wobbles right along with it! Now what? Wonder how Sarai felt? Now instead of living in a tent, she lives in a palace. She is surrounded by servants at her beck and call. She can have a bath whenever she wants one! She is no doubt given beautiful clothes and jewels. She smells like spices instead of sheep! Well, after all, the man dragged her from her homeland, traveled all through Canaan in a tent, got into a famine, dragged her to Egypt, and then denied they were married because he thought it would save his own skin! But Pharaoh, though he has ultimate power in Egypt and can give her all she might desire, he is not her Abram. She is married to that man with the tents and the sheep and the altars. What is a woman to do?
Just like Pharaoh, the world wants us for its own. To the world, we actually look pretty good. The world desperately wants people who are honest, moral, upstanding, generous, hard-working people. The character traits of the church are attractive to the world. When was the last time you heard somebody running for political office say, “I am a lying, swindling, bribe-taking, skirt-chasing thief! I’m just what this country needs!” No, no. They trot out their pastors and their church positions and their charity work, etc. They want to look like a model Christian! Yes, the world really wants the church, but it wants to invade our spirituality and cut us off from the One who gives us life. It wants the spiritual character without the Spiritual Life. The world won’t have Jesus Christ because it cannot mold Him to fit the “system” properly. Therefore, the world seeks to cut off the believer from the Source of faith.
Denying intimacy with our Lord leaves us vulnerable to the world. Oh, the world will hate you if you are attached to Jesus Christ, but greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4) We only become truly vulnerable to the world by denying our intimacy with the Lord. We can deny intimacy with the Lord in our personal lives by compartmentalizing our lives—having a “Sunday face” and a “rest of the week face.” We deny the Lord in our churches by using worldly means to try to entice people to come to church. Solving the personal side of the issue is rather easy, really, and we will see how Abram deals with his personal denial at the end of our story. But how does one deal with worldliness in one’s church? What if the leaders of the church are the very ones bringing in and approving worldliness in the hope that it will increase attendance and therefore “reach people for Christ”? Like Sarai in the harem, it all looks good. It beckons to us and who knows? Maybe it will work! The glory of Pharaoh’s palace is a salve to the pain of an empty womb. But deep down, Pharaoh’s harem is not the place for us—Abram belongs in our tent. It’s actually rather lonely in Pharaoh’s harem; nobody understands that we are really married to Abram. And if we try to talk about it, they think we are crazy for not wanting the palace and Pharaoh—I mean, after all, he is supposed to be a god and everything! And what of the promises of God—that matter of becoming the mother of a great nation that would bless the world! Well, maybe she can do that as queen of Egypt.
MEANWHILE…BACK AT THE TENT
Genesis 12:16 says,
“He (Pharaoh) treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels.”
Well, Abram appears to have lost Sarai, but he has saved his own life and he is now rich and enjoys the favor of Pharaoh. Compromising with the world can bring a lot of worldly riches. Just look at the big-time pastors and televangelists who have preached a compromised message. The itching ears pay handsomely for a bit of tickling, don’t they? Take a good look at the homes of big city pastors—they are well-kept, are they not? And don’t believe for one minute that these men do not understand the importance of not offending from the pulpit in order to remain comfortable in those beautiful homes. Now, I don’t begrudge anyone a nice place to live, but these things generally have a higher price than just the amount on the closing statement! How many pastors have found it necessary to water down messages on sin, repentance, and salvation by faith in Christ alone and replace them with more “seeker friendly” messages to help “bring in new people?” Incidentally, a really good novel that addresses this issue is And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers. And the pastors are not all to blame in this matter—the complaints and whining of people who are not interested in growing in godliness have had their intended effect.
THE TEST IS ENDED…HOW DID WE DO?
Genesis 12:17-19 says,
“But the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.”’
What happens when the duplicity of a saint is exposed to the world? The world is ever so quick to say, “hypocrite!” and rightly so. We were put to the test in some area and when the heat was on, we didn’t do so well. It is a humbling experience, but necessary. The Apostle Paul said, “I will glory in my weakness because when I am weak, then I am strong.” (II Corinthians 12:9-10) Once we see our weakness, we never want to trust ourselves again. We realize that we must return to the altar and make a fresh sacrifice and begin again. God never tires of giving His saints a new start when they repent.
Abram tried to solve his problem of famine with his own ingenuity. He tried to deal with fear by deceit. But when Sarai was taken, he had no more ingenuity to fall back on. God intervened, terminated the test, and rescued Sarai. It is interesting to note that Pharaoh apparently recognized the hand of God against his house and was able to comprehend the reason. He seems genuinely horrified over the possibility of having almost taken another man’s wife. He had believed Abram to be an honorable man—perhaps he sensed destiny surrounding him—so the idea of having almost taken his wife inadvertently has outraged the Pharaoh.
I guess for those who have read my blogs, it is readily apparent that I am concerned over the presence of the world in our churches today. As I have read the writings of men over the last century, I find that even 100 years ago, men were seeing the same trend over and over. I have to wonder as I walk through different churches in our land, “What would the Lord throw out if He walked through here?” There are basketball courts, video arcades, big screen tvs, “high octane” music in the services, book stores, internet cafes, expensive playgrounds, all sorts of stuff. Where is the man with his Bible preaching right out of the word of God? Where is the man with the guts to name sin as such? How long before we will be ignoring homosexuality in the church just like we do divorce and remarriage? I wonder about these things, and it strikes me over and over that the only way God is going to be able to get the church back on track is to strike Pharaoh’s house with great plagues. It is a sobering thought.
LEAVE…AND DON’T COME BACK!
The final verse in Genesis 12 says,
“So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away, with his wife and all that he had.”
This is not a picture of a polite request, accompanied by goodwill. Abram has been ignominiously dismissed from Pharaoh’s land. Abram meant no harm and he did not intend to sin or cause Pharaoh to sin. It all started when he forgot to ask God what to do about the famine problem. He relied on common sense to lead him, and it led him straight into the arms of the world. But the believer and the world don’t gee-haw. One is pulling one way and the other is pulling the other. Once Abram’s duplicity is discovered, he has lost any influence he might have had in Pharaoh’s court.
QUESTION: When the trial comes in our lives, whether spiritual or physical, where will we turn initially? We cannot control our circumstances, but we are expected to control ourselves in our circumstances.
RETURN AND RENEW
Genesis 13:1-4 records how Abram dealt with the personal failure in his faith.
“Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, to the South. Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he went on his journey from the South as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD.”
Abram didn’t wallow in the world nor did he hide under a rock and say, “Woe is me; I can’t live with my disgrace.” He never tried to excuse himself, or blame God for bringing a famine, either. He journeyed back to Canaan and went all the way back to Bethel, to the altar where he had originally sacrificed his natural life to the call of God, a place where he had found balance between spiritual life and physical life. I think he made a fresh offering on that old altar and began again. He picked up and began proclaiming the Lord again to the pagan people. Despite his own ignominious failure, he didn’t blame God, but recognized that God had delivered both himself and Sarai. God had been faithful to him, even when he had departed from God and followed his own instinct.
QUESTION: How do we handle spiritual failures? Do we wallow around and focus on our failure, and therefore ourselves, or do we return to our own place of sacrifice, give it all to God, and begin again with a better understanding of our need to rely on Him?
OBSERVATION: Abram came away from Egypt with more than he bargained for and his decision to go there changed the course of history forever. It is most likely that, along with all the other valuable stuff he acquired in Egypt, Sarai acquired her handmaiden, Hagar. As we will see in later chapters, Hagar figures prominently in world events.
Thanks for following along. The next lesson will give us some insight into the life of Abram's nephew, Lot.
ABRAHAM – CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND MY CONTROL
Faith has trusted God and cut ties to all that would hold it back. It has journeyed to the appointed place and placed all on the altar to God. It has searched for and found balance living a spiritual life in the physical world and is a living proclamation of the true God. What next? Faith must be tested in order to be found precious to God. (1 Peter 1:6-7) What is the purpose of a test? It shows you where you are in your studies. Have you really got a grasp of what you have been learning, or not? The test reveals to us where we are…God is already well aware of where we are.
SPIRITUAL DETOUR
Genesis 12:10 says,
“Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.”
Things have been going quite well for Abram. He has been moving about, taking moral and spiritual possession of the land of promise by building altars and proclaiming the name of the Lord who brought him to Canaan. He has been doing exactly what God called him to do, but then suddenly, there is a setback. He is faced with the question of what to feed all these people and animals for whom he is responsible. Circumstances have arisen that are quite beyond his control and he must respond to them. There is no record that he consulted God about this famine or what he should do for his people. God had plainly told him to go to Canaan, and he did, but now he is perplexed. He looks the situation over and decides to go to Egypt to find food.
Throughout the Bible, Egypt is a symbol of the world. The use of the term “world” in the Bible refers, not to the planet earth, but to the system of so-called “civilization” by which man operates on earth. It includes economic and financial systems, religious systems, political systems, and social systems. All of these systems operate without any reference to God—even the so-called “religious” systems at best pay only lip service to the true God. So any time we see a reference to Egypt in the Bible, this is what it refers to symbolically. The “world” is always the enemy of the believer. (1 John 2:16)
So we see that when things got lean in the Promised Land, Abram headed for Egypt. Now one thing in particular to notice here is that, while in Egypt, Abram did not build an altar and call on the name of the Lord. Up until now, he has been boldly walking through a pagan land proclaiming the true God, but this never happens in Egypt. Perhaps he is perplexed because of his circumstances. Have you ever felt the need to “defend God” because He allowed circumstances that did not seem “good” to you or to others? God doesn’t “need” us to come to His “defense” when times are bad. Rather, trying circumstances are meant to show who we really are. Will we stand firm, like Job, and boldly proclaim that we will trust Him even if He kills us? (Job 13:15) Are we truly confident in God in dark times? The only way to find out is to walk through darkness. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Psalm 23:4) How often have we quoted these words, but are they really true?
Spiritual “dry times”, or famine, will come in the life of any believer and also in any church. Some signs of spiritual dryness in our nation, church, and personal lives are:
1. Biblical ignorance—the Spirit of God creates a great hunger for the Word of God; (1 Peter 2:2) Biblical ignorance indicates that that hunger has been absent and the people have not been reading the Bible
2. Lack of attendance at church—the Spirit of God creates a hunger for fellowship with other believers and for hearing the Word of God; (Hebrews 10:24-25) lack of attendance reveals a lack of hunger for these things
3. Lack of faith in the efficacy of prayer or in God—the idea that “if it is to be, it is up to me” replaces a dependence on God in prayer (1 John 5:14-15)
4. Restlessness and always seeking a new thrill—the idea that a life with God should produce a continued sense of excitement with bigger and better thrills, rather than godliness with contentment, 1 Timothy 6:6 (this sense of restlessness may lead to dabbling in cults or even the occult in search of something new and exciting)
5. Finding the sermon and Bible study boring while finding entertainment and sports intensely exciting—the craving for excitement is of the flesh; the craving for the “still, small voice of God” is spiritual
What do our churches do when attendance begins to falter and people show little interest in God or church activities? Do we return to the altar and pray, asking God to intervene in the lives of His people? Or do we assume that God hasn’t got the power to bring people to Himself and that it is up to us to find a way to bolster our situation? Are we willing to prayerfully trust and wait and continue to feed and disciple the ones who are left, or do we launch out with brand new exciting programs to stir up people and get their interest? Abram didn’t intend to make a spiritual detour; he just used his common sense, right?
THE PLACE OF SPIRITUAL INTIMACY
Genesis 12:11-13 says,
“And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, ‘Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it will happen when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, “This is his wife”; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.’”
She really was his sister, after all—that is, his half-sister, (Genesis 20:12) so he wasn’t really asking her to lie….was he? The intent here was clearly to deceive, though I don’t imagine he realized that denying his true intimacy with Sarai would lead to such consequences. Remember that up to now, Abram has been journeying all over the land of Canaan proclaiming boldly the true God to a bunch of heathen idol-worshipers. But as he approaches Egypt, he becomes afraid. Egypt was Abram’s solution, not God’s, so he has no confidence as he approaches Egypt. Also, the world is not the same as paganism. Pagans at least acknowledge a god of some sort—it is just the wrong one! The world is its own god and wants only to exalt self—the very opposite of the believer who has built an altar and sacrificed himself to God. No wonder Abram is uncomfortable and afraid—the world is a scary place!
QUESTION: Do we ever compromise with the world in order to “feel safer” among unbelievers? Sarai is the mother of the promise, but Abram is willing to deny his intimacy with her to save his skin. Are we ever ashamed of our intimacy with the Lord and His Church before the world? Have we ever been uncomfortable introducing our believing friends to unbelieving associates? Is our church sacrificing itself to worldliness for the sake of expediency?
QUESTION: Is there an area in your life where you cannot honestly build an altar and call the Lord your God? If so, that is your Egypt.
WHAT THE WORLD WANTS
Genesis 12:14-15 says,
“So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house.”
Oops! Talk about unintended consequences! Wonder how Abram felt as he stood there watching the royal entourage load his Sarai onto an ornate palanquin and cart her off to Pharaoh’s harem? When our faith wobbles, sometimes the rest of us wobbles right along with it! Now what? Wonder how Sarai felt? Now instead of living in a tent, she lives in a palace. She is surrounded by servants at her beck and call. She can have a bath whenever she wants one! She is no doubt given beautiful clothes and jewels. She smells like spices instead of sheep! Well, after all, the man dragged her from her homeland, traveled all through Canaan in a tent, got into a famine, dragged her to Egypt, and then denied they were married because he thought it would save his own skin! But Pharaoh, though he has ultimate power in Egypt and can give her all she might desire, he is not her Abram. She is married to that man with the tents and the sheep and the altars. What is a woman to do?
Just like Pharaoh, the world wants us for its own. To the world, we actually look pretty good. The world desperately wants people who are honest, moral, upstanding, generous, hard-working people. The character traits of the church are attractive to the world. When was the last time you heard somebody running for political office say, “I am a lying, swindling, bribe-taking, skirt-chasing thief! I’m just what this country needs!” No, no. They trot out their pastors and their church positions and their charity work, etc. They want to look like a model Christian! Yes, the world really wants the church, but it wants to invade our spirituality and cut us off from the One who gives us life. It wants the spiritual character without the Spiritual Life. The world won’t have Jesus Christ because it cannot mold Him to fit the “system” properly. Therefore, the world seeks to cut off the believer from the Source of faith.
Denying intimacy with our Lord leaves us vulnerable to the world. Oh, the world will hate you if you are attached to Jesus Christ, but greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4) We only become truly vulnerable to the world by denying our intimacy with the Lord. We can deny intimacy with the Lord in our personal lives by compartmentalizing our lives—having a “Sunday face” and a “rest of the week face.” We deny the Lord in our churches by using worldly means to try to entice people to come to church. Solving the personal side of the issue is rather easy, really, and we will see how Abram deals with his personal denial at the end of our story. But how does one deal with worldliness in one’s church? What if the leaders of the church are the very ones bringing in and approving worldliness in the hope that it will increase attendance and therefore “reach people for Christ”? Like Sarai in the harem, it all looks good. It beckons to us and who knows? Maybe it will work! The glory of Pharaoh’s palace is a salve to the pain of an empty womb. But deep down, Pharaoh’s harem is not the place for us—Abram belongs in our tent. It’s actually rather lonely in Pharaoh’s harem; nobody understands that we are really married to Abram. And if we try to talk about it, they think we are crazy for not wanting the palace and Pharaoh—I mean, after all, he is supposed to be a god and everything! And what of the promises of God—that matter of becoming the mother of a great nation that would bless the world! Well, maybe she can do that as queen of Egypt.
MEANWHILE…BACK AT THE TENT
Genesis 12:16 says,
“He (Pharaoh) treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels.”
Well, Abram appears to have lost Sarai, but he has saved his own life and he is now rich and enjoys the favor of Pharaoh. Compromising with the world can bring a lot of worldly riches. Just look at the big-time pastors and televangelists who have preached a compromised message. The itching ears pay handsomely for a bit of tickling, don’t they? Take a good look at the homes of big city pastors—they are well-kept, are they not? And don’t believe for one minute that these men do not understand the importance of not offending from the pulpit in order to remain comfortable in those beautiful homes. Now, I don’t begrudge anyone a nice place to live, but these things generally have a higher price than just the amount on the closing statement! How many pastors have found it necessary to water down messages on sin, repentance, and salvation by faith in Christ alone and replace them with more “seeker friendly” messages to help “bring in new people?” Incidentally, a really good novel that addresses this issue is And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers. And the pastors are not all to blame in this matter—the complaints and whining of people who are not interested in growing in godliness have had their intended effect.
THE TEST IS ENDED…HOW DID WE DO?
Genesis 12:17-19 says,
“But the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.”’
What happens when the duplicity of a saint is exposed to the world? The world is ever so quick to say, “hypocrite!” and rightly so. We were put to the test in some area and when the heat was on, we didn’t do so well. It is a humbling experience, but necessary. The Apostle Paul said, “I will glory in my weakness because when I am weak, then I am strong.” (II Corinthians 12:9-10) Once we see our weakness, we never want to trust ourselves again. We realize that we must return to the altar and make a fresh sacrifice and begin again. God never tires of giving His saints a new start when they repent.
Abram tried to solve his problem of famine with his own ingenuity. He tried to deal with fear by deceit. But when Sarai was taken, he had no more ingenuity to fall back on. God intervened, terminated the test, and rescued Sarai. It is interesting to note that Pharaoh apparently recognized the hand of God against his house and was able to comprehend the reason. He seems genuinely horrified over the possibility of having almost taken another man’s wife. He had believed Abram to be an honorable man—perhaps he sensed destiny surrounding him—so the idea of having almost taken his wife inadvertently has outraged the Pharaoh.
I guess for those who have read my blogs, it is readily apparent that I am concerned over the presence of the world in our churches today. As I have read the writings of men over the last century, I find that even 100 years ago, men were seeing the same trend over and over. I have to wonder as I walk through different churches in our land, “What would the Lord throw out if He walked through here?” There are basketball courts, video arcades, big screen tvs, “high octane” music in the services, book stores, internet cafes, expensive playgrounds, all sorts of stuff. Where is the man with his Bible preaching right out of the word of God? Where is the man with the guts to name sin as such? How long before we will be ignoring homosexuality in the church just like we do divorce and remarriage? I wonder about these things, and it strikes me over and over that the only way God is going to be able to get the church back on track is to strike Pharaoh’s house with great plagues. It is a sobering thought.
LEAVE…AND DON’T COME BACK!
The final verse in Genesis 12 says,
“So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away, with his wife and all that he had.”
This is not a picture of a polite request, accompanied by goodwill. Abram has been ignominiously dismissed from Pharaoh’s land. Abram meant no harm and he did not intend to sin or cause Pharaoh to sin. It all started when he forgot to ask God what to do about the famine problem. He relied on common sense to lead him, and it led him straight into the arms of the world. But the believer and the world don’t gee-haw. One is pulling one way and the other is pulling the other. Once Abram’s duplicity is discovered, he has lost any influence he might have had in Pharaoh’s court.
QUESTION: When the trial comes in our lives, whether spiritual or physical, where will we turn initially? We cannot control our circumstances, but we are expected to control ourselves in our circumstances.
RETURN AND RENEW
Genesis 13:1-4 records how Abram dealt with the personal failure in his faith.
“Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, to the South. Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he went on his journey from the South as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD.”
Abram didn’t wallow in the world nor did he hide under a rock and say, “Woe is me; I can’t live with my disgrace.” He never tried to excuse himself, or blame God for bringing a famine, either. He journeyed back to Canaan and went all the way back to Bethel, to the altar where he had originally sacrificed his natural life to the call of God, a place where he had found balance between spiritual life and physical life. I think he made a fresh offering on that old altar and began again. He picked up and began proclaiming the Lord again to the pagan people. Despite his own ignominious failure, he didn’t blame God, but recognized that God had delivered both himself and Sarai. God had been faithful to him, even when he had departed from God and followed his own instinct.
QUESTION: How do we handle spiritual failures? Do we wallow around and focus on our failure, and therefore ourselves, or do we return to our own place of sacrifice, give it all to God, and begin again with a better understanding of our need to rely on Him?
OBSERVATION: Abram came away from Egypt with more than he bargained for and his decision to go there changed the course of history forever. It is most likely that, along with all the other valuable stuff he acquired in Egypt, Sarai acquired her handmaiden, Hagar. As we will see in later chapters, Hagar figures prominently in world events.
Thanks for following along. The next lesson will give us some insight into the life of Abram's nephew, Lot.
Friday, October 16, 2009
ABRAHAM-THE WALK OF FAITH
ABRAHAM – A PICTURE OF THE BELIEVER’S LIFE
It is sometimes easy to imagine what a perfect life of faith is supposed to be like—the fruits of the Spirit are all present; there is confidence when we pray; answers come quickly to life’s problems; we are ever trusting and walking in a way that pleases God; people recognize that God has His hand on us. I could go on and on and these things present a wonderful picture of heavenly bliss on earth. Except that working it out in our actual circumstances is just not usually that blissful!
MAKING AN ENTRANCE
I think that Abraham’s life is a picture of the life of faith as it travels through the physical life on earth. The opening verses of Genesis 12 set out some principles for the life we are called to live on earth after we have answered God’s call to faith in Christ. Genesis 12:5-6 says,
“Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land.”
From these verses we see Abram’s first entrance into the Promised Land. He has left behind all that God asked him to leave and has come to a place where he will be regarded as a foreigner, but which in fact, he will possess with his descendants forever. Jesus said that if we would follow Him, we must hate father, mother, etc. (Luke 14:26) He is not speaking, of course, of an evil, malicious hatred, but of the fact that our focus is to be on Him, not our most natural ties. In fact, those natural ties, if we do not sever them properly, will eat away at our spiritual life because they will quite naturally desire to shield and protect us from the very trying circumstances that God wishes to use to test and perfect us spiritually. Genesis 2:24 tells us that before a man marries, he must leave father and mother and then cleave to his wife. The same is true, I believe, for a spiritual joining with Christ. This does not necessarily require a physical removal from the vicinity of family, but an inner emancipation. The influence and security of family must go by the way if the believer is to learn to depend fully on Christ.
We notice from these verses that Sarai, Lot, and a group of others (presumably servants) entered the Promised Land with Abram. He did not really go alone. Whoever in our sphere of influence wants to go along to the Promised Land with us is welcome to come. It should be the most natural thing in the world for a parent to lead a child to Christ. Often, the conversion of one spouse leads to the salvation of the other. Sometimes one can lead a sibling or parent to the Lord, but I think that this is often more difficult, largely because pride gets in the way, but it does happen. Take everybody with you who is willing to go, but don’t stay behind for anyone who wants to hold you back from the Lord.
We see further from the Scriptures that they first journeyed to the town of Shechem. Shechem was a city with religious affiliations and the terebinth tree was most likely a marker for that city. The Bible says that the Canaanites were living in the land. Abram was not the first man there. The Canaanites were pagans, and a pagan is someone who worships a false god. This may be due to a willful denial of the true God (some would use Romans 1:18-24 to argue that this is always the case) but I think some did so out of ignorance. They could look around and see that the world didn’t get here all by itself but they did not know the true God who created it. So they made up religions and groped in darkness. (Acts 17:22-31) How easy it would have been for Abram to move into an unoccupied land, stake a claim, and settle down to peacefully commune with God and wait for the promises of God to be fulfilled regarding his posterity! But Abram had to live in the land of the Canaanites, and more than that, he was required to be a blessing to them! I think we can learn from these verses that God does not intend for His children to shut themselves away in permanent spiritual retreats. Although a certain amount of insulation in the early years until discipleship is completed may be necessary, eventually, we have to launch out among the Canaanites and start blessing them. It is a simple matter to be “religious” when there is no one else around to upset your apple cart, but that is not what we are called to do.
QUESTION: Are we blessing unbelievers? Sometimes, it seems like we have a difficult time just blessing other believers!
Verse 7 of Genesis 12 says,
“Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ And there he built an altar to the LORD who had appeared to him.”
We see that God has given a vision to Abram. We don’t know exactly how the Lord appeared, if He assumed a physical form, or appeared in a vision—it just doesn’t say. But we know that God appeared to Abram in some form that he could discern. He knew Who was speaking to him. I think that the Lord appears to us today, not so much in visions, although that can happen, but through His word and through the discernment and leadership of His Spirit. In fact, I don’t think that we can really know the Lord apart from His word. As I have read and heard accounts of people being saved all over the world, their first priority after being saved is to get hold of a Bible—this is no accident! It is the Spirit of God who enables people to understand the Bible and to discern the teaching of those who proclaim it.
When God appeared to Abram, He made a promise—descendants to inhabit the land. Now who are these descendants? I think that the Scriptures reveal to us that he had two types of descendants. He had physical descendants, according to the flesh, and he had spiritual descendants, according to faith. At the ripe age of 75 and still childless, this promise would have been amazing to hear, and we will see that God does indeed fulfill the promise of descendants according to the flesh. But let’s take a quick look at descendants according to faith. Galatians 3:26-29 says,
“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
These verses make it plain that being a Jew naturally is not the same thing as being a spiritual child of Abraham. The promise is given to the spiritual offspring of Abraham, not those of physical descent. Those of physical descent ought to have been first in line to receive the promise by faith, but in large part, they rejected the promise, and so it was extended to Gentiles who would believe. Not everyone who is a Jew outwardly is a child of Abraham inwardly; likewise, not everyone who receives physical baptism is truly born again inwardly.
Does God extend the promise of posterity to us? I think that He does. As we seek to bless the “Canaanites” around us, they are able to see that there really is a true God. Some of us are made to be seed sowers; some are waterers; others are harvesters, but all share in the growth of the people of faith.
We see from these verses that God promised not only descendants, but the land. What a burning issue that Promised Land is today! The land became a controversy in 1948 when Israel was formally recognized as a nation in that land and it has left a trail of violence ever since. The land, however, belongs to God because He created the earth and He gives it to whomever He pleases. It pleased Him to give the physical land known as Palestine to Abraham’s physical descendants forever and nothing in the world will change that. They were absent from the land for a long time because of disobedience, but it has pleased God in these last days to bring them back to the land that was promised to them. Anyone who resists their living in it is fighting against God and will eventually pay the price for their stubbornness and pride. The spiritual children of Abraham, however, have a different land. Hebrews 11:13-16 says,
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
Returning to our original text, we see that after God appeared to Abram and gave him the promise regarding land and posterity, Abram built an altar. An altar, quite plainly, is a place of death. True worship is the sacrifice of the dearest thing you have—your own self. Romans 12:1-2 says,
“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
The only proper response to the promises of God in Christ is a total sacrifice of ourselves. I think this is what Abram’s altar signifies. He has walked boldly into Shechem, a religious center of pagan worship, and has built an altar to the true God. He is beginning to take possession of the land.
OBSERVATION: When a person built an altar and placed a dead animal on it as a sacrifice, he was identifying himself with the dead animal—giving himself wholly to God and dying to selfish ambitions and desires. When we are baptized physically, it is to show an inward identification with the death of Christ, recognizing that sin in us must die.
STAKING A CLAIM IN THE PROMISED LAND
The whole land was given to Abram and his descendants. Let’s see how Abram handles this promise. Genesis 12:8 says,
“And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.”
Abram had entered the Promised Land and immediately received a vision of the Lord. How tempting it must have been to settle down in that place where he had received the vision and just try to feed spiritually on what he had seen. It calls to mind the transfiguration of Jesus, after He had taken with Him Peter, James, and John on the mountaintop. When Peter saw Jesus transfigured in glory before them with Moses and Elijah speaking to Him, he said in Matthew 17:4,
“Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to camp out for life on a spiritual high! But God immediately answered Peter and told him to listen to Jesus. What did Jesus do? He headed back down the mountain to a demon-possessed valley and crucifixion. Likewise, we see that Abram didn’t settle down in the place where God had appeared to him. He moved on through the Promised Land. All this land had been promised to him and he was checking it out and staking a spiritual claim.
We see from the Scriptures that he pitched his tent. I think that the tent is a symbol of the physical life—the body, if you will. A tent requires a support pole and stakes firmly driven into the ground to hold it up. We are of the earth, earthy, (I Corinthians 15:46-49) and it is our physical bodies that hold us firmly on the ground. We can’t visit other realms because our bodies are meant for the earth—like tent pegs driven into the ground. But the pole is what gives the tent support and enables it to provide shelter. I think Jesus wants to be our support pole; He wants us to trust Him with the actual circumstances of our lives. If we will trust Him, He will provide shelter for us. This doesn’t mean no storms will come—they will. But His tent pole won’t collapse.
This verse says that Abram pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai. This in itself is an interesting idea. The word Bethel means “House of God.” The name Ai means “ruin.” Bethel is a picture of the spiritual domain and Ai is a picture of the physical life. The physical body is a ruin of what it was meant to be. Adam, as he was created, was meant never to die, never to age, never to be ill or suffer physically. All that was lost in the fall into sin and sin has been passed on to all people since Adam, and so we all die, get sick, get old, etc. We are a magnificent ruin of what God intended. Even our best attributes are merely a ruin, the Old Testament calls them “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), of what was meant to be. We have absolutely no room for pride of any kind, and yet how puffed up we get! Abram set up his physical camp, his tent, in between these two places. He did not try to go settle in the House of God and live on an isolated spiritual high, nor did he settle in Ai and try to live a spiritual life in a worldly atmosphere. The life of faith, I believe, requires a balance between the physical and the spiritual and we can see this modeled in the life of Jesus. We can find numerous times in the Scriptures where he retreated for times of prayer and communion with the Father, but He also spent a lot of time ministering to the people. If we are going to bless the “Canaanites” around us, those times of retreat and prayer are essential. Then when we are strengthened, we are to return to the place where God has put us to work out the life that He has put in us.
After he pitched his tent, i.e. established himself physically, he built an altar. I think we can see in this second altar the need to keep the physical always under control. We cannot escape the body with its fleshly desires and designs until we die physically, but we must never allow them to get the upper hand in our lives. Paul says in I Corinthians 9:27,
“I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”
The altar is the place where the physical is sacrificed so that the spiritual may grow and develop. The altar is the place where we offer to God the “right arm” or the “right eye” that is leading us astray. (Matthew 5:29-30)
QUESTION: Have we been “pruning” those areas of our lives that want to get the upper hand and drive spiritual wedges between us and God? Do we even know what these areas are? It takes the searchlight of the Holy Spirit to show us what needs to be cut off. Do we have the courage to ask Him about it?
After building an altar, it says that Abram called on the name of the Lord. The Hebrew verb that is used here for “called” means “to proclaim.” Abram didn’t build this altar, kneel down and offer a private prayer, and then go on about his business. He used this altar as a place to begin announcing the true God to the Canaanites in the area. This is really how he is staking his claim in the Promised Land and how we can understand that Abram’s call was not merely to make a physical move, but to begin a new spiritual life that would reach out and impact the whole land. As we study the life of Abram, we will see that he became a man renowned in the land and the presence of his God attracted other people.
QUESTION: Have we built an altar in our lives? Does the presence of our God attract other people? Do they realize that we are different? Do they ever wonder why? Do they sometimes ask? If they know why we are different, does it have an effect on them? The holiness of God will either drive people to repentance and faith or it will drive them away. Is that holiness manifesting itself? Or are the “Canaanites” in our lives quite “comfortable” when they are around us?
STAKING A BIGGER CLAIM
Returning to Genesis 12, verse 9 says,
“So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.”
Abram is proclaiming the true God throughout the land that he has been promised. If his descendants are going to live in this land, he wants the land cleaned up for them—no more idolatry. This idea reminds me of the prayer of Jabez found in I Chronicles 4:10,
“And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory; that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’”
This prayer was the basis of a popular book several years ago which pointed out that Jabez was asking God, not only to enlarge his physical holdings, but to enlarge his sphere of spiritual influence in the land. This is what Abram is apparently doing, as he moves from place to place proclaiming the true God who called him to this land. Notice that Jabez does not attempt this in his own strength—he doesn’t devise a “formula” for success. He asks God first of all to grant this to him. I think building the altar and offering ourselves is paramount to the successful proclaiming of the gospel. While using prewritten tracts like the “Four Spiritual Laws” and other such devices for witnessing can be helpful, they are no substitute for a life lived in sacrifice to God, trusting Him to lead and provide the words necessary at the appropriate time. Sometimes people are so ready for the gospel that the Four Spiritual Laws will work beautifully to bring them to faith in Christ. However, often, I think, people have to see the altars in our lives and smell the flesh roasting before they want to hear us calling on the name of the Lord.
Thanks for following along in our walk with Abram. Now that summer has ended, I hope to return to a more steady posting schedule.
It is sometimes easy to imagine what a perfect life of faith is supposed to be like—the fruits of the Spirit are all present; there is confidence when we pray; answers come quickly to life’s problems; we are ever trusting and walking in a way that pleases God; people recognize that God has His hand on us. I could go on and on and these things present a wonderful picture of heavenly bliss on earth. Except that working it out in our actual circumstances is just not usually that blissful!
MAKING AN ENTRANCE
I think that Abraham’s life is a picture of the life of faith as it travels through the physical life on earth. The opening verses of Genesis 12 set out some principles for the life we are called to live on earth after we have answered God’s call to faith in Christ. Genesis 12:5-6 says,
“Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land.”
From these verses we see Abram’s first entrance into the Promised Land. He has left behind all that God asked him to leave and has come to a place where he will be regarded as a foreigner, but which in fact, he will possess with his descendants forever. Jesus said that if we would follow Him, we must hate father, mother, etc. (Luke 14:26) He is not speaking, of course, of an evil, malicious hatred, but of the fact that our focus is to be on Him, not our most natural ties. In fact, those natural ties, if we do not sever them properly, will eat away at our spiritual life because they will quite naturally desire to shield and protect us from the very trying circumstances that God wishes to use to test and perfect us spiritually. Genesis 2:24 tells us that before a man marries, he must leave father and mother and then cleave to his wife. The same is true, I believe, for a spiritual joining with Christ. This does not necessarily require a physical removal from the vicinity of family, but an inner emancipation. The influence and security of family must go by the way if the believer is to learn to depend fully on Christ.
We notice from these verses that Sarai, Lot, and a group of others (presumably servants) entered the Promised Land with Abram. He did not really go alone. Whoever in our sphere of influence wants to go along to the Promised Land with us is welcome to come. It should be the most natural thing in the world for a parent to lead a child to Christ. Often, the conversion of one spouse leads to the salvation of the other. Sometimes one can lead a sibling or parent to the Lord, but I think that this is often more difficult, largely because pride gets in the way, but it does happen. Take everybody with you who is willing to go, but don’t stay behind for anyone who wants to hold you back from the Lord.
We see further from the Scriptures that they first journeyed to the town of Shechem. Shechem was a city with religious affiliations and the terebinth tree was most likely a marker for that city. The Bible says that the Canaanites were living in the land. Abram was not the first man there. The Canaanites were pagans, and a pagan is someone who worships a false god. This may be due to a willful denial of the true God (some would use Romans 1:18-24 to argue that this is always the case) but I think some did so out of ignorance. They could look around and see that the world didn’t get here all by itself but they did not know the true God who created it. So they made up religions and groped in darkness. (Acts 17:22-31) How easy it would have been for Abram to move into an unoccupied land, stake a claim, and settle down to peacefully commune with God and wait for the promises of God to be fulfilled regarding his posterity! But Abram had to live in the land of the Canaanites, and more than that, he was required to be a blessing to them! I think we can learn from these verses that God does not intend for His children to shut themselves away in permanent spiritual retreats. Although a certain amount of insulation in the early years until discipleship is completed may be necessary, eventually, we have to launch out among the Canaanites and start blessing them. It is a simple matter to be “religious” when there is no one else around to upset your apple cart, but that is not what we are called to do.
QUESTION: Are we blessing unbelievers? Sometimes, it seems like we have a difficult time just blessing other believers!
Verse 7 of Genesis 12 says,
“Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ And there he built an altar to the LORD who had appeared to him.”
We see that God has given a vision to Abram. We don’t know exactly how the Lord appeared, if He assumed a physical form, or appeared in a vision—it just doesn’t say. But we know that God appeared to Abram in some form that he could discern. He knew Who was speaking to him. I think that the Lord appears to us today, not so much in visions, although that can happen, but through His word and through the discernment and leadership of His Spirit. In fact, I don’t think that we can really know the Lord apart from His word. As I have read and heard accounts of people being saved all over the world, their first priority after being saved is to get hold of a Bible—this is no accident! It is the Spirit of God who enables people to understand the Bible and to discern the teaching of those who proclaim it.
When God appeared to Abram, He made a promise—descendants to inhabit the land. Now who are these descendants? I think that the Scriptures reveal to us that he had two types of descendants. He had physical descendants, according to the flesh, and he had spiritual descendants, according to faith. At the ripe age of 75 and still childless, this promise would have been amazing to hear, and we will see that God does indeed fulfill the promise of descendants according to the flesh. But let’s take a quick look at descendants according to faith. Galatians 3:26-29 says,
“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
These verses make it plain that being a Jew naturally is not the same thing as being a spiritual child of Abraham. The promise is given to the spiritual offspring of Abraham, not those of physical descent. Those of physical descent ought to have been first in line to receive the promise by faith, but in large part, they rejected the promise, and so it was extended to Gentiles who would believe. Not everyone who is a Jew outwardly is a child of Abraham inwardly; likewise, not everyone who receives physical baptism is truly born again inwardly.
Does God extend the promise of posterity to us? I think that He does. As we seek to bless the “Canaanites” around us, they are able to see that there really is a true God. Some of us are made to be seed sowers; some are waterers; others are harvesters, but all share in the growth of the people of faith.
We see from these verses that God promised not only descendants, but the land. What a burning issue that Promised Land is today! The land became a controversy in 1948 when Israel was formally recognized as a nation in that land and it has left a trail of violence ever since. The land, however, belongs to God because He created the earth and He gives it to whomever He pleases. It pleased Him to give the physical land known as Palestine to Abraham’s physical descendants forever and nothing in the world will change that. They were absent from the land for a long time because of disobedience, but it has pleased God in these last days to bring them back to the land that was promised to them. Anyone who resists their living in it is fighting against God and will eventually pay the price for their stubbornness and pride. The spiritual children of Abraham, however, have a different land. Hebrews 11:13-16 says,
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
Returning to our original text, we see that after God appeared to Abram and gave him the promise regarding land and posterity, Abram built an altar. An altar, quite plainly, is a place of death. True worship is the sacrifice of the dearest thing you have—your own self. Romans 12:1-2 says,
“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
The only proper response to the promises of God in Christ is a total sacrifice of ourselves. I think this is what Abram’s altar signifies. He has walked boldly into Shechem, a religious center of pagan worship, and has built an altar to the true God. He is beginning to take possession of the land.
OBSERVATION: When a person built an altar and placed a dead animal on it as a sacrifice, he was identifying himself with the dead animal—giving himself wholly to God and dying to selfish ambitions and desires. When we are baptized physically, it is to show an inward identification with the death of Christ, recognizing that sin in us must die.
STAKING A CLAIM IN THE PROMISED LAND
The whole land was given to Abram and his descendants. Let’s see how Abram handles this promise. Genesis 12:8 says,
“And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.”
Abram had entered the Promised Land and immediately received a vision of the Lord. How tempting it must have been to settle down in that place where he had received the vision and just try to feed spiritually on what he had seen. It calls to mind the transfiguration of Jesus, after He had taken with Him Peter, James, and John on the mountaintop. When Peter saw Jesus transfigured in glory before them with Moses and Elijah speaking to Him, he said in Matthew 17:4,
“Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to camp out for life on a spiritual high! But God immediately answered Peter and told him to listen to Jesus. What did Jesus do? He headed back down the mountain to a demon-possessed valley and crucifixion. Likewise, we see that Abram didn’t settle down in the place where God had appeared to him. He moved on through the Promised Land. All this land had been promised to him and he was checking it out and staking a spiritual claim.
We see from the Scriptures that he pitched his tent. I think that the tent is a symbol of the physical life—the body, if you will. A tent requires a support pole and stakes firmly driven into the ground to hold it up. We are of the earth, earthy, (I Corinthians 15:46-49) and it is our physical bodies that hold us firmly on the ground. We can’t visit other realms because our bodies are meant for the earth—like tent pegs driven into the ground. But the pole is what gives the tent support and enables it to provide shelter. I think Jesus wants to be our support pole; He wants us to trust Him with the actual circumstances of our lives. If we will trust Him, He will provide shelter for us. This doesn’t mean no storms will come—they will. But His tent pole won’t collapse.
This verse says that Abram pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai. This in itself is an interesting idea. The word Bethel means “House of God.” The name Ai means “ruin.” Bethel is a picture of the spiritual domain and Ai is a picture of the physical life. The physical body is a ruin of what it was meant to be. Adam, as he was created, was meant never to die, never to age, never to be ill or suffer physically. All that was lost in the fall into sin and sin has been passed on to all people since Adam, and so we all die, get sick, get old, etc. We are a magnificent ruin of what God intended. Even our best attributes are merely a ruin, the Old Testament calls them “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), of what was meant to be. We have absolutely no room for pride of any kind, and yet how puffed up we get! Abram set up his physical camp, his tent, in between these two places. He did not try to go settle in the House of God and live on an isolated spiritual high, nor did he settle in Ai and try to live a spiritual life in a worldly atmosphere. The life of faith, I believe, requires a balance between the physical and the spiritual and we can see this modeled in the life of Jesus. We can find numerous times in the Scriptures where he retreated for times of prayer and communion with the Father, but He also spent a lot of time ministering to the people. If we are going to bless the “Canaanites” around us, those times of retreat and prayer are essential. Then when we are strengthened, we are to return to the place where God has put us to work out the life that He has put in us.
After he pitched his tent, i.e. established himself physically, he built an altar. I think we can see in this second altar the need to keep the physical always under control. We cannot escape the body with its fleshly desires and designs until we die physically, but we must never allow them to get the upper hand in our lives. Paul says in I Corinthians 9:27,
“I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”
The altar is the place where the physical is sacrificed so that the spiritual may grow and develop. The altar is the place where we offer to God the “right arm” or the “right eye” that is leading us astray. (Matthew 5:29-30)
QUESTION: Have we been “pruning” those areas of our lives that want to get the upper hand and drive spiritual wedges between us and God? Do we even know what these areas are? It takes the searchlight of the Holy Spirit to show us what needs to be cut off. Do we have the courage to ask Him about it?
After building an altar, it says that Abram called on the name of the Lord. The Hebrew verb that is used here for “called” means “to proclaim.” Abram didn’t build this altar, kneel down and offer a private prayer, and then go on about his business. He used this altar as a place to begin announcing the true God to the Canaanites in the area. This is really how he is staking his claim in the Promised Land and how we can understand that Abram’s call was not merely to make a physical move, but to begin a new spiritual life that would reach out and impact the whole land. As we study the life of Abram, we will see that he became a man renowned in the land and the presence of his God attracted other people.
QUESTION: Have we built an altar in our lives? Does the presence of our God attract other people? Do they realize that we are different? Do they ever wonder why? Do they sometimes ask? If they know why we are different, does it have an effect on them? The holiness of God will either drive people to repentance and faith or it will drive them away. Is that holiness manifesting itself? Or are the “Canaanites” in our lives quite “comfortable” when they are around us?
STAKING A BIGGER CLAIM
Returning to Genesis 12, verse 9 says,
“So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.”
Abram is proclaiming the true God throughout the land that he has been promised. If his descendants are going to live in this land, he wants the land cleaned up for them—no more idolatry. This idea reminds me of the prayer of Jabez found in I Chronicles 4:10,
“And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory; that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’”
This prayer was the basis of a popular book several years ago which pointed out that Jabez was asking God, not only to enlarge his physical holdings, but to enlarge his sphere of spiritual influence in the land. This is what Abram is apparently doing, as he moves from place to place proclaiming the true God who called him to this land. Notice that Jabez does not attempt this in his own strength—he doesn’t devise a “formula” for success. He asks God first of all to grant this to him. I think building the altar and offering ourselves is paramount to the successful proclaiming of the gospel. While using prewritten tracts like the “Four Spiritual Laws” and other such devices for witnessing can be helpful, they are no substitute for a life lived in sacrifice to God, trusting Him to lead and provide the words necessary at the appropriate time. Sometimes people are so ready for the gospel that the Four Spiritual Laws will work beautifully to bring them to faith in Christ. However, often, I think, people have to see the altars in our lives and smell the flesh roasting before they want to hear us calling on the name of the Lord.
Thanks for following along in our walk with Abram. Now that summer has ended, I hope to return to a more steady posting schedule.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
ABRAHAM - WHAT TO DO WHEN GOD CALLS
ABRAHAM: WHAT TO DO WHEN GOD CALLS
“Quit your job. We both know that God wants you to be at home with the baby. We’ll make it somehow.” For a couple of weeks, scriptures had suddenly come to mind reminding me that a wife was to submit to her husband’s leadership. I thought that I didn’t really have a problem with this because we pretty well agreed together on most things. So why did these verses keep coming over and over? “Yes, Lord. You know I am fine with letting him lead.” I could never have imagined that those verses were preparing me for that one fateful telephone call that was to change the course of our lives forever. The minute I heard him say, “Quit your job,” I knew why those verses had been coming to mind. It seemed crazy. He was only making minimum wage. But who was I to argue with God?
THE CALL
Long before we did something that seemed crazy in answer to the call of God, a remarkable man named Abraham had done a similarly crazy thing. Let’s look at how his decision to obey God changed the course of his own life as well as the history of the world. Genesis 11:27-32 says,
“This is the genealogy of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.”
In studying the Old Testament, I like to research the meanings of names, because to the ancients, the name was a great indication of character and place in life. Some of the names in the passage above are from uncertain origin, so the meaning is hard to trace. However, Abram means, “Exalted Father,” and Sarai means “Princess,” and Milcah means “Queen.” From these names, it is easy to imagine that these were people of significant consequence in the land of Ur. They clearly were not “nobodies” as far as the world was concerned. We see Terah, the head of the family, doing something unheard of in that he packed up and moved off. Ur was located on the Euphrates River near the Persian Gulf. He moved, together with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, far upriver to the foothills of the mountain leading into modern day Turkey. While these verses in Genesis do not tell us why Terah decided to make this move, Acts 7:2-3 tells us why Abram went:
“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will show you.’”
Although we do not know why Terah decided to travel with Abram, these verses make it plain that Abram was following the call of God. Terah headed with Abram to Canaan, but settled in Haran where he died. Genesis 12:1 affirms the prior call of God,
“Now the LORD had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.’”
What was God calling Abram to do? In our modern life, moving is a very common event. Most people do move several times in their lives and there is an entire industry set up to assist people when they move. Although moving can be exhausting physically and emotionally trying, most people accept it as necessary. But in Abram’s day and culture, moving was not often done.
Let’s look at what Abram was called to leave behind. First, he had to leave his country. While most of us make a few moves in our lives, we generally do not leave the United States behind. We move within our American culture, and though there may be regional differences in culture, it is still the good old USA. We do not become “foreigners.” God is calling Abram to leave his country and become a “foreigner.”
QUESTION: Where is our allegiance? If God called us to move to Poland, or China, or Ethiopia, or Chile, would we be willing to uproot and go?
Second, God was calling Abram to leave his land. Considering the social position implied by their names, I feel sure that Abram owned land and had a house to live in. Owning land and a house has always given human beings a sense of stability in the world. Though houses may be lost through fire, storm, or war, they still provide us with a place to be.
QUESTION: Would we be willing to give up living in a house and go pitch a tent in some strange land? Hebrews 11:8-10 says,
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
In addition, Abraham was required to leave his clan behind. His father died in Haran, and his brother Nahor stayed behind in Ur with the rest of the blood relatives. In those days, family was much tighter than it is today. People often married their own clan members, and we can see in later verses in Genesis that Sarai was Abram’s half-sister, and Milcah was also her own husband’s niece. The clan provided security, identity, blood ties, and a sense of belonging. One would not get up and cut those ties without a very compelling reason. For Abram, the call of God was a compelling reason.
Finally, Abram was required to leave behind his immediate family. Only Sarai and Lot were with him when he arrived in Canaan. Abram was apparently the firstborn of his father Terah and it is easy to see that he would have inherited a position of leadership and responsibility in his family. Jesus said, in Luke 14:26,
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
Of course, Jesus is not speaking here of a malicious hatred, but rather that the sovereign preference in one’s life must be for Himself far above all others. We see Abram exhibiting a sovereign preference for the fellowship of God over even his family members.
OBSERVATION: If God calls us to do something in life, the claims of family must not be allowed to interfere.
THE COVENANT PROMISE
In Genesis 12:2-3 we find the first record of God’s covenant promise to Abram.
“I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
This is a seven-fold promise, and I think it is worth noting that in the Bible, the number seven signifies completion/perfection.
FIRST:
God promises to make Abram into a great nation. This nation will be great both in number and in consequence. This will be a nation with a destiny to fulfill. It will be the most peculiar nation ever and God will have His hand on it in a very special way. Now, what is Abram’s situation when God makes this promise? We have already been told that Abram’s wife, Sarai, is barren—no children. In the following verse, we will see that Abram is 75 years old. In later verses, we will find that Sarai is only ten years younger than Abram, so she at present is 65. Seems a little late to become the father of a nation, doesn’t it?
OBSERVATION: Common sense is the gift of God that allows us to negotiate the curves of life; faith is the gift of God that gives us a destination and keeps us on the road despite the curves we encounter.
SECOND:
God promises to bless Abram. For Abram, the blessing of God was seen in material wealth, consequence in life, the presence and intervention of God, fellowship with God, peace with man, in posterity, and in long life. These are all good things to receive. In fact, there would be very few people who would not desire all of the above. But let’s think about the life of Jesus when He was on earth. He was materially poor, despised, hated for His message, had no wife or children, and was crucified at the ripe old age of 33. So, are we to conclude that He was not blessed by God? Indeed, doesn’t Isaiah 53 say that His own people would consider Him “afflicted by God?”
OBSERVATION: Everything that comes our way in life is intended to be a blessing. Sometimes the blessing is in the form of correction or discipline. Sometimes the blessing is a foundation to help others who are suffering in a similar situation. Whether or not the things that come our way become blessings depends entirely on how we receive them. I once heard a “victim” of cerebral palsy say, “Next to my salvation, the greatest gift in my life has been my CP.” On the other hand, many of the things we normally consider blessings actually prove otherwise because they tend to keep us independent of God.
THIRD:
God promises to make Abram’s name great. To have a great name is to be in a position of ultimate honor. As far as the Bible is concerned, your name describes who you really are in character. Who in the world has not heard of father Abraham. All Christians, Jews, and Muslims descend in one way or another from this man. But I believe that not only has his name been great in the world, it will continue to be great in the life to come.
FOURTH:
The next aspect of the covenant promise is in the form of a command. When God says, “You shall be a blessing,” it is not only a promise of what will be, but an instruction for how Abram is to live in the land of promise. Abram will be entering a pagan, idolatrous land whose inhabitants have never heard of the God who has been calling Abram. He is instructed to live in that land in such a way that he will bless its inhabitants. As we look through Genesis and see the manner in which Abram lived, we can see that he did this very thing. Everywhere he went, he built altars and called on the name of the Lord. The pagans took notice of this stranger among them and respected him and even sought treaties with him. In like manner, we are to live in this world as blessings to others. The worldlings live to grab all they can for themselves. People whose faith is like that of Abraham desire to bless others instead.
FIFTH:
God promises to bless those who bless Abraham. Not only will Abraham be blessed by God, but anyone who associates with him in a friendly manner will also receive the blessing of God. Anyone who lives for the Lord knows that others react one way or another to a true believer. Some people react by doing such things as changing the topic of conversation when the believer walks into the room. This type of behavior is respectful, but not willing to change permanently. Others criticize or mock a believer or try to catch him in a fault. This type of behavior is definitely not blessing. But there are some who want to know the God who brings blessing to the believer. They receive him with friendliness and good will. This is the type of person who will be blessed by God because he blesses the believer.
SIXTH:
In this part of the promise, God says that He will curse the one who curses Abram. In ancient times, a curse was considered to be a powerful thing. In fact, in Numbers 22, it is recorded that, as the children of Israel, Abram’s descendents, moved across the desert, they had defeated the armies of two kings, Sihon and Og. As they approached the land of Moab, Balak, its king, was desperately afraid of them and called for a seer named Balaam to come and put a curse on the children of Israel. Balaam came because Balak had promised him a lot of money if he would curse Israel, but God had warned him that he could not curse them because they were being blessed by God. Most modern people cannot understand such a thing and believe such curses to be a matter of mere superstition. However, because God took the matter seriously then, I believe these curses proceeded from a connection with supernatural forces and as time comes to an end, people will once again recognize the importance of what occurs in the spirit realm.
In Matthew 10, Jesus sent His disciples out to preach the kingdom of God in various cities. In verses 14 - 15, He said,
“And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.”
Thus the promise to Abram extends to his offspring by faith. The one who shuns the believer because of his faith in God will himself be shunned by God.
SEVENTH:
The final aspect of God’s covenant promise with Abram is perhaps the most significant of all. “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” This is the messianic promise—salvation will be possible for every person on earth because of Abram’s obedience. From him will come the promised savior of the world and in Revelation 5:9-10a, as the scene in heaven unfolds, we find that this promise has been fulfilled.
“And they sang a new song, singing: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God.”
ABRAM’S RESPONSE
Genesis 12:4-5 says,
“So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan.”
We see that Abram obeyed the call of God. He did what seemed crazy to everybody else. When God called, he didn’t go ask his family and friends what they thought about it. Human opinion didn’t enter in. He was 75 years old, and that is pretty old to be making such a radical change. He had the responsibility of a wife, his nephew, and servants to pick up and move. Once in the land, he would be living in a tent among people who were practicing gross idolatry. He would be a single light in a very dark land, but he would be God’s little light.
QUESTION: How dark is the land you live in? Are you willing to be a single light, if necessary, shining in a dark place? Can you believe that the “Canaan” you live in can become a land of promise and blessing?
“Quit your job. We both know that God wants you to be at home with the baby. We’ll make it somehow.” For a couple of weeks, scriptures had suddenly come to mind reminding me that a wife was to submit to her husband’s leadership. I thought that I didn’t really have a problem with this because we pretty well agreed together on most things. So why did these verses keep coming over and over? “Yes, Lord. You know I am fine with letting him lead.” I could never have imagined that those verses were preparing me for that one fateful telephone call that was to change the course of our lives forever. The minute I heard him say, “Quit your job,” I knew why those verses had been coming to mind. It seemed crazy. He was only making minimum wage. But who was I to argue with God?
THE CALL
Long before we did something that seemed crazy in answer to the call of God, a remarkable man named Abraham had done a similarly crazy thing. Let’s look at how his decision to obey God changed the course of his own life as well as the history of the world. Genesis 11:27-32 says,
“This is the genealogy of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.”
In studying the Old Testament, I like to research the meanings of names, because to the ancients, the name was a great indication of character and place in life. Some of the names in the passage above are from uncertain origin, so the meaning is hard to trace. However, Abram means, “Exalted Father,” and Sarai means “Princess,” and Milcah means “Queen.” From these names, it is easy to imagine that these were people of significant consequence in the land of Ur. They clearly were not “nobodies” as far as the world was concerned. We see Terah, the head of the family, doing something unheard of in that he packed up and moved off. Ur was located on the Euphrates River near the Persian Gulf. He moved, together with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, far upriver to the foothills of the mountain leading into modern day Turkey. While these verses in Genesis do not tell us why Terah decided to make this move, Acts 7:2-3 tells us why Abram went:
“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will show you.’”
Although we do not know why Terah decided to travel with Abram, these verses make it plain that Abram was following the call of God. Terah headed with Abram to Canaan, but settled in Haran where he died. Genesis 12:1 affirms the prior call of God,
“Now the LORD had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.’”
What was God calling Abram to do? In our modern life, moving is a very common event. Most people do move several times in their lives and there is an entire industry set up to assist people when they move. Although moving can be exhausting physically and emotionally trying, most people accept it as necessary. But in Abram’s day and culture, moving was not often done.
Let’s look at what Abram was called to leave behind. First, he had to leave his country. While most of us make a few moves in our lives, we generally do not leave the United States behind. We move within our American culture, and though there may be regional differences in culture, it is still the good old USA. We do not become “foreigners.” God is calling Abram to leave his country and become a “foreigner.”
QUESTION: Where is our allegiance? If God called us to move to Poland, or China, or Ethiopia, or Chile, would we be willing to uproot and go?
Second, God was calling Abram to leave his land. Considering the social position implied by their names, I feel sure that Abram owned land and had a house to live in. Owning land and a house has always given human beings a sense of stability in the world. Though houses may be lost through fire, storm, or war, they still provide us with a place to be.
QUESTION: Would we be willing to give up living in a house and go pitch a tent in some strange land? Hebrews 11:8-10 says,
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
In addition, Abraham was required to leave his clan behind. His father died in Haran, and his brother Nahor stayed behind in Ur with the rest of the blood relatives. In those days, family was much tighter than it is today. People often married their own clan members, and we can see in later verses in Genesis that Sarai was Abram’s half-sister, and Milcah was also her own husband’s niece. The clan provided security, identity, blood ties, and a sense of belonging. One would not get up and cut those ties without a very compelling reason. For Abram, the call of God was a compelling reason.
Finally, Abram was required to leave behind his immediate family. Only Sarai and Lot were with him when he arrived in Canaan. Abram was apparently the firstborn of his father Terah and it is easy to see that he would have inherited a position of leadership and responsibility in his family. Jesus said, in Luke 14:26,
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
Of course, Jesus is not speaking here of a malicious hatred, but rather that the sovereign preference in one’s life must be for Himself far above all others. We see Abram exhibiting a sovereign preference for the fellowship of God over even his family members.
OBSERVATION: If God calls us to do something in life, the claims of family must not be allowed to interfere.
THE COVENANT PROMISE
In Genesis 12:2-3 we find the first record of God’s covenant promise to Abram.
“I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
This is a seven-fold promise, and I think it is worth noting that in the Bible, the number seven signifies completion/perfection.
FIRST:
God promises to make Abram into a great nation. This nation will be great both in number and in consequence. This will be a nation with a destiny to fulfill. It will be the most peculiar nation ever and God will have His hand on it in a very special way. Now, what is Abram’s situation when God makes this promise? We have already been told that Abram’s wife, Sarai, is barren—no children. In the following verse, we will see that Abram is 75 years old. In later verses, we will find that Sarai is only ten years younger than Abram, so she at present is 65. Seems a little late to become the father of a nation, doesn’t it?
OBSERVATION: Common sense is the gift of God that allows us to negotiate the curves of life; faith is the gift of God that gives us a destination and keeps us on the road despite the curves we encounter.
SECOND:
God promises to bless Abram. For Abram, the blessing of God was seen in material wealth, consequence in life, the presence and intervention of God, fellowship with God, peace with man, in posterity, and in long life. These are all good things to receive. In fact, there would be very few people who would not desire all of the above. But let’s think about the life of Jesus when He was on earth. He was materially poor, despised, hated for His message, had no wife or children, and was crucified at the ripe old age of 33. So, are we to conclude that He was not blessed by God? Indeed, doesn’t Isaiah 53 say that His own people would consider Him “afflicted by God?”
OBSERVATION: Everything that comes our way in life is intended to be a blessing. Sometimes the blessing is in the form of correction or discipline. Sometimes the blessing is a foundation to help others who are suffering in a similar situation. Whether or not the things that come our way become blessings depends entirely on how we receive them. I once heard a “victim” of cerebral palsy say, “Next to my salvation, the greatest gift in my life has been my CP.” On the other hand, many of the things we normally consider blessings actually prove otherwise because they tend to keep us independent of God.
THIRD:
God promises to make Abram’s name great. To have a great name is to be in a position of ultimate honor. As far as the Bible is concerned, your name describes who you really are in character. Who in the world has not heard of father Abraham. All Christians, Jews, and Muslims descend in one way or another from this man. But I believe that not only has his name been great in the world, it will continue to be great in the life to come.
FOURTH:
The next aspect of the covenant promise is in the form of a command. When God says, “You shall be a blessing,” it is not only a promise of what will be, but an instruction for how Abram is to live in the land of promise. Abram will be entering a pagan, idolatrous land whose inhabitants have never heard of the God who has been calling Abram. He is instructed to live in that land in such a way that he will bless its inhabitants. As we look through Genesis and see the manner in which Abram lived, we can see that he did this very thing. Everywhere he went, he built altars and called on the name of the Lord. The pagans took notice of this stranger among them and respected him and even sought treaties with him. In like manner, we are to live in this world as blessings to others. The worldlings live to grab all they can for themselves. People whose faith is like that of Abraham desire to bless others instead.
FIFTH:
God promises to bless those who bless Abraham. Not only will Abraham be blessed by God, but anyone who associates with him in a friendly manner will also receive the blessing of God. Anyone who lives for the Lord knows that others react one way or another to a true believer. Some people react by doing such things as changing the topic of conversation when the believer walks into the room. This type of behavior is respectful, but not willing to change permanently. Others criticize or mock a believer or try to catch him in a fault. This type of behavior is definitely not blessing. But there are some who want to know the God who brings blessing to the believer. They receive him with friendliness and good will. This is the type of person who will be blessed by God because he blesses the believer.
SIXTH:
In this part of the promise, God says that He will curse the one who curses Abram. In ancient times, a curse was considered to be a powerful thing. In fact, in Numbers 22, it is recorded that, as the children of Israel, Abram’s descendents, moved across the desert, they had defeated the armies of two kings, Sihon and Og. As they approached the land of Moab, Balak, its king, was desperately afraid of them and called for a seer named Balaam to come and put a curse on the children of Israel. Balaam came because Balak had promised him a lot of money if he would curse Israel, but God had warned him that he could not curse them because they were being blessed by God. Most modern people cannot understand such a thing and believe such curses to be a matter of mere superstition. However, because God took the matter seriously then, I believe these curses proceeded from a connection with supernatural forces and as time comes to an end, people will once again recognize the importance of what occurs in the spirit realm.
In Matthew 10, Jesus sent His disciples out to preach the kingdom of God in various cities. In verses 14 - 15, He said,
“And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.”
Thus the promise to Abram extends to his offspring by faith. The one who shuns the believer because of his faith in God will himself be shunned by God.
SEVENTH:
The final aspect of God’s covenant promise with Abram is perhaps the most significant of all. “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” This is the messianic promise—salvation will be possible for every person on earth because of Abram’s obedience. From him will come the promised savior of the world and in Revelation 5:9-10a, as the scene in heaven unfolds, we find that this promise has been fulfilled.
“And they sang a new song, singing: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God.”
ABRAM’S RESPONSE
Genesis 12:4-5 says,
“So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan.”
We see that Abram obeyed the call of God. He did what seemed crazy to everybody else. When God called, he didn’t go ask his family and friends what they thought about it. Human opinion didn’t enter in. He was 75 years old, and that is pretty old to be making such a radical change. He had the responsibility of a wife, his nephew, and servants to pick up and move. Once in the land, he would be living in a tent among people who were practicing gross idolatry. He would be a single light in a very dark land, but he would be God’s little light.
QUESTION: How dark is the land you live in? Are you willing to be a single light, if necessary, shining in a dark place? Can you believe that the “Canaan” you live in can become a land of promise and blessing?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
THE LORD'S SABBATH
Welcome to Bible Study online! This week's topic, as you can see, is rest. There are several scriptures to look up, so I hope you will grab your Bibles. After all, truth is not what I say, but what God has said to us in His word.
THE LORD’S SABBATH
In studying the subject of Sabbath and rest in general, I found that there are many different Hebrew and Greek words that can be translated as “rest” in the English. However, the Bible seems to begin and end with the idea of a special kind of rest, the Sabbath, and I would like to focus mainly on this idea.
THE DIVINE IDEA OF SABBATH
As most know, the book of Genesis begins with God creating the heavens and the earth. It gives the details of what was created each day during the first week. Finally, Genesis 1:31 – 2:3 says,
“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
First, we see that at the end of the sixth day, God looked at all the things that He had made. Have you ever taken a good bit of time and effort making something, and when you felt like you were done, you just stopped and looked closely to see if you were really satisfied with it? Was anything else needed? I think that this is what the “looking” of God at this point was all about. He had spent time creating many wonderful things and now He was just giving a final, careful look. All of the planets, and suns, and stars throughout the universe, galaxy after galaxy, were finished and in place. The earth, which had received so much careful attention, had everything needed to support and maintain all the many different forms of life that He had created to live on it. Man, who had received the most special attention of all, together with his wife, was walking around in the Garden of Eden. All the hosts of heaven, the angelic creations, were finished also. Everything that God had planned to create was finished. Nothing needed rearranging or remaking. Nothing needed to be added.
Next, we see that as God looked everything over, He was completely satisfied with all He had made. Now, I have to admit, that many times when I make something, I am not totally satisfied when I get done, but I just accept it as it turned out and go on. Occasionally, I may find that I am really happy with the dress, the cake, the paint job, whatever, but usually there are little things that I would have liked to have done better, but I have to accept my own limitations. God, however, found everything that He had made to be very good. Everything that He had made reflected His own qualities of goodness and perfection. The Psalmist says,
“The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows His handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)
The works of His hands were meant to bring God glory, that is, to reflect Who He really is, and in the beginning that is just what we find. Everything that He had made reflected His perfect goodness.
After this, we see from the verses in Genesis that on the seventh day, God rested from His work. This does not mean that God was tired at the end of the sixth day and had to take a nap or something. God is a Spirit and He does not tire from doing things. This word for rest simply means that He stopped creating. Everything that He had intended to make had been made and it was perfect. There was nothing else to make, so He stopped. Have you ever been working on something and kept tweaking it here and there until it was actually marred because you kept messing with it too long? Well, God knew that once He had it done, it was time to stop. This does not mean that He was no longer active with His creation. Some theological views hold that God made everything and sort of wound it all up like a top and then stepped back and left it running on its own. However, when questioned regarding the Sabbath, Jesus said, “My Father is working and I Myself am working.” (John 5:17) This seems to indicate pretty plainly that God has always had an active role in the working of His creation. Indeed, I do not see how a person could read the Bible and not see that God is constantly at work in the lives of people, nations, the weather, geologic disturbances, etc. So we see that this Sabbath rest is not based on inactivity, but rather a satisfied completion of creation.
I think the most important feature to notice about the Sabbath rest on the seventh day is that it is based on the fact that, not only was everything complete, but everything was very good. If there had not been a divine perfection in the work of God’s hands, I do not believe that He would have been able to rest. He would not have been satisfied. Another important feature regarding the Lord’s Sabbath, is that it is perpetual. Throughout the first chapter of Genesis as each day drew to a close, the Scriptures say, “And the evening and the morning were the first day, “ then second, third, etc., but it does not at any point say, “And the evening and the morning were the seventh day.” The Sabbath rest of God never ended. He was always perfectly satisfied with His creation and there was never a need to create anything else. I think it is very important to keep in mind that from God’s point of view, the Sabbath rest is eternal and we will see that He invites us to participate in it with Him.
Finally, it says that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because He had finished His creation. Now, from our earthly standpoint, we mark the days in terms of weeks and call the days by different names (based, incidentally upon the sun, moon, and planets), but I get the idea that from God’s standpoint, He is in His Sabbath perpetually. The heavenly standpoint is that of eternal Sabbath. All that God purposed to accomplish in the creation of the universe, despite the fall into sin, remains fulfilled and He is satisfied. Of course, He has been active in dealing with sin and redemption, but the Scriptures tell us that He had this all worked out before He ever even began the creation because it says that Jesus was “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth.” (Revelation 13:8) This tells us that in the mind and heart of God, before He ever made anything, He had redemption through sending His Son all worked out. So despite the fact that sin entered the world, God was still able to rest in an eternal Sabbath.
A TEMPORAL DISTURBANCE IN ETERNAL REST
Although God is resting in the completeness of His creation, something has happened to disturb its perfection, and this disturbance He moves to deal with. The disturbance is sin, and I refer to it as temporal because it exists only for the time being, but it has already been dealt with perfectly and will end when time ends. The disturbance occurs in Genesis 3 in the familiar story of the serpent, the woman, and the forbidden fruit. I believe that when the first couple disobeyed God and in so doing took upon themselves the “right to themselves”, even though they were clearly the creations of God, they fell out of the Sabbath rest of God. Let’s take a look at Genesis 3:17-19 where the effects of falling out of God’s rest are to be seen.
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’”
This sounds like anything but rest. Adam and Eve have fallen out of the perfection of God’s Sabbath rest, and the result is wearisome toil. I think that this toil represents the burden of sin in their lives. The burden of sin is really the burden of self, because the root of sin is wanting to be our own little god, but we are not strong enough to carry the weight of all that ego, insecurity, and need. Only God can do that. In the punishment of Eve, we see that there will be pain in childbirth—not for the child, but for the mother. I think that this symbolizes the pain that God Himself would have to endure in order to provide a new birth for mankind through the death of His Son. The punishment of the serpent shows us that pride and rebellion are content to slither on the ground eating dust when they might have walked among the stars as God intended.
We see at the end of Genesis 3 that man was left without the Sabbath rest, but not without hope. But what does sin do to God? We have seen what it did to man, but how does it disturb God? Let’s look at Zechariah 6:1-8. In this passage, the prophet Zechariah sees an apocalyptic vision of horses pulling chariots, very reminiscent of the horses that we see in the book of Revelation. The fact that they come out between two bronze mountains symbolizes judgment and the colors of the horses indicate that they represent war, bloodshed, and death. They are sent into different parts of the earth to execute judgment. In verse 8, God says,
“See, those who go toward the north country have given rest to My Spirit in the north country.”
Why did war, bloodshed, and death give rest to God’s Spirit? Because it worked to stop the sin that was going on. Sin is a great disturbance to the Spirit of God. It does not disturb His Sabbath rest (there is still no need for any further creating) but it disturbs His Spirit, and it should likewise disturb our spirits.
QUESTION: Is God at rest in our hearts? Is God at rest in our homes? Is God disturbed when He walks through the halls and sanctuaries of our churches? Is God at rest in our nation?
God says something very interesting in Isaiah 62:1-3.
“For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns. The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD will name. You shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
Notice He says that He won’t rest until righteousness and salvation shine from Jerusalem to the whole world. This reference to rest is not Sabbath rest (He is still not planning to create anything else) but rather that He is actively working to bring about salvation and righteousness and that He will do it through Jerusalem. Salvation was accomplished in Jerusalem with the death and resurrection of Jesus, but the final fulfillment of these verses will come when He returns to rule the world from Jerusalem. This, I believe, will occur in the seventh millennium, so we are pretty well there and I think this will soon be accomplished.
THE JEWISH SABBATH
In the history of the Jewish people, we will see that the land of Canaan was symbolic of Sabbath rest. God rescues them from slavery in Egypt (slavery is symbolic of sin) and leads them out of Egypt. He takes them through the desert to Mount Sinai. In the desert wilderness, they are to be consecrated—that is, they are to enter into covenant with God to be His people. From Mount Sinai, God gives all His commands as to how they are to live in the land that He intends to give them, how they are to worship, think, eat, work, etc. The people respond by saying, “All that the LORD has said we will do and we will be obedient.” (Exodus 24:7) Very soon afterward, however, in Numbers 14:6-10, we see that the people would not obey when put to the test. They refused to enter the land and trust God to provide victory and rest for them, so they were left to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. After 40 years, Joshua led the people victoriously into the Promised Land, and in Joshua 1:13-15 we read,
“Remember the word which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, saying, ‘The LORD your God is giving you rest and is giving you this land.’ Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side of the Jordan. But you shall pass before your brethren armed, all your mighty men of valor, and help them, until the LORD has given your brethren rest, as He gave you and they also have taken possession of the land which the LORD your God is giving them. Then you shall return to the land of your possession and enjoy it, which Moses the LORD’s servant gave you on this side of the Jordan toward the sunrise.”
Notice that God was giving them rest, along with the land. And if the people of Israel had kept God’s commandments and made Him the center of their lives and worship, looking faithfully for the Sacrifice promised through their worship rituals, I think they would have enjoyed the Lord’s Sabbath. However, their history reveals that they soon followed the gods of the Canaanites and forsook the Lord their God, so they never realized the divine idea of rest. The Law that was given through Moses specified that the seventh day was to be a Sabbath of rest—no toilsome labor—and the seventh year was to be a Sabbath for the land and no crops were to be sown. So we see in the Law that God had intended for the people to enter into His rest. The observance of the Sabbath, with no toilsome work, should have shown to them the hope of redemption from sin because toilsome work was the punishment for sin in the Garden of Eden. But the people would not observe His Sabbath as commanded, and they could not enter into it because of disobedience and lack of faith.
Psalm 95:8-11 sums up the situation for the people of Israel:
“Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me; they tried Me, though they saw My work for forty years. I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts; and they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.”
THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH
Hebrews 4 gives insight and promise to those who will believe God. Verses 1-2 say,
“Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them (refers to the Israelites in the wilderness); but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.”
So what is required to enter into the Sabbath rest? These verses tell us that faith is required. What is faith? Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
QUESTION: What do you hope for? If you have fixed your hope in man’s ingenuity and in science and technology, you will find “evidence” that man came from apes all over the place. You will find “evidence” that the world just evolved out of who knows what and you will snub people who believe in God and say that God is just a crutch for the weak-minded. However, if your hope is in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, you will look around and see all sorts of evidence that God made the world, that He has been working through history and individual lives, and you will scratch your head perplexedly at the notion that the universe just sort of “happened all by itself” and say, “It’s mathematically impossible! There must be a Designer and Builder.” So where do you place your hope—and I don’t mean, where do you place your hope when you are sitting in church and you know the answer you are supposed to give to that question. Where do you place your hope Monday – Saturday when the world is telling you to think and behave one way, but God has said to think and behave in another way. We live in a time when people “compartmentalize” their faith, but as we saw in the passages above, these people are in danger of failing to enter into God’s rest because of unbelief. The true Sabbath rest of God is eternal, not just one day out of the week.
To the Christian believers, the author of Hebrews wrote in 4:9-11,
“There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.”
The Greek word used in verse 9 for rest is “sabbatismos,” and it refers to the Sabbath rest, tying this verse directly to the verse in Genesis in which God rested from His creative work on the seventh day. God is inviting those who will exercise real faith by obeying Him to enter into His perfect rest. He has provided the means by which we are to be made perfect—the atoning death of His Son. Jesus’ last words on the cross before He died were, “It is finished.” All the work that was necessary to enable man to enter into God’s Sabbath of perfect rest was complete. When one enters that perfect rest, he realizes that his own works could never have gotten him in. I am very much afraid that most people believe that when God weighs their good deeds against their evil deeds, the good will win out and they will be let into heaven. That is not what the writer to the Hebrews says in this passage, but rather that when we have entered into His rest by faith, we have stopped our own pitiful works and have placed our faith in Jesus for salvation from sin.
What does the author mean by exhorting us to be diligent to enter into that rest? Does this mean that we can lose our salvation along the way? Some do believe this very frightening thought.The Hebrews to whom this letter was written had been practicing Judaism before receiving Jesus as their Messiah and becoming Christians. They were in danger of letting themselves be dragged back into Judaism because it was really hard to buck their traditions, cultural and religious upbringing, and often even their own families. For Christians in the Western world, I think that he means that as long as we live on earth in bodies that are still influenced by the fleshly desires we will have to be diligent to remain faithful and obedient to God. The natural desires that have been corrupted by sin will not be done away with until we receive resurrection bodies like that of the Lord Jesus and they will always tend to drag us out of God’s rest. Also, there will always be those people whose words tend to influence us away from resting in the completed work of God and in His sovereignty and His willingness and ability to lead us. These are the folks that are always desperately doing and never restfully being.
QUESTION: Have you entered into the Lord’s Sabbath rest? Have you ceased trying to “be good” and placed your faith in Jesus and His death for your sins? Are you continuing in the Sabbath rest by trusting Him to lead you day by day and focusing your worshipful attention on Him, rather than the things of the world? Jesus said,
“Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)
Those who are carrying the burden of sin or who are trying hard to be “good enough” are invited to come to Jesus, submit to His yoke (self-denial and obedient following) and thereby find real rest.
Thanks for checking this out. I am planning a study on the life of Abraham, focusing on his worship and faith. Hopefully, I can have the first lesson ready to post in a couple of weeks.
THE LORD’S SABBATH
In studying the subject of Sabbath and rest in general, I found that there are many different Hebrew and Greek words that can be translated as “rest” in the English. However, the Bible seems to begin and end with the idea of a special kind of rest, the Sabbath, and I would like to focus mainly on this idea.
THE DIVINE IDEA OF SABBATH
As most know, the book of Genesis begins with God creating the heavens and the earth. It gives the details of what was created each day during the first week. Finally, Genesis 1:31 – 2:3 says,
“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
First, we see that at the end of the sixth day, God looked at all the things that He had made. Have you ever taken a good bit of time and effort making something, and when you felt like you were done, you just stopped and looked closely to see if you were really satisfied with it? Was anything else needed? I think that this is what the “looking” of God at this point was all about. He had spent time creating many wonderful things and now He was just giving a final, careful look. All of the planets, and suns, and stars throughout the universe, galaxy after galaxy, were finished and in place. The earth, which had received so much careful attention, had everything needed to support and maintain all the many different forms of life that He had created to live on it. Man, who had received the most special attention of all, together with his wife, was walking around in the Garden of Eden. All the hosts of heaven, the angelic creations, were finished also. Everything that God had planned to create was finished. Nothing needed rearranging or remaking. Nothing needed to be added.
Next, we see that as God looked everything over, He was completely satisfied with all He had made. Now, I have to admit, that many times when I make something, I am not totally satisfied when I get done, but I just accept it as it turned out and go on. Occasionally, I may find that I am really happy with the dress, the cake, the paint job, whatever, but usually there are little things that I would have liked to have done better, but I have to accept my own limitations. God, however, found everything that He had made to be very good. Everything that He had made reflected His own qualities of goodness and perfection. The Psalmist says,
“The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows His handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)
The works of His hands were meant to bring God glory, that is, to reflect Who He really is, and in the beginning that is just what we find. Everything that He had made reflected His perfect goodness.
After this, we see from the verses in Genesis that on the seventh day, God rested from His work. This does not mean that God was tired at the end of the sixth day and had to take a nap or something. God is a Spirit and He does not tire from doing things. This word for rest simply means that He stopped creating. Everything that He had intended to make had been made and it was perfect. There was nothing else to make, so He stopped. Have you ever been working on something and kept tweaking it here and there until it was actually marred because you kept messing with it too long? Well, God knew that once He had it done, it was time to stop. This does not mean that He was no longer active with His creation. Some theological views hold that God made everything and sort of wound it all up like a top and then stepped back and left it running on its own. However, when questioned regarding the Sabbath, Jesus said, “My Father is working and I Myself am working.” (John 5:17) This seems to indicate pretty plainly that God has always had an active role in the working of His creation. Indeed, I do not see how a person could read the Bible and not see that God is constantly at work in the lives of people, nations, the weather, geologic disturbances, etc. So we see that this Sabbath rest is not based on inactivity, but rather a satisfied completion of creation.
I think the most important feature to notice about the Sabbath rest on the seventh day is that it is based on the fact that, not only was everything complete, but everything was very good. If there had not been a divine perfection in the work of God’s hands, I do not believe that He would have been able to rest. He would not have been satisfied. Another important feature regarding the Lord’s Sabbath, is that it is perpetual. Throughout the first chapter of Genesis as each day drew to a close, the Scriptures say, “And the evening and the morning were the first day, “ then second, third, etc., but it does not at any point say, “And the evening and the morning were the seventh day.” The Sabbath rest of God never ended. He was always perfectly satisfied with His creation and there was never a need to create anything else. I think it is very important to keep in mind that from God’s point of view, the Sabbath rest is eternal and we will see that He invites us to participate in it with Him.
Finally, it says that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because He had finished His creation. Now, from our earthly standpoint, we mark the days in terms of weeks and call the days by different names (based, incidentally upon the sun, moon, and planets), but I get the idea that from God’s standpoint, He is in His Sabbath perpetually. The heavenly standpoint is that of eternal Sabbath. All that God purposed to accomplish in the creation of the universe, despite the fall into sin, remains fulfilled and He is satisfied. Of course, He has been active in dealing with sin and redemption, but the Scriptures tell us that He had this all worked out before He ever even began the creation because it says that Jesus was “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth.” (Revelation 13:8) This tells us that in the mind and heart of God, before He ever made anything, He had redemption through sending His Son all worked out. So despite the fact that sin entered the world, God was still able to rest in an eternal Sabbath.
A TEMPORAL DISTURBANCE IN ETERNAL REST
Although God is resting in the completeness of His creation, something has happened to disturb its perfection, and this disturbance He moves to deal with. The disturbance is sin, and I refer to it as temporal because it exists only for the time being, but it has already been dealt with perfectly and will end when time ends. The disturbance occurs in Genesis 3 in the familiar story of the serpent, the woman, and the forbidden fruit. I believe that when the first couple disobeyed God and in so doing took upon themselves the “right to themselves”, even though they were clearly the creations of God, they fell out of the Sabbath rest of God. Let’s take a look at Genesis 3:17-19 where the effects of falling out of God’s rest are to be seen.
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’”
This sounds like anything but rest. Adam and Eve have fallen out of the perfection of God’s Sabbath rest, and the result is wearisome toil. I think that this toil represents the burden of sin in their lives. The burden of sin is really the burden of self, because the root of sin is wanting to be our own little god, but we are not strong enough to carry the weight of all that ego, insecurity, and need. Only God can do that. In the punishment of Eve, we see that there will be pain in childbirth—not for the child, but for the mother. I think that this symbolizes the pain that God Himself would have to endure in order to provide a new birth for mankind through the death of His Son. The punishment of the serpent shows us that pride and rebellion are content to slither on the ground eating dust when they might have walked among the stars as God intended.
We see at the end of Genesis 3 that man was left without the Sabbath rest, but not without hope. But what does sin do to God? We have seen what it did to man, but how does it disturb God? Let’s look at Zechariah 6:1-8. In this passage, the prophet Zechariah sees an apocalyptic vision of horses pulling chariots, very reminiscent of the horses that we see in the book of Revelation. The fact that they come out between two bronze mountains symbolizes judgment and the colors of the horses indicate that they represent war, bloodshed, and death. They are sent into different parts of the earth to execute judgment. In verse 8, God says,
“See, those who go toward the north country have given rest to My Spirit in the north country.”
Why did war, bloodshed, and death give rest to God’s Spirit? Because it worked to stop the sin that was going on. Sin is a great disturbance to the Spirit of God. It does not disturb His Sabbath rest (there is still no need for any further creating) but it disturbs His Spirit, and it should likewise disturb our spirits.
QUESTION: Is God at rest in our hearts? Is God at rest in our homes? Is God disturbed when He walks through the halls and sanctuaries of our churches? Is God at rest in our nation?
God says something very interesting in Isaiah 62:1-3.
“For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns. The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD will name. You shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
Notice He says that He won’t rest until righteousness and salvation shine from Jerusalem to the whole world. This reference to rest is not Sabbath rest (He is still not planning to create anything else) but rather that He is actively working to bring about salvation and righteousness and that He will do it through Jerusalem. Salvation was accomplished in Jerusalem with the death and resurrection of Jesus, but the final fulfillment of these verses will come when He returns to rule the world from Jerusalem. This, I believe, will occur in the seventh millennium, so we are pretty well there and I think this will soon be accomplished.
THE JEWISH SABBATH
In the history of the Jewish people, we will see that the land of Canaan was symbolic of Sabbath rest. God rescues them from slavery in Egypt (slavery is symbolic of sin) and leads them out of Egypt. He takes them through the desert to Mount Sinai. In the desert wilderness, they are to be consecrated—that is, they are to enter into covenant with God to be His people. From Mount Sinai, God gives all His commands as to how they are to live in the land that He intends to give them, how they are to worship, think, eat, work, etc. The people respond by saying, “All that the LORD has said we will do and we will be obedient.” (Exodus 24:7) Very soon afterward, however, in Numbers 14:6-10, we see that the people would not obey when put to the test. They refused to enter the land and trust God to provide victory and rest for them, so they were left to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. After 40 years, Joshua led the people victoriously into the Promised Land, and in Joshua 1:13-15 we read,
“Remember the word which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, saying, ‘The LORD your God is giving you rest and is giving you this land.’ Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side of the Jordan. But you shall pass before your brethren armed, all your mighty men of valor, and help them, until the LORD has given your brethren rest, as He gave you and they also have taken possession of the land which the LORD your God is giving them. Then you shall return to the land of your possession and enjoy it, which Moses the LORD’s servant gave you on this side of the Jordan toward the sunrise.”
Notice that God was giving them rest, along with the land. And if the people of Israel had kept God’s commandments and made Him the center of their lives and worship, looking faithfully for the Sacrifice promised through their worship rituals, I think they would have enjoyed the Lord’s Sabbath. However, their history reveals that they soon followed the gods of the Canaanites and forsook the Lord their God, so they never realized the divine idea of rest. The Law that was given through Moses specified that the seventh day was to be a Sabbath of rest—no toilsome labor—and the seventh year was to be a Sabbath for the land and no crops were to be sown. So we see in the Law that God had intended for the people to enter into His rest. The observance of the Sabbath, with no toilsome work, should have shown to them the hope of redemption from sin because toilsome work was the punishment for sin in the Garden of Eden. But the people would not observe His Sabbath as commanded, and they could not enter into it because of disobedience and lack of faith.
Psalm 95:8-11 sums up the situation for the people of Israel:
“Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me; they tried Me, though they saw My work for forty years. I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts; and they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.”
THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH
Hebrews 4 gives insight and promise to those who will believe God. Verses 1-2 say,
“Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them (refers to the Israelites in the wilderness); but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.”
So what is required to enter into the Sabbath rest? These verses tell us that faith is required. What is faith? Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
QUESTION: What do you hope for? If you have fixed your hope in man’s ingenuity and in science and technology, you will find “evidence” that man came from apes all over the place. You will find “evidence” that the world just evolved out of who knows what and you will snub people who believe in God and say that God is just a crutch for the weak-minded. However, if your hope is in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, you will look around and see all sorts of evidence that God made the world, that He has been working through history and individual lives, and you will scratch your head perplexedly at the notion that the universe just sort of “happened all by itself” and say, “It’s mathematically impossible! There must be a Designer and Builder.” So where do you place your hope—and I don’t mean, where do you place your hope when you are sitting in church and you know the answer you are supposed to give to that question. Where do you place your hope Monday – Saturday when the world is telling you to think and behave one way, but God has said to think and behave in another way. We live in a time when people “compartmentalize” their faith, but as we saw in the passages above, these people are in danger of failing to enter into God’s rest because of unbelief. The true Sabbath rest of God is eternal, not just one day out of the week.
To the Christian believers, the author of Hebrews wrote in 4:9-11,
“There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.”
The Greek word used in verse 9 for rest is “sabbatismos,” and it refers to the Sabbath rest, tying this verse directly to the verse in Genesis in which God rested from His creative work on the seventh day. God is inviting those who will exercise real faith by obeying Him to enter into His perfect rest. He has provided the means by which we are to be made perfect—the atoning death of His Son. Jesus’ last words on the cross before He died were, “It is finished.” All the work that was necessary to enable man to enter into God’s Sabbath of perfect rest was complete. When one enters that perfect rest, he realizes that his own works could never have gotten him in. I am very much afraid that most people believe that when God weighs their good deeds against their evil deeds, the good will win out and they will be let into heaven. That is not what the writer to the Hebrews says in this passage, but rather that when we have entered into His rest by faith, we have stopped our own pitiful works and have placed our faith in Jesus for salvation from sin.
What does the author mean by exhorting us to be diligent to enter into that rest? Does this mean that we can lose our salvation along the way? Some do believe this very frightening thought.The Hebrews to whom this letter was written had been practicing Judaism before receiving Jesus as their Messiah and becoming Christians. They were in danger of letting themselves be dragged back into Judaism because it was really hard to buck their traditions, cultural and religious upbringing, and often even their own families. For Christians in the Western world, I think that he means that as long as we live on earth in bodies that are still influenced by the fleshly desires we will have to be diligent to remain faithful and obedient to God. The natural desires that have been corrupted by sin will not be done away with until we receive resurrection bodies like that of the Lord Jesus and they will always tend to drag us out of God’s rest. Also, there will always be those people whose words tend to influence us away from resting in the completed work of God and in His sovereignty and His willingness and ability to lead us. These are the folks that are always desperately doing and never restfully being.
QUESTION: Have you entered into the Lord’s Sabbath rest? Have you ceased trying to “be good” and placed your faith in Jesus and His death for your sins? Are you continuing in the Sabbath rest by trusting Him to lead you day by day and focusing your worshipful attention on Him, rather than the things of the world? Jesus said,
“Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)
Those who are carrying the burden of sin or who are trying hard to be “good enough” are invited to come to Jesus, submit to His yoke (self-denial and obedient following) and thereby find real rest.
Thanks for checking this out. I am planning a study on the life of Abraham, focusing on his worship and faith. Hopefully, I can have the first lesson ready to post in a couple of weeks.
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