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.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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.
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