When we
meet Abraham in Genesis, he is called Abram.
He is living in Mesopotamia with his father’s family. God spoke to Abram while he was living in
Mesopotamia and told him to get up, leave his home and father’s family and
travel to a land that God would show him.
Abram moved
from what is now Iraq to an area that is Syria in the present day. It was there, in a city called Haran that God
appeared to Abram a second time and said:
Leave your native country, your
relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2I will make you into a great
nation. I will bless you and make you
famous, and you will be a blessing to others.
3I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat
you with contempt. All the families on
earth will be blessed through you.
Genesis 12:1-3[i]
Abram moved
away from Haran, leaving all behind except his nephew Lot. Lot apparently was Abram’s heir. Abram held on to this family connection until
Lot and Abram’s combined possessions became too great for the land to
support.
Abram and
Lot parted ways, and then God appeared to Abram again.
14After Lot
had gone, the LORD said to Abram, “Look as far as you can see in every
direction—north and south, east and west.
15I am giving all this land, as far as you can see, to you
and your descendants as a permanent possession.
16And I will give you so many descendants that, like the dust
of the earth, they cannot be counted! 17Go
and walk through the land in every direction, for I am giving it to you.” Genesis 13:14-17
We do not
know what Abram looked like. We do not
know how tall he was, or any of his physical characteristics. Like Jesus, he had no form or beauty that we
should be drawn to him. The thing that
sets Abram apart is the call of God on his life. There are two unique characteristics to this
call that we can observe in what we have just covered.
First,
there is a promise of blessing. God
called Abram for the purpose of blessing him.
Second, in
order to receive the blessing Abram had to let go of everything he might have
been relying on. First, it was his
homeland. A few generations of Abram’s
family lived in Mesopotamia. Next, it
was his family. He left his brothers and
relatives. Finally, he left his only
living male heir, Lot.
All this
leaving makes me think of Romans 12:1 where it says, “Present your bodies as a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”
ESV
Genesis
22:1 & 2 say:
1Some time
later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.
“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”
2“Take your
son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of
Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt
offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
Of all the
things God has asked Abram, now Abraham, to give up, this is the hardest. “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac,
whom you love so much . . .”
The call of
God is first a call for the purpose of blessing.
If God was
willing to give up His One and Only Son to save us, can we imagine anything He
would be unwilling to give for our sake?
Romans 8:32 says, “Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him
up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?”
The call of
God is also a call to leave all else and follow Him. God calls on each of us to let go of
everything we might be relying on. This
is consistent with the first commandment.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Jesus said:
37“If you
love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being
mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of
being mine. 38If you refuse
to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. 39If you cling to your life, you
will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. Mathew 10:37-39
Abraham has
become our example because he was willing to rely completely on God. Is there anything that we have or hold
besides God that we will not lose anyway?
All our possessions will grow old and spoil. All our family will eventually pass on. Everything we have is temporary at best. Is there anything we have that we did not
receive from God?
In his
willingness to rely on God alone, Abraham experienced the provision of
God. As he lifted the knife to kill his
son, God stopped him. God provided a Ram
as a substitute for Isaac. Hebrews 11
says this about this incident:
17It was by
faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was
ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, 18even though God had told
him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.” 19Abraham reasoned that if Isaac
died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son
back from the dead.
Genesis
22:1 starts out, “Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith.” The testing of faith is hard to
understand. We cannot know what God
knows or see what God sees. Because of
this James 1 gives good advice when it says:
2Dear
brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity
for great joy. 3For you know
that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4So let it grow, for when your
endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing
nothing.
If Abraham
had held on instead of relying on God, he would never have known God’s
provision. His faith would not have
grown. His experience of God would have
remained shallow at best. He would not
have become what James calls “perfect and complete.”
Is there
something you are holding on to? Is
there something that God is asking you to let go?
Abraham
experienced God’s call and then because of faith he experienced God’s
provision, and finally he experienced the fullness of God’s blessing.
Genesis
22:15-18 says:
15Then the
angel of the LORD called again to Abraham from heaven. 16“This is what the LORD says:
Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son,
I swear by my own name that 17I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number,
like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of
their enemies. 18And through
your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you
have obeyed me.”
Look at
this again, “I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you.”
God is
certainly a help in time of trouble. He
is Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will
provide. In addition, He is so much
more.
He wants to
bless us. He longs to bless us.
Lamenting
over Jerusalem, Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the
prophets and stones God’s messengers! How
often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her
chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.” (Luke 13:34)
God shows
He wants to bless us when He says, “For it was I, the LORD your God, who
rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open
your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things.” (Psalm 81:10)
Think of
the position that God has given us because of Jesus Christ. He provided a substitute to die in our place
and pay the price for our sins. 1 John
3:2 tells us:
Dear friends, we are already God’s
children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for
we will see him as he really is.
We see in
Genesis 22:1-18 how Abraham experienced God’s call, provision and
blessing. In closing, I would like to
reconsider Romans 12. However, this time
I would like to read all of verses 1 and 2.
1And so,
dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because
of all he has done for you. Let them be
a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2Don’t copy the behavior and
customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing
the way you think. Then you will learn
to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Do we want
to know how good and pleasing and perfect God’s will is? It starts with letting our bodies be a living
and holy sacrifice.
If you are
like me, we need to spend less time telling God what we think needs to happen
and more time praying for His will to be done.
[i]
Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New
Living Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Steam, Illinois
60188. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please Share thoughts comments or questions.