Chapter summary
In the last chapter we introduced the idea of being “grafted into God’s special olive tree”  and “sharing the blessing of Abraham and his children”.  As a non-Jew (Gentile) I came to understand these things as an outsider looking in, through the revelation given to Paul.  Paul however, came to this understanding first hand.  He was taught the Hebrew scriptures from childhood, yet for all his study he failed to grasp the significance of Abraham until the Lord apprehended him and  led him to the Arabian desert for 3 years.  Perhaps our own journey mirrors that of Paul who was trained as a very religious person but later began to understand the grace of God.  

Origins of Grace
Up until that fateful day on the Damascus road Saul was a respectable, upstanding Jew in first century Israel.  But he was unprepared for the events which were soon to unfold and set his life on a new course.  Saul was the epitome of a law-abiding, Pharisaical Jew.  It was this man, who “full of the truth” and believing that he was serving God was actually persecuting the Lord’s Messiah.  Remember that Saul did not have a New Testament to read or study – his Bible was the Old Testament and he knew it inside and out.  We know from his writings that Paul was extremely detail oriented and a stickler for accuracy.  But without a New Testament, how did God take such a man and teach him the grace of God from the Hebrew scriptures.

To understand the insight given to Saul (whose name was changed to Paul), we must go back to Genesis and consider the life of Abram.  In his epistles, Paul repeatedly makes reference (both directly and indirectly) to Abraham.  Actually, if we attribute the book of Hebrews to Paul, there are 57 references by name to Abraham in his letters. Personally, I believe it was through the lens of Abraham’s life that Paul understood the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.  To comprehend his understanding of the New Covenant we must understand how he arrived at this understanding.  If you question how I make that last statement, please consider these verses.

So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.
Galatians 3:9

Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith.
Galatians 3:14

And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn’t just for Abraham’s benefit. It was recorded for our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
Romans 4:23-24

Brief Review of the Early History
A great deal of primeval history predates the call of Abram, much more than we can explain now.  I am working on a companion study detailing events in Genesis chapters 1 – 11 that will help in understanding the background to the call of God on Abram’s life.  For now, it is enough to know that the effects from the fall of man, the great flood and the tower of Babel left humanity and the created order in a desperate condition. It was in response to these three events that God’s story of redemption began.  Even in the early church this was understood; listen to how Stephen begins his sermon:

At this point everyone in the high council stared at Stephen, because his face became as bright as an angels.  This was Stephen’s reply: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran.  God told him, ‘Leave your native land and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.  So Abraham left…..
Acts 6:15-7:2

Notice that Stephen begins with Abraham.  I’ve always found it peculiar that Stephen did not mention the earlier events of Genesis. But his point was in tracing Yahweh’s story of redemption through the Jewish people, not the root of pain and suffering.  And that story of grace and redemption for humanity began with Abraham. 

Cost of Redemption

They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.
Revelation 13:8

Even in the garden God knew the extremely high cost of restoring all things and in the previous chapter we introduced the idea of covenant.  In the opening chapters of Genesis, God covered our first parents with animal skins which prophetically foreshadowed the coming Messiah’s work at the cross.  Later, after the great flood the Lord God even established a covenant with the earth.  So we see there is promised hope for both creation and humanity.  We should recognize that God has always been concerned for both his human family as well as the earth itself and its created order,  and this concern is demonstrated through covenant. 

These two streams of redemption (humanity and creation) are further developed in the Abrahamic story and woven together throughout the balance of scripture with numerous references to both the people and the land.  The ultimate fulfillment is found in Rev. 21 with these words:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.
Rev. 21:1-3

If we linger with Adam and Eve for a moment, what are some of the lessons they would learn from this experience? Consider…..

• There was need of a covering.
• The best covering sinners could make was of no avail. 
• Yahweh removed their fig leaves and covered them with animal skins – demonstrating their shame was valid.
• Yahweh is holy and just and will by no means clear the guilty.
• Only by life can a life be redeemed.
• If the sinner is not put to death, there must be a substitute.

These are lessons which would have been understood by our first ancestors.  An observation about this covering is that Adam and Eve just received that which God provided.  The Lord did all the work and provided the covering for the receptive couple.  This is an early picture of his mercy – we bring nothing to the table, it is all him. 

The Big Risk
The short segue above helps to demonstrate the need for redemption and provides clues to the method of its accomplishment.  In the preface, I mentioned how God telescopes his plan through a series of continually expanding types and shadows.  The blessing of Shem is one such example.  From Genesis 11:11 we know that Shem (son of Noah) lived 600 years and it is likely that his life overlapped that of Abram’s father Terah and possibly Abram as well.  Recall that Shem was alive during the flood being an eyewitness of the prevailing wickedness and the judgment of God against a wayward world. Certainly, the flood story was passed down through both oral history as well as inscribed on cuneiform tablets.  It is also possible that a first hand account may have been shared with Abram’s immediate family due to Shem’s advanced age.  

Abram lived with his family in Ur² , a city in ancient Mesopotamia.  Ur existed prior to the flood and it had been rebuilt after the flood.  It was a magnificent city of commerce, manufacturing, farming and shipping on the banks of the Persian Gulf and mouth of the Euphrates river.  Ur also was home to the great Ziggurat of Ur which supported the local religious worship of the moon and the associated deities.  This is the city and culture in which Terah and his sons lived, worked and had societal ties.

The Original Road Trip
The Genesis account does not provide many details, but we could speculate that the flood story and increasing wickedness in Ur may have contributed to the motivation to leave this great city.  But something supernatural was also occurring.  Stephen during his speech before the high council tells us that the glory of God appeared to Abraham while still in Mesopotamia. 

Our glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran. God told him, ‘Leave your native land and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you. So Abraham left the land of the Chaldean’s and lived in Haran until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land where you now live.
Acts 7:2-4

But the Genesis record suggests that Terah initiated the move away from Ur.  Regardless, what is obvious is that both father and son were in agreement that it was time to leave Mesopotamia

One day Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (his son Abram’s wife), and his grandson Lot (his son Haran’s child) and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.
Genesis 11:31

So it seems there was both a positive and negative motivation (the call of God and the wickedness surrounding the family) to leave Mesopotamia and the city of Ur. Consider what would have been required to move a large family with numerous possessions to a land which was unknown.  They were unable to scope it out ahead of time as they didn’t know where God was leading them.  They didn’t have smartphones, air travel, high-speed rail or social media. How would Terah and Abram stay connected to the people back home? What if tragedy struck? What if someone became ill or the family dynamics became unbearable?

Well, the traveling caravan did run into issues. They failed to make it all the way to Canaan and stopped in a place called Haran, a 600 hundred mile journey from where they began.  Apparently, Haran was accommodating and the family decided to settle there.  It was in Haran that Terah (the family patriarch) passed away.

Extinguishing the Light of God?
Recall from Gen. 3:15 that it was the seed of the woman who was to crush the serpent’s head.  This prophecy portends the significance of the generational blessings which had been kept alive through Adam’s family and passed down to Noah, Shem and now rested with Abram.  There was just one problem, Sarai (Abram’s wife) was barren (^{Gen 11:30}).  Can you feel the hopelessness?  It was not just that Sarai could not have children. No, no, no; the seed of promise and the Messianic line was about to be extinguished.  The light of God would be gone forever!  This is the background when God began speaking to Abram.

It’s doubtful that Abram understood what was at stake just as we often have difficulty seeing the big picture.  If we had been walking in Abram’s sandals, our thoughts may have been something like, “Here I am in a strange land, and my father has now passed on and now the entire burden rests on my shoulders. I now have responsibility for my nephew as well as the people taken into the household, and let’s not forget about the care and feeding of these large flocks.  Oh, and did I fail to mention my wife is barren and separated from the land and people she is familiar with?”  I don’t think it would be a far stretch to suggest that Sarah probably struggled with depression based on her current lot in life.

What questions might we be asking in similar circumstances?  “What about job security, health insurance, and what if enemies attack? What if we’re just not up to the task of caring for all this responsibility?  Why did my father have to pass away and leave me in this strange land with so much responsibility?”

Lord, I trust you with my future!
It is in this place of great difficulty that God first calls to Abram and makes the following incredible promise.

“Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s family and go to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation.  I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.  I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.  All families on earth will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 12:1-2

Recall from earlier that God had established a general covenant with Adam and Eve as well as the earth through Noah.  Now he is narrowing the scope of his covenant and making the application more specific – to one man and a parcel of land.  It is to a single man and his descendants that the blessing of God will flow through to bless all humanity as well as the earth.  The Abrahamic covenant did not terminate the covenant of  Adam and Eve or the earth.  The covenant with Abram added to these covenants focusing the work of God on a specific individual and family line.  The covenant with Abraham is God beginning to rebuild a family after his own image.

Doing a careful reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we find a very interesting verse in Galatians chapter 3.

“Now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.”
Gal. 3:29

Could this really be true; God will bless us, and we will be a blessing to others? He will bless those who bless us and curse those who treat us with contempt, and all families on earth will be blessed through us?  Since we are relating the Abrahamic covenant to our lives, let’s also consider that God did not dwell on Abram’s past or current challenges.

• His focus was and is on the future; the past is ancient history. Read the promise again in Genesis 12:1-2 and notice it’s all forward thinking. 
• Abram did nothing to deserve this blessing and promise from Almighty God. It was a demonstration of his unmerited favor.
• Also, throughout the scriptures, the Lord refers to himself as the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob demonstrating that the covenant is firmly established for all time. There is a biblical principle of establishing everything by multiple witnesses (Deut. 19:15, ll Cor. 13:1).  Abraham, his son and his grandson are the three witnesses to this firmly established covenant. 

Can we really apply this to our lives, to be blessed by God and to be a blessing to others?  Can we trust that God will defend us against our enemies, know that our failures are history and that he’s optimistically looking toward the future, knowing this is firmly established?  This really is God’s intention for my life.  Abram believed this promise and stood firm in it no matter the circumstances, and he is the father of all who believe.

 

 

Meditation and discussion

What does it mean to have Abraham as the father of your faith?

Are you releasing the blessing of God into the people and situations which are under  your sphere of authority?

When finding ourselves in a difficult place or situation, do we try avoiding it at all costs or is it an opportunity to hear a fresh revelation and promise from the Lord?

What has God spoken about our future?  Do we believe and steward those promises?