Following in the Footsteps of Abraham

 

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ABRAHAM

by John Douglas

Our speaker at church yesterday is a great believer in dating people in the bible so here i am today dating Abraham ...

Genesis spans 2300 years in 50 chapters
Chapters 12 to 25 cover his life of 175 years
Chapters 2 to 6 cover 2000 years
There is no record of Abraham's first 75 years of life
Born about 2166 BC
Left home at 75
At 80 talked with Melchizedek
First son born at 86
Saw judgment of Sodom at 99
Isaac born when 100
Sarah buried when he was 137
He lived 115 years before Jacob and family went to Egypt

We first read of Abraham at 75 years of age.

"The fact that this great patriarch's walk with God did not begin until later life, gives us cause for encouragement as well. Some of us who have reached our golden years may be tempted to feel that the best of our lives is behind us. That might be true physically but it does not have to he true spiritually. God has a ministry not only for the young but for the old also. Remember Anna and Simeon in the temple when Jesus was presented as a baby. This could be a key time in your life when the Lord will begin to work in your own soul in a way that you have never experienced before.

Abraham was 75 when he entered Canaan, when he got into victory, started to obey to the fullness of his ability."

Hebrews 11 mentions 14 leading servants of God - one verse is given to the description of Noah, Enoch and Abel. Abraham has 12 verses to himself, nearly as much as the rest of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 put together. 

Abraham was a Semite, born about 2166 BC into a pagan family living in the land of Ur in Babylonia. 

Why study Abraham?

2 reasons: because it was through Abraham and his descendants that God chose to mediate the covenant blessings and because Abraham demonstrated a pattern for every faithful believer walking the path of obedience to the Saviour.

He was persuaded of the existence of the heavenly city to which he would travel with all the saints. Abraham the man of obedience came to a high point of crisis at the sacrificial altar with Isaac his son; Isaac was the type through which Abraham learned of things to come.

4 spiritual cameos of Abraham's spiritual experience ...

1. He left all for Jesus. he saw Christ's day in many ways and was glad. But what did he give up for the Lord? He turned his back on his homeland never to return. He departed from his father's grave, struggled to leave Lot and gave up Ishmael. Even Eliezer had to be eliminated in the making of his faith. It was his response to the final demand of discipleship which saw him place his beloved Isaac on that altar on Moriah's heights, marking out, centuries before the time, the hill called Calvary. That experience outshines all other experiences as the grand climax of his spiritual pilgrimage.

2. He identified with the Land. There is no other land like the Land of Promise, for it is the land of Israel, the land of the bible and the land where Jesus walked. Abraham believed God would give him, in the fullness of time, that land for a personal possession, although the scriptures reveal that he was to die first without ever having received it. The only piece of it he ever owned was the grave he lay in and he had to buy that before he could have it.

3. He is the spiritual father of the whole family of God's redeemed. The epistle to the Romans proclaims 7 times in one chapter that Abraham is father of all who are justified by faith in Jesus. This means that there is one integral and indivisible family gathered under one head (Romans 4 verse 1; Galatians 3 verses 7, 8 and 29). This one family consists of all God's people irrespective of the times in which they lived.

4. He is a pilgrim travelling to the New Jerusalem. The earthly inheritance is for him and for us, the type of the heavenly. Places in the land and experiences in his life are a constant and powerful reminder of that which is eternal. Abraham's interest in the heavenly is not eclipsed by his commitment to the earthly. While Abraham is always the pilgrim, the stalwart follower of the Lord in the land he is ever looking for the oncoming Day of Christ, the day that made him glad - "For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11 verse 10)

Genesis 12 verses 1 to 3 - the three-fold call of God to Abraham

The essence of discipleship - leaving all for Jesus. . The Lord never does just a single work at a time. God has a definite purpose in bringing Abraham to Canaan; however the secondary import of all that Abraham is passing through, is that God is teaching him and all who follow in his footsteps a powerful lesson on discipleship.

Abraham learns of the Lord Jesus

John 8 verse 56 "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad." Abraham knew about the Saviour. He did it for Jesus' sake. The verse emphasizes, he saw it. He saw clearly the Day of Christ. He saw something of the sufferings of Christ. He saw something of the glory of Christ that should be revealed at the Saviour's return in the clouds of heaven. When Abraham left all, he left all with Jesus Christ in mind.

Abraham had to get out of Babylon

In addition to teaching Abraham how to be a disciples of Jesus Christ, God would also deal with his pilgrimage to the Land of Promise. But in between all of that, God had another purpose that of drawing this man out of a wicked environment. 

Jeremiah 50 verse 38 gives us a vivid picture of the spiritual declension of Babylon: "A drought is upon her  waters; and they shall be dried up: for it is the land of graven images and they are mad upon their idols."

it is difficult to imagine the depth of wickedness in that horrible place. The idolatry of pagan society in days of old was no little thing - it was anguish, cruelty, darkness, horror - a nightmare we would not even want to describe.

A person who is "mad" about something is completely consumed, captivated and motivated by that thing. It is first in his life. Babylon was mad about idols but God's will for Abraham held forth for him something far, far better than that. 

You must learn to put the Saviour first!

The strange place called Ur of the Chaldees

Ur is derived from a word which means light. Consider Babylonish religion. The region of the whole territory was called light. The light of Babylon was there. Ur of the Chaldees was the religious capital of Babylonia, the place where the apostasy was at its worst. "If the light that is in thee be darkness, the Saviour said, how great is that darkness!" For the citizens of Babylon, Ur was the central place, their "Mecca". This was, to them, the place where men could find their way to God, but in reality it was an abomination from start to finish. It was a place of horrible darkness. Hebrews 11 verse 8 tells us that Abraham went out - by faith. 

The Lord knew where Abraham was going. 

The need for patience when seeking guidance

Guidance is gradual. Very often, if not all the time, when the Lord is leading you forth you do not see the end from the beginning. The Lord shows you only a little glimmering at a time. he will show you only enough to enable you to take the first step. Abraham could see the first few steps ahead, but as for the rest of the way, he could not discern it. He trusted the Lord with it.

Why God kept the land of Israel in mind

Abraham did not know where he was going. He had never seen the land of Canaan before, though he might have heard of it. The Lord did know the way, for Genesis 12 verse 1 says "Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee." In the Hebrew bible, the word land has the definite article. It makes all the difference. God had a definite place in mind. 

Deuteronomy 32 verse 8 - the last sermon of Moses. "When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel."  In the days of Adam, when the Lord had in mind the separation of the earth among the sons of men, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. That statement means, if it means anything, that God allocated the territories of the earth to the respective nation all around the land of Israel. He had the land of Israel in mind, Israel as a people, and certainly Israel as a country. The land of Israel was already in the mind of God when Adam stood in Eden's garden. We can echo the words of Scripture which say, Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world (Acts 15 verse 18).

In the Garden of Eden God already had the population of the earth in mind. The earth would be divided into nations and in that allocation of territory to the various nations, God would determine their bounds in accordance with the placement of Israel. He would set Israel in the midst of the nations for Ezekiel 5 verse 5 says Jerusalem is set in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.  All around the city of Jerusalem, God put mountains - the Mount of Olivet the best known and other mountains - all of which can be seen to the present day. Then out there on a wing to the north God placed that little hill called Calvary. God put it there in the midst of the nations.  When God called Abraham out of faraway Babylon, he had Israel in mind. He had redemption in mind. He would show him the country; and before the life of Abraham was through, God intended to show Abraham the very place where the Cross would be lifted up, where that final sacrifice for sin would be made once and for all.

"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad." The Lord would accomplish the great scheme of redemption on the hill which today stands outside the city wall.

Abraham did not go the whole way with God at the first

Disobedience. Abraham is holding back on one hand. Then Abraham erred in the other direction and went too far. Abraham went only halfway. Genesis 11 tells us that he got as far as Haran and then he stopped there. Also he brought his father with him, Actually the scriptures say in Genesis 11 verse 31, "And Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his son's son."  This was in obvious disobedience to the command of the Lord - "Abraham leave the country, leave your kindred and leave your father's house." But the old man came too. Terah actually took Abram. 

"They went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan." The intention was to go all the way with God. The verse continues "and they came unto Haran and dwelt there." They were on their way to Canaan but they came only so far as Haran and they dwelt there out of the will of God. 

Terah means delay

Haran means dry ground

Genesis 12 "Now the Lord had said" - "had" God had already settled this matter; God had already made his will clear to Abraham. But Abraham is stuck, stuck at Haran. 

If you have come only halfway with God you are not in the right place at all. As long as Abraham went only halfway he did not stand to receive the promise and God himself gave Abraham a definite promise. 

Some information about Abraham not given until very much later

Acts 7 verse 2 "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran (Haran). And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran (haran); and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child."

God promised to give the land where he would lead Abraham, to him and to his seed; yet Abraham never received the land. he had only a small bit of territory that he finally brought for a grave. Acts 7 verses 2 to 5 tells us that Abraham did not get even enough of the land for him to set foot on. Abraham journeyed for those 100 years walking around the land that God had promised him, surveying all the while the mountains and the valleys, the rivers and the seas. He looked at the land that God had promised and he believed God; yet he never so much as set foot on it.  God will keep that promise. God will bless Abraham in keeping with every detail of the promise he originally gave. The God of glory appeared personally to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia in far-off Ur of the Chaldees.

Abraham actually met with God and he believed God. And God counted it to him for righteousness. When God gives the word, he fulfills it.

The seven-fold reward God had in store for Abraham

First, I will make of thee a great nation; 

Second, I will bless thee;

Third, make thy name great;

Fourth, thou shalt be a blessing - obey God now and you will be a blessing

Fifth, I will bless them that bless thee;

Sixth, and curse them that curseth thee;

Seventh, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed

We can see God has placed emphasis on different people - in the first section, you can see Abraham himself.

Then in verse 3 there is a reference to others.

In verse 2 God speaks of Abraham and in verse 3 he speaks of others. No man lives unto himself. In verse 2 there is also an application to Israel. In verse 3 you can see the blessing reaching out to all the earth, to all the families of the earth.. That includes you!

The 2 things we need to know about every blessing God gives

First, blessing comes by bowing the knee. "blessing" comes from a word that means to bend the knee.  You cannot have the best that God has for you unless you bend the knee at the mercy seat. No man has ever lost by obeying God. Second it is clear that the blessing of God goes on for all eternity.  All the families of the earth, not only in Abraham's day but on and on and on since that time, continue to receive God's blessing. We too, have been sharing in the goodness of God. We have been blessed through the obedience of Abraham. We are blessed in Christ forever.