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Bible Survey - #6 - Genesis 21-22

The Child of the Promise

God was very clear to Abraham that the promised child would come through Sarah, even though it seemed so unlikely. Isaac's name means “he laughs.” Even Sarah was able to laugh with joy at God's wonderful provision.

But not everyone was laughing in the peace of a common purpose. Isaac's half-brother Ishmael laughed in a different way when Abraham had a great feast for Isaac after the boy was weaned. God affirmed the plan of Sarah, that the time had now come for a separation of the nation that would come from Isaac and the nation that would come from Ishmael.

From Isaac's descendants would come the promised Redeemer. The Father in heaven would lovingly give Jesus for our sake. This Child of God would knowingly offer Himself up as our Substitute. Nothing would stay the hand of His Father against Him on that day. His death was necessary for our eternal life.

Through faith in Jesus, the covenant blessing of God would come not only to Jews, but to all kinds of Gentiles who would humbly take refuge in the King of the Jews. This is the only way to life for any of us. We must find our hope in this one descendant of Isaac, and in His work for us as the Lamb of God.

The promised child of Abraham was saved.

A ram was found to take the young lad's place.

But God's own Son was given for our sake,

And Jews and Gentiles find their life in Him.

Genesis 18

Abraham received a sudden visit from three men and he knew that it was more than an ordinary call from strangers who were passing by. With eagerness he prevailed upon them to accept the hospitality of his home as his wife and servants prepared a meal for someone Abraham calls “Lord.” Are these angels? Is one of them God? We are not given answers immediately, but we see the behavior of Abraham which communicates to us that he understands more than we can immediately surmise.

These “men” know Sarah by her God-given new name. We have learned that Sarah is a women of great importance to the Lord. God has insisted that the child of promise will come from her. “Where is Sarah your wife?” they asked. Suddenly the one who is speaking is unambiguously the Lord. “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.”

This news is what Abraham has been waiting for, but can he believe it? Sarah is listening at the tent door, and she laughs, though she soon denies it. We know that the name of her future child will mean “he laughs.” We get the joke. Does she? At the moment she just seems embarrassed before the Lord who loves her and knows her.

The point that God, somehow in the flesh before this elderly couple, seems to emphasize is not only the fact of what will happen within one year, but also the ability of God to do far more than we can imagine. He says, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” This is good for us to consider when we meditate upon the great plans of the Lord that have been announced to us in Jesus Christ. Is anything too hard, is anything too wonderful, for the Lord? Sarah was afraid at this interchange, since she had been caught in the laughter of unbelief, but God insists on the truth, and we are able to laugh along, since we know how this story turns out. God says to her, “No, but you did laugh.” Eventually she will be able to laugh with everyone at the wonder of the goodness and the enormity of the blessing that comes from the God who loves His people.

These “men” came for more than one purpose. We may be laughing about the abundant mercy of God, but now we must see that a meeting between God and man is not all laughter. We soon will pick up the story of Abraham's nephew Lot once again, which has become dangerously entwined with the judgment of God against the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham demonstrated caution regarding Sodom when he interacted with the king of that place who was trying to honor Abraham after his military success in Genesis 14. God has heard about Sodom. This should not surprise us. Earlier we heard this question: Is anything too hard for God? Now we can add a second one: Can anything be hidden from the Lord?

God has announced the imminent arrival of Isaac, the child of promise, but He has also come to reveal the even more immediate destruction of the beautifully fertile area that Lot had chosen for himself. God speaks again of His plan for Abraham, His determination to bless all the clans of the earth in him and his descendants whom Abraham would instruct in the ways of the Lord.

The Lord has heard the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah. Just as the blood of Abel called out to Him from the ground, the sin of man can never be hidden from the God who sees and hears. The Lord has come to examine the truth that He already knows. God will judge wickedness. The cross displays this truth as well as the truth of the Lord's abundant mercy. God has not ignored our sin. He has judged it through an appointed Substitute who faced the full wrath of the Almighty that was coming against His people. Those who will not embrace the Lord's gracious provision in Christ, how will they stand in the day of His anger?

What remains in this chapter is the pleading of a mediator who knows that God is both merciful and just. He calls upon the Lord to put off His wrath against an evil majority on the basis of a minority who have been counted as righteous. One day there will be a complete separation between the righteous and the wicked. Until that day we live in close proximity, sharing this world and experiencing the manifold grace and curse of the Lord that is common to all the children of Adam. Will God continue to spare a wicked place based on a small number of His chosen servants who live there?

Here we see the care of our Mediator Jesus being expressed through the pleading of Abraham. Jesus holds back the judgment that the world deserves as He pleads for the world in which the elect live. The day will come when He will no longer stand in the way of the full expression of the justice of God. Then the sheep will be placed on one side of the King and the goats on the other. Until then, the Lord may allow a city to stand even when there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, or even 10 righteous in that place.

On the cross, the one truly righteous man took the wrath of God upon Himself for a great multitude of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Now He continues to plead for us on high, and His voice is heard. His sun and His rain are blessings upon the just and the unjust. The flood of waters does not come upon the whole earth, and many cities and nations are spared for a season. But the day will come when the full purposes of God will be accomplished. The Protector will stand out of the way, and He will come as the holy Warrior with all His angelic host and the entire multitude of the redeemed who eagerly look for the vindication of His Name above.

The Lord knows how to separate the righteous from the wicked. He will save and He will judge. He will do what is right. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Genesis 17

More waiting, more longing for some sign of the fulfillment of the promises of God, more living by faith... And now Abram was 99 years old, and the Lord appeared to him. God called him to a life of trust and blameless obedience. And the Lord kept speaking to this elderly man about His promise.

Now the Lord God Almighty gave Abram a new name, Abraham, to remind this man that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. God reiterated His pledge to be Abraham's God and the God of his offspring. There is an everlasting covenant here with one particular offspring of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom a multitude have found the blessing of peace with God.

God would give the land of Canaan not merely for a long period of time, but for an everlasting possession. Though Abram would only see the smallest beginnings of the Lord's eternal fulfillment of these Words in his own lifetime, the final yield that would come from these words of great promise would be far more than Abraham could ask for or imagine.

In addition to the Word of promise, and the special new name, the Lord gave Abraham a special new sign that he would bear in his flesh as a reminder of his commitment to hear and obey the Lord. Earlier the Lord had given to Abram a different covenant ritual that was not to be repeated as the Lord symbolically passed through the cut up animals as a pledge of His own life for the eternal security of Abraham and all the chosen seed of God.

Now the Lord gave a second cutting ritual, but this one would be a sacramental obligation for all the centuries of old covenant life. This circumcision would be a commitment of blameless obedience, with a sanction upon the violator. This pledge was that the circumcised would keep the whole law of God or be cut off from the people of the Lord as this little piece of skin was cut off from the child's body.

How could any Israelite agree to such a pledge? The Apostle Paul shines a wonderful light on that great mystery when he reveals that the true meaning behind circumcision has always been righteousness by faith. See Romans 4:11. Circumcision rightly practiced was always a plea for a substitute. Knowing that every child would surely be a violator of the Law, circumcision was a plea before God that God would provide a perfectly righteous representative who would willingly be cut off from the body, so that we might be kept in the body of Christ. Our faith is in that Substitute.

This sign was a pledge to obey the Lord in all things, but it also was a sign of a promise of the Lord to provide an answer to our deepest need. Our longing for a righteous substitute who would be our obedience and who would then cover us by His blood is the key truth that makes sense of all biblical religion.

To turn away from the sacrament was a grave insult to God, one that almost killed Moses. In that symbol, the whole of the covenant life of God's people was shown forth. Circumcision could not save, but the story behind circumcision, the story of the coming provision of a perfect Man who would die the perfect death for us, was hidden in this sacrament of satisfaction of the Lord's holy demands through the gracious provision of His Son as our dying Redeemer.

This was a sign of the covenant between God and His people, a fearful sign of perfect and perpetual blamelessness, and a visual Word of faith that demanded a provision of the perfect Man from heaven. The Lord provided this ceremony as an everlasting covenant for the entire Old Covenant era. Now the meaning of this ritual in the death of Christ has come within our reach on the basis of New Testament revelation. See Colossians 2.9-15.

This sacrament was not a work of merit to earn God's favor, but a testimony of faith by the people of God, that the Lord who surely find a way, through a promised descendant of Abraham to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. The coming of Jesus, and especially His death, has revealed the love of Christ more supremely than it had ever been presented to the people before. Circumcision is a type and a shadow. Christ and the cross are the real thing.

God used this occasion of the provision of the Old Testament rite of initiation to prepare Abraham and Sarai for the more imminent giving of a small down-payment of the promises of God in the wonderful arrival of their long-expected son Isaac. Sarai would now be Sarah, a name that spoke of the gift she would be given in a child. We now know that the Isaac they would greet with laughter would be far superseded by the gift of another child 2000 years later according to circumstances that would be far more miraculous.

Even the provision of one Isaac was so hard for Abraham to believe, yet this man somehow looked forward to the day of Christ and rejoiced. See John 8:56. Abraham was still asking God to bless Ishmael as the chosen child of promise. To think that Sarah would bear a child was too much for him. Yet Abraham somehow believed in the Jesus who was to come, this Man who was wounded for our transgression, and whose death has brought us life.

Abraham did believe the promises of God and He obeyed the command of circumcision, even for Ishmael. Christ received circumcision as well; not only the ceremony given to Him as a child, but the fullness of what that ceremony meant when He was cut off from the people of God in His death, so that we be kept forever for eternal life.

Genesis 16

God makes His promises, and man is called to wait in faith. We hear the Word of God, and we know that the just shall live by faith, but we have our own ideas.

Sarai was a woman of faith (See Hebrews 11), but she struggled, and she considered. Might there be some other way to achieve a godly purpose through a different method than she had earlier imagined? We do wonder how the Lord will bring about the blessings that He has announced.

Sarai had a plan that fit in well with contemporary customs. Hagar, Sarai's female Egyptian servant, could be the mother of children that Sarai had not been able to conceive. Legally the children would belong to Abram and Sarai. Could this be a way to achieve the promise, since so many years had passed and Sarai had not yet been able to conceive a child? This would be a way for Sarai to have children, sort of.

That was Sarai's plan, and Abram listened to the voice of his wife. Hagar would be taken as a wife. The plan seemed to work at first. Hagar did conceive by Abram. But there were additional problems that Sarai had not foreseen. The dynamic between Sarai and Hagar had changed. Can a servant be given to a husband to serve as a wife without some serious problems developing between the two women? Hagar began to give Sarai some kind of evil eye, and Sarai did not appreciate the treatment.

Sarai blamed Abram for this trouble. “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” Wait, wasn't this her idea? Well, never mind. It had gone bad, and Sarai was mad at Abram because of it. Abram seemed to back away from all responsibility. “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” And so she did, harshly; and Hagar ran away.

God found Hagar. This is an amazing moment to consider. The child of Abram and Sarai would be the child of promise, not the child of Abram and Hagar. Yet the Lord had a plan for Hagar and for the child she carried.

The first step for Hagar in God's plan for the future involved going back to Sarai and submitting to her. Hagar would be Sarai's servant, despite the fact that she carried Abram's child. Meanwhile, the Lord had a future for the descendents of Abram through Hagar. God intended to multiply her offspring greatly.

The name of the son she was carrying would be Ishmael. God knew the affliction of Hagar. He listened, and He cared. While Ishmael would be a man of controversy, assaulting those around him and facing the attacks of others, the descendants of Ishmael would thrive and have a future. The God who sees had seen this woman, and He had a plan for her. He acknowledged her, and she acknowledged Him. She had seen the messenger of the Lord, but she spoke as one who has seen God. “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

This is a moment for future generations to remember like the announcement of the Lord to Adam and Eve after the Fall. Yes, the child will be a man associated with violence and controversy, but the Lord had seen Hagar, and somehow Hagar concluded that she had seen the Lord, and she knew that the Lord cared for her. To know this is to know blessing. To name the well in that place after the God who sees Hagar is to leave a testimony for future generations.

The God who sees is the God who rules. Hagar did bear Abram a son. Abram was moved by this experience that Hagar had with God, and so he named his son Ishmael according to the Word of the Lord.

Meanwhile, this child was still not the child of promise, and Abram was now 86 years old. The plan of Sarai worked only in that Hagar conceived and gave birth to Ishmael. Abram and Sarai still did not bring about the blessing of God through their own intervention. They still needed to wait. They still needed to live by faith.

What is amazing is that the strange plan of Sarai and Abram involving Hagar and Ishmael is somehow a part of the eternal purpose of God, despite the fact that it was a fruit of human unbelief. God had a settled plan for the descendants of Ishmael. They would have a part to play in the affairs of men and nations for centuries to come. More important than even the conflicts that might exist between the descendents of Sarai and the descendants of Hagar, some of the people that would count Ishmael as their ancestor would one day claim a Jewish Messiah as their Savior and the Son of God.

This is a significant component of the eternal purpose of God, that some of the descendants of Hagar and Abram would be heirs of the promises of God and members of God's household through Jesus Christ. One Jewish Messiah has given His life to cover the sins of many descendants of Ishmael. Through faith in Christ, they have given up the bondage of sin and have been granted new freedom as sons of God through Jesus.

Bible Survey - #5 - Genesis 12-17

The Day of Promise

God made a promise to Abram. He told him that He would bless him, that He would make Abram's seed into a great nation, and that through Abram all the people groups of the earth would be blessed.

He also instructed Abram to go to a land that He would show him. Abram went out, not knowing where he was going. As the years passed, he did not seem to be receiving all the promises of God, though the Lord was blessing him through all sorts of experiences.

God repeated His words of promise to Abram, and Abram believed God. Abram's faith was far from perfect. He struggled with the plain facts that he saw around him, and he even tried to win the blessing his own way. Yet God somehow counted Abram's faith as righteousness.

The battle of faith admits of sad moments of unbelief and disobedience. But it is God who is our hope. He has made a promise that He will perfectly keep. Everyone else may fail us, but Christ has fully obeyed the Law. Then He was cut off for a time from the body of the God's people, so that we might be kept in the love of God forever.

Like Abram, we have heard the Word of the Promise. We believe God, and the Lord has credited us with a righteousness that is not our own.

Our father Abram heard the Word of God.

He did believe, God helped his unbelief.

As God declared him righteous in His sight,

The righteousness of Jesus counts for me!

Genesis 15

God called Abram and sent him on a great journey. Along the way, the Lord blessed Abram, but God had not yet fulfilled all his promises to this chosen man. When the Lord came to Abram in a vision, God said, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram was concerned. How long would he live? God was going to make a great nation from his family, but so far Abram did not have even one child, and he was getting older.

God did several things to help Abram trust Him. First, He renewed His words of promise to Abram. He said, “Your very own son shall be your heir.” Second, God gave Abram a visible reminder of His promise. He brought him outside and said to him, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” And then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Third, when Abram believed the Lord, God credited it to him as righteousness. This was a very exciting announcement. One would have assumed that for any person to be counted as righteous or obedient in God's accounting of men, that person would have to do all the righteousness that God required by himself or forfeit the Lord's approval. This announcement of a crediting of righteousness to Abram's account said something very different than what men naturally assume about the workings of God with people. God determined that Abram's trust in the Lord, his belief, was all that He required in order to credit Abram's account with a verdict of “righteousness.” This is a tremendous revelation: God intended to credit righteousness to a man, Abraham, despite that man's own level of partial obedience. Even Abram's faith, as we might observe it, seemed imperfect. Notice that when God reiterated to Abram His promise to give Abram a special land, Abram said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He asks for help in believing.

The Lord understands our weakness. He has Abram bring before Him animals in order to cut a covenant with Abram. This covenant is a solemn promise of God, and He puts Abram to sleep in order to emphasize that the blessings that will surely come to Abram will be from the Lord's own sovereign hand, and not from the merit of the man He has determined to bless. What Abraham will receive is grace, and not wages.

According to the cutting rituals of Abram's day, a great king would make this kind of covenant with a defeated lesser king in order to publicly display His authority over the subjugated inferior. Animals were cut in two, and the lesser king had to walk through the slain victims in order to publicly acknowledge that such a punishment of a brutal death would happen to him if he violated the stipulations of the great superior king.

But now the Lord put Abram to sleep. Instead of Abram, the inferior, going through the animal pieces, God, in miniature form, walks through the cut up flesh. This after God speaks to Abram in his deep sleep, in the midst of a dreadful darkness, of the sufferings that will come to Abram's descendants before they will be given the land. But the greatest suffering would be God's. The One who would be a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night for His people in the wilderness, appeared as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch in Abram's dream, and He went through the slain animals.

God took the place of the vanquished and inferior king. What was He saying? “My promise to you is secured by My own suffering, and not by yours. I am willing to be cut in order that My promise to you is kept.” 2000 years later, the Son of God would fulfill this vision when He took the curse of the covenant on the cross. Because of that sacrificial love, we have been given a much better kingdom than the land of Canaan.

Meanwhile the offspring of Abram would live as strangers and even slaves in a foreign land for hundreds of years before they were given even the partial earthly fulfillment of God's great promise in His gift of the Promised Land to the Jews. God announces to Abraham that His descendants would be afflicted for four hundred years. We need to be patient when it appears that evil is winning and that the Lord's kingdom is losing. We are not the first servants of God to be instructed in the art of waiting upon the Lord. We are not the first ones to be told that the key to our life comes in believing the sure Word of the Almighty.

God knows how to afflict those who trouble His people now. Vengeance is in His hands. Sometimes we have great difficulty in even distinguishing between the righteous and the wicked. The Lord will judge. We need to trust Him. We need to sleep peacefully at night, resting in His goodness, and then rise up every new morning with an ear for His Voice. It is enough for us to know that He was willing to take the pain that has secured His promise toward Abram and his seed forever. If we doubt the promise, we need only look to the One who was cut off for our transgressions, and who rose again for our justification.

God knows when the iniquity of His adversaries has reached the tipping point. Whether that is forty years from now or four hundred is His concern, and not ours. We need to believe in Christ and lay hold of the promise made to Abram so long ago. It is enough that we have been credited with a righteousness that is not our own through faith in Christ. It is enough that Jesus has promised us a land of eternal blessing, and that He will be with us forever.

Genesis 14

Not only was Sodom a place of wickedness, it turned out to be a place of great danger for Abram's nephew, Lot. A league of kings and their united armies came against a second group of city states, including the place where Lot was residing. The immediate consequences were disastrous for Lot and his considerable entourage and possessions.

In this world, we cannot always escape the larger affairs of warring nations all around us. Lot came to Sodom not because of his interest in international relations. He saw the beauty and fruitfulness of the place, and he judged that it was the land that he should choose for himself. When we choose according to the world's criteria, we should not be surprised that we may have picked something that other more powerful forces have also judged to be desirable.

Lot went to Sodom to do well for himself, but now he finds himself in the middle of an international controversy. Not only that, he is on the losing end of that struggle, and is soon taken as a prisoner of war along with all he has. The choice of Sodom may not look as wise as it once did for Lot. He has made a speedy slide from the owner of many servants and livestock to a prisoner who will now be the slave of men who have come with evil intent from a more powerful consortium of nations.

But Abram has not forgotten his nephew. When he hears of these alarming events, he leads forth his trained men together with those of his allied clans. He went forth to the north and east a great distance in order to recapture and bring back to safety those who had been stolen away from their homes, including Lot. He used some military strategy and the advantage of an attack by night to surprise the adversaries, but the victory was the Lord's

It is the remainder of this chapter, the aftermath of this military success that gives this chapter its enduring value. When Abram returned home with his fighting men and the people and property that he had rescued, he was met by two kings, Melchizedek, the king of Salem (which would later be Jerusalem), and the king of Sodom. Melchizedek is a mysterious figure who seems to come out of nowhere, and is mentioned later in Psalm 110 and in the New Testament book of Hebrews. His name means “king of righteousness,” and he is the king of “peace,” since Salem means “peace.” He has no genealogy, and most significantly, he takes a position in this story above God's great man, Abram. Melchizedek blesses Abram, as one from above would bless one from below.

This man is both king and priest, just as Christ is for us. He is not a servant of a pagan deity, but of God Most High. He speaks of the blessing of the God of heaven and earth on Abram, and He praises God Most High, acknowledging that this deliverance of the nations has come from the Lord's hand.

Who is this great man? Is he prefiguring the coming of the great Prince of Peace, our King of Righteousness? Is this priestly king somehow the Son of God come forth for just a moment in time before the appointed day of our deliverance? We do know that the treatment he receives is that of one who is acknowledged by Abram to be greater than himself. Abram gives him a tenth of everything.

How different is Abram's interaction with the king of Sodom! That man came out attempting not to praise Abram's God, but to honor Abram, and to give Abram a great reward. But Abram will not accept any trophies from the hands of Sodom's king. Does Abram know something that Lot earlier ignored? That Sodom was a place of great wickedness, and that an honor received from Sodom's king might not be worth taking home?

The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’”

Abram is spiritually prepared for this interaction. He has solemnly promised God that he would take nothing from the king of Sodom. He desires that all glory go to the God that Melchizedek serves, and not to himself or to the alliance of forces that he led.

He does provide a share for the men of the allied clans who have fought under his leadership. That is for them to dispose of as they see fit. For Abram, the victory is the Lord's and the glory belongs to God. He worships God in the day of victory.

We follow a king who is the Son of David and a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He honored His Father, even willingly suffering the cursed death of the cross in our place. He gave His all to God Most High when we were slaves of sin.

Nothing of His victory came with the help of any man, as if we could justly say that Jesus plus some other man has delivered us from the hands of our enemies. The Lord is a champion of solo warfare. He alone accomplished what He alone could do. Through Him we will praise God Most High forever, the God of heaven and earth.

Let the nations be glad, and let the earth rejoice! Jesus, the Son of God, has delivered us from bondage. We are free from sin and death in Him.

Genesis 13

Terah was Abram's father. Lot was with Abram and Sarai because Abram's brother Haran had died at an early age, so Lot, Haran's son, went with his uncle when God called him to go to land that the Lord would show to him. It was a privilege for Lot to be with Abram, but as time went on, the herdsmen of the two men began to quarrel with each other as they all tried to make the most of life in the Negeb.

Abram went to the place where he had first made an altar to the Lord. He called upon the Name of the Lord there as one who was seeking the presence and leading of God. But the place where they were was not enough for both men, since their animals needed land for grazing. Not only that, they were not the only people there. The Canaanites and Perizzites were in the land.

In order to address this strife amongst kinsmen, Abram suggested what seemed like a very generous solution. The time had come for Lot and his servants to be on their own. Abraham gave Lot the gift of choice. The whole land was before him. What did Lot want? Did he want to go to the right or to the left.

Lot looked, he considered, and he chose. It was obvious. Like someone who is getting ready to graduate, and has two job offers, he made the decision based on his own assessment of the economic benefits. Which job pays the higher salary? That's what the soon-to-be graduate asks himself. And which land is the most fertile and prosperous? Lot made his choice.

He looked over the whole area and he saw the Jordan Valley. It was well-watered and fruitful, like the ancient stories of the Paradise of God before sin came into the world through Adam. Like His wife who later died looking back at the beautiful land under God's wrath, Lot fell in love with what his eyes could see.

Moses must remind the reader, “This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.” We know what is coming here in just a few short chapters. The observer in the days of Moses would not have considered this valley a fertile place of God's blessing. By then God had brought judgment upon the land because of extreme wickedness. It was no longer fruitful. Lot judged like Eve had judged the forbidden fruit. Did Lot consider who was living in that fertile land and the kind of difficulties that might come upon him and his family from locating in the region of Sodom and Gomorrah? Do we give adequate weight to the spiritual well-being of ourselves and our children when we move from one location to another in order to take advantage of some great opportunity for potential prosperity? How often does the gold at the end of the rainbow vanish, and we end up stuck in the mud of family troubles in a place that we thought would be a paradise? How often do we show true spiritual discernment in the midst of a choice between prosperity and holiness?

But how can a person know the right thing to do? What does a good spiritual choice look like? We would do well to wait, and to be suspicious of the choice that is obvious from the standpoint of the flesh, the high-paying job, the greenest field. Here is one consideration, a negative one, telling us to be suspicious of something that may look too good to be true. But there is a second factor that we can discern from this story. In order to choose Sodom, Lot had to leave Abram. Would there have been some other way to surmount what seemed to be the insurmountable problem? Could Lot have somehow stayed with Abram? It is wise for us to stay in close contact with those who are of the greatest spiritual good for our lives, particularly if we are young in the faith and insufficiently discipled in the ways of Christ. Too frequently new believers are uprooted because of some great financial opportunity before they have had adequate time to grow in the Lord. They may leave a place of good influence only to find themselves surrounded by temptations.

“So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and he journeyed east.” And what about his relationship with his uncle? “They separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.” That ended up being a very serious problem. Why? Something that Lot had not adequately considered: “The men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.” More on that later.

Meanwhile God meets Abram again after Lot went his way, and God reiterates that the land will belong to Abram, all of it, and not to the descendants of Lot. God has Abram look in every direction. “All of the land is given to Abram and his offspring forever.” There is no trading away God's promises just to make things easier for a little while.

The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. Jesus tells us that the meek shall inherit the earth. God will give it to them. Christ has won a renewed earth through His perfect righteousness. He does not need to ask for anything below as if it were not His already. By virtue of His life, death, and resurrection, the Man who laid down His life and picked it up again has announced to His disciples that all power and authority belong to Him.

He is the One who says that the meek shall inherit the earth – that reunited and renewed heaven and earth. We might imagine that we could make peace for a season with those who trouble us by giving it away to them, but the Lord, has given it all to Jesus, and He has bequeathed it to His chosen people. Until the day when His purposes are fully established we should labor to make wise spiritual decisions where we are planted, for the days are evil. Not everything that looks beautiful is safe. Not every fruitful valley is worth choosing.

Bible Survey - #4 - Genesis 4-11

“The Day of Death”

Death came into the world through Adam. People first experienced death when Abel died before his parents through the horror of one brother murdering another. God knew what Cain concealed. The genealogies that followed reinforced the fact that the “day” of death had come.

Even before anyone died, the power of death was expressed in lives of sin that grew from generation to generation. The strong thought they had the right to abuse the weak. Men and angels rebelled against the Lord of life by stealing, killing, and destroying. God hated sin, and He brought His judgment upon evil through the flood in the days of Noah. Only those who followed His Word and took refuge in the ark of His blessing were saved.

After a new beginning, the Lord announced through Noah the pain of history that would provide the context first for the Old Testament and then for the New Testament. In a sweeping prophesy involving thousands of years, the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and the later salvation of many Gentiles through the Lord's best blessing upon the Jews was in part revealed and in part concealed. What men could not know, the Lord has accomplished. The way to heaven has not come through the works of people, but through the Son of God.

The sin of Cain, the blood of Abel shed,

The mighty men that push aside the weak,

Display the terror of the day of death;

But Jesus Christ secured a day of life.

Genesis 12

We leave behind the days of Noah and the flood. We are ready to see God's saving work in a nation from whom will one day come the Savior. But before Jesus can come, and before the Hebrews can be saved out of Egypt, the special chosen nation of Israel must come into existence. That all starts with God's saving work with one man, Abram, the chosen son of Terah, who had died in Haran.

God called Abram. It is our privilege to listen to that call as recorded for us in the Scriptures. God spoke audibly and decisively to this one man. He told Abram to go. God gave Adam a mandate that was worldwide. That mandate was renewed with Noah. Jesus gave a worldwide mandate to His disciples. We have needed more than a little push in order to get going. Many of us would just rather stay. That's not all bad. The desire for a home base that would be stable and exist for many generations sounds like heaven on earth in some ways.

Yet the Lord will oblige us and give His servants a push if need be, both for the worldwide creation mandate of having dominion over the earth and the worldwide gospel mandate of making disciples of all nations. Abram hears the Word of God calling him to go, and he goes. That is commendable, and a sign of unusual special grace from heaven. A new day in the history of salvation is born.

To be sure, we are still in the day of death that began when Adam sinned. Yet a new day has been superimposed on that day of death, the day of promise. It is this day of promise that Peter will refer to in the early life of the New Testament church when He says, “The promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.”

The call to Abram is just a start, but it is a powerful start that will not be completed until the trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ are raised. This is the promise in Genesis 12: God will gave Abram a land, descendants, and many other blessings. The immediate point of greatest extravagance is that the Lord promises to make this one seemingly inconsequential man a conduit of blessing to all the people groups of the earth. This makes Abraham not only a father to the Jews, but through the Jews, a blessing to the world. Also, those who bless Abram and the people of God will be blessed by God. Those who dishonor him will face trouble.

Abram and his wife Sarai went out according to the command of God, and they took Abram's nephew Lot with him who would figure into this story later. They did not know where they were going. They were following the voice of God, and they were looking for a city that only God could lead them to.

God brought them to Canaan, a land that He intended to give to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob well beyond the span of Abram's life. God gave Abram a tour of that land. Abram built altars as touchstones of the promise of the Lord. An altar is a place of sacrifice. The sacrifice of animals to the Lord requires the shedding of blood, and adds to the growing story of the cost of the Lord's promises. The best land will be given to the people of God at the expense of a Substitute.

The multi-generational journey of the people of God that will eventually lead to the greatest Promised Land, a reunited Paradise of heaven and earth, will cause them to pass through many dangerous places before they arrive at their settled home. All men do not call upon the Name of the Lord. Everyone did not agree with the determination of God to give Canaan to the Israelites, and everyone did not agree with the plan of the Lord to grant the blessings of heaven to mankind through the death of the Son of God. That may bring trouble.

In the world we will have tribulation, but God has overcome the world, and He can bless us even when those in positions of power stand against us. Not only do we face enemies outside us, our own hearts may be captivated by fear, causing us to make foolish choices that are inconsistent with the requirement that we walk with God.

Famine and fear can persuade us to take refuge in half truths, yet God will not abandon His project of blessing those who are the true offspring of Abraham. We should be a blessing to the nations, yet even faithful Abraham lied about Sarah, and put her in danger to protect himself. He was afraid that he might be killed, but what was he willing to do in placing her in such a compromising situation? We cannot really second guess the patriarch from a distance of many thousands of years, but what we can observe is that despite Abraham's weakness, the Lord turned everything into a blessing. Was this God's reward for Abram's good behavior? No, but it was an expression of the Lord's plan to bless Abram and Sarai according to His own good pleasure.

Whatever the Lord's and Abram's reasons may have been for this strange series of dangerous events, there can be no doubt about this: The Lord preserved His chosen one from a very precarious mess and brought much fruitful increase in his substance as a result of the unusual danger and hostility that he and his wife faced in the world. A distinction would be made between the people of the promise and those who were not of the elect nation.

The Lord will bless all who are in Christ with more than we can even imagine. We still must travel dangerous roads as we proclaim the gospel. But since Christ has taken the worst trouble upon Himself for our sake, we are assured that we are more than safe in Him. We are blessed in Christ, and Christ is in us. We are children of Abraham, and greater is He who is in us now, than all the dangers that we face in this troubled world.

Genesis 11

The Bible tells us the story of the gathering of the Kingdom of God. In that story, the account of the Tower of Babel has great significance. The gathering and reuniting of mankind in the new heaven/earth is best understood with the backdrop of the prior scattering of the nations.

Long ago the whole earth had one language. This enabled mankind to work together on projects of joint concern. That might sound like a very good thing, but it was not. Cooperation and efficiency toward a common endeavor are only good if the goal of the common effort is good. If our goal is bad, scattering may serve the purposes of God more than gathering.

In Genesis 10 we had observed division in the accounts of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. How did this division come to pass? Some portion of mankind had migrated from the east to a plain in the land of Shinar, a name that is later used for Babylonia. These people had a sense of purpose, and they were working together. They said, “Come, let us make bricks.” They wanted to make a large structure in order to build for themselves a city with a tower, making a name that would be tied to this one notable achievement through which they could gather for generations and have access to heaven.

Mankind feels the division between heaven and earth, and they try many different methods to achieve transcendence and longevity. We feel the problem of death, for we know intuitively about the immortality of the soul, and we would like to find some way to reach into the heavens. We would like to solve the problem of the division of heaven and earth through our own plans and initiative.

Of course this is a laughable enterprise. We cannot get to heaven that way. Our efforts can cause a great deal of trouble as we try to find an alternative to whatever solution God may have to this problem. The problem is ultimately one of conquering death by conquering the limitations of our mortal existence on this earth. Man could never fix our troubles, yet God had announced from the beginning that He would use man, though the solution would come in a way that no one could have possibly discerned. The seed of the woman would suffer in a victorious battle that would bruise the head of the serpent, but what did all this mean? Man would have to wait and listen for God's Word. He would have to trust. Yet the great men who settled in the plain of Shinar were unwilling to hold off for the many generations that were necessary before the Lord's own solution would appear.

The problem was obvious. We die. After the flood, the life expectancy of mankind takes a precipitous decline. Within a few hundred years or so, we are finding people living lifespans that are more recognizable to us. When death feels so imminent, and the land of the dead seems beyond our reach, could a building project make the difference now? These men thought so, and they began to build. So many people try to build a stairway to heaven and a name for themselves that will last, yet in a few hundred years who can remember the best efforts of even the most fruitful people?

The Lord was not pleased with their enterprise. He came and saw what they were doing, and within the eternal counsel of the Godhead and in the great assembly of the heavenly host of men and angels, the God of heaven and earth determined to scatter mankind upon the earth so that they would not be so successful at their vain and self-seeking project.

There was a change that took place in human society at this time. After the division that the Lord brought among the peoples of the earth, men could no longer understand each other, and they were further dispersed, moving to the places that are listed in Genesis 10.

All of this fit into the eternal purpose and plan of God. The heaven and earth problem would be solved, but not by man building his own tower. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would be the one safe link between heaven and earth. In Him we have the solution of time and place that we desperately desire. In Him we have eternity, and in Him we even have the truest Friend in the present heaven, a place that will one day descend upon the earth in a beautiful act of fulfillment and renewal.

From this point on, man in all his great endeavors would have to battle within the confusing futility of a world of Babel. But patiently, over some centuries, the true saving plan was moving forward. Shem would father Arpachshad, and Arpachshad would father Shelah, Shelah would father Eber, Eber would father Peleg, Peleg would father Reu, Reu would father Serug, Serug would father Nahor, Nahor would father Terah, and Terah would father Abram.

This Abram would have the miracle baby Isaac through Sarah, and Isaac would father Jacob, who would father the twelve sons that would father the tribes of Israel. One of those sons, Judah, would be the ancestor of Jesus Christ, and these Jesus would be preached to the nations. All of this would take thousands of years.

Mankind, who has neither patience nor lifespan for a project that takes that long, could never have solved the heaven/earth divide, no matter how high the tower that he built. The reuniting of heaven and earth required a towering righteousness and a towering love. The second Adam, Jesus, is the perfect man for this kingdom work, and He has proved His great love for us in that He died for us knowing that we would one day be hard at work on our various Tower of Babel schemes. Man cannot build a tower to heaven. The tower to heaven has come to earth for us in Jesus Christ, our King. He is our all in all.

Genesis 10

God gave an amazing prophecy through His servant Noah at the end of the prior chapter. He said “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.” This prepares us for the partial conquest of the Canaanites by the Hebrews (descendants of Shem) that will be the backdrop for the history of the entire Old Testament. But then the Lord revealed the following words through Noah: “May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem.” What are the people groups that descended from the three sons of Noah, and how do the centuries that followed provide the fulfillment of this amazing Word from God through Noah?

This chapter and the one that follows provide us with some answers as we move through a long period of history going from Shem to a very important father in the faith, Abraham. Noah's prophesy and this related material concerning the nations of the world are the only links that move us from the worldwide flood to the story of redemption that comes through the chosen seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They tell us what is going on in the world that will be the environment within which the saving purposes of God will be accomplished.

Within the lists of individuals and related people groups contained in Genesis 10, there are many names that hold no meaning to the average reader. Even the most diligent scholar may be left with many question marks in chasing down the heritage that is so briefly described here. Yet several very significant points are clear, and the theological importance of those points has become more obvious with the coming of the events of salvation history described in the New Testament.

We begin with the descendants of Moses' son Japheth. Our best understanding is that this man's descendants are associated with ancient peoples who settled northwest of the region of the Tigris and the Euphrates. This list anticipates the events that will be described in the next chapter, which explains how it is that each people group developed their own language and cultural practices.

Those associated with Noah's son Ham include the Canaanites and the Egyptians, among others. Israel would be delivered from the hands of the Egyptians in the days of Moses, and would be commanded by God to take over the land of the Canaanites by conquest. Also included in this group are the forerunners of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, two imperial powers that will be used by the Lord to take His people into exile.

Though the Lord had commanded the Israelites to utterly destroy the Canaanites, throughout the early history of the conquest recorded for us in Joshua and Judges, we read that many of these peoples were instead subject to forced labor, fulfilling the earlier words of Noah, that Canaan would be a servant to the descendants of Shem.

Nimrod is prominent among the descendants of Ham, a “mighty man,” “a mighty hunter before the Lord.” From this man of power come the great empires. Here was a kingdom builder, the man behind the “great city.”

From Canaan, the cursed son of Ham, came the nations that would be familiar names in the region that would be the Promised Land. These nations would be displaced by the command of God, but not before the Israelites were completely intimidated by what they considered to be the more formidable powers who lived in the land that God's people were told to conquer.

Noah's son Shem was the ancestor of all the children of Eber, from which the word “Hebrew” comes. In the midst of the names of the descendents of Shem, the division of the earth is mentioned, a story that is picked up in the next chapter.

These are the clans of the sons of Noah. From these groups, the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood. Most of the names may mean nothing to the modern reader, but they are known to the Lord.

Some of these people were the ancestors of established people groups that we have heard of. The Greeks, the inhabitants of Cyprus, the Scythians, and the nomadic Northern tribes that would eventually settle in what would become Asia minor are all the descendants of Japheth. Many generations after Noah, and many generations after Moses, these races and peoples would be the Gentiles that would fill tent of the greatest descendant of Shem, Jesus Christ. Many of these Gentiles would respond to the proclamation of the Jewish Messiah, and would find their way through faith in Him, into the new tabernacle of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Their entrance into the church, though a very difficult matter even for the Apostles, was known to God long before, and was announced through Noah not long after the flood.

Though the events of any era in history may cause us to wonder, we can trust that the Lord knows what is happening to all the peoples of the world, and that He is working out His own great glory. All of our history and even our present moments are mysteriously connected to the greatest event of all time: the coming of Jesus Christ, His life, death, and resurrection. With this great revelation of God in person, we have the close of Old Testament events, and the beginning of New Testament events. Even in the cross of Christ, we know that the Lord, who knows all, was accomplishing His holy will. If we can trust our God in the cross, we can trust Him in all that we face in our own lives. He has become the Lord of the nations.