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January 4th, 2003
Transcript of recording
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recording available at www.SpiritAndTruth.org/teaching)
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Introduction
This is recording #2003011101 recorded on January 11, 2003 at Camano Chapel (www.CamanoChapel.org). Our course is entitled Israel Through The Eyes Of Scripture. This is session #2, “The Calling of Abraham.”
These classes are available on the internet at www.SpiritAndTruth.org.
I will go ahead and open in prayer.
“Father we thank You that we can come and be in fellowship with one another and that You haven’t left us on our own here with Your Word Father, but that You’ve raised up other believers to trust in You, other sheep who hear Your voice, Father. That respond to You and want to please You, want to get to know You closer. Father, tonight, as we look at the role of Abraham in Your Word, we ask that You would open our eyes and our ears and give us hearts to understand Your heart and the things which You’ve said to Abraham and how they play out even today, Father, as we look at things in the wordand in our own liveshow critical the promises to Abraham are in regard to ourselves, Father, as the New Covenant and our participation in it as the seed of Abraham by faith. And so Father, tonight, as we open Your Word, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would minister to us and teach us, in Jesus name, Amen.”
This is what we are going to talk about this week. We have a number of areas we want to look at. This week is “The Calling of Abraham.” We are going to look at Abraham’s role as the father of the Jews. And that has to do with whenever you hear God speaking to Israel He says, “I’m the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” as you recall. What He is referring to is the promises that started at Abraham and involved Abraham’s son Isaac and then his son Jacob. So we’ll see Abraham ends up functioning as the “basement” of this “house” that will be the nation Israel.
We are going to look at God’s promises to Abraham. God called Abraham from a different areaa different regionand we are going to look at what He told Abraham. And these promises that He gave to Abraham in the form of a covenant. We’ll look at what that is a little bit and why that is important. When God makes a promise it is just as good as anything, but He wanted to make this particular set of promises very clear and remarkable in the Bible and so He went to great lengths to “cut” a covenant with Abraham that is quite unusual.
We are going to look at that covenant and how that functions as the foundation for other covenants or promises which are made. For example, the Davidic promises to king David. The promises which had to do with the land, and the New Covenantwhich is where God said, “I will put My Spirit within you” which is already in operation as far as believers gowe have the Holy Spirit within us as we trust in Christ.
And we are going to look at the line of promise. That is, the promise started at Abraham, but then how did it travel from there as it went on from that point.
Historic Timeline
So with that, I’ll put up the historic timeline [see handouts from session 1]. The very first page from the first class, just to mention that as far as we are concerned, Abraham’s calling is the beginning of our course. Our course goes all the way back to Adam and Evecreation in Genesis 1:1 (or John 1:1)but looking at Israelthere was no Israel prior to Abraham. In fact there is not really an Israel until we go through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then Jacob gets renamed Israel and that is “officially” where Israel starts. But the promises initiated at Abraham and so that’s why we are starting at Abraham and on our chart that is the first entryaround 1921 B.C.. Isaac is born, then Jacobwho becomes Israelis born, and then eventually 400+ years later, Israel is pulled out of Egypt in the Exodus and this is where the nation of Israel is “born” from God’s perspective. He says, “Out of Egypt I have called My firstborn.”
So there are different things going on. There are promises to the individual [Abraham] and those promises involve his offspring which will later become this nation which will come out. So that’s what we’ll be looking at some of the time today.
Schedule
We looked at the Mystery Of The Jews last time. We are looking at the Calling of Abraham this week, and then next week we’ll be looking at when the nation is called Out Of Egypt. So in a sense, they are called twice: Abraham is called from Ur of the Chaldeans over in the Babylonian, Persian area. He is called as an individual. Then, later, the nation is called out of Egypt by God by the hand of Moses.
Abraham as Father of the Jews
We are going to look at Abraham’s role as the father of the Jews. Let’s start out by turning in our Bibles to Matthew 1. The very first verse of the New Testament. Matthew 1, verse 1. If you take some time to look at the gospels, you’ll see that each of the gospels has a different slant to it, a different emphasis. They record many of the same events, but the perspectives are somewhat different. And Matthew’s perspective is that he is writing primarily to a Jewish audience and he is trying to show in his gospel that Jesus is the promised Messiah. He is the Anointed One that was promised in the Old Testament. And so when He begins his genealogy in Matthew 1:1, he takes great pains to show how Jesus is tied into Abrahamto this line of promise. If we read verse 1, we’ll see, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. That’s all the further he goes back. He takes two big leaps back. He says, Jesushe jumps back and says He is the offspring of David, and then he jumps back from there and says He is the offspring of Abraham. And then in verse 2 he starts from Abraham and goes forward again, Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and on and on.
Notice how in the very first verseif we were to write this, we would start with verse 2but he is trying to make this point to the Jewish audience that Jesus is related to David who is related to Abraham. And he wants to make that point for the very reasons we are talking about in this class. He is trying to say Jesus has something to do with these promises. The promises that you know from the old testament were given to Abraham and the promises which were given to David. Jesus has a relationship to both of those.
Now if we go to Luke instead, over to Luke 3, we’ll find a different genealogy in Luke. In fact, I like to say that there are three genealogies in the gospels. There is one in Matthew, one in Luke, and one in JohnJohn 1, In the beginning was the Wordthat is a genealogy too. It is the genealogy of Jesus Christ as God.
In Matthew, the genealogy is toward the Jewish emphasis of Christ as the son of Abraham, the son of David. In Luke 3, starting in verse 34, we see Luke’s genealogy starts (the genealogy actually starts a bit earlier than verse 34) and he has a different emphasis than Matthew and he works his way backwards. He takes it all the way back to Adam in verse 38. So Luke is trying to say that this Jesus is the “son of man.” Not just the son of David, the son of Abraham (as Matthew recordsJohn says He is the Son of God), Luke is saying he is also the Son of Man. Part of the reason that is important is that He is a manHe is fully God and fully man. His importance as a man is key because way back in the garden when Adam and Eve fall God, when He is pronouncing the curse related to that, He says to the serpent that, “the seed of the woman will crush your head and you will crush His heel” and He is going to put enmity (or opposition) between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. So Jesus is this “seed of the woman” as wellthis promised seed which would come and crush the serpent’s head. And Luke is writing primarily to a Gentile audience apparently and so he wants to make that point.
The Call of Abraham
But one of the things I want you to notice, because Luke’s genealogy goes back furtherif we look at around verse 34we’ll see where it gets back to Jacob. See there in verse 34, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of AbrahamOK? So those are the three I was mentioning, Abraham Isaac and Jacob, that is in reverse order because he is going backwards in time. And notice what he says after that, the son of Terahwe know a little bit about Terahwe know he was the father of Abraham, but we don’t know much more. Then look at the next set of names, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem. At Shem again we know quite a bit about him.
Now some of these names we hear a little about, but if you go back in your Bible, and you look at [the time] after the flood, after Noah, there’s a big silence. If you search the pages of your Bible and you get a concordance and start searching on some of these names and try to figure out what was God doing at that time, you won’t find much information. Because we know that God was dealing directly with Noah and his sons when they came off of the arkat that point everybody [alive] knew Godand then we don’t hear much. So by the time we get to Abraham we have about 8 generations from Shem. So that that point, God is going to call Abraham.
The reason I’m emphasizing this is that one of the things which is very important to understand about this whole thing with Abraham and the promises is that its unilaterally God’s action that is taking place. You’ll see that in a number of ways, but I want you to see that at this point in time, as far as we know, nothing is goingit’s not recorded in scripture that God is working with specific individuals. And in fact we’ll see elsewhere, in Joshua, that Terah, who was Abraham’s father worshiped other gods. So he was an idolater. So he wasn’t necessarily the kind of candidate that you would expect God would use. And as we look at this more and morein this line of promiseand even as we look in the new testament regarding what it says about believers, you’ll see the sovereignty of God. That is to say, God has a plan, a plan which involves lots of different elements, but when He initiates a plan, He comes in, sometimes He picks an unlikely candidate and starts working with that person.
So at this point in history in the Bible, we don’t see a lot, but we’ll see here that Abraham gets called “out of the blue,” if you want. I say, “out of the blue,” because there is nothing to tell us that he was in any way commendable. But again, he is chosen and then the nation becomes chosen because of it. But it is not because of his merit or because of the merit of the nation. It is because of God’s sovereign choice. This is really importantthis is something I would like to underline: never forget that God has His purposes. Our tendency is to look at what God is doing and to look at whoever he is working through and say that that person is special, or even the people (like the Jews for instance, when God chose them as a nation) that they could do no wrong because they were chosen. We can get into that situation as Christians too, where we think that we are something really specialin some ways we are, but still it is God’s purpose that is being played outnot necessarily our merit (it’s not our merit at all!).
The Abrahamic Covenant Given
Let’s go to Genesis 12 now and we’ll start looking at the second part nowGod’s promises to Abraham. In Genesis 12 there is recorded the very beginning of God’s dealings with Abrahamwe see a tiny bit at the end of chapter 11but this is where God really starts working with Abraham.
Genesis 12:1, Now the Lord said to Abram [like many people in the Bible, Abraham started with a different name and was renamed by God] get out of your country, from your family, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
So in these first few verses there is a lot of information. There is this idea of progressive revelation (a fancy term for saying that God leads a trail of bread crumbs through history where He starts saying more and more about different things He is doing). We’ll see how here he is laying the very foundation of this promise, but it gets elaborated on in some other places.
But notice some of the conditions here: He says He is going to take Abraham to “a land I will show you.” So there is a land involved. He says, “I’ll make you a great nation.” He is going to make Abram’s name great. Abram is going to be blessed and God is going to bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him. And then this last one, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
We are going to look at a couple of those before we look at some other passages. There is this issue of blessing those who bless you and cursing those who curse you. This was a promise that God was putting His favor on Abraham. This is echoed again later on in Numbers 24 when Balaak hires Balaam to go up on a high place and look down on the camp of Israel and to curse them. In Numbers 24:8-9, Balaam goes to curse Israel, but God won’t let him curse Israel. In fact, He has him pronounce a blessing and he repeats the same idea, Blessed is he who blesses you and cursed is he who curses you. And that has led a number of people to observe in historyI know this is a debated point, buthere is one person’s view of this.
Charles Feinberg said,
:No nation under Israel could touch Israel for ill without bringing down upon him the wrath of Almighty God. The pages of history are strewn with the wreckage of nations who, though great in the eyes of the councils of the world, incurred the just wrath of an outraged God. While God reserves the right to judge his chosen people for their sins, He also reserves the right to judge those who spitefully mistreat the Jews and thus bring reproach upon the One Whom made an everlasting covenant with Israel.
So if you go back to last week when we talked about how to destroy Israelremember we said if you fire your missiles at the Sun and the Moon and take out the Sun and the Moon, then you can destroy Israel based upon what God had said in Jeremiah. This gets back at the situation as Christians, we have to walk in a Godly way. God does not endorse the nation Israel when it is evilHe judges. In fact, “to the Jew first and to the Gentile,” we’ll see that phrase in the new testament numerous timesand the idea is “to whom much is given, much is required.” Those who have more knowledge and more relationship from their past (with God), more is expected of them. That is one of the reasons why God has judged Israel harshly. But at the same time, we also know that God has a plan He is carrying out with Israel and any nation that tries to spitefully interfere with the nation is messing with the “apply of His eye.” That’s what He says. That is where this whole idea starts here with this curse and blessing.
The most important part of the promise in verse 3 for everybody in the word is, in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Notice that everything prior to that has beenGod has said, “Abraham, I am going to do this for you. I am going to do this for youI am going to make your name great and make you a great nation.” And then at the end, He throws in, In you all families of the earth shall be blessed. This is the promise where we plug in when we become believers in Jesus Christ. In the new testament we’ll see that we are called the “seed of Abraham” by faith. And what He is saying here is that something would come from Abraham that would bless everybody in the eartheven the families which are not in this family line. At this point in time there are all these people who descended from Noah and Jesus is going to come out from Abraham, but there are many other people who do not have the same lineage. They are not from Abraham, and in fact if you are not Jewish then you are not from Abraham [correction if you are not from Jacob/Israelthere are other descendants of Abraham by Ishmael which are not Jews]. So God has a plan also for those who are outside this stream.
This is connected with Genesis 3:15 where God promises there would be the seed of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent.
Let’s just take a quick look at Romans 4:11, because it is so closely related to this passage. In Romans 4:11. Paul here is talking about works vs. faith. And he is making an argument about when Abraham was justified in the sight of God? Was it before he got circumcised or after circumcision? He is pointing out that it is before he was circumcised and therefore Abraham was justified before God before he did any worksbased on his faith alone. And here in verse 11 it says that, Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith while he was still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, thought they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also.
So he is saying here that Abraham received justification by faith and he is going to be the father of all those who are uncircumcisedthat is they are not Jewishand they walk in the faith of Abraham. So that is where this, In you all the families of the earth will be blessedthat is the major part of that promisecomes through this salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, no matter what your background is.
Let’s look at the next part of the Abrahamic covenant that is given back in Genesis again. This is in Genesis 13. It is interestingpeople have observed that God
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
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