Abraham

Paul confirms that Abraham was special.

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Gal 3:6).

We do not know why God called Abraham rather than someone else. Maybe God has called his father Terah first, because he set out to go to Canaan, but only got as far as Harran, which is north of the Euphrates River (Gen 11:31).
Anyway, God call Abraham and told him to move to Canaan.

The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you... So Abram went, as the LORD had told him (Gen 12:1-4).

Abraham trusted God when he was called, and he obeyed the Lord’s calling and took his family and herds to Canaan. This was an amazing step, because Abraham knew nothing about the place that he was going. He obeyed God anyway.

The scriptures say that Abraham’s trust in God was sufficient for him to be right with God. I think we have forgotten what that means. Abraham was put right with God because he trusted him; nothing more.

The interesting thing is that Abraham did not have to make an offering to appease God for his sins, before declared him to be right. No doubt, Abraham had sinned, but his sins did not prevent God from calling him. God forgave him, because he loved him. His wrath did not need to be appeased. Abraham did not need to shed blood. God forgave Abraham and Abraham trusted God. That was sufficient for God.

I presume that Abraham escaped the spiritual powers of evil when he moved away from Ur and Harran. They let him go, because they thought he was unimportant, but God uses outsiders who are ignored by the powers of the world ignore.

Our gospel should reflect this truth. God loves the people he created. He is calling out to them to trust him and serve him. Jesus death on the cross paid a ransom to redeem those who are enslaved by the powers of evil. People should not let their shame full them into thinking that the problem is that God’s anger is the problem. The problem is the spiritual powers of evil who manipulate and control those who have rejected God. The good news is that Jesus defeated them on the cross.

Abraham and Isaac

The incident where Abraham attempts to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God concerns many Christians. God seems to tell him to offer a human sacrifice. This is strange behaviour for a loving God.

In the end, an angel points at a lamb caught in a thorn bush that Abraham can sacrifice, but that is not much better, because it suggests that God was tricking Abraham all along.

Maybe God was testing Abraham to see if he would be willing to sacrifice the thing that was most precious to him, but that is odd, because Abraham had already left his family and home to follow God’s call. God had already promised to bless Abraham (Gen 12,15), so there was nothing God could do if he failed the test.

I think we need a must better understanding of this incident. Genesis begins by saying that “God tested Abraham”. The interesting question is who did the testing? The subject of the sentence is the Hebrew word “Elohim” This word is translated as God in all translations of Genesis 22.

Although Elohim is usually translated as God, it has a number of other meanings. It can also be translated as:

angels
idols
gods
spiritual powers.

When I did a search, I found more than a hundred verses where Elohim was not translated as God, but one of these other words. Here are a few examples.

But why did you steal my gods (Gen 31:31).

You have made him a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:5).

I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt (Ex 12:12)

They have followed other gods to serve them (Jer 11:10).

Rid yourselves of the foreign gods (1 Sam 7:3)

All of these are valid translations of the word Elohim and the context tells us how it should be translated. Genesis 22 makes more sense if Elohim is translated as “gods” in the sense of evil spiritual powers.

Now it came to pass after these things that one of the gods (spiritual powers) tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen 22:1-2).

Abraham had obeyed God’s call and travelled a long way to Canaan. However, he did not have the fullness of the Spirit, so he was not very good at discerning the voice of God. Speaking a false word was a good way to trip him up.

Since God was doing something special with Abraham, it was natural that the spiritual powers of evil would try to thwart him. They tried to trick Abraham into killing his son. Isaac was going to be the father of Israel, so what better way to disrupt God’s plans than to kill him.
An evil angel came to Abraham disguised as an angel of light and pretended to speak for God. He told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son to God. Abraham did not realise that he was being tricked, but thought that God had asked him to offer his son.

Abraham’s obedience to the terrible command demonstrates his character. He was so loyal; the spiritual powers of evil knew it was a waste of time tempting him to disobey God. They had probably tried that already and failed. Persuading him to obey God was a much better tactic.

Jesus warned us that that the “thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy”, whereas he is the source of abundant life (John 10:10). Abraham did not have the benefit of Jesus’s wisdom, so he did not recognise the voice of evil. He did not understand the character of God, as well as well do, but his faith in him was amazing. I presume that he believed that God could give him another son once Isaac died. God had given him a son when he was old, so he could do it again.

God did not let Abraham sin by killing his son. I think that he was testing the spiritual powers of evil. He wanted to see if they really would let Abraham kill his son. Could they be that hateful? When he realised that they were going to go all the way, he sent his angel to intervene.

The speaker in the second part of the chapter is described differently, suggesting it is a different person. “The angel of Yahweh called to Abraham from the heavens” and told him not to harm the child. The angel of Yahweh saved him from doing a terrible thing.

This is not just angel. The writer avoids any confusion by explaining it is an angel “of Yahweh” and “from the heavens.”

The contrast is telling. In the beginning of the chapter it is Elohim (the gods) speaking to Abraham. At the end of the chapter the angel of Yahweh speaks. The first is the voice of evil. The second is the voice comes from heaven, so it is the voice of truth and life. This confirms that it was the spiritual powers of evil who were trying to trick Abraham, and not God.

The incident reminds us that it can be hard to hear from God. Sometimes, the spiritual powers of evil will try to confuse us by pretending to be God. They tried to do it to Abraham. They still try to do it in the age of the Holy Spirit.

The good news is that God can protect us, even if we get it wrong, provided our attitude is right. Abraham was keen so obey God that he jumped to obey when the thought he heard God’s voice. He was deceived, because he was keen to obey, but God intervened by sending an angel to rescue him by speaking the truth.

When we hear God speak, we should obey willingly. If our desire is to obey him, he will protect us from false voices. He will rescue us, if we hear wrong. The main thing is to have a heart that desires to serve him.

The angel from Yahweh spoke God’s true word to Abraham. The angel graciously acknowledged Abraham’s obedience, even though he had got it wrong. God was really impressed with his loyalty. He repeated the promise of blessing given to Abraham earlier.

Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Gen 22:16-18).

Abraham and Moses

Abraham was part of God’s solution to the problems described in a previous post. God needed a land where he could work and a people to watch over it, so that he would have a safe place to send his son as a Messiah. Sending Jesus as a baby was a huge risk. If God got this wrong, the spiritual powers of evil would kill Jesus as soon as he was born, and his deliverance plan would fail.

Abraham provided the people through his growing family of descendants. The land came when Moses led the people out of Egypt into the promised land. The law allowed the people to live in peace in the land.

Israel was called to be a light to the nations by operating a different system of government: local judges applying God’s law. This dealt with one of the problems listed in the previous post, but it could not deal with the rest.

If Israel had implemented God’s way, many nations would have copied them. Instead, Israel chose not to be a light and copied the darkness of the nations by adopting a king and military power. They hid their light under a bushel of kingly power.

If Israel had fulfilled its calling to live under God’s law, they would have established a place of safety, relatively free of the spiritual powers of evil, where it would be safety for God to send the Messiah.

Israel chose to have a king, giving the spiritual powers of evil a home.

God used Rome to establish a place of relative order using military power and system of law. This was not ideal, but it provided sufficient peace for God to send the Messiah as a baby. However, he had to send Jesus to refugee to Egypt to be safe from the attacks of King Herod, and the principalities and powers that controlled him.

Why Abraham?

Why did God choose Abraham. Was there something special about him. He was not more virtuous than other people. he was a sinner, when God made his covenant promise in Genesis 12:2. God declared him righteous, when he believed the promise of the covenant, even though he was old with no family (Gen 15:6).

There were three reasons why God may have chosen him.

1. He was not part of the power establishment at Ur, and he did not join with the Canaanites, so he was free from the domination of the spiritual powers of evil.
2. He was old with no children, so there was no one to distract him from following God’s call.
3. He had failed to become a father, so he was desperate for a miracle.

Maybe God called many others, but Abraham was the first to respond and go. We don't know.

Abraham

Abraham’s calling was a promise with no guidance, explanation or conditions, except moving to Canaan. It was more like a prophecy. Circumcision was not a condition for obtaining the promise, but a sign that marked out the people of promise.

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6).

How was that possible before the cross?

God had already decided that he would forgive anyone who trusted him. Knowing what Jesus would do, he was prepared to forgive their sin and consider them righteous.

The cross was necessary, because the spiritual powers of evil had stolen authority over the earth when Adam and Eve submitted to them. The evil powers refused to let humans free without a ransom being paid. Especially, once the law was given, as it defined transgression and specified the curses on transgression. The spiritual powers of evil demanded the right to implement the curses of the law.

Jesus died on the cross to satisfy the demands of the spiritual powers of evil. His death was the ransom that the law specified for sin. His death redeemed all those who trusted in him from under their authority.

I think Abraham had escaped the spiritual powers of evil by leaving Ur. They thought he was irrelevant, so they just let him go, so they could concentrate their authority near the centre of power. They had not heard God’s call, so they did not understand that Abraham was following God. He just walked out and they let him go free.

Abraham was not perfect, but there was no law yet specifying a curse for transgression, so the spiritual powers of evil had no hold on him. He was dodgy when dealing with Abimelech, but God had accepted his faith and declared him to be righteous. Once God had done that, the spiritual powers of evil could not touch Abraham, because he was under God’s protection. This is why he was able to defeat the kings that took Lot captive.

Abraham’s servant was faithful to his master’s God. I presume his faith was credited to him as righteousness too. He asked God to lead him to the woman who would be a wife for Isaac. God lead him to a good woman. This gave Abraham’s family a great start.

Gods OT Strategy (15) - Abraham

Abraham was the first person who lived by faith. He believed the promise and obeyed Gods call to move to Palestine which would become the centre of the playground of empires (Gen 12:1). This was an important step in God's strategy, because it gave him a place from which to challenge empires.

Abraham was the first military commander. The resources of his family were sufficient that he could defend his family from attack (Gen 14:15-16). Abraham and his family could serve God without being overcome by the evil forces around them. For the first time in the history of the world, God had a group of people on earth that he could work through. This was a major step i God strategy.

Abraham was a prophet (Deut 34:10). The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a protective judgment. Abraham was the prophet who released God to achieve this result. It prevented a malicious evil from emerging in this important region.

Discerning Seasons (4) - Amplifying Authority

Christians with authority in business or politics can amplify the authority of God even further. People like Joseph, Jeremiah or Isaiah are really important. Their position in the political system increased their influence. When they pray for God’s will to be done, his authority on earth is dramatically boosted. A small minority with authority in business or government, who understand God’s will and pray for the release of his Spirit in their sphere of influence can have a huge impact on earth. They give far more authority to God than is taken by the majority who simply ignore him.

Abraham is a great example. He pleaded for Sodom to be saved and God agreed to save it if ten righteous men lived in the city, although he already knew there were not ten good men in there (Gen 18:32). This number is often taken out of context and applied to other cities with no understanding of the extent of Abraham’s authority in Sodom.

Sodom and the surrounding nations had been controlled by the King of Elam (which is in modern Iran) for thirteen years. When they rebelled, the King of Elam and some allies came against them and defeated them. Many people, including Lot, were taken captive and their property stolen. Abraham took his fighting men and defeated the King of Elam and his allies. He recovered the captives and their property (Gen 141-17).

The King of Sodom offered Abraham all his property, as anyone would in those days, if they met someone tougher than them.

The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself” (Gen 14:21).

The King was offering to pay tribute to Abraham as a more powerful leader, but Abraham told him to keep his people and his property. By submitting to Abraham, the King of Sodom gave Abraham immense authority in Sodom (that he mostly chose not to use). Abraham’s relationship with God and the pagan king’s surrender gave God authority to act in Sodom. It also gave Abraham the authority to plead for Sodom to be saved

Abraham’s faith and authority pushed the tipping point way over to the left.

History of Government (1) - In the Beginning

What is the best form of government? This is a really important question. The Bible describes a number of different systems and most are condemned. We need to dig deeply to find God’s optimal form of civil government.

There was no need for government in the Garden of Eden. Everyone obeyed God, so there was no conflict. Sin had not yet entered in, so there was no theft or violence. Human government was not needed.

Once Adam and Eve sinned, crime and violence became a problem. Initially these problems were dealt with by families. Fathers are required to teach their children to obey God and live in harmony with each other. They must provide for their children and resolve disputes between them. I presume that Adam and Eve had no choice, but to send Cain away. That was his penalty for murder.