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The next speaker this morning is Brother John Martin of the Enfield South Australia Ecclesia. The theme for Brother Martin's classes this week is Abraham, Father of the Faithful. Today's class is entitled Get the Out of Thy Country from Genesis 12. Thank you Brother Rod and good morning my dearly beloved brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well what a remarkable character we have to consider brothers and sisters in Abraham. You know that Abraham is given three specific titles in the record. Three times in this record he's called the Friend of God. The Canaanites called him the Hebrew and the Apostle Paul called him the Father of the Faithful. And I want to show you brothers and sisters that some of them just over expand the meaning of those titles as we begin to consider the life of this man. Now in the 2nd Chronicles chapter 20, Isaiah 41 and James chapter 2, don't turn them up because we're going to save time, but in those three places in the 2nd Chronicles 20, Isaiah 41 verse 8 and James chapter 2 he's called the Friend of God. And you know what? The Lord Jesus Christ picked that up and he picked it up from the life of Abraham when he said this. He said to his disciples, you are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you. And then he went on to say this, he said I don't call you servants anymore because he said the servant doesn't know what his Lord is going to do, but I've called you my friends for all things that the Father has told me I'm going to tell you. You know that's taken from the life of Abraham. You may remember the occasion brothers and sisters when the angels were on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And they turned aside to speak to Abraham and by the commandment of God they were told to do that because they said, God said I know him, I know him, that he will command his children to do the things that I say. So Abraham was a man that God knew that do the things that he would command him and he said why would I hide things from Abraham? And he sent those angels to tell Abraham what he was going to do. Now there is the friend of God and Jesus picked that up and said, you're my friends if you do whatever I command you, I don't call you servants because I don't tell you things to a servant, I tell you as friends what I intend to do and that's taken straight out of the life of Abraham. Now isn't that incredible? The Lord should pick that up from the life of this wonderful man because God knew him and therefore he was going to tell him future things. Now the Canaanites called him the Hebrew and they called him that because that word means a crosser over. Now this is why he was called the Hebrew. You see Joshua had said, he said to all the people, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood. In old time even Tyra the father of Apam and the father of Nacor and they served other gods and I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood and led him throughout the land of Canaan and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac. And so God brought him brothers and sisters from the other side of the flood. I have seen that. It's unbelievable when you see where Abraham came from. Now this is a journey that he made. They dwelt on the other side of the flood. He came from Ur of the Chaldees here and you'll notice that he didn't make his way across here did he, straight across to the land, but he followed up this course here because he had to get across the river Euphrates which is that blue line on that map. Now brothers and sisters the Euphrates is known in the Bible as the flood. And when we were in Iraq in 1969 we had to go down and have a look at Ur of the Chaldees. We wanted to go down and see the excavations that they'd done at Ur of the Chaldees and we had to go down from Baghdad. And the only way we could get there was by train. We were supposed to go by bus but we had to go by the train because the only thing above the water was the railway line. And believe it or not when we got halfway down to Ur of the Chaldees coming down from Baghdad here on our way down that area there brothers and sisters, when we were on our way down there we got to a point on that railway line when you could not see land east, north, south or west. You could have been in the middle of the Atlantic for all you knew. And the only thing above that water was the railway line. They'd built it up high so that the train could go through that area and you could look everywhere and from horizon to horizon in every direction was water. Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood and that man made that journey not even knowing where he was going. That's what you call faith. That's why he's called the father of the faithful. And he had to make his way way up here to Hayran and Hayran by the way means crossroads and it certainly was the crossroads for Abraham and he had to come down here to Shechem. And we know brothers and sisters that when he was told he was told to get thee out of thy country. That was the first thing he was told so he left Ur of the Chaldees. And the work of Professor Woolley who excavated Ur of the Chaldees has revealed brothers and sisters that Abraham came from a very sophisticated society, a very sophisticated society. He wasn't just one of these nomads wandering around with a few sheep and a tent. He came from a very upgraded society in Ur of the Chaldees. And that man showed incredible faith to uproot his home and house and move towards Hayran not knowing where he went and he came to the crossroads with his father, his brothers and his nephew. And they stayed there brothers and sisters. We'll see later on that Abraham had to move away from here again. He stayed there for a while and what happened there? Well Tyra, his father, his name means to delay and that's what he did. He delayed there didn't he? Until the message of God came to Abraham, get out of your father's house. So it's not only a question now of leaving country, it's leaving family. Brothers and sisters, I know what that means. When we came into the truth, there were ten children in our family, my mother and father and ten children. And by the time I had accepted the truth, I was about the third one to accept it in We were told to get out of our house. It was either this religion or live here. And we were away from home for six weeks and had to leave a semi-invalid father. And I had to get my mother sedated every day by the doctor to endure that period. We knew what it meant to get out of family. But the truth is the truth brothers and sisters. And Abraham was told not only get out of your country but now you've got to leave your dad because he's delaying. And there wasn't going to be any delay with God. And Abraham went, didn't he? His brothers didn't go. Nahor, his brother, his name means a snorer. I know what that means too. I've had a sleep in the same room with Jim Luke. And he of course, true to his name, he sort of slept there type of thing, you know. And he established his home there. And that's why the truth was half understood at Heyron. That's why Isaac was to go up there to find a wife and so forth and so forth. And Jacob a little bit later on. And he stayed there. Heyron, another brother, he died before his father left her of the Chaldeans actually. And then there was Lot, his nephew. His name means veiled. And although Peter says that Lot was a just and a righteous man, he was veiled, brothers and sisters. He couldn't see clearly, could he? And when the day came to make a dramatic decision, he was blinded to the realities of Solomon Gomorrah, wasn't he, and made a tragic decision. And then there was Milka, who was Nahor's wife and her name means a queen. And you know, brothers and sisters, it's interesting in the record that when you read why Abraham sent Isaac back there to find a wife and Isaac sent Jacob back there to find a wife, you get great hints in the record that Milka was the strength of that household. She was evidently a very strong woman and who probably was the real reason why the truth hung on there in that particular place that they could find wives for their sons who had some affinity with the religion of Abraham. And it would indicate in the record that Milka was largely responsible for that. And then there was Sarah, or Sarai, as she was then known, a princess. She was the daughter of Tyra by another wife than, of course, than Abraham was born. And so she was Abraham's half-sister. And she became his partner in life. Look unto Abraham, the rock from whence you are hewn, and look unto Sarah, the quarry out of which you've been dug. And there was a rock-like companionship between Abraham and Sarai that survived, brothers and sisters, some very, very, very dramatic circumstances. And would to God that our people today, husband and wife, could learn to overcome their difficulties when you consider how this woman endured incredible things and yet clung to her husband and the two of them went down in the record as being an incredible partnership of faith. Look unto the rock from whence you are hewn and the quarry from whence you are digged. The foundations were in that family, brothers and sisters, because these people were people of faith. And the sisters in Christ who follow the example of Sarai, Peter says, whose daughters you are. And we're going to have a look at the record a little bit later on in the context of why he said that. And I tell you what, it wouldn't be too many faithful daughters of Sarah when you look at that context of what she did to gain that title that God gave her as a daughter. And all those associated with her are daughters of Sarai, or Sarah. Now Abraham was called the father of the faithful. Brothers and sisters, have you ever wondered why in the record of the scripture that God calls himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? Why don't I say the God of Joshua, the God of Moses, the God of Isaiah, the God of David, and so on and so on? Why would he want to stop at those three men? Well, the reason is this, that in Hebrews 11, it says, therefore he is not ashamed be called, and the Greek means surnamed, their God. Now you look at this, just have a look at how this encapsulates the whole purpose of God in these three men. So God surnamed himself upon them. Now that Greek word there, called, is better understood as surnamed. And it's rendered several times by that term, surnamed. So he put his name upon those three men, just the same as a woman takes a brother for her husband, and she's quite proud and privileged to take his name. My wife is Verna Martin, and she's proud to wear my name because she wants to be associated with me. And that's what that word means. Now God's name is a prophecy. It's a name of God's purpose. He who will be. God will be people. People will be taken into God's own nature, into his own character, his own name, and we will be incorporated into that. Now he said he's not ashamed to have these three men associated with that name. And when you look at them, you realize why it's restricted to those three. Because you see Abraham's called the father of us all. Isaac is called in Hebrews 11, 17 his only begotten son when he was literally not his only begotten son. Abraham had other children, but he was called his only begotten son. And here's the incredible thing. I want you to turn this reference up with me, Genesis chapter 28. Just have a look at this. When you come to Jacob, look what it says. In the 28th chapter of Genesis, we read this in verse 3. And God Almighty bless thee and make thee fruitful and multiply thee that thou mayest be a multitude of people. Now brothers and sisters, that's not the first time that the word multitude is used in the promises. It's used copiously in the promises. But that's the first time that that particular Hebrew word is used for multitude in the promises. Now that's incredible. And if you've got a Bible like mine with a marginal rendition here as some alternative, you will see that alongside the word multitude, my margin says Hebrew, an assembly of people. And so God waited until Jacob's promise came to use a specific Hebrew word, which is the equivalent of the Greek ecclesia. Now look at that. The father and the son and his ecclesia. That's why God restricted it to those three men because encapsulated in those three men was that fact that God is the father of us all through his only begotten son through whom he's developing the ecclesia. And that's God's name. And so he surname himself upon that man and those men rather in that remarkable fashion. Now before they left Haren, we are told in the record that Sarai was barren. And that sets the drama, brothers and sisters, for this story. Because you see, as we develop in this story of Abraham and Sarah, we're going to find that as the time drew near for the manifestation and the birth of the seed, the spotlight's going to fall right on Sarah. Because whilst it was, of course, improbable that Abraham at his old age could have children, he actually did have children at his old age, it might have been improbable with him. It was impossible with Sarah. And as the story develops, the drama of that will be developed with it. Sarai was barren. And so, brothers and sisters, he moved into the land and God made wonderful promises to him. Now what we will do as we will pass through this story, we will highlight the main features of these promises. And there are just seven elements of the promise. There are just seven elements. You'll notice that first of all, all families of the earth were to be blessed in Abraham. The Gospel is announced. You know, Paul says, the God foreseeing that he would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations, all families of the earth be blessed. And many Christendelfians think that that verse says that the Gospel was first preached to Abraham. Well, it wasn't. And it wasn't first preached to Adam and Eve. The Gospel was first preached to the serpent. There's a reason for that. We won't go into that now, but that's a fact. What Paul is saying, the Gospel was preached to Abraham before the law. That's the point he's making. Before the law was ever given, the Gospel was preached to Abraham. And Paul does not mean, brothers and sisters, that when all families of the earth be blessed, that every man, woman and child upon the earth will be blessed because they weren't. What he means is this. That people of all nationalities would be blessed. That Abraham's promises had an international flavor. And it's ironical that the Jews pride themselves from their descent from Abraham when the very first thing he was told, that all families, families of the earth would be blessed. And that was the idea of that. And as we move through the promises, we will see that the promise was first made of the land to his seed before Abraham was ever promised an inch of it, before he ever was promised it. God promised it to his seed. And therefore, if Christ had not lived and died and rose again to inherit the kingdom, brothers and sisters, nobody would. Because it's to him it was first promised. And Paul says in Romans chapter 8 and verse 17 that we are joint heirs with Christ. And then finally, of course, he came to when the land was promised to him. To thee will I give it and to thy seed. And we will see that in Genesis chapter 13. And we'll have a look at the day when God made a covenant with him and he confirmed that promise. And that's an intriguing story in Genesis 15. And then in Genesis 17, brothers and sisters, we will learn about the spiritual fatherhood of Abraham and how that God, God was to make him a father, says God like me. And we're going to see the significance of that. And then finally, we're going to see how that the spotlight of activity fell upon Sarah. I will return, says Yahweh, I will come and Sarah will have a son. Wow, I'll come, says God, into your house and Sarah will have a son. And you know, Paul in Romans chapter 9 says that's the quintessence of the promise. This is the word of promise. Afterward, I will return and Sarah will have a son. And the drama, brothers and sisters, was to heighten as to God was entering into that relationship and the seed of the promise was to be born. A wonderful story. And then we have the last section when that lad, when he had grown to virtual maturity, Abraham was to take him and offer him up as a burnt offering. And faith was made perfect. You know, when those promises were made, Abraham was moving through the land. All nations were to be blessed. God called him into the land by that promise. And to thy seed, which is Christ, which was made at Shechem. And then later on, brothers and sisters, he came to Bethel where the promise of the land was made to him. And then at Hebron, three sections of the promise were made there. It was to be confirmed by sacrifice. Abraham was to be a spiritual father. And the boy that was to be born was God's own son. And the drama culminated when he moved to Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, there to offer Isaac upon the altar. And so that's how the promise developed. Now in Genesis chapter 12, we pick up the record. And they came into the land, and verse five says, And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and all the souls that they had gotten in Haren. And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came. They came to the land of Canaan. And Abraham passed through the land under the place of Sikkim, which is Shechem, under the plain of Moriah, and the Canaanite was then in the land. Now note that, the Canaanite was there. So God specifically records the fact that the Canaanite was there. And you know, brothers and sisters, Abraham came to Shechem. You know what Shechem is? It's the physical center of the land. It's the physical center of the land. And here in the physical center of the land, God was to say, Unto thy seed will I give this land. It was promised to Christ before it was ever promised to Abraham. And the fact that it was made there, brothers and sisters, between those two mountains, Ibel and Gerizim, which are only about 500 yards apart, and Shechem sits in the little saddle that's between those two mountains, with Ibel a little bit higher than Gerizim. Ibel being a mountain with no verdure on it, and Gerizim being a mountain with, of course, the trees and the grass. And they stood in contrast, the cursing and the blessing, and in between that little valley. And it was there that God said, Look, Abraham, to your seed I'm going to give this land. Now the Canaanites hear Abraham. And the question was, brothers and sisters, whether Abraham would separate or assimilate. Now this is intriguing, because you know that ever after, that place became a place where people make decisions. Look at it. It was a question with Abraham of whether he would separate or assimilate. Choose you this day whom you will serve. And we find, brothers and sisters, that when you come to Genesis 35, when Jacob made his way back from Paedon Aram, there was idolatry in his house. His own wife was carrying idols. And there were strangers with him. And he stopped at Shechem. And he asked them to make a decision whether they were prepared to come into pilgrimage with him into the land as strangers or to carry the gods of the heathen with them. And they buried the gods at Shechem and made that decision. In the book of Judges, the surviving son of Gideon, when Abimelech, the bramble king, had killed the 69 sons of Gideon and left only Jotham left, he ran over top of Gerizim and called to the men of Shechem to make up their mind whether they wanted to follow in the ways of his faithful father or to follow that vain king, the bramble king of Bimelech. Did they want him or did they want his father? Make up your mind at Shechem. In Deuteronomy 27, when the people were taking you to the land, Moses told Joshua, when you go into the land, he said, you put six tribes on Ebal and you put six tribes on Gerizim and put the priests in the middle and chant the blessings and the cursing. Make up your mind. Do you want a cursing or do you want a blessing? And that, brothers and sisters, was where they had to make up their mind. And in Joshua 24, before Joshua died, he took Israel to that very place again between those two mountains. And he says, choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve God. But make up your mind what you want to do. And that's where Jesus met the woman of Samaria. And she said, our fathers said in that mountain we ought to worship. What do you say? He said, salvation to the Jews. Make up your mind. Isn't that incredible? And you know, brothers and sisters, Joshua told the people right there that they had to serve God in sincerity and in truth. When Jotham, the son of Gideon, ran up on top of that mountain to Gerizim and spoke to the men in that valley, he said twice, twice he said it, if you have done truly and sincerely. And right there Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, they that worship the father must worship him in spirit and in truth. And so there was a monumental principle established in the life of Abraham when he came there, brothers and sisters, that it was either separation or assimilation, and we've got to separate sincerely and truly. Nothing less is worth it. You've got to do it sincerely and truly. And so Abraham made up his mind, didn't he? He became a stranger in a pilgrim and dwelt in that land, even though the Canaanite was then in that land. We know that Zechariah the prophet says, when the Lord Jesus Christ establishes the kingdom, there shall be no more of the Canaanites there. No more. They'll be gone. Because it'll be all Abraham's land and his seed. And so that's what Shechem stood for. And that place, the promise to the seed was given. When the tribes, brothers and sisters, were assembled, thereby Joshua, according to the commandment of Moses, there were six of them on the bald hill of Abel here and six of them upon the green hill here of Gerizim. It's very interesting to note that the tribes who were on Gerizim, the tribe of blessing, this one here, Simeon, of course, had his inheritance within Judah. Levi didn't have an inheritance. And when you draw a line around the borders of those tribes, they are all concentering around the center of the land. All those borders are the center of the land. And all these tribes, brothers and sisters, are outside of that center. And you will notice in that list, we have all the children of the bond women, not the children of the free. The children of Zilpar and Bilhar are in that list that's outside of the borders of that center. But all those on Gerizim, their borders make up the center of the land. And when Joshua took them there and they spelled out the blessings and the cursings, it was not the blessings and the cursings of the law only, brothers and sisters. Oh, no. Because 12 times in the book of Deuteronomy, they were told, just 12 times, once for every tribe, that the inheritance would be on the basis of promises made to the Father. And it was there that God said, I will bless him that blesses thee, and I'll curse him that curses thee. Israel, make up your mind. And if you want the land, if you want the center of the land, then choose blessing. And all those borders ring the center of the land. Isn't that incredible, brothers and sisters? And all of that based upon the promises made to the Father. Now, Abraham came to the place of Moreh, to the oak of Moreh in Shechem. Now, the oak, brothers and sisters, is a solitary tree in Israel. It doesn't grow in groves. It was a solitary tree, and it stood there as a monument. And when you look at the word Moreh in the Hebrew, you'll find that it's rendered in three different ways. And there's been a little bit of confusion about that. We have it rendered as a teacher. We have it rendered as an archer, firing arrows. And we have it rendered as the early rain, rain that comes during the season of the spring, and the so forth, to bring forth the crops. The early rain. Remember, they've all got something in common, you see. A teacher points to the lesson. An archer fires in that direction. And the early rain signaled the coming of the season. They all pointed the way. So whatever rendition we have of that term Moreh, it all has the same connotation. It's pointing that this is the way, walking in it. And Abraham came to that place where that oak tree was that pointed the way for him, brothers and sisters, into that land. Now, verse 7 says he built an altar there. He built an altar there. And, of course, he commemorated, as it were, that great promise that was made to him. Now, he left Shechem, we read in verse 8, and he removed him from this, unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Haiai on the east. Now, here's a remarkable thing. You know, when he came to Bethel, which is a bit lower, of course, than Shechem, down towards Jerusalem, when he came to Bethel, brothers and sisters, you know, Bethel means the house of God. And I want you to turn to Hebrews 11 and have a look at what the apostle says. Because, you know, the thing about this is that this is the first time that we have reference to Abraham dwelling in a tent. Now, of course he dwelt in tents before. But this is the first time we're told that. And because the record is inspired, God, I believe, deemed to tell us at this point that he dwelt in this tent. And so in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 9 and 10, it says, By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Isn't that interesting? That he dwelt in tents because he looked for a city. And it's not until he came to Bethel, the house of God that we have first mentioned, of his tent. Now, that's not just done coincidentally, brothers and sisters, that's to tell us that this was the spirit of that man. So having made his decision up there in Shechem, he decided that he'd live as a pilgrim. And the first mention of that is in the house of God. And that's really interesting. But he went on journeying, we read, in verse 9, and Abraham journeyed going on toward the south. So he had departed out of Erechol Des, he'd gone up to Haren, he'd gone out of his father's house, he'd come into the land, and he's journeying ever southward until he comes towards the south. And the Hebrew word for south is neger, and it means the dry land. And there's trials ahead, brothers and sisters, everybody's faith gets dried. We read in verse 10, and it came to pass, or rather, especially in verse 10, and there was a famine in the land. Now you think about it. Here you're told to get out of your country, so you do that. And you march up along this great river, because you've got to get around it somewhere. It's a flood, you can't get across here. You've got to go up and up and up, more or less in a different direction than what you really want to go. To get around this flood, and so you trudge up there for hundreds of miles, 300-odd mile up there, he trudges with his family, 318 servants he's got with him. Incredible journey. He takes a left-hand turn and comes down into the land. He stands to check him, and God says, this is it, Abraham, to thy seed will I give this land. But there's Canaanites everywhere. They're swarming over the place. And Abraham's got to assimilate all that and separate from them. He's got to take this in and think about it. There's Canaanites everywhere. And then he finds, brothers and sisters, that the land is under the threat of famine. There's a famine in the land. There's a drought. It's his land. Now, what would you do? What on earth would you and I do under those circumstances, having come all that way, hundreds of miles through difficult terrain into an unknown world and then be told that this is the world we're coming to, called by God Almighty, the controller of heaven and earth, and our country is swarming with Canaanites, and it's under the stricken with drought. What on earth would you do? You'd wonder what on earth was going on. You'd be absolutely disillusioned. And temporarily, Abraham became disillusioned. And he went down into Egypt. And you know, it's interesting that Abraham's life is a pattern of his seed's life. As this nation developed from him, so all these characteristics came through the nation. And Isaiah the prophet, in his 30th chapter, and I'm not turning this up because we want to save a bit of time. This is a big story. But in Isaiah, in his 30th chapter, talks about Egypt. They went down into Egypt for help. And Egypt was a broken reed. And Isaiah depicts them going down into Egypt through the wastes and howling deserts, wherein were scorpions and serpents and all manner of beasts. And they were riding on their camels and their donkeys. And they'd make their journey in the blinding sandstorms, said Isaiah. And they'd come to Egypt under extreme difficulty to find what? A broken reed. And all their trust in Egypt and all the trouble they took across the Sinai desert, brothers and sisters, meant nothing in the end because Egypt couldn't do nothing for them. Well Abraham went down there. And he went down there, it says, to Sojourn. Which means he didn't go down there to live. He didn't intend to go down and stop there, brothers and sisters. He went down there to be a stranger and a pilgrim. He could have returned to the land, says Paul, in Hebrews 11. They might have had opportunity to return, he said, if they wanted to, but he didn't. He went down there to Sojourn. Now we read in verse 11, and it came to pass when he was come near to enter into Egypt, he said unto Sarai his wife. Now from verse 11 to verse 20, Sarai is called just seven times his wife. Just seven. And that's the number of the covenant. We know that from Leviticus 26. When God kept telling Israel, if you break my covenant, I will punish you seven times. He kept saying that in Leviticus 26. And that's not the only place where seven is associated with the covenant. And here is a woman that's called his wife seven times. Because as Malachi says, she was the wife of his covenant. But he had made another covenant with her. And before they ever left Haren, he'd made another covenant, brothers and sisters. And over in chapter 20, you read about that covenant. It was a tragic covenant, really. It says in chapter 20 in verse 13, And it came to pass, said Abraham, when God caused me to wander from my father's house that I said unto her, to Sarah, this is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me, at every place whither we shall come, say of me he is your brother. That was a covenant they made before he came into the land. Mention a husband coming to his wife and saying, look dear, you're a beautiful woman. I love you dearly. But look, you are a beautiful woman. And I'm frightened. I'm frightened. I'm going to get killed for you. So everywhere we come, you just tell everybody you're my sister. And that was a half lie. Because she was a half sister. But it was a total denial of his covenant that he should have made with that woman. That she should have been the wife of his covenant. And he put Sarah into terrifying circumstances. Now you come to me with 1 Peter, chapter 3, and see what Peter says about this. Speaking as the example that was set here, the Apostle Peter tells the sisters, he says in verse 4, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner, in all time, the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves being in subjection under their own husbands. Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are, as you're not terrified, as the idea is it. You're Sarah's daughters, sisters, you're going to be her daughters, if you're not terrified by circumstances in your married life to break with your husband. And there wouldn't have been a woman who would have more justification for that than this one did. But Paul says she had a hidden man of the heart. Abraham was hidden in her heart. How did that happen? Well she called him Lord. Do you know brothers and sisters, you listen to this, there's only one occasion where it's ever recorded that she called him Lord. She would have called him Lord regularly. There is only one occasion that it's recorded. And it's recorded in Genesis 18, when the angel came with the message that she was going to have a child by Abraham, and she laughed within herself, she laughed within herself and said, shall I have pleasure, my Lord? Being old also, she said that in here. That's the only time it's ever said that she called him Lord. And Abraham was the hidden man of her heart, and on two occasions he was prepared for her to go into a harem. Terrifying experiences. Whose daughters you are, if you're not terrified. And how tragic is it brothers and sisters that we have, in these last days, in these days of Noah, we have such a plague of marriage problems. And all the justification of why that should happen. We're incompatible for this reason or that reason, or he's done this or she's done that. Well look what this woman had to go through. And she kept that man in her heart. In here. She didn't go around mouthing platitudes that she loved her husband with her mouth, and she had spite in her heart. That wasn't the case at all. He was hidden in here. Unbelievable. And she survived two terrifying experiences which he put her into, and they'd made an agreement before they left his father's house that they'd do that. Now that's the sort of partner that he had brothers and sisters. And what a wonderful woman she is. What a wonderful woman she is. And no wonder that God of course chose Abraham and Sarah to be not only the father of the faithful but the mother, Sarah the mother of all those who have that attitude and who can withstand the storms of life and come out on the other end on top. Now we haven't got much time, but a couple of minutes to finish this session. When I do Abraham back home I do ten sessions in an hour and a half. So you can just imagine what we're going to do here. So here we go and we come to the end of this story in Egypt and what happens? Pharaoh of course, according to Abraham's fears, he sees this woman, his servants point her out and he thinks this will be a nice woman I can take into my harem and he takes Sarah under his roof. And you know what happened brothers and sisters, that God plagued his house. He plagued his house. And the Egyptian king the Egyptian king came to Abraham and said you've done the wrong thing. She said your wife and I was in danger of taking another man's wife. That Egyptian king in this circumstance has had more integrity in that way than Abraham did. Did you know that? And it happened twice. Abraham was not born a faithful man. He was not by nature faith. This had to be developed brothers and sisters. Circumstances had to develop it. And Pharaoh gave him sheep and oxen and asses and mints and he'd already given him that because of taking Sarah. And when he sent him away brothers and sisters, he sent him away with all those possessions. With all those possessions. And the expedient which they had adopted set the scene for a disaster because it was those possessions that when he got back into the land and he got back with his nephew-in-law, they found that they couldn't dwell together because of their possessions most of which Abraham got out of Egypt. And including included in those possessions was handmaiden. He got haggard there. And by that expedient that woman came into his house. And later on when Sarah herself adopted her expedient that that woman should be the one through whom the seed was come, that almost again tore that marriage apart. But it survived. And so brothers and sisters we see the scene set for a wonderful life of a wonderful man and of a wonderful woman. Abraham, if we follow him, is the father of us all. And sisters if we manifest the characteristics of Sarah then you are her daughters.

Transcript

The theme for Brother Martin's class of this week is Abraham, Father of the Faithful. And today's class is entitled, Walk Through the Land, based upon Genesis 13. Well, good morning, my dear brothers and sisters, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. Is it a good morning? Okay. Right, now we're going to come back with Abraham now from Egypt. Remember, he went down into Egypt, driven there by the fact that there was a famine in the land. And of course, the Canaanite was in the land also. And we noted, brothers and sisters, that here was the land of promise. And yet, it would appear to Abraham now there was anything but the land of promise. And so he was forced by circumstances into Egypt. And that's always a dangerous practice. When you go down into Egypt, you really go down. And we know what happened there, the circumstances with his wife, Sarah. And of course, what happened out of that, that God delivered him from that circumstance, and he made his way back. Now look, when we read the early verses of Genesis 13, they are full of meaning. They really are. Almost every phrase here is pregnant with meaning, because Abraham is coming back, he commands not to make that mistake again, although later on he did. But now he's coming back with a new attitude. And when we pick up the record in Genesis 13, brothers and sisters, which I understand you read this morning, it is absolutely full of significance. And just see the determination of Abraham here as he came back to make amends for that mistake. And we read that Abraham went up out of Egypt. And when you go towards Egypt, you go down. And when you come out of Egypt, you go up. It's always the case. And it says, he and his wife, and all that he had, and lot with him into the south, that is into the Negev, into the south of the land of Israel. He came up out of Egypt, and he's got Sarah his wife. And he's got lot with him. And they're still together. But it reads, brothers and sisters, that Abraham was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. And it was those riches, along with the possessions of lot, that were going later on to separate them in this chapter. A tragedy, brothers and sisters. Blessings from God in one sense. But the accumulation of wealth was going to be the means of separating Abraham from his nephew Lot. And it was going to prove a disaster for that nephew. And a great decision was going to be made when he went back to Bethel. And look what it says. It says, Abraham went on his journey. The Hebrew has it according to his station. And what we're being told, brothers and sisters, is this. That Abraham is deliberately retracing his steps. So station by station, he retraces his steps, and he knows where he wants to go, and he knows why he wants to get there. And he went on his journey from the south, even to Bethel. And that's where the tragic decision had been made to leave the land. And he's hurrying back to that spot, to Bethel, which means, of course, the house of God. That's 180 miles from Egypt. And he hurries back there, and it says there, under the place where his tent had been at the beginning. Now note that. Now Abraham came out of Ur the Chaldees. He would have built in a tent all the way on to the land. He would have been in a tent at Shechem. But remember the point we made, that it wasn't mentioned in the record that he pitched his tent until he came to Bethel. Not that he had not had a tent before, but it hadn't been said until that point. And when he came to the house of God, he pitched that tent as a stranger and a sojourn in the land, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. Now here he is going back station by station until he gets to Bethel, where he had pitched his tent at the beginning. And that's clearly telling us that Abraham was hurrying back to recommit his pilgrimage in that land. That's what he's doing. And it says he pitched that tent between Bethel and Ai. Now Bethel is about 12 or 15 miles north of Jerusalem. And Ai, brothers and sisters, if you're looking at a map, it would be on the right-hand side, just a few miles to the east of Bethel, towards the valley of Jordan. And Bethel means the house of God, and Ai means ruin. And he stood between those two places, between the house of God and ruin. And a great decision was going to be made there by him and by Lot. And, says the record, in verse 4, under the place of the altar which he had made there at the first. You see? See how the record is telling us? So he goes back where his tent had been at the beginning. And he's now at that altar where he had made at the first. And here's Abraham retracing his steps to commence his pilgrimage. And he comes back to that place of the altar, brothers and sisters, and there he called upon the name of the Lord. He rededicated himself to the purpose for which he was called, out of erudite called deeds, a chastened man. These are the experiences of life, brothers and sisters, that we all go through. We all have these experiences. We all make bad decisions. We all run into disaster. And what we should do is do what Abraham did. Get back to the beginning. Retrace the steps. Be determined to go there and get back to where we started. And, you know, as one brother once said in a talk that I heard, I thought it was a rather expressive thing that he said. He said, you know, we are taught in the Bible that our life is a life of education and discipline, and we grow in maturity. But he said, for me, it's a constant struggle to get back to my first flush of enthusiasm. And my word, there's a lot of truth in that. And I can remember, brothers and sisters, as a young man coming out of the worst of the world, that when I came into the truth, look, the first six or 12 months of my life in the truth, the world was an absolute blank. I can't think of anything in the world in that period that I took cognizance of. It was a total blank. Sad to say that it's not so now. It returned. And the first flush of enthusiasm had waned, hadn't it? And problems come into my life and crowded back. And I know things I ought not to know. And it's a constant struggle to retrace my steps to where the tent had been at the beginning, and where the altar was of the truth to which I had first come, that I might call upon the name of the Lord again, that the world might become a blank to me again. And that's exactly what is happening here with Abraham. Now, the time came for a decision to be made. Because we read in verse 5, And Lot also, which went with Abraham, had flocks and herds and tents. So both men are growing very great. And the record says, and the land was not able to bear them. The land was not able to bear them. But God is going to tell this man, under thy seed will I give this land. And he's going to tell him that this seed is going to be numbered like the dust of the earth. And he has two families and the land is not able to bear them. Now you just think of the test upon Abraham's face with all these things. The Canaanites in his land. It was experience of famine. Now he's come back with Lot and just two families and the land cannot bear them. But under your seed Abraham, as the dust of the earth will I give this land. Now that would have taken incredible faith to believe that under these circumstances. Just as it is brothers and sisters with us. We say we believe that the kingdom is going to be set upon the earth. Brother Bob last night made us get a point score about that belief. How strong do we believe that? Oh we glibly say we believe it. But you look around you it seems impossible. It seems that everything is so real today and unreal tomorrow. But this is the unreal world and the real world is coming. And Abraham had to believe that because here you can see that they wouldn't even bear two families. And tragically brothers and sisters. Possessions and riches, verse seven says, brought about a strife. Between the herdsmen of Abraham's cattle and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle. They were brethren in the truth. And there was a commencement of strife brothers and sisters. When there didn't ought to be strife. Because you see the record goes on and says. And the Canaanites and the Perizzites dwelt then in the land. And there was no strife between them. And this Bible is beautifully written. It's written by the finger of God. Look how that's put. So here are two men called of God to the pristine truth of his word. Who ought to have been one. Who ought to have been able to make the accommodation to live together. Brothers and sisters they needed to live together because the Canaanite and the Perizzite were living together in that land. And they were desperately in need to stand against the influences of that world. And there's a great message in that for us. There's a tremendous message in that for us. We've had some disgraceful divisions in the brotherhood of Christ that ought not to be. When issues brothers and sisters have divided us. Some of them yes there have been justification for that because they impinge upon our statement of faith. And some of them don't. And I tell you brothers and sisters this world is full of the Canaanite and the Perizzite. And they're united. And if we're not careful. If we shiver to pieces brothers and sisters. We will expose not only ourselves but our children and our grandchildren to pressures they will not be able to bear. Believe me. Because we're rapidly coming to a situation in this world where we're going to be put on enormous pressure. Look all put together the Christadelphians are a feeble folk in the earth. People hardly even know we exist. But brothers and sisters the pressure is coming upon us. And we need to be aware of that. We're going to have to make a stand for the truth. Oh yes we say Christ is coming and he will take us out of the world. But you don't know when and I don't know when that will be. And we don't know how long we're going to be here. And brothers and sisters we're going to find that the very moral issues we stand for. We're going to have to stand up tall on those issues. Because the day is coming when they're going to be challenged. In Melbourne just recently in Australia. In the city of Melbourne the brethren put on a lecture about homosexuality. And the hall was full of a riotous crowd. And they were abused. And after that they got from the public a very good response. But I'm telling you these are the issues that are coming upon us. And when they had this gay Mardi Gras in Sydney these are the issues that are coming. On the Sydney Harbour Bridge there was a huge banner right across the bridge. Which said welcome to Sodom. I'm telling you. Welcome to Sodom. And Lot is about to make a trip into Sodom. And expose himself to danger brothers and sisters when they didn't ought to have done that. When he could have had the protection of the faith of his uncle Abraham. And Paul you know in Galatians says they that are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Not without him. They that are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. And this division of thought here brought about my material things. Split brethren and put Lot into a very very invidious position brothers and sisters. The love of money is the root of all evil says the apostle. And many he says who covered after that money are pierced through. They err from the face and are pierced through with many many sorrows. And look at the tragedy of Lot. Just look at the tragedy of Lot brothers. Look this is how it went. He went down there didn't he? In the end he lost his home. He lost his wife. His children married outside the truth. To the worst sort of people. And even when they were dragged out of Sodom and saved by the skin of their teeth. His own daughters who had been now skilled in the ways of Sodom committed incest to their father. Got him drunk and committed incest with him. And two boys were born Moab and Emin. Both of whose names indicate from father. And these children of the incest that came from that incestuous union of his own girls with him. Grew into nationhood and became absolute thorns in the side of Israel. So much so brothers and sisters that in the 83rd Psalm. When there's a list of all Israel's enemies. They're not simply called Edom and Moab. Or Moab and Emad rather. They're not simply called that. Tragically they're called the children of Lot. And look at the expression that that conjures up. The children of Lot. And they became dangerous enemies of Israel. Who would never have been in the earth. Had Lot stayed with faithful Abraham. But material things divided brethren in a dangerous world brothers and sisters. And Zephaniah the prophet you know. It was Zephaniah the prophet. When he was denouncing the neighboring nations around Israel. Who were their inveterate enemies. He said concerning Moab and Emad. He said I will make you like Sodom and Gomorrah. And if ever there were two nations who should have understood that. They should have understood it. The conceptions of their nation was right under the shadow of that Holocaust. And Zephaniah said I'll make you like Sodom and Gomorrah. And that was the threat against the Moabites and the Ammonites. Now Abraham pleaded with Lot in verse 8. And he said look let there be no strife he says. Let there be no strife. He said because between me and thee and between my herdmen and thy herdmen. For we are brethren. We are brethren. Brethren and sisters we have an enormous responsibility. To realize the import of that. I mean these two were brethren because God called them out of the land. He called them out of their house and country. And he brought them into the land. They were brethren because they had the same hope and the same faith. The children of Israel were brethren because God brothers and sisters. Brought them out of Egypt on the basis of the death of their next door neighbors son. So God killed other people to make them united. And they weren't worth it says Ezekiel the prophet when that happened. And therefore they ought to have had gratitude towards God. That other people's children suffered that they might be delivered. And God would have expected from them a response. Brothers and sisters we haven't simply been called out of the land to go to the kingdom. It hasn't been other people's sons that have been killed that we might be delivered. It's God's boy that died. And he died expressly for the purpose that we might be one. That the last prayer he ever made before he went to the garden of Gethsemane was a passionate prayer. That we might be one as he was with the father. And if we're stupid enough to divide on issues where we didn't ought to divide. And I know there are issues which call for that because they're fundamental. I'm not talking about them. But if we're silly enough brothers and sisters to allow these things to come into our lives. Materialism or preoccupation with self or anything else. Then we deserve all we get. And this is what happened to Lot. And he went down into that dangerous country and Abraham. Look at the monumental faith of this man. But in verse 9 he says to Lot look Lot is not the whole land before you, before thee. Separate thyself I pray thee from me. If thou will take the left hand then I will go to the right. Or if thou the part of the right hand then I will go to the left. So Abraham gave Lot the widest and the first choice. And yet says the apostle in Hebrews chapter 11 or chapter 7 rather verse 6. He said concerning Abraham to quote the Greek. He was the holder of the promises. Now the man who was the holder of the promises. Who had the title deeds of that land by promise. It's his. He says to Lot. There it is. The whole lot of it. You take first pick. Anywhere you like. That's the words of a very faithful man brothers and sisters. Because he knew in the end it was all going to be his. All going to be his. And Lot was told if you want to make the choice separate yourself from me. You don't do that. As I said in Galatians chapter 3. They that are blessed are blessed with faithful Abraham. Dangerous thing brothers and sisters to separate from the truth as we have it. In the covenants of promise. An absolute disaster. Well how did Lot separate? Why did he separate? It's very interesting to follow the retrogression of Lot. Look for example in verse 7. First of all brothers and sisters the first step in the process is strife. It always begins with strife. And when there's strife of course then it becomes discontent. And we separate. And then in verse 10. He lifted up his eyes and he beheld all the plain of Jordan. So the sight of his eyes begin to lead him away. So this strife. There's the lifting up of his eyes. And then in verse 11. Lot chose all the plain of Jordan. And verse 12. It says at the end of that verse. He pitched his tent toward Sodom. So he's only just going in that direction you see. And he's still got a tent. And he just pitches his tent in that direction. But down there brothers and sisters are dreadful people. But it's a beautiful country. And it offers great prospects. The Jordan Valley then was not like it is now. And so Lot's decline continued. And as he went towards Sodom to pitch his tent. It wasn't long until we come to chapter 19 and verse 1 when we read. And there came two angels to Sodom and even. And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. So he's among the rulers of that country. As a matter of fact the Sodomites accused him of that. He has grown to great prominence. Such great prominence that his wife is caught up in the social aspect of that city. Her heart is entwined in that wickedness brothers and sisters. And she settled down in a luxurious situation. And she loves every minute of it. And poor Lot has walked into disaster. You know Peter's comment concerning Lot that he is a righteous man. He becks his soul. Lot will be in the kingdom of God I believe. But my word brothers and sisters he will be a very chastened man when he comes to that kingdom. He lost everything. But he hung on to his faith even in those circumstances. It could have cost him his own life. And as his name means he was veiled. His name means veiled. He couldn't see brothers and sisters could he? The god of this world had blinded him. And looking down toward the plain of Sodom he could see the sweep of the Jordan Valley. He could see in those days as it was a glorious valley. Fertile. Sparkling with greenery. And of course there was no such thing then as the salt sea and the deadness of that. It was vital with life. And it was a country to be greatly desired by men with flocks and herds. The possibilities were endless brothers and sisters. But he was veiled because he couldn't see the people that were there. He didn't take cognizance of the people who lived there. And he went into that dangerous situation. Extremely dangerous situation. You know the thing that grieves me. I'm an old fashioned person. I probably tread on a lot of toes by that means but I don't care. Honestly I don't care. The thing that grieves me today as you move among the brothers and sisters is the education of our children. How on earth, how on earth are our children ever going to become embedded into the truth brothers and sisters with the extent and the intensity of the education which people deem necessary today for children to get a job. How on earth are they ever going to get down into this book? And you hear some of the stories and the length of time the kids have got to spend at universities and that. And I just despair and I think to myself the world by wisdom knew not God. And this man got tangled up in all those sort of things. And it cost him almost everything. And I believe brothers and sisters that as the time goes on and pressures become even more intense radical situations are going to need radical adjustments or we won't survive. This is not an idle warning brothers and sisters. As you grow older and you look around you and you see the things that are happening and because you've got a basis of comparison having lived to that point you see it brothers and sisters ever so clearly. And we need, we need desperately to get back to this book, to open its pages, expound its wonderful message and to inspire our brothers and sisters. But where oh where are the young men today who've got the time to do that? And this is what happened here. And he pitched his tit. And you know what it says in Genesis 13? When he beheld all the plain of Jordan, look how he saw it. Why it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Solomon Gomorrah. You see Jordan Valley is only like it is today because of the Holocaust of Solomon Gomorrah. It changed the whole contour of the land. It changed the climatic conditions. It baked the earth into sterility. But it wasn't always like that. And Lot looked down there and he saw it like the garden of the Lord it says. He saw it like Eden. Like Egypt. And in his mind he's seeing this tremendous valley. Oh look at this. It's like the garden of Eden. It's just like Egypt. Garden of Eden was never like Egypt. And Lot had equated in his mind brothers and sisters those two things. And he thought he could have something in this life and something in the next as well. A lot of people think the kingdom of God will be like the garden of Egypt. And some of them think just like today. It'll be nothing like today. It'll have no resemblance to today. It'll have a splendour and a glory brothers and sisters which will be beyond our comprehension now. But which we must try and fix our imagination. But it'll be nothing like today. Did you see how Egypt had affected Lot? Egypt had made a big impression on him, hadn't it? And that's how he saw the garden of the Lord as it were down there in Sodom. And so we read in verse 12. And Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain. Look at that. And the decision was taken brothers and sisters between Bethel and Ai. Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. And we read in verse 11 that Lot journeyed toward the east. He went straight into ruin, Ai. And Abraham turned west and went to the hills of Judea to Bethel. And you would never have found a greater contrast because the hills of Judea brothers and sisters were bare and sparse. There was little verger there. We know that because they couldn't dwell together. A man could barely eke out an existence. But that's the way that he went. And brother and sisters that choice is before us every day of our lives. Which way do you want to go? Here are the possibilities to the east. There are immense possibilities. This world can offer much. There's money to be made. It can run out of your ears. If you're prepared to give your life, your soul and your might to the God of this world. Well go east and you'll walk into ruin. But where are the people that's going to go to the left? Towards the west. Who wants to go to the house of God? But if you want to go there, there's not much offering in this life I'll tell you. And the choice is ours brothers and sisters. It's the house of God or ruin. The choice is crystal clear. And Lot made the wrong choice. And he went down there to Sodom. And you know brothers and sisters, Sodomy as we know it today was not the only sin of that place. And when Jesus said, as it was in the days of Lot, he never mentioned that abomination. He never said a word about it. What he said was this. Like as it was in the days of Lot, he said, they builded, they planted, they married and were given in marriage. Things were prosperous. He never said a word about the abomination which came as the end result. What Jesus was warning us about was not the abomination, but that which led to it. And Ezekiel the prophet said, this was the sin of thy sister city Sodom. Foolness of bread. Abundance of idleness. And carelessness about other people. Ezekiel said brothers and sisters, they were the factors that led to that abomination. Bread. Plenty to eat. The economy's booming. Abundance of idleness. Come to Australia. Four weeks and you'll leave. Plenty of public holidays. Work ten years for your employer and you get 13 weeks off. Full pay. Long service leave they call it. And every year after that you get five weeks and you'll leave. And when you go on annual leave, you get 17.5% loading on top of your wages. And what's Australia like? One of the stupidest countries in the world. Okay? Absolutely idiotic. People laid back. Sport crazy. Absolutely indifferent to anybody else. Selfish. Brutal. And only about ten years behind America in all its technology. And none of us brothers and sisters here today belong to either country. We're not proud of our country. We're Israelites, aren't we? Ours is another citizenship. Another citizenship entirely. And you know this is what Lot chose. But you see after Lot was departed from him, verse 14. And this is a wonderful moment in Abraham's life. And the Lord said unto Abraham after that Lot was separated from him. You see he acknowledged Abraham's greatness and his magnanimous attitude towards Lot. As he offered him everything brothers and sisters. And when he had the promises and God was thrilled with that attitude. And he says Abraham lift up thine eyes and look from the place where you are. And where was he? He was in Bethel, the house of God. And he told him to look northward. And he would look therefore towards the Lebanon. He would look southward down through Jerusalem. Down through Hebron and onto the Negev. And eastward. And Abraham would turn and look eastward. And as Lot disappeared into the distance. God was telling him don't worry about it Abraham. In the end it's yours anyway. And eastward. And finally westward. He would look over Samaria. Over the plain of Sharon. Right to the Mediterranean sea. Was all here. What a wonderful thing brothers and sisters. And so the pilgrimage of this life is worth every inch of the way isn't it? It's all ours. To thee will I give it he says and to thy seed forever. This is the first time that Abraham is promised this land. And when in the 13th chapter of Luke. When the Lord Jesus Christ was talking about the inheritance of Abraham. He said they shall come from the north. And from the south. And from the east. And from the west and shall sit down with Abraham. So it wasn't just simply a promise brothers and sisters of all directions of the compass. It was a promise of all directions of humanity. There was a width and a breadth about that promise. That was staggering. And they would come from all points of the compass. And here we are today. Hundreds and thousands of years removed from Abraham. From all points of the compass. And we're all converging on the house of God. What a marvelous thing. And God went on to tell him. Abraham I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth. Abraham's seed was to be developed first of all from the dust of the earth. From a dry and a parched place. Later on when Isaac was offered. He was going to make them like the stars of heaven. And when the faith had come to fullness. The seed was not only going to come from the dust. It was going to be a star spangled heaven of great people. Descended from Abraham by their faith. And this is how the promise developed. And you know brothers and sisters. You know it's a marvelous figure of speech. The dust of the earth. You know Isaiah's prophecy. It speaks of a time. When God would bring out of the dust of the earth. The seed of Abraham. And he said it will be like pouring water on a dry and a thirsty land. And he said the virgin would grow up like the reeds of the water course. Like rushes of the river. In other words brothers and sisters. It wouldn't be a slow growth. The rapidity of the growth would be like the rushes of the river. The reeds of the water course. On a dry and a thirsty land. And when the apostles went out with this message. That Abraham's seed was not restricted to the Jews. That God had made him the father of many nations. And by the mercy of God people of all ranks and society. And from all nationalities could become his seed. What did they do? They poured water on a dry land. The Roman world was sterile. And what happened? Hundreds of people. Thousands of people believed the truth. And they sprang up like reeds of the water course. Like rushes of the river. Said Isaiah the prophet. From the dust of the earth. And those same people. As they develop in their faith. One day brothers and sisters will shine like stars of the firmament. It was a wonderful promise. But it's conditional. It's conditional. And here comes a marvellous thing. You see Abraham was told brothers and sisters. To walk through the land. Now that wasn't said idly. I want to show you now how that ran through the Bible. Abraham you walk through the land. And the apostle tells us. And I'm not turning these references up. Because you know them well. I understand you know them well. He says Abraham is not only the father of the circumcision. That is the father of the Jewish people. This is Romans 4 verse 12. He said he's not only the father of the circumcision. But the father of those also who walk in the steps of that faith. Of our father Abraham. Think about that. Who walk in the steps of that faith. Of our father Abraham. Abraham arise. Walk through the. You know what God was saying. He was saying brothers and sisters that this promise would be fulfilled. There's no doubt about that. And Abraham's participation would be dependent on where his footprints were. In other words God was issuing him a promise with a challenge. And the challenge was Abraham it's up to you. If you walk with me. If you walk in this land. I will give you everywhere where your footprints are. And you follow Abraham's life brothers and sisters. He said he moved around that land. He literally walked the length of it. And the breadth of it. And left these footprints all over it. Where are your footprints? And where are mine? Well we don't intend brothers and sisters. We don't believe that in the end God's going to give us a baseball stadium. And that's where your footprints are. You're not going to get that in the kingdom of God. You're not going to get a picture theatre. You're not going to get the entertainment places of this world. You're not going to get the pleasures that sports may offer. If your footprints and my footprints are in the wrong place brothers and sisters. Woe unto us. Walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham. What a wonderful thing that was. Now let me tell you how that worked out. You look at this. To thee will I give it and to thy seed forever. It was dependent upon faith in action. Arise. Walk through the land and the length of it. And the breadth of it. Then Abraham removed his tent. And came and dwelt in Hebron. Immediately after the promise of the land he removed his tent. He pulled up the pegs and the ropes. Folded up his tent. And off he went. And finally came down through past Jerusalem. About 20 miles south of Jerusalem to Hebron. Which means fellowship. Now just think of this. And so Paul says we also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham. Now come to Caleb. And what happened here brothers and sisters was this. Caleb I believe was a Gentile. He was a Kenazite. And his name means a dog. And that's the title the Jews gave to Gentiles. You remember the woman of Syropenicia? The dogs which eat, the crumbs which fall from the table. And the Jews called them dogs. And if we read the record correctly as the Hebraists tell us. When Caleb's speeches are recorded he's evidently a pretty rough diamond. The Hebrew is inarticulate and broken and colloquial in its language. So old Caleb you know was a pretty rough old diamond. He was old Caleb. And he came from among the Gentiles. But he had a towering faith brothers and sisters. And he believed in God. As a matter of fact the indication that he was a Gentile was that God said to him. In commending him through Joshua. That he'd wholly followed the Lord God of Israel. Now that would have been a superfluous comment to a Jew. But to a Gentile that would be full of meaning. He had wholly followed the Lord God of Israel. You know what he did? He said to Joshua. You see he was 85 years old. He'd been 40 years in the wilderness. And now they've come to the end of the journey. And they've got to go into the land. And he goes in as one of the spies. And he went in as one of the spies. And of course he came back and had to wander another 40 years. And so you see he was now 85 years old. He was 45 years when he went into that land. And what did he do? He remembered the words of Moses. And in the 11th chapter of Deuteronomy Moses had said this. He said all the land upon which your feet have trodden will be yours. Listen to that. All the land upon which your feet have trodden. So Caleb heard that. And he went into the land. And he was going to go to a certain place. And he was determined to go there. Guess where he went? He went to Hebron. And there were four giants there. Four giants. And he'd seen them as a spy. And he'd gone there and seen that brothers and sisters. And now came the time, the division of the land. And he said to Joshua, I want Hebron. And he said because you know Joshua, he said, Moses told you all the land upon which your feet have trodden. He said you'll find my footprints in Hebron. Nobody else would go to Hebron. There were too many giants. But he went there. And he put his footprints in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham in Hebron, which is Abraham's city. Isn't that incredible? And he reminded Joshua that. And when time came, brothers and sisters, for the inheritance of the human, he got Hebron for an inheritance. And you see what happened? A Gentile came into fellowship with God through the faith of Abraham because he walked in the steps of that faith of his father Abraham. He did that literally. Now isn't that an incredible story? But it doesn't end there. When the time came, brothers and sisters, for that land to be settled, Joshua was to distribute to the Levites up and down the land, both sides of Jordan, 48 cities. So he put a study leader within proximity of everybody. Everyone had a study leader in a Levite set in proximity to them throughout the land. And of those 48 cities, he chose three of them east of Jordan and three west of Jordan for cities of refuge. And the Levites inherited those 48 cities. Guess who got Hebron for their inheritance among the Levites? None less than Aaron's own family. Think about that. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that Aaron's family, being the family of the high priest, would have got Jerusalem. They got Hebron. And you look now from the scene, as God would see it, and there in Hebron, when they gave the sons of Aaron Hebron, you know what they did? They said, yes, the city of Hebron is yours, but the suburbs of that city, reaching out for a thousand cubits around that city, shall be Caleb's. So he never lost the city. He kept the country around about Hebron. And there you've got a marvelous picture of a Gentile dog who went and put his footprints in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, came back and reminded Joshua that Moses had said that, wherever your feet have trodden, I can have it. Joshua, you'll find my footprints in that city. And he finished up in fellowship on the basis of the promises made to the fathers. And he was living with the high priest of Israel. Now, isn't that absolutely remarkable? And here we all are, brothers and sisters, Gentiles, dogs, according to the Jews, but walking in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham. And where are we today? Where we're in the suburbs. We're waiting to enter into that city, but we know we dwell in the presence of the great high priest of our profession. And that's the mystery of the Gospel, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, having the same hopes as the apostles, through those great and wonderful promises which God made unto the fathers. And so Abraham removed his tent. He came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which means vigorous. There was a vigor about the truth here. He came and dwelt in the plain of the vigorous, which is Hebron, which means fellowship. And there he built an altar under the Lord. And so, brothers and sisters, he had built an altar at Shechem, where the principle of separation was set forth. He came back from Egypt to build an altar at Bethel, where the principle of dedication was set forth. And now he comes to Hebron to build an altar upon which fellowship is based. Amen.

Transcript

The theme for Brothers Martin's classes this week is Abraham, Father of the Faithful. Today's class is entitled, The Righteousness of Faith, Genesis chapter 15. Brother Martin. Well, good morning, brethren and sisters. It's raining. And I rang home yesterday and it's freezing in Adelaide. So I'm very pleased to be here even though it's raining. Now look, we're going to deal with Genesis chapter 15 today, which means we've jumped chapter 14, but that won't matter. But brothers and sisters, have a look how Genesis 15 opens. It says, after these things. After what things? Well, it's after the great defeat by Abraham of the Confederated Armies of the North, who came down and sacked Sodom and Gomorrah and took Lot, his nephew, into captivity. And Abraham and his 318 trained servants in his house had defeated that Northern army and delivered the captives that were taken from Sodom, including Lot, and they sent them back to Sodom. And the king of Sodom had come to him to offer him a gift. And Abraham would have nothing to do with him. As a matter of fact, chapter 14, brethren and sisters, if you read that, he turns his back on the king of Sodom in the middle of a conversation. Right in the middle of a conversation. Because Melchizedek came to meet him. And he turned around and addressed Melchizedek and totally ignored the king of Sodom. Abraham had no affinity, whatever, with that wicked king. And when the king of Sodom offered him a gift, because what he had done for them, Abraham said, I wouldn't take a boot lace from you. And rejected that reward that was off to him. And it was after those things that God said to Abraham, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. And God was very pleased, brethren and sisters, with that response of Abraham. Firstly, to acknowledge Melchizedek as being greater than he. And secondly, to spurn that wicked king of Sodom. And when he did that, of course, Abraham would incur the wrath of that king. And could very well have been in danger. But God said to him, Abraham, don't worry about that. I'm your shield and I'm your exceeding great reward. Don't take rewards from him. And brothers and sisters, when we adopt that attitude, then God will be similar to us. Never mind about the rewards of this world. Never mind about the windows of opportunity, which take us away from the truth and bury us in business activities or whatever. Spurn that, brothers and sisters. Spurn it. And take a simple life. Take the simple choices. Believe me. And look, God will reward you. There's no question of that. We've proven that over the years. Make the right decision. Never mind about ambition. Turn your back on that and believe in God. And God will say to you, I am your reward. And he will be, brothers and sisters. There's no question of that, whatever. Now, God responded to Abraham in a vision. As we read here, and he says, fear not, Abraham. I am thy shield. I'll protect you, Abraham. And don't worry about the rewards of Sodom. I am your reward. Now, just keep your hand in Genesis and have a look at Psalm 47, brothers and sisters, which is a commentary upon that very incident. And in Psalm 47, we read from verses seven to nine. For God is the King of all the earth. Sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen. God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham. For he is the shield of the earth, which belong unto God, he is greatly exalted. And here is the people of the God of Abraham, and he will be a shield of them in the earth when we exalt him. That term is a commentary upon that incident in Abraham's life, brothers and sisters. Now, you know, Paul said, that without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must first believe that he is, and secondly, that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Abraham, I will be thy exceeding great reward. Abraham had believed that God is. And now, brothers and sisters, he's gonna be brought to that point of his life when he's gotta believe in the reward. Now, people say, oh, look, we shouldn't believe like that. We shouldn't think about what we're gonna get out of the truth. That's not what Paul says. You know, people who believe that God will reward them must believe that he is. You can't have a reward from somebody that's not there. And therefore, the greater we desire the reward of the kingdom, brothers and sisters, is the intensity that we believe in God. Now, Abraham had believed in God, and now he's offered this great reward. And you know what? Immediately, Abraham reacted to that, because there's one thing he desperately wanted. He was longing for it with all his heart and soul. And he poured out his soul to God. And as soon as God mentioned reward, one thing only came into his mind. It wasn't riches, brothers and sisters. It wasn't self-aggrandizement. It was nothing like that. It wasn't ambition. Where is this boy? Where's this child? That's the thing that dominated him. And verse two, Abraham said, Lord God, what will you give me? What will you give me, he says, for he's seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus. And the Hebrew expression here, I go childless, is really, I'm going to the grave childless. God, please, please, he said, if you're offering me a reward, this is all I want. Brothers and sisters, can you imagine God's reaction to that request? Because God had promised him that seed. And the promise of reward evoked from Abraham the very thing that God had promised him. And the Father in the heavens would have been thrilled with that, to think that Abraham longed for what God had promised. And that's all he wanted. And he wanted it so badly, he said, what about this Eliezer of Damascus, the steward of my house? And the word steward is ben mishek. It means one born, or son of my possession, he's really my son, God, I know he's only a servant, but he's like a child to me, he's like a son. Can't we do it through him? And you see, Abraham had seen that he was growing older, and Sarah was growing older, and they hadn't had any children. Surely God, can't we do it through him, he said. And Eliezer, brothers and sisters, was a very faithful man. As a matter of fact, Eliezer was a man of prayer. He would have been the servant that was sent, of course, to get a wife for Isaac. And when you look at Genesis 24, and you read what he did, he went all, every step of the way, he prayed to God. He was a very faithful servant. His name means, Ael is my help. God is my help. But the true seed, brothers and sisters, was to be Immanuel, God with us. And it was gonna be far greater than Abraham could ever have imagined. And Abraham wanted one born in his house. As he said, look, he's been born in my house. Can't he be the one? But Paul says, in Hebrews chapter three, of brothers and sisters, that Christ is a son over his house, and built the house. It wasn't only one that was gonna be born in the house, the Lord Jesus Christ was to be the son over the house, and the very builder of it, says Paul in Hebrews chapter three. And again, the promise went way beyond Abraham's anticipations, as God's promises always do. And then God said to him, verse four, And behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir Abraham, but he that shall come forth of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. It couldn't have been more expressive, brothers and sisters, could it? Out of his own bowels, he's got to believe. And then God invited him abroad to tell the stars. He says, come and tell the stars, Abraham. And the word tell means to count them. And you know what God was telling him? You see, he was concentrating. He said, Abraham, it's your body that I'm talking about. Your own body, Abraham. There's where the son is. It's gonna come forth of your bowels. Now Abraham, look here. And he looked up there. And what God was saying, brothers and sisters, that though that boy would have human origins, there was a divine destiny for that scene. A divine destiny. Now you turn to Romans chapter nine, keeping, of course, Genesis 15 always ready. Would you look at what Romans nine says? So though he would come of Abraham, the seed would also have God for their father. Now there's interchangeable terms here, brothers and sisters. Count the stars. Well, look at what Romans chapter nine says. And in Romans chapter nine, we read in verses seven and eight, neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children. But in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, the name which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Count the stars. Counted for the seed. And so the seed was to have a human father, yes, but they were ultimately to have a divine destiny. And the child that was coming, brothers and sisters, would not only be the son of Abraham, he'd be the son of God. Now look at the interchangeable terms here. In verse seven, look what it says. Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children. Now verse eight, that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God. So verse seven talks about the children of Abraham and verse eight talks about the children of God, same people. And that's what Galatians three said. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And if you're Christ's, then you're Abraham's children, same thing. And the terms are interchangeable. So we're the children of God and we're Abraham's children, exactly the same thing. And we're gonna see, brothers and sisters, in Genesis 17 where God was to make Abraham a father like himself. And that's a remarkable chapter when we come to that and we'll see that the fatherhood of Abraham became, as it were, entangled with the fatherhood of God and together, father of the heavens and our father the faithful working together to produce that seed, brothers and sisters, whose faith would be characteristic of that of Abraham. It's wonderful how this is done. And so Abraham is told to come forth and to gaze upon that starry sky. You know, it's a poignant scene, brothers and sisters. The apostle says in Romans chapter four, we won't turn to this, he said he diligently considered his own body now dead and he considered the deadness of Sarah's womb. Paul says that. He says Abraham diligently considered it. He thought deep about it. And that old man came out there, brothers and sisters, on that starry night. And you can imagine with none of the city lights that we have to dim the heavens and the bolt of the heavens that night, the velvet blackness of that and the sparkling stars, millions of them up there. And he came aboard, this old man, he looked up there and he gave diligent consideration to his body. And although he, of course, was to have children later, he then considered the deadness of Sarah's womb. And she never could have children beyond the time of life. And he gave that deep and diligent consideration, said the apostle, and believed God. And God counted that to him for righteousness, it says here in this chapter in verse six, he believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. Now, I'm gonna make a statement in it now, brothers and sisters, I want you to listen carefully because I believe that when you see it this way, it makes all the difference, this verse. And this is the statement. It's not so important to know that Abraham believed. What is important is to know what he believed. Now, look at the importance of this. So it's not the emphasis on the fact that he believed, but it's what he believed. Now, there's where the emphasis is. And so we find in Romans four, Galatians three, James chapter two, this verse is quoted as a monument of faith, absolute monument of faith. And this man rose above the flesh to believe this. And God said, that's righteousness. Now, what's righteousness? Well, what did he believe? He believed a human impossibility. And God counted his belief in a human impossibility as righteousness. See the point? And so when Paul expounds this in Romans chapter four in particular, he sets forth the righteousness of faith. And the righteousness of faith, brothers and sisters, is a belief in something that we can't do. So it's important to know the character of what he believed. Now, in order to illustrate this, listen to the apostle, listen to him. Paul says, now look, it was not imputed unto him only, he says, but it shall be, this was not written for his sake alone, he says, that it was imputed unto him, but unto us to whom it shall be imputed if we believe. What? That God raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. Can you raise the dead? I can't. And we've got to have a belief, brothers and sisters, in what is absolutely impossible with us. So it was not written for his sake alone, says Paul in Romans four, verse 22, it wasn't written for his sake, but unto us, unto whom it shall be imputed if we believe this, that God could raise a dead body. Now, it's all very well to say that our doctrines, the statement of faith says we believe in the resurrection of the dead. It's a fundamental of our faith, and the Bible's full of it, so we can prove it. But as you grow older, brothers and sisters, and the aches and pains come, and the memory fades, and Solomon paints his picture in Ecclesiastes 12, of the golden bowl that is broken, and the silver thread, and the chain that fails, the grinders are grinding low, and the lights are going out, we've got to believe, really believe, that God can actually raise a dead body. There's no way in the world we can do that. And when we believe that, brothers and sisters, God counts that, unto us, for righteousness, something we can't do ourselves. That's the incredible faith of Abraham. Now, I want to show you Romans chapter nine again. And I want you to turn up Romans chapter nine, and I want you to turn up, with the other hand, Isaiah 51. And Paul builds upon this wonderful doctrine of the righteousness of faith. Isaiah nine, or rather, Romans nine, and Isaiah 51. Come to Romans nine first. So Paul has this to say, and here's a case, brothers and sisters, where Paul doesn't quote the Bible, here's a case where Paul actually paraphrases it. It's a simple paraphrase. So in Isaiah nine and verse 30, he said, what shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, have not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? It's an incredible thing. The Gentiles were not following after it, and they found it. And here's the Jew following diligently the law of righteousness, and he can't find it. Paul says, why? One's not looking for it and found it. The other one's looking diligently for it and can't find it. Why? Because the Jew was looking in the wrong direction. He was following after the law of righteousness, but the Gentile found the righteousness of faith. See, verse 32. Why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. Now, brothers and sisters, that's Isaiah 51. Keep your hand in Romans, we'll come back to you in a minute. Look what Isaiah 51 says. Verse one. Harken to me, ye that follow after righteousness. So there it is. Ye that seek the Lord. Well, how are we gonna find it? Look under the rock from whence ye are hewn and the hole of the pit from whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham. Now, look at that, brothers and sisters. So the Jew was looking in the wrong direction. He was looking in the law. And the righteousness of God was only prefigured and typified in the law. It wasn't there in reality. It was in faith in Abraham's life. And if we were to take that literally, if we were to take Isaiah's advice literally and say, you're looking for righteousness, following after it, look unto Abraham. Say we took that literally. We got a concordance out. We think, all right, righteousness is in Abraham's life. We'll find it there. So we turn up the record from Genesis 11 right through to chapter 26 to 27 of Abraham's life. And lo and behold, we find the word righteousness once. So we don't even look very far. In Genesis 15, he counted on him for righteousness. Oh, and now we've found out that righteousness is something we can't do. And the Jew thought it was something he could do. And that's why the Gentiles, when the offer was made to them, recognized it. They recognized their lowly position. They were dragged from the gutters of humanity and they accepted God's offer of righteousness. The Jew was searching through the law as what he could do to work his way to God. And so Paul says, they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. And Isaiah 51 and verse four says, listen Israel, hearken unto me my people, give me your unto me, oh my nation, for a law shall proceed from me. Look at the direction it's going. It wasn't the Jew working his way to God. It says God says it's coming this way. It's me working towards you. And then he says in verse five, my righteousness is near. My salvation has gone forth and they were not submitting to it. But being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, they were going in the wrong direction. Look unto Abraham, he says. And there we've seen it brothers and sisters, a belief in the humanly impossible. Now come back to Genesis 15. Wonderful chapter of scripture this is. They're all wonderful in the life of Abraham. There are monumental principles here taken up in the New Testament by the apostle. But now you see in verses seven and eight, and God said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it. But Abraham's got a problem. And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? Now brothers and sisters, let's get this in context. There's no way in the world that verse eight is a doubt. Because verse six, just as it says, was a monumental peak of Abraham's faith here. So he's not now doubting it. The apostle would never have quoted that, Paul twice and James once, had this verse eight been a doubt. Abraham's problem is, I'm mortal. You tell me that I'm gonna inherit this land forever. I believe what you've said about the seed. I know that you will do it. I can't do it, but I believe you will do it. But God, how are you gonna deal with me? I'm dust and ashes. How am I gonna have this mortal body changed? What's gonna happen? That was his question. I'll show you that in a minute. And God said to him, take a sacrifice. And now Abraham has shown how it's all gonna be done. And he took a heifer of three years old, a she goat, a ram, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And you know, brothers and sisters, the law of Moses sprang out of the record of Genesis and extrapolated these principles in the legislation of the law. Much of the law is rooted in the life of the patriarchs. And we look at those animals and say, what was the point being made? And when you go through all the offerings, the sin offering, the bird's offering, the peace offering, the trespass offering, and you run down through all the long schedules that were given, what do you find? You find that those animals mentioned are scattered through all those offerings. They're scattered through the whole lot of them. But when you sort them out, there's one thing they got in common. Here it is. The heifer. The red heifer was for the removal of mortality. That's Abraham's problem. The she goat was the sin offering for a commoner. The ram was used for the trespass offering. And the turtle doves and pigeons were the sin offerings for the poor. The only thing they all had in common, scattered throughout that law, was to do with sin. And that's Abraham's problem. And forgiveness of sins is the essential element of the Abrahamic covenant. For this is the covenant, said Jeremiah, that I will make with them in those days, said the Lord. Not like the covenant I made with them in the land of Egypt, though I was a father unto them. But this is the covenant that I will make in those days. I will put my law in their hearts and in their minds, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. And so the new covenant, brothers and sisters, was guaranteed by the forgiveness of sins. And that's the barrier that Abraham was worried about. Sin brought death. How could God handle that? God says, I've got it under control. And so Peter says, in speaking to the Jewish people, he says, you are the children of the covenant, which God made with Abraham. He's sending his son first unto you, to bless you, in turning every one of you away from your iniquities. Acts chapter three, verses 25 and 26. And so Peter saw the quintessence of the promises as being not just simply forgiveness, did you notice? But such forgiveness that we would turn away from our iniquities. There would be a moral imperative force in those promises, with the grace of God that was given unto us. Now just to illustrate my point about how the law extrapolated these principles. The first animal Abraham was told to take was a heifer. And here is the foundation of that sacrifice of the red heifer of which we spoke about last night. The only one that could remove mortality. The only one that was made outside the law entirely. And the only one that could be used more than once. A unique offering. And that's the first animal mentioned. Now was that, is that linked through the law with Abraham? I want to invite your close attention to Paul's exposition of this in Hebrews nine. Just have a look at this. And brethren and sisters, remember what we said last night about Bible echoes, how the echo of the Bible is heard. Well you're gonna hear three of them, loud and clear. Abraham's problem was mortality. God, how are you gonna handle the problem of sin and mortality? And so the heifer is taken. And here's the exposition of the red heifer. Verse 13. For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctify for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through an eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Now listen to the next verse and listen to three glorious echoes. And for this cause he is the mediator of the new covenant that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant and here they come, the day which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. That's all straight out of Genesis 15. The day which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. Lord God, whereby shall I know? And the surety of that brothers and sisters was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ which not only was to forgive the sins of his contemporaries and those who would live after him, it reached back, it reached way back over the annals of history and it gathered up right back to Abel, it gathered up all the faithful. Was looking forward to this great sacrifice and Abraham rejoiced to see my day said the Lord and saw it was glad. His faith developed right through the offering of Isaac and he knew now what God was gonna do and said that by means of death for the redemption of those people who died under the first covenant which couldn't save them. They which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance, three glorious echoes of Abraham's life right in the context of the red heifer and mortality and that's Abraham's problem. Isn't that magnificent? And so how the law of Moses picked that up and just developed that right through that way and Paul just picking it up again brothers and sisters and joining the two of them together with those echoes to show that here is the solution to Abraham's problem and your problem, my problem. But the promise is sure to all the seed because Jesus has come and has died for our sins that we might live again. That's the whole question brothers and sisters. Now we come back to Genesis 15. And God is gonna put Abraham into a symbolic time frame. And verse 10, Genesis 15, he took unto him all these and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another but the birds divide, he did not. So Abraham divided the offerings brothers and sisters. And now the idea of that as we learned from Jeremiah 34 verses 18 and 19 was that when men made a covenant they used to pass between the pieces. They would swear to one another that they would keep the terms of the covenant between them and they would cut up the animal and each party would walk between the pieces. Jeremiah 34 verses 18 and 19 mentions that custom. Abraham I do not believe ever passed through those pieces. What he did was to divide the animals up and verse 11 says that as the fowls came down, the vultures came down to feed upon the carcass, he shooed them away, he kept them away. All he could do was to preserve the offering. He couldn't do anything about it else and then God put him in verse 12 into a horror of great darkness. A horror of great darkness. He fell into the article symbolically of death. That's why Jesus said when God spoke to Abraham when he was dead, he said God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Because he said I am, not I was, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And when he said that in Exodus, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were dead. He didn't say I was, he said I am. He's not the God of the dead or the living and here he's talking to a symbolic dead man. Counting that he was alive brothers, which he really was but in symbolically he's dead and God's speaking to him. And in that horror of great darkness, the king of terrors has come upon him and yet God is telling him that Abraham when you sleep in the dust of the earth, this is the history of your seed. Ah, this isn't it, the way this is done. And he said to Abraham, know of a surety that thy seed should be stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them and they shall afflict them 400 years. This is their stay in Egypt. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall come hither again. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. Isn't that incredible? Now did you know something? Here's a man of whom it had just been said that God counted his faith for righteousness. But when the man falls into a deep sleep, brothers and sisters, in the horror of great darkness and God speaks of the history of his seed, the climatic point which is gonna come when that seed being developed in Egypt would come into the land to which it was promised to Abraham, the climatic point was not their righteousness but the iniquity of the Amorites. Note that. So there's no claim, brothers and sisters, upon the rewards of God. Not even to a man of whom it had been said he counted it to him for righteousness. The climatic point came in the sins of other people. And when they had reached their fullness of their iniquity, then Abraham's seed took the land. Now is that the right interpretation of that? Is that how you should read that? Have a look at the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, brothers and sisters. Just have a look what Moses said. And notice the emphasis that Moses puts on this. The ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, verse three. Understand therefore this day that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire, he shall destroy them and he shall bring them down before thee. So thou shalt drive them out and destroy them quickly as the Lord hath said unto thee. Speak not thou in thine heart after the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, for my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land. But for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart doth thou go to possess their land but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee and that he may perform the word which the Lord swear unto thy father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet for. Brothers and sisters, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back to the earth. He is not coming back for the specific purpose to save us. He's not coming back for that specific purpose. He's coming back to judge the world in righteousness. And the climatic point that's gonna bring him into the earth is the same climatic point that sent him to the cross. And when he went to the cross to save the world he wasn't waiting for men to be righteous. He told Israel, fill up the measure of your fathers. And Isaiah, or rather Daniel had prophesied in chapter eight that when the fourth beast would come and destroy the Jewish people and destroy the temple and magnify himself against the prince of the host Daniel said, it's when the transgressors are come to the fall. And the Lord is coming back because the days of Lot are fulfilling and the days of Noah are fulfilling and he's coming back brothers and sisters to judge this world and he's not coming back to specifically save us because we're righteous. Now that is a clear message. And even when Abraham was given the specific promise that Sarah would have that child, the angels came down not for that fee purpose. They came down for the purpose of seeing that the wickedness of Sodom was so great and they passed by Abraham and almost as an afterthought they turned around and said, God said, I better tell Abraham what I'm gonna do. Doesn't that put us in our place? And Moses reminded them of that. Don't ever forget he said, that the climatic point was nothing to do with your righteousness. God doesn't wait for people to become righteous. He'd wait forever. But he doesn't have to wait too long for iniquity to reach its climatic point. And that's what Abraham was told in a horror of great darkness when God had counted it to him for righteousness. But it was something that he couldn't do. It was the grace of God brothers and sisters. Peter says, the righteous shall scarcely be saved. And we will see in that day that the real issue is the glory of God that will flood this earth. The manifestation of his power among men that they might stand in awe of him. And we brothers and sisters will scarcely be saved. And we need to understand that. And so Abraham then, he saw the sun go down coming back to Genesis 15. And it says, and it came to pass in verse 17 that when the sun went down and it was dark. So the time came for the covenant to be made, a covenant by sacrifice. And when Judas went out brothers and sisters to betray our Lord, John says, and it was night. And at the darkest hour, and it was night, he went out to betray his Lord to death. Well it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark. Behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. So Abraham in this symbolic death can do nothing about it. He's inert, he's all but dead. And he's watching this. And he sees this lamp, this flickering lamp go through the pieces. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the Lord Jesus Christ, God was in Christ reconciling the world under himself. And God passed through the pieces in the person of his son. And because Abraham looked forward and rejoiced to see Christ's day, Abraham was involved in the coming of Messiah. And he was as it were by faith immersed into him. And Abraham was represented there as well. And the two parties in the one man passed between those pieces. Now look at Hebrews chapter six. Look at Paul's exposition of this. Wonderful exposition of it. Verse 13. For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself, saying, surely blessing I will bless thee and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater. And an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Where in God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. Now in my Bible, the word confirmed has got a little number alongside of it. And it tells me that the Greek really means put himself between by an oath. Interposed. Put himself between by an oath. Now work it out. There's the pieces of the offering. And here's your burning lamp going between and God is putting himself in between. Now where's the oath whereby he put himself in between? The Lord has sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. And God swore the priesthood in with the oath and the priesthood is that which goes between. And so he put himself between with that oath. And God never swears an oath on any other occasion except when it's got to do with eternal matters. You will never find an oath of God in relation to anything temporal. It doesn't exist. And when he says the Lord has sworn, he interposed himself and there was the certainty of the coming of the Son of God as the great high priest of our profession after the order of Melchizedek. And he walked between God and men and God was in him and we relate to him, brothers and sisters. And we'll come out of the horror of great darkness and we'll inherit the kingdom not for our righteousness or for any good deeds that we may have done. But we'll be most thankful that we won't be swallowed up in the Holocaust which will obliterate the wicked from the earth and by the grace and mercy of God we will stand before him saved by God's grace because righteousness had been counted unto us because we didn't believe we could do it ourselves. That's Abraham's faith. That's the quality of it, brothers and sisters and that's the humility of it. And we need never to forget that. Now I've just got enough time to deal with the last few verses of Hebrews chapter, or rather of Genesis 15. And here in Genesis 15 it says, in the same day, verse 18, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, under thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt under the great river Euphrates. Now brothers and sisters, Paul says in Romans four that Abraham was promised the world. How did he know that? Well, we deduce it, we say, well, if the land is gonna be given to Abraham that's the center of the kingdom. And so because it's the center of the kingdom which will then radiate out to the confines of the world in that sense, God promised him the world. But he promised him the world. From the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates was the then known world. Now all you gotta do, don't turn this up, but you can look at Isaiah chapter 19. He speaks of Syria to Egypt and Israel in the middle was the then known world. That was all they knew. And it's twice in Isaiah's prophecy, I think it's the 23, the other one, certainly in chapter 19, he talks about Syria, he talks about Egypt and Israel being a third, three thirds of the world. And Abraham was promised the world. Now when you look down through those nations, there are 10 of them. And 10 is the aggregate number. Laban changed Jacob's wages 10 times. In the seeds of Jerusalem, Leviticus 26 says 10 women shall bake bread in one oven. Daniel's wisdom was 10 times better than magicians. There were 10 virgins in the parable. And in Zechariah, 10 men out of all the languages of the nations shall take hold of a skirt of him that is a Jew. That's the world. 10 is the aggregate number. The first nation mentioned are the descendants of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, whose son went with Moses and became an integral part of the Commonwealth of Israel, Hobab, his son, and continued with Israel right until the captivity in Babylon, and when Nebuchadnezzar was hammering upon the walls of Jerusalem, and when Israel were deep in iniquity, and Jeremiah was told to run through the streets and find me one righteous man, there was only one family holding the truth, and it was the family of Jethro. And this little group of Gentiles who had been adopted into the house of Israel were standing firm and fast, and Jeremiah paraded them before Israel and said, look at these. And that's the first nation mentioned here. And the second nation mentioned is where Caleb came from. The dog. They're the first two nations mentioned here. The Kenites and the Kenazites. The Kenites came from Jethro and Hobab, and the Kenazites was where Caleb came from. They're the first two that's mentioned. And the last one is the Jebusites. And they were the people that occupied Jerusalem. And their name means trodden down. And Jesus said, Jerusalem shall be trodden down. Until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And so Abraham was promised the world. And the day is coming when Jerusalem shall no longer be trodden down.

Transcript

Brother Martin's classes this week have been on the subject, Abraham, Father of the Faithful. Today's class is entitled, A Father of Many Nations. Good morning, my dear brothers and sisters, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Right, brothers and sisters, now the life of Abraham takes a very interesting turn indeed, believe me. Because what we're going to see, brothers and sisters, is the spotlight is going now to fall upon Sarah, and the seed of the woman is about to come into the world. And this wonderful promise of the seed is about to be fulfilled in a remarkable fashion, and Abraham now is educated to that end. Now, brothers and sisters, the scene had been set for this drama because of the disaster of the experiment with Hagar. We're not going to consider that in chapter 16, but we know what happened, that there was an experiment whereby Sarah felt that through her handmaiden, Hagar, they could have this seed. But it's the Apostle Paul who says in Hebrews 11, by faith, Sarah herself. And there's the word, Sarah herself conceived seed. And she had to come to realize that that seed was to come through her. And so this morning, we're going to concentrate on Genesis 17 in this dialogue between the Father in the heavens and he's going to make a father on the earth. And this is a wonderful chapter of Scripture. Now, Genesis 17 opens up with the fact that Abraham was 99 years of age. It now wants but one year, brothers and sisters, before his faith is going to see that child in the world. And the Apostle Paul commenting upon this chapter says that he staggered not in unbelief. He believed that God would produce that seed. Thirteen years had passed since the birth of Ishmael. Thirteen years had gone and Ishmael was in the world, a bounding young lad in the earth. And the great lesson had been learned that that's not the child of the promise. The essence of the promise that was given to Abraham was God said, I will come and Sarah will have a seed. Now, it's interesting as we read this chapter that the Lord appears to Abraham and the Lord there, of course, in capitals is the divine name of Yahweh. But he doesn't reveal himself at this time to Abraham as Yahweh. You see, that's what Moses said in Exodus 6. By my name Yahweh was I not known to Abraham. Now, brothers and sisters, he was known to Abraham as Yahweh. This record here proves that. But the point being made is this. It's not that name at this time that God is going to reveal himself to Abraham because he's not working through that name. The name he's working through is the next, well not so much the name, but the title is the next one. Almighty God. Now, that's very interesting. You see, because the Hebrew there is ale-shadayi. Ale-shadayi. The word ale, of course, signifying the uncreative, the mighty power of the universe, the enormous power of God. Now, shadayi, brothers and sisters, and this is intensely interesting and we won't be able to turn all these references up, but I want you to listen carefully. Shadayi, we've been told in the concordance, means either nourisher or destroyer. Now, how can it mean those two things which seem so opposite? Well, the fact of the matter is it comes from a word shad, which means to bulge like a muscle, you see? To bulge like a muscle. And so he's a powerful destroyer. But the same term, brothers and sisters, is used of the woman's breast. And it's that term that is applicable to this situation. Because what's about to happen is that God is revealing himself to Abraham as a father about to have an infant family. Now, you watch this. As I say, we won't turn these references up. That word is used through the patriarchs with that sense. And so when God was to give these promises to the fathers, in the context where he says, I will multiply your seed, he did so through ale-shadayi. And that word shadayi is rendered over 20 times in relation to the breast of the nursing mother. And when Jacob, for example, was implored by his other sons to finally send Benjamin down into Egypt, where Joseph was, and he didn't want that to happen because he was absolutely petrified that he would lose his baby boy. He appealed to ale-shadayi be with you because it was his little baby, you see? And the title was used in that sense, that God was going to have an infant family. It's going to start here. And so it wasn't the divine name, which applies to the grown-up nation when they came out of Egypt, when his son had come to maturity. Here he is as ale-shadayi working with the patriarchs to develop that name. Now, it's used in Genesis 49. See, let's have a look at this one. In Genesis 49, look at the way it's used here. The title of ale-shadayi referring, of course, to the young family being developed, nursed by its mother. But this is not so much its mother now, but by its father in the heavens who's acting like a nursing mother towards this family. And so we read in Genesis 49 and verse 25, even by the ale of thy father, who shall help thee, and by the shadayi who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. See the way that title is used? And so the young family is about to come through Abraham, and the seed is about to be developed, and the child is about to be born and nursed into the world. And you know, brothers and sisters, that's even carried over into the New Testament? When the apostle was appealing to the Corinthians to come out of the world, he says, come ye out and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, says God, and you shall be my children, you shall be my sons and daughters, Seth, the Lord Almighty. And there it is in the New Testament in exactly that context, as God was developing these infants in Corinth who couldn't partake of the milk of the word, said the apostle. Rather the meat. But they were in need of the milk of the word, and he called them out, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, Seth, the Lord Almighty. So even that title in that sense is carried over into the New Testament. That's fascinating. Now as this chapter of chapter 17 develops, we see how God is going to make Abraham a father like himself. And so he's told to walk before God and to be perfect. And in verse 2, he says, I will make my covenant between me and thee. Now the covenant had already been made in chapter 15, but here the word means to give. I'm going to give you this covenant. And there are three words used of that covenant. God made it, gave it, and then later on he's going to talk about you shall be my sons and daughters, making it rise. So he gave it, he's making it, and he's going to make it rise with Abraham. He's going to develop that covenant through the birth of this seed. Now brothers and sisters, here's a wonderful thing. You know, keep your hand in Genesis 17, and let's come to Romans chapter 4, and then we'll come back to Genesis 17 and show you what the apostle is here saying. Now Abraham is about to be made a father, but no ordinary father. And so in Romans chapter 4, we read this. Verse 16, Therefore says Paul, it is of faith that it might be by grace to the end that the promise might be sure to all, not to that only which is of the law but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. You know, Jesus said call no man your father on the earth, didn't he? How come Abraham's got that title? You see, but Paul says this. As it is written, I, that is God, have made thee a father of many nations. So God made him a father, an extraordinary father, not a natural father, a father of many nations. A man can be a father of a multitude given enough time and enough wives, but no man can be the father of many nationalities. Naturally, that's got to happen spiritually. And here's the point. Look at those little words here. Before him whom he believed. Before him whom he believed. Now in my Bible, in the margin it's got, like unto him whom he believed. And so God was to make Abraham a father like himself. Now come back to Genesis 17. Now just have a look at this. You read these words with me and let's pick them out. Five times this is said, five. The number of grace, and that's what Paul says, that it might be by grace, grace, that the promise might be sure to all the seed. That is, if God's mercy is with us, we can be sure of our inheritance because we can't be sure by law, can we brothers and sisters? If God made it by law, we'd all fail. But because it's by grace, it's sure. Now just five times we've got this statement in Genesis 17, that Abraham's gonna be made a father like God. Now listen, verse two. I will make my covenant between me and thee. Verse four, as for me, behold, my covenant is with thee. Verse seven, and I will establish my covenant between me and thee. Verse 10, this is my covenant which he shall keep between me and you. And the end of verse 11, this shall be a token of the covenant between me and you. Look at that. You and me. Me and you. Like him, whom he believed. And so God took Abraham into a little intimate relationship where he shared with this man his divine fatherhood. That's how Abraham becomes the father of us all. Because the children that Abraham produces are not natural children. Just the same as God in heaven above. It is not procreating natural children, but spiritual children. And he's sharing this with Abraham. You know what he did? He then changed his name. And what did he do to change it? He put the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet in his name. And it's the main consonant of the Yahweh name. And this is the beginning of God surname-ing himself upon the patriarchs. The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is inserted in that name, Abraham. And now he's Abraham. And he's the father of many nations. And he's got the main consonant now of God's own name. Between me and you. You and me. Five times. Like him, whom he believed. Isn't that a wonderful comment of the apostle Paul? And so these children that are gonna be developed from Abraham are spiritual children. Now have a look at Isaiah. Keep Genesis 17. Have a look at Isaiah 29. And here, in Isaiah 29, the prophet speaks of those children of the patriarchs. And how those children would be developed. Now they were ashamed of their natural children. The patriarchs, if they could have lived and seen the end result of their natural children would have been ashamed of them. But here in Isaiah 29, we read in verse 22. Therefore thus saith the Lord who redeemed Abraham. Concerning the house of Jacob. Jacob shall not now be ashamed. Neither shall his face now wax pale. But when he seeeth his children, the work of my hands in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name and sanctify the holy one of Jacob and shall fear the God of Israel. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are coming forth, brothers and sisters, to learn that over the centuries of time their natural seed disgraced their name, they're gonna be ashamed. Absolutely ashamed of their natural seed. But they're gonna be presented to a vast multitude of whom they're gonna be told that these people were developed in the earth by their example, following their example of faith. And we walked in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham and we are his children characteristically. And they will not be ashamed. They will be proud of those children. And they will say, well, how are these so different? Because God will say, they're the work of my hand. And the fatherhood of God and the fatherhood of Abraham here is joined together to develop that wonderful seed. It's a marvelous story. It really is. And so we're coming back to Genesis 17. And we read, brothers and sisters, in verse five, neither shall thy name anymore be called Abraham, but thy name shall be called Abraham. For a father of many nations have I made thee. And you know something? In the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, you have the word rock used about nine times of God. And it says there in verse 18 of the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, of the rock that begat thee, thou art unmindful. So a rock begets children. And in Isaiah 51, the prophet says, look unto the rock from whence ye are hewn. Look unto Abraham. And here's God. And here's Abraham as rocks producing children. Now rocks can't have children. There's no natural life in rocks. But brothers and sisters, in certain rocks, they're full of character. Men split them and polish them. And they glean with all the grains of the minerals, the sediment that has been settled down into that hard, brittle rock, and it comes up beautiful. No natural life, but full of character. And both God and Abraham are likened to rock-like fathers. God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham, said John the Baptist. That's not natural children. That is spiritual children. And so in verse seven of this chapter, chapter 17, God said, I will establish my covenant. Now in Genesis 15, God said, I will cut a covenant. And he divided the pieces. And the burning lamp passed between those pieces. But now here, this word means to rise. I will rise a covenant. And Jesus both died and rose again, brothers and sisters, to establish that covenant between God and his people through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was all done. And so there's gonna be covenant that will rise to finally confirm that everlasting covenant, which we read in verse seven. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generation for an everlasting covenant. That's different than the law of Moses. The covenant of the law was not everlasting. And you know something? The term everlasting covenant appears in the Old Testament just 14 times, twice seven. Everlasting covenant, seven, seven. And in the New Testament, it appears once. And it comes, brothers and sisters, at the end of one of the most majestic expositions of the law you will ever read, at the end of the book of Hebrews. Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus by the blood of the everlasting covenant that's the only place that ever appears in the New Testament. So that which was everlasting in the Old Testament has now focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the blood of that covenant, brothers and sisters, was precious blood, blood that had life in it. Not just natural life, but spiritual life. A life that was lived like no other life. It was different. And it was precious blood. It was by that precious life, God's not talking about fluid, he's talking about that which it symbolizes. And by that perfect life, he raised that man to everlasting life to establish that covenant. And that covenant was made to rise and come to its fulfillment. God had given it, he'd cut it, he'd made it, and now it's rising, brothers and sisters. And here we have all those promises being brought forward here in this chapter. Now God is gonna give Abraham a token of this covenant. And that token in verse 10 is this. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised. Now it's very obvious. You know, you can talk about circumcision all day. It has many, many facets to it. Its significance is many facets. It really is. It means a lot of things. And I just wanna dwell now on a couple of those things because it's so pertinent to this record. You see what was happening, brothers and sisters. God said, Abraham, now look, you and I, you and me are gonna share a fatherhood, a spiritual fatherhood. Now Abraham, I'm not talking about natural procreation because I'm gonna give you a token which tells you that's not the way it's gonna be done. And we all know what circumcision is. And circumcision performed upon a 99-year-old man. When that was done, in that immediate context, he could not have been the father in a natural sense. It would not have been possible. So God was saying to him in effect, not like that. And you know, Stephen picked that up beautifully in the seventh chapter of Acts. When he mentions events 12 months apart and he rolls them together like this. He said this. And so he gave him the covenant of circumcision and Isaac was born. And so he gave him the covenant of circumcision and Isaac was born, it's 12 months apart. Now Isaac was the child of Abraham by nature. He was the child of Sarah. It was not born of a virgin. It was a normal birth, but it was not a normal birth. Those two people were too old. And had not God come into that situation, the boy would never have been born. Certainly wasn't a virgin birth, but it was the nearest thing to it in the Old Testament you'll ever get. And he began Isaac because he gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Isaac was known then as his only begotten son when in literal fact he was not. Because Ishmael was well and truly 13, 14 years in the world before Isaac was born. And so that's the way the covenant was given. Now brothers and sisters, circumcision then became extremely important. You see there are many things of which it is significant. Now I'm gonna show you what happened under the law of Moses. I won't go into a lot of detail about this, but I want you to see this. The importance of circumcision. You see what happened was this. The law of childbirth. When a woman had a baby, if it was a little baby girl, she had to undergo two periods of uncleanness. Now the reason there was two periods was this. That the first period that woman would be banned from the, she would not be able to go into worship in the Tabernacle, nor could she mix socially with her own family for the first period of uncleanness. And during the second period, she would be allowed to go back and mix in the domestic circle, but she could not worship. Now that happened for both boy and girl. But you see the difference. For the girl, she was unclean for two weeks, and then followed another period of 66 days, making a total of 80. For the boy, she's unclean for seven days, and then another period of 33 days, making a total of 40. Now it is normal in our literature, and I have the greatest respect for our literature. It is normal in our literature to say that that there shows that the girl was double the period of the boy. I don't believe that. I believe. The truth of the matter is the boy is half that of the girl. You say, oh, come on, what's the difference? It's an enormous difference. You see, when you go through the law minutely, you'd find that that period is the normal period of uncleanness. That's the normal one. But this boy is able to harbor. Now look at the way it's put. You see, the boy is unclean, first of all, for seven days. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. But the girl's unclean for two weeks. Look how that's put. Why? Because to the Jew, a week was a cycle of time. So she has two cycles of time. And what the law is saying, being a girl, she would go on being unclean. She would go on being unclean. It would never end. Why? Because she couldn't be circumcised. And so the next period of uncleanness is the number of men, six, six. But unto us, a child is born, and unto us, a son is given. And he doesn't go around the circle. It counts off one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And on the eighth day, he can do something the girl can't. And the flesh is cut off and brings to an end that cycle of uncleanness that'll take every man and woman to the grave, were it not being for the man child. And he was 33 years of age. When Paul says in Galatians chapter six, he was circumcised on that cross and brought to an end. The curse of the law, that flesh tried to keep law would have an endless cycle of uncleanness, but circumcision, brothers and sisters, the cutting off of the body of the sins of the flesh enabled us all to be saved. And we're all girls, because we're the bride of Christ. We're all girls, because we're the bride of our husband. And if we haven't got our husband to die for us, we'd never be in God's kingdom. Now, where did I get all that from? Is that my, did I dream that up? Come to Colossians chapter two. Here it is, here's Paul's exposition of that wonderful principle. And in Colossians chapter two, we have to read this together. It's just tremendous how he expounds this. And as I read it, brothers and sisters, I want you to notice the words I emphasize here. Listen very carefully to the emphasis I put on these words and see how circumcision apply. Verse nine of Colossians two. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made with our hands in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Buried with him in baptism. Wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. See the point? And we, as little girls as it were, unable to be circumcised in the uncircumcision of our flesh. Jesus didn't put off the sins of the world in that little operation of a piece of skin. He was circumcised in the body, brothers and sisters. The circumcision, he says, by the body of the sins of the flesh. He was totally perfect and put them all off and stripped off of him everything that was unclean, which we couldn't do. But now we're with him, in him, with him. And associated with him, we can have the kingdom of God. Now that brings me to another point about circumcision. It's a representative thing. You see, Exodus 12 and verse 48 said this. No uncircumcised person. Kelly the Passover. Where did that put the sisters? Nowhere, unless they were represented by father, brother, uncle, son, husband, or whatever. But they're members of the family. No uncircumcised person. You take Peter. He calls Noah the eighth. The word person in 2 Peter is not there. He said Noah was the eighth. How does he know he was the eighth? Well, there were eight people in the ark. But how does he know he was the eighth? Because you read, don't turn this off. You read Genesis seven. Over and over and over again it says this. And they all went in unto Noah. And God saved Noah and every living thing. And they all went in unto Noah. And Noah survived and all that were with him. And when the door closed, when the door of the ark closed, it says, now listen, the Lord shut him in. He shut him in. There's a whole creation in there. But he's the eighth. Because he was the representative man that God had saved the world because of that man's faith. And he worked through him. And so Peter says he was the eighth. And so we've got this man child who has come along brothers and sisters. And he has been the one through whom this promise has now been able to have its focus and its fulfillment. It really is a remarkable thing. Now we come back to Genesis 17. Sorry I'm at the rush this. It's so beautiful. I just love to be able to develop this further. It's really beautiful. And so God says in verse 12. He said, and he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generation, he that is born in the house or bought with money from any stranger which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with money must needs be circumcised and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. So you see, we have to be born in Abraham's family. And we are spiritually. And we have to be bought with money. And Paul says we're bought with a price. But a stranger that was only just an itinerant could not be part of that brothers and sisters. He could not be circumcised. And a man that was on wages, a day laborer who was a hired laborer, he couldn't participate in that. They were just itinerants passing through with no intention to becoming the true seed of Abraham. But we've been born into Abraham's family by baptism. We're related to him by character. And the money that's been paid is the price of the blood of God's own son. It's quite remarkable. But now comes Sarah, hey? In verse 15. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai but Sarah shall her name be. You know what God did? He changed her name from meaning dominant or a head person. He changed her name to Sarah which means princess or queen. No, he did it by putting the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet in her name. And they became heirs together of the grace of life. And this is how it was all gonna be done. Now of course you see, now the focus is on Sarah. This is really impossible. We're gonna see that when we come back next time brothers and sisters when the angel comes this is really impossible. And now it calls for extraordinary faith nevermind about any more expedients like Hagar. That's out of the white question. Look God, look Abraham says God, it's gonna be Sarah. I'm gonna give a son from her. She's gonna have it. He's gonna have the seed of the woman. And it's a wonderful story brothers and sisters. It's the seed of the woman. You see Genesis when it said the seed of the woman would come we pick it up and we say oh yes, seed of the woman. That means he would be born of our nature. He would have all our disabilities. He'd be tempted like us we are. And that is absolutely true. But that is not the primary teaching of Genesis. It's true but it's not the primary teaching. I'll prove it to you. The primary teaching is he would not be the seed of man. And the proof is self-evident because the seed of the woman is gonna bruise the seed of the serpent on the head. And if the seed of the woman is primarily teaching that he's in our nature then we've got the doctrine that flesh overcomes flesh and it doesn't. But you see a wonderful golden thread runs through the Bible. So Genesis said seed of the woman. He would not be the seed of man. Question is who then will be his father? Second of Samuel chapter seven. God says I will be his father. The next obvious question is how can that happen? And Isaiah says a virgin will conceive. Oh, what we wanna know now is when will that happen? Well Paul says in the fullness of time. God sent forth his son made of a woman. There it is. And the last question is why do it that way? Or what the law could not do. In that it was weak through the flesh. God sending his son in the sameness of sin's flesh and because of sin condemned. Sin in the very flesh where it rained another. So there's the answer. Not a earthly father. I will be his father. How? By a virgin. When? In the fullness of time. Why? Because flesh can't do it. Sarah's gonna have this child. God's gonna come into the affairs of mankind and this child was to be born. Now look what happened. Verse 17. Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, shall I shall be born unto him that is 100 years old and shall Sarah that is 90 years old bear. Now I notice people here from Australia that would respectfully differ from me with this but they're wrong. You know I do not believe and I have powerful reasons for believing this. I do not believe that Abraham laughed in incredulity. I believe he laughed in sheer joy in belief of what God had said. And here are my reasons brothers and sisters. First of all he was not condemned for doing it as was Sarah. Secondly he laughed in his heart. And when we come to the time when Sarah laughed, the Hebrew says she laughed in her stomach. It was a mere emotion of her stomach, her feelings but Abraham's was in the heart. Secondly or thirdly Paul quoted this chapter to say he staggered not in unbelief. Quoting this chapter. That could never have been said if that had been a laugh of incredulity. And finally Jesus said Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. And this is the only occasion recorded of Abraham laughing. And I believe that and not only that but when he did laugh he fell on his face and did it in an act of worship. And I believe brothers and sisters it was wonderful. And you know what happened don't you? That Abraham absorbed this, he concentrated upon Sarah, he considered the deadness of Sarah's womb and his heart burst with joy and he fell on his face in an act of worship and said in his heart, oh will it be, will it be? And he knew it would be brothers and sisters. And it was just like the apostle who said in Galatians for all those related to Abraham in his seed, he said God has sent forth the spirit of his son in our heart. And both Jew and Greek cry out Abba, father. And standing alongside a Jewish compatriot who is a true seed of Abraham by faith, we have the Gentiles and the Jew says Abba and the Greek says father together and they say it in the heart because they can see brothers and sisters and the spirit of that son is in their hearts because they're gonna be related to him in a huge family and they're gonna be like unto God. What a wonderful concept and I believe that's what happened here with Abraham when he fell on his face and did that. And then verse 18, realizing the import of this, realizing it, it says, oh God, that Ishmael might live before thee. And what he was saying in effect was, look, what about Ishmael? What about him? And Abraham could see now that Ishmael was excluded as it were from the child of the promise and Abraham would be concerned about that boy and God reassures him. And God said, Sarah, thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed. She will surely have a son. So you see, he's endorsing, you see, Abraham, you're right, she will, but don't worry about Ishmael. He says, I've prepared for him. And God is not unmindful of Abraham's paternal feelings. He's not gonna wipe Ishmael out but because he is the seed of Abraham who is God's friend, God says, I'm gonna make him a great nation, Abraham. And he reassures Abraham, brothers and sisters, of that fact, that this would happen. Now, of course, as we come to the end of this story, verse 20 says, but as for me, I have heard thee, and Ishmael means heard of God, behold, I have blessed him and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly. Twelve princes shall he beget and I will make him a great nation. But Abraham, my covenant will I establish a rise with Isaac, my covenant will I make a rise with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. Now, I want you to notice the last, that is verse 22. We're gonna finish up here this time, brothers and sisters. And he left off talking with him and God went up for Abraham. Now, if I had time, I could show you that that language is only used when God makes a very personal and private visit to people. When it says in the record that God went up from him, that's special language in the Bible. It really means that it's not just an ordinary manifestation, like you would see angels visit men, but here is a personal, intimate visit that God is talking about. It's used, for example, at the end of the Bible, Jacob's life, when the angel talked with him and went up from him. And Hosea quoting that says, he found him in Bethel, found him, God had been with him before. But Bethel, when he came back, a chastened man from Laban's experience, brothers and sisters, there was a more intimate manifestation to Jacob and he found him in Bethel. Well, that's what's happening here. But you see, listen, what's happening? And he left off talking with him and Elohim went up from Abraham. Now, here's a lesser manifestation talking about the theory of the child being born. Just come to chapter 21 and see what happened when the child was born. And we'll come back to this, brothers and sisters, but just let's have a look at this. Just note the language. And Yahweh, oh, now this is the greater manifestation. And Yahweh visited Sarah as he had said and Yahweh did unto Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bear Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which Elohim had spoken to him. Look how that's put. So here's the man to whom the lesser manifestation in the Elohim, the angels, is talking about the theory of the thing. Now, we've got the woman and here's the great manifestation. Here is the divine name. Yahweh visited her and did to that woman something of which Elohim had been talking to him about it. What about that? And here comes, brothers and sisters, the seed of the woman. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Look at that focus. Just look how that's focusing now. Bringing our attention to the wonderful thing that has been done that unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given. You work that phrase out. Some people say that's a hebraism, you know, where a thing is said in the same way twice. It's not. Listen, unto us a child is born. He's our child because Mary is our us. She's one of us. She's our race. So unto us a child is born. But, brethren and sisters, unto us a son is given. He might have been our child. He was not our son. And when the angels came to announce the birth of the seed of the woman, they said, unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord. He's God's son and God gave his only begotten son. He may be our child. He's not our son. And so this wonderful promise was now about to be culminated with the birth of that child. And as it was, as I say, the spotlight and the focus switches from Abraham and Sarah stands here in the full glare of that spotlight, impossible by men. And God visited that woman. He paid her a visit and did something to her. And the child came into the world. Oh, yes, a natural birth in the sense that it was a man and a woman involved. But unnatural, brothers and sisters, in the sense that had God never visited that house, that child would never have come into the world. And so Paul, in Romans 9, gathering all this together, said, this is the word of promise. I will return and Sarah will have a son.

Transcript

In Isaac shall thy seed be called, Genesis chapter 21. Now brothers and sisters, we want to start with Genesis chapter 18, if you would. And here we're coming now to that point that I've been mentioning all along, when Sarah becomes the center of focus. And the seed of the woman is about to come into the world, and this remarkable child is to be born. Now it's amazing, brothers and sisters, that this message, which came from the angels to Sarah direct, came not because they had descended to the earth to give her that message. As a matter of fact, when you read the record, the specific purpose they had was to go and destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. That's very interesting. They didn't come down for this purpose. And it was almost an aside mentioned in the record that they turned aside to speak unto Abraham because God said he's my friend and I will reveal to him what I'm going to do. And these angels came and they would reveal themselves unto Sarah, and this message was to come that she was to be the mother of this seed, as already Abraham had been told. And we pick up the record in chapter 18 and verse 9. And they said unto him, that is unto Abraham, where is Sarah thy wife? Now notice the term. Where is Sarah thy wife? Here is her name and the annunciation of her status. Very clear. Here's the true wife of Abraham. They tried the scheme with Hagar and it doesn't work. This is how it's going to work. And he said, behold in the tent. Now that's very interesting. Do you know, brothers and sisters, when you look at verse 10, you'll find that when Sarah heard this message of the angels to Abraham, it says at the end of verse 10, and Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind him. Now that's Abraham's tent. But you see, Sarah had her own tent. If you turn to Genesis chapter 24 and verse 67, you'll learn that. In the last verse of Genesis 24, we learn that fact that she had her own tent. And it says there concerning Isaac that he brought her, that is Rebecca, into his mother Sarah's tent. But now when the angel comes with this message to Abraham of her personal involvement, she's standing in Abraham's tent. And you say to yourself, well, what's the big deal about that? Well, if you turn to the first of Peter chapter 3, brothers and sisters, here we have Peter's commentary upon this incident and others in the life of Abraham and Sarah. And, you know, in this particular section, there are many things that Peter mentions in relation to married couples and how they should conduct themselves and so forth. Many of these things are taken from the life of Abraham and Sarah. And he speaks in this chapter 3, the first of Peter chapter 3, and he talks in verse 5 about the wives being in subjection to their own husbands. And he comes down to verse 4 and he says, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, and we're going to see that in a minute, when Sarah says in her heart, my Lord, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, also being old. And Abraham was the hidden man of her heart, as Peter says, as holy women also trusted in God, adorned themselves being in subjection to their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord in her heart. Didn't say it out loud, the only one record of her ever calling him Lord on this occasion, not that she didn't call him Lord all the time, but it's only recorded once, and she said it in herself. She really meant it, despite the circumstances of life that he had put her through. We mentioned that before. And then we go on in Peter and he says this in verse 7, Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them. Dwell with them according to knowledge. And so the husband is to live with his wife according to knowledge. And here she is, this time standing in the door of his tent when this comes. And what was the knowledge that he had to have? Dwelling with them according to knowledge, giving honor under the wife as the weaker vessel. And brothers and sisters, in this matter of the birth of Isaac, she was clearly the weaker vessel, because Abraham later on still had children. There's no way that that woman, according to nature, can have a child. And so here she is with Abraham and he's got to dwell with her and give her honor. Why? Because Yahweh honored her. He honored her by visiting that woman and the power of the Spirit of God operated upon her dead womb to produce that child. She was honored by God. Dare her husband not honor her. And you know, there's a great lesson in that for all the husbands in this place today. There's a great lesson. There's a lesson for me. We live with our wives and we give them honor. They may be the weaker vessel, but brethren, you know as well as I do that there are many occasions in our life when that wife is so honored by God to influence us that we ought to acknowledge that. And we ought to acknowledge sometimes that in our prowess, as we might imagine that we've got it, and our own strength, and the fact that we are the head of the house and so forth, and all those divine rights which we think we have, that we've got to honor that woman who is with us when we see that very often God works in her life with such power and force to inspire us that if He honors her, then so ought we. And it's extremely interesting that when that honor was given to her, she was standing in his tent, not her own. She was dwelling with him. And Peter says the honor was given because they were to be the heirs together of the grace of life. Now all of this is based upon the life of Abraham and Sarah. Both of them had the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet put in their name by God. Both of them. And they were to be the heirs together of the grace of life. And this child that was to come was to be the child of both of them. And it was to be by God's grace, brothers and sisters. And so the child that was born was to join them together. And then Peter finally says this, that your prayers be not hindered. Now I don't know whether you've ever been through this experience, but I have. And I think every married couple goes through this experience more or less. Marriage doesn't always run smoothly. Even the best of marriages don't run smoothly. And there come those little tips at times when we may exchange a few little sharp words and a few tears are shared. And you know, brothers and sisters, I don't know how you feel about this, but I know how I feel, that on those occasions when it does happen, and I have a very happy marriage, I must say, and I'm thankful to God for that, but it's not without its imperfections. And we run across each other at times and we say cross things. And I know this, that unless I make that up, I'm very awkward in my prayers to God. Aren't you? When you go down on your knees to pray to God and you've had an altercation with your wife and it hasn't been cleared up and it's still in the air, I find myself very embarrassed and very awkward in my prayers. I don't feel the same. And because we're one flesh together in that sense that we're joined in Christ Jesus our Lord, you just don't feel right about that. And you have to go and you have to say, I'm very sorry about that. You know, I was really upset and I shouldn't have said what I did. Will you forgive me? And then you go to God and you're altogether different. Now, you know, this happened to Abraham in a remarkable fashion. And I'm going to anticipate what's coming because I want to stay here with Peter. And when he went through those experiences later on, when he put Sarah again into the arms of another man, or he would have if God had not prevented it, when that happened, brothers and sisters, and it all came out right in the end. You know what happened? Abraham prayed to God. He prayed to God that that man's household, that God would open the wounds of his wives and that Abimelech himself might be given the power to procreate, which God has stopped. And it wasn't until Abraham prayed for him that that household was able to produce. And that prayer became the inspiration for Sarah to conceive. That your prayers be not hindered. And you could imagine how ineffectual that prayer of Abraham had been if he'd have left that situation as it was with Abimelech. God would have closed his ears to that prayer. And it wasn't because Abraham put it right. He didn't put it right. God put it right. And when Abraham acknowledged that in humility, he was able then to freely pray to God. It didn't only open those wounds. It was the inspiration for his wife. What a marvelous thing that is. That in those very circumstances, which were there all set up by God, in the providence of God, through the traumatic circumstances, a man and a woman emerged from that problem so united in one that his prayer brought that child into the world. Isn't that incredible? And Peter picks that up here. That your prayers be not hindered. That's the last thing that happened before the conception of Isaac took place. Now, I find that absolutely incredible. As Peter just peels that off, one incident after another, in just a few words to tell us of the great climax that was coming in Abraham's life. And so we come back to Genesis 18. I thought I'd anticipate that while we had Peter open before us and shows she's in Abraham's tent. And the angel comes with a message of God. And we read in verse 9, and they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold in the tent. And he said, this is God talking through the angel, I will certainly return unto thee. I will come. And the message is clear. If God doesn't come, there's going to be no child. And it doesn't matter that they're the man and wife. And it doesn't matter they live together and cohabitate. It doesn't matter that that happens. If God does not come, that boy will not be born. And so in Romans 9 and verse 9, Paul says, This is the word of promise. This is it. I will return and Sarah will have a son. It was God deliberately, dramatically, entering into the affairs of that household and coming into the world that that boy might be born. You know, you can't miss, can you, brothers and sisters, the overtones here of the birth of the Son of God. You can't miss it. God has visited his people, said Luke. The handmaiden of the Lord had been chosen. That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God, God's Son. And he visited that little maid of Nazareth and the virgin child came into the world. This is a prefiguring of all that. And so here it is that God is going to come and he's going to come, it says here, according to the time of life. According to the time of life. The Hebrew has living time, living time. Rotherham picks it up and he says, he's going to come in the quickening season. It would appear from that, brothers and sisters, that this child was conceived in the spring. New life is coming. Not only to the world, not only as the sunshine, of course, brings forth the herbage of the field, but it's going to bring light to Sarah's womb. It's springtime in her life. And yet she's a very old woman, really, in the winter of her existence. But God is going to come at the springtime of her life. And you see, she's going to have a child. And it says here, brothers and sisters, that Sarah heard it in the tent tour, which was behind him. Now verse 11 says, now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. You see, they were both old. That makes it difficult. Difficult enough for the men, but not impossible, but impossible for the woman. It just ceased to be with her after the manner of women. She had gone through the change of life. There is no quickening time with Sarah. That's the point. Now I want you to turn to John chapter 1 and verse 13. And I just want you to notice what John says here. In relation to this matter, when he talks about the principle by which the sons of God are born of the Spirit in that sense. And so we read in John chapter 1 and verse 12, But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Note the three things. So people who are born spiritually into God's family are not born like that. Now you think about the situation. Not of blood. It ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Not of the will of the flesh. And it says both Abraham and Sarah were old. And she said, Shall my Lord and I have pleasure? Not of the will of the flesh. And not of the will of man. And they got together and schemed how they might do it through haggard. See that? And in those three ways it didn't work. It didn't work by natural processes. It didn't work because in old age they didn't have that sort of pleasure. And it didn't work with haggard either. Not of blood, not of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh. So it didn't work any other way than the way that God wanted it to work. And it had to be a God coming into their lives and changing their lives. And entering into the affairs of that man and woman so that when the child came and they looked upon that child, all people, they saw themselves heirs of the grace of life. It had nothing to do with the flesh. And they were grateful to God. And brothers and sisters, when Jesus Christ came into the world, you and I had nothing but ever to do with it. Mary was merely an instrument through whom the Son of God was born. And to us a son was given. And he was given with a forerunner whose name means the grace of God. And when John spoke of the only begotten the Father, he said, we have received grace for grace. We've got it doubled. Because John the Baptist's name means that. And when the Lord was born, he came into the world by the grace of God and we had nothing to do with it. And we're going to be heirs together because of that child. You imagine how that child would have welded Abraham and Sarah together. Now we know what happened. We read in this record of Genesis that Sarah laughed within herself. And as I pointed out, brothers and sisters, when Abraham laughed, it says he laughed in his heart. But in here, the Hebrew word means bowels. It means her bowels. She laughed with a laugh of incredulity. She couldn't believe it. And she said, after I'm waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, being old also? And Yahweh said to Abraham, wherefore did Sarah laugh? Notice he doesn't address the woman, and she's right behind her husband. You can imagine standing behind him, hiding behind him as God addresses the husband. Why did she laugh? Saying, surely, shall I surely have a child which I'm old? And then he says in verse 14, is anything too hard for the Lord? Is anything too hard for the Lord? You know, brothers and sisters, that word is taken up quite frequently in the Old Testament scriptures to speak about the wonder of God's work among men. Do you know in Isaiah 9 and verse 6 where it says, unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given, it says his name shall be called wonderful. That's exactly the same word in the Hebrew. There's not so much that he's going to be wonderful in the ordinary sense of the word. We're going to look at him and say, isn't it extraordinary? It's an amazing thing what happened that he came into the world without the intervention of man. It's extraordinary that that happened. And then in Psalm 118, when he rode into Jerusalem, and the people chanted that Psalm, oh, save us, Hosanna, to the son of David. A Psalm which says, brothers and sisters, that he would come back again. They will not see me until they say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. That's Psalm 118. And it also says this, this is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes. That's exactly the same word. So it wasn't just a question of saying, isn't it too hard in that sense? But the fact that when it happened, men and women would stand in awe of what would happen. And God would be able to perform that. That's what he said here. And we leave that record there, brothers and sisters. We turn the page and come to chapter 20 because we're not going to deal with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And now something else happens, which is quite extraordinary. That after this wonderful promise that Sarah would have the child, we read in chapter 20, and Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country. And you know, every time he went south, he went into danger. And he came to a place, it says, he dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gira. Did you know Gira means a seed? He dwelt in the land of the Philistines at a place which means a seed. Now that's very significant. It was in this place, brothers and sisters, that Isaac later on was to sow the field and to reap a hundredfold. The only time ever recorded of anyone, anyone who got a hundred percent yield from his crop. And it was the seed of promise who sowed in a place called a seed that reaped a hundredfold. And Isaac, of course, being typical of the only begotten of the Son of God, brothers and sisters, there was no other person who ever reaped a hundredfold except a corn of wheat fall into the ground. It abides alone, said Jesus. But he came, brothers and sisters, as the seed of promise. He sowed the gospel in the hearts of his disciples. They went into the world, and the result of that will be that this world will be full of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. A hundredfold. And it was only that man of whom that's recorded in this place. But here's danger. Here is danger. Because in verse two, Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister, and Abimelek king of Gira sent to take Sarah, or sent and took Sarah. Now here's danger. And Abraham, once more, reverts to this expedient. You'd think he would have learned his lesson, but he hasn't. And once more, she's put into terrifying circumstances. And Abimelek, Abimelek, means the father of the king. And of Sarah it had been said, kings shall come of her. Now here's the drama. Here's the drama. Here we are in the land of the Philistines among the uncircumcised. And Abraham is there, who has in his body the mark of circumcision indicating spiritual fatherhood, and Abimelek is an uncircumcised Philistine. And the question is, who's going to be the father of the king and the father of the seed? Look at the dangerous circumstances that are here. And this is what happened with Abraham. Will he become the seed of an uncircumcised Philistine or the seed of a circumcised Hebrew? Now God intervened immediately. He intervened immediately. And he comes to Abimelek by night in verse 3 and tells him, you're a dead man. You're a dead man if you touch that woman. Or she's another man's wife. And God plagued his house, not only closed up the wounds of his wife, but closed up his ability to procreate too. Immediately. Because there's no way this is going to be allowed to happen. Not only because, brothers and sisters, it's morally right, which of course it was, but because it couldn't happen. And you know when the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and he went around being, he claimed to be the son of God, the Jews cast a slur on him and circumstances must have been known about Mary. You can't hide that sort of thing. And one of the things that were flung in his face was, we be not born of fornication. That's what they said to him. We be not born of fornication. The clear inference was, we know about your circumstances. But here, brothers and sisters, it was made exceedingly plain. And it just wasn't going to happen. But what was quite extraordinary about this incident is this, that Abimelek protested his innocence. And it would appear, brothers and sisters, quite clearly here, that Abimelek was a man of integrity. And what a remarkable thing that here is the uncircumcised king and the circumcised Hebrew, and he's got more integrity here than Abraham himself. There's a great lesson in this. You see, the righteousness of faith is not personal righteousness, it's imputed. And these weaknesses of Abraham are recorded for all posterity. This is God's doing. And God acknowledged that that man was a man of integrity. He says in verse 6, God said unto him in a dream, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart. He was an honest, upright man for all that. But he had been deceived. Now he says in verse 7, Now therefore restore the man his wife, for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for you. Can you imagine that king trying to understand that? Can you imagine that king trying to understand that? That in one breath, God says, Look, I know your sincerity. I know you're a man of honor and integrity. Fancy this to a Philistine king. I understand that, says God. But I've stopped you from sinning against me because you would have done it in ignorance. I know that. And you've been deceived. And this woman is another man's wife, and I'm going to get her husband, who did this, to pray for you. Wow. There were lessons for everybody in that, wasn't there? There were lessons for everybody in that, brothers and sisters. That he was God dealing with men on the basis of his grace and favor. It wasn't a question of one being righteous and the other being unrighteous. In that sense, it was all a question of the selection of God. Now, you turn to Psalm 105. Imagine Abimelek having to accept the fact that Abraham was to pray for him. And so in Psalm 105, verses 14 and 15, he said, He suffered no man to do them wrong, yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. And Abimelek was told he is a prophet. And he didn't suffer him to do any harm. And yet, brothers and sisters, Abraham had to pray for him. But nonetheless, as we read, and we won't stop to consider this, but from verses 9 to 13 of Genesis 20, Abimelek severely rebukes Abraham, and he had every justification for doing that. And so look at the interaction of men here. Look what's being learned by men here in relation to their relationships to God. That Abraham is in the wrong. This man is sincere and upright at his heart. God stops him from sinning, asks him to accept Abraham's prayer, and Abimelek still goes to Abraham and severely rebukes Abraham for what he did, and he had every justification for that. Every justification. But he acknowledged, brothers and sisters, that it was right. And Abraham is to pray for him. Now, in verse 15 of chapter 20, we read this. And Abimelek said, Behold, my land is before thee, dwell where it pleases thee. And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver. Behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee and with all other thus. Now, that's rather ambiguous in the authorized version. What was the thousand pieces of silver about? Now, we won't turn this reference up, but you might like to make a note of it. In the Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verses 11 and 12, the thousand pieces of silver are spoken of as being the price of the vineyard of the Messiah and of his bride. So that silver is the price of redemption, a thousand pieces underlines the fact that we belong to him. And in the Song of Solomon, that's the price of his bride and his vineyard. Now, the RSV puts verse 15 like this. Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is your vindication in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are put right. And Abimelek, a man of integrity, came out with that symbolic price of a thousand pieces of silver, and in front of everybody he gave it unto Abraham and got everybody to watch him doing it that this man, that man there is that woman's husband and that woman is his wife. And that thousand pieces of silver, he said, has put everything right. And in the Song of Solomon, that's exactly the symbolic use of the thousand pieces of silver. And so it was all put right. And Abraham prayed, we read in verse 17, his prayers, brothers and sisters, were no longer hindered because it's all put right. He has been severely rebuked by the king and had to take that on the chin because it was just. But nonetheless, the king had to accept that Abraham was the friend of God and therefore it wasn't a question of Abimelek praying for Abraham's wrong, it was a question of Abraham praying for Abimelek, which may have seemed to him back to front, but God's lordship overall was enforced. And when God was upheld, when Abimelek was told by God that he was a just man and he had rebuked Abraham and put him in his place, and when the thousand pieces of silver was shown to everybody that that woman belonged to that man and everything was right, Abraham was free to pray. His prayers were no longer hindered. And he prayed that the household of Abimelek, all the wombs might be opened, and Yahweh visited Sarah and did to Sarah exactly as he had promised. And the prayers of that man, brothers and sisters, were not only effectual upon the household of the Philistine, but on his own house. Incredible. And it was going through that traumatic experience. And that's our life, isn't it? There are times, brothers and sisters, when people in the world put us to shame, like Abimelek, people in the world who have some sense of integrity, sometimes put us to shame, and sometimes we're in a situation where we feel that we've wronged people, not only in the truth but out of the truth, and we've got to take it from God, and yet we've got the truth. And those people would depend upon us to tell them the truth. And sometimes, brothers and sisters, in our homes, with the altercation with our wives, if we hang on to our bitterness and we will not give in, and we won't say we're wrong because we're too darn proud, your prayers are going to be hindered. And all of this had to be put right. And when it was put right, that prayer was powerful. And the seed came into the world. And Paul says in Hebrews 11 and verse 11, By faith Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed. Received strength. Where did she get it from? She got it from the prayer of her husband. She would have seen those wounds open. She would have been inspired by that. And being ears together with him, with the fervent prayer of Abraham, she got the strength she needed to rise above the natural things of this life, and Sarah herself. That's the key word. Never mind about Hagar. Never mind about somebody else. Her. And she had to believe, brothers and sisters, that it was her that was going to have the seed. And Paul said, Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed. And do you know something? The word conceive there is only used 11 times in the New Testament. You say, oh, well, 11 times. So what? So this. But 10 of those times, that word is found in one phrase, the foundation of the world. So what he's saying is that Sarah received strength to conceive the foundation seed. And therefore, says Paul, there came from one, and him as good as dead, as the stars of the heaven for multitude. So Paul saw Sarah's faith was not just to have a child, but to have a family of children. Her faith was way beyond that one child. She had enormous faith now. How did Paul know that? How did he know that was the quality of her faith? Well, have a look at what it says here in Genesis 21. Verse 6. Sarah said, God hath made me to Isaac. That's what the word Isaac means, laughter. He's made me to Isaac. So that all that hear me will Isaac with me. And she said, who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah would have given children so? She only had one. Who would have said that Sarah would have given children so? And she received strength, says the apostle, to conceive the foundation seed. Isn't that interesting? So she uses the plural, but she only had the one child. But she saw him, and later as good as dead, says the apostle, that from that one would spring as many as the stars of the heaven for multitude. Her faith was enormous. It wasn't just a woman wanting a child. She saw the destiny of that child, and the ultimate family that would spread abroad through the earth. Who would have thought that Sarah would have given children so? That's how Paul knew that was the quality of her faith. Now, of course, Ishmael was old enough now, brothers and sisters, to express his contempt of this child. When Sarah saw the son of the woman, the son of the bondwoman mocking her child, she said to Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son. And we would think that was cruel and unkind. And I once read an article in the Christadelphian magazine where Sarah was taken to task for this, as this was totally wrong and absolutely evil and all sorts of things. But Paul said those words are the Scripture. What says the Scripture in Galatians 4? Cast out the bondwoman and her son is what the Scripture says. It wasn't just Sarah that. The spirit of the Scripture is there. Why? Because she was a bondwoman. This boy was uncouth. He was not the promised seed. And he was like them that cast into the teeth of the Lord, we be not born of fornication. And he mocked Isaac, and the word mocked is Isaac. Sarah laughed in belief and the wonderful expression of her faith. This boy laughed in mockery. And Abraham was forced to put that boy away because of the domestic upheaval that was there. It was their expedient. It had brought tragedy to their house. But this is the Bible. What says the Scripture? The children of the bondwoman are not counted for the seed, but the children of the free. And so verse 10 said, Wherefore, she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son. Verse 11 says, And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. And so Sarah saw the boy as being Haggai's son. And Abraham was grieved because it was his son. And in the rest of the record, six times, God calls him the lad. Verse 12, the lad. Twice in verse 17, the lad. Verse 18, the lad. The end of verse 19, the lad. And in verse 20, the lad. He wasn't his son at all in the sense that God wanted it to be because he called Isaac, Paul called Isaac. He's only begotten. As far as God was concerned, it was the lad. Isn't that interesting? Now Haggai sat, it says, in verse 16, a good way. The boy fainted. He was dying of thirst. She was wandering in the wilderness of Beersheba, brothers and sisters, in the desert down by Beersheba. And the lad, they had no water. In verse 15, it was all gone. And she went against him, verse 16, and sat down against him and watched him and then prayed to God and lifted up her voice. And the record says that God heard the voice of the lad. He's over there. And the woman is praying. But God hears the voice of the lad. Why? Because that's Abraham's seed. Ishmael means heard of God. And do you know this? Every single mention of Ishmael in the narrative record is of God hearing him. He's Israel after the flesh. And despite the fact that they've been children of bondwomen, they've been enslaved to law, they're cast off and they're under a bush, God's still hearing their voice because of Abraham. Now, come with me to Isaiah 51. Before we go there, by the way, just a minute. Let's read verse 18 of chapter 21. So she sits down over against him, a good way off, as if we're a bow shot, you see. And it says it twice. And she sat over against him and lifted up her voice and wept. And in verse 18 it says, the angel said, Arise, lift up the lad and hold him in thy hand. Now, let's go to Isaiah 51. And you notice the play on words here, taken from this incident. As the prophet builds a prophecy on this incident. Now, Isaiah 51 deals with the faith of Abraham. Verse 1, hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord. Verse 2, look unto Abraham, your father and Sarah that bear you. See the point? Harken to me, ye that follow after righteousness. Where do you find it? Look to Abraham. Once you find it. Once in his life. Only once it's mentioned that he was righteous. And the righteousness consisted of believing what he could not do. So that's where you find it. Now, there's three hearkens in this chapter. Verse 1, verse 4, verse 7. Hearken, hearken, hearken. And there's three awakes. Verse 9, awake. Verse 17, awake. And chapter 52, verse 1, awake. Now, I won't go through all those sections, but they all tell a story. But look at verse 17 of chapter 51. I'm going to read certain words here. And this is based upon the experience of Haggar and Ishmael. Because here, Jerusalem's got to wake up. But the son is not going to come through a bondwoman. Verse 17, awake, awake. Stand up, O Jerusalem. And that's what the angel told her. Then verse 18. There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth. Neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up. And the angel says, take him by the hand. And why couldn't he take her by the hand? Because verse 20 says, thy sons have fainted. And he fainted under the bush. And there is a paraphrase of Genesis 21 with Haggar and Ishmael. Now we'll have to be quick, brothers and sisters. But you know what happened? Coming back to Genesis 21. She had been wandering, if we read in verse 14. At the end of verse 14, Haggar had been wandering in the wilderness of Beersheba. And there was a well of water there and she couldn't see it. Just like Israel. Beersheba, you see, means the well of the oath. The well of the oath. And Israel had been in the presence of the well of the oath all these centuries and they can't see it. But in verse 19 it says, and God opened her eyes. And she saw the well of water. And that's what God is going to do for Israel. Blindness in part has happened to Israel. Blindness. They can't see it. But God opened her eyes. So here's a little parable of the restoration of Israel. Now look at verse 22. And it came to pass at that time. What time? At the same time as Haggar is wandering blind by the well of the oath and can't see it, here's Abraham making a covenant with Abimelech. Abimelech. And they made a covenant at that well. So that Abimelech had to acknowledge that it belonged to Abraham. This well belonged to Abraham. And in order that Abimelech might accept this, they made offerings there and agreed, you see, that Abraham said, this is my well and they're going to have to swear to this. And in verse 27 we read, and Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them unto Abimelech and both of them made a covenant. And Abraham set seven eulams of the flock by themselves. And Abimelech says, what mean these seven eulams by themselves? And he said, these seven eulams shall thou take of my hand that they may be a witness unto me that I have digged this well. Now, at the same time as Israel, in the person of Haggar, was wandering blind by the well of the oath, here's Abraham at that time dealing with a Gentile and making a covenant with him about that well that Abraham has dug up. And he's got these seven eulams. Beersheba means the well of the oath or the well of the covenant. Oath and seven are the same word in the Hebrew. And Abimelech says, you know, what those little seven eulams? He said, I want you to recognize that I've dug this well. You know what a eulam was, brothers and sisters? Under the law of Moses, you will never, ever, ever find a male lamb for sin offering. It's not there. It's just not there. Not anywhere. Right up to Malachi. That was to come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the eulam was the sin offering of a commoner. A commoner. Bullock for the priest, bullock for the nation, a goat for the ruler, and a eulam or a commoner. And Abimelech had to stand there and acknowledge that he's not the father of the king. He is a mere commoner. And he had to acknowledge, brothers and sisters, that the covenant which was being made had nothing to do with him, but he had to be related to Abraham because Abraham had dug that well. And Abraham, I believe, had clear insight here of what was to happen. And when that was accepted, Abraham called the place, he planted a grove, which is a tamarisk tree, a statues tree of one solitary monument, and he called it the Well of the Oath and called upon the name of the Lord the everlasting God. The name of he who will be. The everlasting God of the everlasting covenant. And that Philistine, while Israel are wandering blind to the Well of the Oath, that Philistine had to acknowledge that he is but a commoner. He's in need of God's salvation, and he's got to acknowledge that he's got to be a member of the Commonwealth of Israel, and he's not to be a stranger to the covenants of promise, otherwise he's got no hope, and he's without God in the world, that I have done this well. And that happened at the same time that Israel were wandering blind in the wilderness. And you just think of that circumstance, and here we are, brothers and sisters, just like that king having made that very covenant through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Transcript

Well, this is the climax, and what a chapter this one is, brothers and sisters. I just wish to have the rest of the week with you. This is a magnificent chapter of Scripture, and it's got more to do, brothers and sisters, with the sacrifice of God and His Son, really, than it has of Abraham and Isaac. It's a wonderful chapter. There is so much in this chapter that spreads forth into the New Testament, and it's here that James says, look, he says, was not our father Abraham justified by works when he offered up Isaac upon the altar? And he said, see, see, he said, how faith cooperated with his works, and how faith was made perfect, and how more perfect could it be, brothers and sisters, than to offer up your only begotten son? How more perfect could it be? And how, what a wonderful thing it must have been to our Heavenly Father to have seen this remarkable action of this remarkable man. It's one of the most poignant and dramatic chapters in the Bible, and I'd like to direct your attention, first of all, to Hebrews 11, and let's get Paul's comment about it, and it'll set the scene for Genesis chapter 22. Look what Paul says about this monumental act of faith. And in the 11th chapter of Hebrews and verse 17, the apostle says, by faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac. And you know, the perfect tense is in the Greek, he hath offered him up. It was done, brothers and sisters, such was the determination of Abraham. And then the apostle goes on and says, and he that had received the promises, offered up his only begotten son. And you know, when you put that together in the Greek tense, what he's saying here is this, he that gladly received the promises, and that's how the revised version renders that. He that gladly received the promises, was in that frame of mind, offering up his son to Isaac, and there, brothers and sisters, we have the imperfect tense. So what Paul is saying is this, that Abraham offered him up, he was as good as dead. And how was he doing it? He was doing it because he had gladly received the promises, and he was in that frame of mind, offering up his son. Now that's incredible when you think about that. Not that Abraham would have gone there laughing and rejoicing, it would have been a drama and traumatic, and he would have been in distress, brothers and sisters. But in his heart, he knew that beyond that suffering, that this boy was set for the rise and fall again of many in Israel because he portrayed that great son that was to come. And he saw that, clearly. And not only that, says Paul, he attributed the power to God. The word Junimus is here, dynamic. He attributed that God was so dynamic that he could raise him from the dead. I and the son will come again, he said. And Paul said here in the 19th verse that Abraham, accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure. And the word there, figure, is a parable. Abraham did. In other words, he's telling us that Abraham saw clearly the whole parable of redemption here in the offering up of his son. I don't think, brothers and sisters, we have ever given due credit to the faith of the patriarchs, that Abraham, Paul says, he received him in a parable. Not a parable for us, Abraham saw it that way. And you just think of that faith that this man exhibited on this occasion. It was a wonderful action. And here's Paul's commentary upon this record of Genesis 22, to which we will now direct your attention. Now, brothers and sisters, we read in verse 1 of Genesis 22 and it came to pass after these things. After what things? Well after the birth of Isaac. After the casting out of the bondwoman and her son. After the wandering around in the wilderness blind to the well of Beersheba. And then the covenant made with the Gentiles, Abimelech, with the seven Yulands. After these things. And Isaac has now grown up, brothers and sisters, and Josephus tells us that he was probably about 25 years of age. The term that is used of him is used of Joseph when he was 30 years of age. And it's perhaps nearer the mark that Isaac may have even been about 33. I don't know. But that term is used of Joseph when he was 30. So after these things, and Isaac has now grown to manhood as it were, and the time has come, brothers and sisters, to see whether Abraham really believed what God had told him. And not only that, not only that, but God knew the quality of that man and was going to project here in these pages, brothers and sisters, another drama that would exceed this one of a father going with his son to make an offering for the sins of the world. And do you know why that was? Because when God said to him in Genesis 17, five times, I will make you a father like me. Like me. You remember that? Me and you. You and me. You and me. Me and you. Five times. And God took Abraham, as it were, into that intimate relationship of fatherhood and said, we'll share it together, Abraham. I'm the father in the heavens, and you will be the father of the faithful. You will be the example. Well, brothers and sisters, if he's going to share that fatherhood, he's going to have to share the sufferings of that fatherhood. What a remarkable thing. And Abraham would probably never have contemplated how intimately he was going to share that. And here together, he's going to share with his son the very feelings of God that would come forth centuries later when God would take his son by the hand and lead him to Golgotha. You and me. And I'm going to show you the climax of this chapter, brothers and sisters, which is taken up beautifully in the Psalms. I want to show you this. It's absolutely marvelous how it's done. And we learn a lot here in this chapter about the feelings of our heavenly father when he offered up his son. And when we talk Sunday morning by Sunday morning about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, let us spare a thought for his father and think about the sacrifice of God. When the heavens were darkened in distress, as it were, as God looked upon that sad and tragic scene, when a wonderful boy who had done everything for his father was given in an agonizing death for, brothers and sisters, for people who were not worth it. Let's spare a thought for that. And Abraham's going to have to spare a thought for that. Now, Abraham, this is between me and you. And so the drama begins. And God tells him in verse two, take now thy son, thine only son. And the word only there, yachad, brothers and sisters, is taken up in various places in the word. It's the word that's rendered in the Psalms, my darling, my only one. But here in this chapter, we have it used three more times. Look up with me, at the end of verse six, they went both of them together. And there's the same related word. Your only one, but they went together as with his only one. At the end of verse eight, so they went both of them together. In verse 19, they rose up and went together, and there it is three times in that chapter. And it's telling us, brothers and sisters, that the cooperation of father and son, and if you want to understand how the Lord Jesus Christ cooperated with his father, listen to this. Do you know in John chapter 10, he said, I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. His power to take it again, brothers and sisters, existed in his perfect obedience. It being perfectly obedient to his father, when he closed his eyes in death, there was his power to take it again. His power to lay it down was with him. As we said before, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not one of them say that Jesus died. They all say he yielded up the spirit. And he went with his father to that cross with authority to die whenever he liked. God had given it into his hand, committed it to him, whenever he liked. But his father said, you know what I want. That's cooperation. There was no compulsion here, brothers and sisters. It was an appeal of the father. Son, you know what I want. And he came to do God's will. And the will of God is defined in the Bible, clearly defined. This is the will of God that sent me, said Jesus. That of all he had given me, I should lose nothing. God is not willing that any should perish. Hebrews chapter 10, he fulfilled the law. He took away the first that he might establish the second. I come to do thy will, O God, by the which will we are sanctified. There it is. So the will of God was to save people. And Jesus knew that the barrier to that was the law. So his father's law could not save. It wasn't given for that purpose. It was given to show men their need of salvation. It had had to go. And he knew, brothers and sisters, there's only one way it could go, that he must die at a specific time. Because all the law was encapsulated in the Passover. The Passover, the law was but an exposition of it. And so he had to wait and wait and wait for those hours upon that cross. Waiting for those hours of agony until the sun got between the two evenings. And then he says, well, it's all over. Here it is. And he had power to go before that. But he knew what his father wanted. His father wanted us in the kingdom of God. And they went together to do that. It was a wonderful act of father and son together. And the son having complete free will. But subjecting his own will that his father's will might be done. Not my will, but thy will. And this is the will of him that sent me. That of all he hath given me, I should lose nothing. Now God told Abraham to take his only son. But he added this comment, whom thou lovest. So it wasn't as if, brothers and sisters, there was any estrangement between Abraham and Isaac. It was recognized by heaven above that Abraham really loved him. As I say, some fathers and sons can grow apart as the boy grows older. Some fathers do not relate to their son. As they ought to relate, and vice versa. But this was different. Abraham really loved him. And God reminds him of that. And God knew that he loved him. And he wanted to take him, brothers and sisters, to a place called, in verse 2, Mount Moriah. To the land of Moriah. And in Genesis 22, in verse 2, he was going to the land of Moriah. And in the land of Moriah, Moriah means Yahweh will be seen. God will be seen there, and he was. Moriah, of course, is the hill upon which Jerusalem is built. Another name associated with Jerusalem. And there Abraham was told to offer that lad as a burnt offering. And you see, brothers and sisters, it wasn't just killing the boy. The death of Isaac was to have a sacrificial element in it. It wasn't an ordinary death. Abraham was to understand that this principle was involved. It was a burnt offering, and therefore it was sacrificial in its content. There were lessons to be learned in that death, in other words. And so we read in verse 3 that Abraham rose early in the morning. And there are three times, brothers and sisters, we're told that Abraham did that. And there are crucial times in Abraham's life. For example, he rose early in the morning to go and have a look at the Holocaust of Sodom and Gomorrah because he was anxious about his nephew Lot. Got up early in the morning to see what happened to his nephew. He saw the great column of smoke billowing up out of the Valley of Jordan. He rose early in the morning to send Ishmael into the wilderness. And his heart ached for that boy. And he rose early in the morning to do that. Abraham was determined, brothers and sisters, in these traumatic circumstances. He faced the issues of life clearly and early. And this was the most traumatic of them all. And so he got up early to do that. And then it says, brothers and sisters, that in verse 3 he rose early in the morning and saddled his ass and took his young men with him and his son and claved the wood for the burnt offering. They carried the wood all the way. Fifty miles, brothers and sisters, they carried that wood. Didn't wait till he'd get there to get the wood. He made absolutely certain he had that timber before he got that he might offer his son upon that altar. And Jesus said, if any man come after me let him take up his cross and follow me. And we don't pick it up, brothers and sisters, just before the Lord returns. We pick it up now. And the Lord carried his cross all the way until he fell under the weight of it. And this boy and these men, these servants and Abraham carried that wood all the way. You think about that. Take up your cross, said the Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse 4, on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. These, not having received the promises, says the apostle, saw them afar off and embraced them and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Now Abraham not only saw the promises afar off, but from afar off he saw the means whereby the promises would be fulfilled. And Jesus said he saw my day and was glad and rejoiced. That's what the apostle says in Hebrews 11, he that had gladly received the promises. And lifting up his eyes, he not only saw the promises afar off, he saw the means by which those promises were to be fulfilled. Whereby shall I know that I will inherit it? God said sacrifice and showed him those animals, one of which was three years of age. And we know the significance, brothers and sisters, of the three, don't we? We know that significance. And that wonderful statement of faith in the end of verse 5, he said to his servants, you abide here, he said, and I and the lad will go yonder in worship and come again unto you. Accounting that God was able, had the power, the dynamics to raise him from the dead. And verse 6 says, brothers and sisters, that Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son. He laid it upon Isaac his son. You think Abraham's knowing what he's doing? He takes that wood and gives it to Isaac and laid it upon him. And what did Isaiah the prophet say concerning God's son? It says Yahweh had laid on him the iniquity of us all. And the father put the burden on the child. But the son might bear that burden on behalf of his father. He laid it on his son. I think that's incredible. And he took fire in his hand and a knife. He took the fire in his hand. And it's Peter who talks about the fiery trial, brothers and sisters. And it's Leviticus which always says that when the sacrifices were made to God, they were made, these are sacrifices made by fire under the Lord. And that's repeated over and over and over again. Made by fire. And when they roasted the Passover, they were not to put it in any water. They weren't to boil it. It was to be exposed to the flame. There was sufferings involved in this. Suffering because of what we've done wrong, brothers and sisters. And the dreadful suffering. All the agony of it all was not because God was trying to demonstrate to the world that his son was just obedient in enduring suffering. That suffering and the immensity of it was the measure of your sins and my sins. That's what it was. And the father's got that fire in his hands to put upon his son to tell us that. And try to convince us, brothers and sisters, of the love that is here being manifest. And so they're going to go together. And this fire is in his hand. But we said they both went together. And Jesus said in the 16th chapter of John in that poignant moment as he was walking from the upper room, making his way down through the eastern gate and down the slope of the Kidron, and as they walked along there, brothers and sisters, you have John 13, 14, or rather 15, 16, and 17. You've got three chapters in John spoken as they walked to the Garden of Gethsemane. They're walking through the dead of night in the moonlight. And Jesus is there in the darkness and went over the Kidron, says John, which means murky and dark. And he went over that place and he said to his disciples, all you will leave me tonight and I will be alone. But he said, I'm not alone. I'm not alone, he says. The father is with me. And so verse 8 says they went both of them together. They went both of them together. And then in verse 7 of Genesis 22, and Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said, My father, and he said, Here am I, my son. Now notice the tenor of that conversation. Notice how that is put. And you can see what is happening here. By the way, that is put. Abraham is concentrating with all his might, and Isaac's got to call his father's attention. He says, My father, and Abraham shakes his head and says, Oh, here I am, my son. Look at the concentration that's here. Look at the concentration. And Isaac's got to break his father's concentration. And he says, Look, you've got the fire in the wood. Where is the lamb that burned off there? And you can see the son starting to work it out for himself. Where is it, father? The answer was, My son. My son. My son. God will provide himself a lamb. It doesn't say God will provide a lamb. My son. God will provide himself, himself a lamb. Me and you. You and me. And you know, brothers and sisters, it's a remarkable thing that he did provide that lamb. And you know something? You will read from Genesis to Malachi, and I will defy any of you to find anywhere in the Old Testament where you ever have a lamb, a male lamb, for a sin offering. It's not fair. And with a great long list of offerings and animals and birds that were available to sacrifice, it just is not there. And nowhere in the Old Testament, anywhere in the law, in the Psalms or in the prophets, is there any mention of a lamb for a sin offering. But God will provide himself a lamb. None of the animals were from God himself. Until the day came when John on the banks of the Jordan said to the scribes and the Pharisees and all the people who had come to hear him, Behold the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. There were three monumental statements in that. But here is God's lamb. Here is a sin offering that the law never offered. And furthermore, brothers and sisters, it's efficacious for the sins of the whole world and not just Jewry. It was a comment, a comment that was based upon the full intelligence of what the law had said. And so God was to provide the lamb. And it wasn't going to come until that New Testament. And so we read in verse 9, and they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built the altar. The definite article is in the Hebrew. This is the altar. It's the absolute anti-type of Jerusalem. But here it is, he builds the altar. And he bound his son. That word there, bound, is the only occurrence of that Hebrew word in the whole of the Old Testament. Because this, brothers and sisters, is a unique experience. And there's no way that Abraham could ever have bound his son unless Isaac complied. Had there been a struggle here, brothers and sisters, just remember that Abraham would probably be, at this time, about 130 years of age. That boy would have been full of vital life. It would have been a very unequal struggle, wouldn't it? There's no mention of it. None whatever. And Isaac, you see, was complying here. And he took forth the knife to slay his son, and he had every intention of killing him. Every intention of doing it. And all of a sudden, at the critical point, we read in verse 11, and the angel of the Lord crawled unto him out of heaven, Abraham, Abraham! Oh, and he says, I'm here. Imagine that knife was probably flashing down the, stop, says the angel, Abraham, Abraham. And you know, the Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane said, could not I ask my Father for 12 legions of angels? And would he not give it? Would he not? There are people, there are brethren who say, oh, God wouldn't do it, because the law had to be fulfilled. The Bible had to be fulfilled. Would you dare say to the Lord that he wouldn't? And the very question of our Lord implied that he would. Would he not do it? Of course he would. And the armies of heaven were marshaled, brothers and sisters, at his command. But he didn't ask for them, did he? Because he knew there was going to be no deliverance. And he says in Hebrews, and don't turn this up, you know the references so well, you know, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him, that at the power of death, that is the devil. For, says the apostle, for, says the apostle, he took not upon him the nature of angels, but he took upon him the seed of Abraham. Now when you look at those words, took upon him, you know what they mean in the Greek and how they're used? They're used of seizing hold of people to help them. Those are the terms that are used in the gospel records of Jesus helping people and rescuing them from their problems and their sickness. And Jesus didn't come in the world to rescue angels. Angels came and rescued Abraham. But Jesus didn't come to rescue angels. He came to rescue the seed of Abraham. And run to the Christ, says the apostle, to succor them who are tempted. And the word succor that Paul used means run to the Christ. And here in this record, brothers and sisters, is an angel stopping Abraham from killing that boy and that boy is prefiguring the Lord Jesus Christ who didn't come into the world to save angels from their problems because they haven't got any. But he came into the world to run to the cry of the seed of Abraham. And Abraham's heart would have been crying to God for deliverance. And this boy's gonna come years, hundreds of years later to save him from the grave and to give him the kingdom of God. That's God's son. But this boy is delivered. And the angel calls out of heaven because it could only be affected. The deliverance could only be from heaven. And Abraham only heard the voice. You see, he only heard the voice of words to use the expression of Moses. But Jesus was to be God manifest, brothers and sisters. And then, verse 12, God says, Don't you touch him, he says. For I know, I know, Abraham, that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son from me. From me, brothers and sisters. Now, here is a wonderful thing. We talk about God manifestation. And that's almost a technical, clinical term. It really means, brothers and sisters, that we're expected to express in our lives not only the character of God, but the sentiments of God. And all that goes with it. Well, learn this. That God himself responded from heaven to a father offering up his son. God did that. And we know what he says in John 3, 16. God gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth on him. And all God is saying, I did it. I responded to a father offering his son. Can't you? The Father in heaven was moved by that action. I know, Abraham, I know what you're about now. And, of course, he delivered that boy. And when it was delivered, we read in verse 13, And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a ram. Now, the Hebrew says, one ram. And the emphasis there, brothers and sisters, is upon the one ram. Because it's not a lamb, is it? That was to wait until the manifestation of the lamb. But here is the leader of the flock. And the flock in question is the seed of Abraham, isn't it? And here is the one ram. The one ram that's the leader of the flock. And how is that used in the law of Moses? Didn't the law take all these things forward and extrapolate them in that legislation and fill them out? Well, where was the lamb used? The ram used, rather, in a significant way. Why? Then the consecration of the high priest. And it was so called the ram of the consecration. Well, here he is, the one ram. And it's the leader of the flock, brothers and sisters. And he's caught in a thicket. God spared not his own son, said the apostle in Romans 8.32. God spared not his own son, but gave him up for us all. This boy was spared. God did not spare his own son, brothers and sisters. And the ram is caught in a thicket. Caught. I'm going to show you all this in a little while. You wait, you see how this is taken forward. It's magnificent. Now, brothers and sisters, you think, you picture that ram, and you see those horns, those curled horns twisted in this thicket. Inextricably caught in that thicket. God's son was inextricably caught up in the thicket of our problems. He cannot get out of it. He is involved in all that he did for others. And we lay great emphasis upon the fact that it's a doctrinal truth, brothers and sisters, that he did die for himself. We know that to be true. But be careful how you say that. Because he didn't die for himself to save number one. But he was inextricably caught in our problem. And he came into the world, brothers and sisters, to be entangled with the nature of flesh, and all the ugliness of it, the weakness of it, and the pull and the desire of it to do wrong. And he was entangled in that for our sake. And he was inextricably there. And there's only one way out for everybody, and that is to get himself out and become the leader of the flock. That's why he came into the world to save sinners. And it was all done in himself. Now you think, you look at that projector here, this overhead projector. Imagine that's the altar under the law of Moses. On every corner there was a horn. And the reason that was there was because a horn is a symbol of power. That's why men grabbed hold of it, you see, for mercy. And the greatest power on earth is the forgiveness of sins. There's no greater power available to us, brothers and sisters. It's more powerful than all the atomic bombs in the world. Because when we grab hold of that horn in the symbolic sense when we're approaching God in prayer, sin cannot win. It's beaten. Now, on the day when they had the great festivities and there were multiple offerings and they couldn't get them one by one upon the altar. It would take too long. So they piled them up there. And with those they couldn't pile up, they spread on the floor. And in Solomon's day they covered the court. And whilst they did that, they hung them on the horns with leather thongs. And so they'd tie the legs of the animal and put the leather thongs over. So Psalm 118 full of Messianic references says bind the sacrifices with cords to the horns of the altar. And so when they had these multiple offerings, there they would all be hanging. And if you stood off and looked at that altar, it would look for all the world like a ram caught in a thicket. And there was a wonderful symbol of how in one offering, every thing else hung upon that offering. A ram caught in a thicket. That's exactly what we see on those festive occasions when we live with these multiple offerings. It was a marvelous symbol. There's no doubt about that. What it was to take that ram in verse 14 and offer him instead of his son. And in verse 14 it says, and Abraham called the name of that place Yahweh Yaira. In the mount of Yahweh it will be seen. Is what that means. And that's the exact rendition of the Septuagint version. In the mount of Yahweh it will be seen. What would be seen? Somebody would recognize that a father had offered a son. And only one man saw that. But it was seen. And in the midst of all that agony and all the clamor and all the abuse of the mob the Roman centurion standing there witnessing it all and watching the demeanor of the Lord as he endured and seeing his attitude and his expression said truly this is the son of God. In the mount of Yahweh it will be seen. And it took a Roman to see it. It's a marvelous thing brothers and sisters. And then God called unto Abraham through the angel the second time in verse 15 and now God brothers and sisters is going to express himself passionately for what Abraham had done. And God says Abraham by myself have I sworn. Now brothers and sisters whenever you read that in the Bible when God swears with an oath it's eternal. There are no oaths under the law of Moses because God fully intended that it would go. But when God says I have sworn there's no way that that won't be done. It is absolutely eternal because it's sworn by the eternal. As truly as I live the earth will be filled with my glory. So the earth will be filled with his glory. Well says God by myself have I sworn Abraham. And the promise now brothers and sisters is unconditional. As far as Abraham is concerned it is unconditional. So Paul says in Hebrews chapter 6 after he had patiently endured he obtained the promise. Now we know he hasn't done that literally. He's in his grave. He's waiting for the fulfillment. But brothers and sisters the grave's nothing. Time is nothing. It is unconditional. That promise will be fulfilled because the son has come. The son has died. And God said that. Why did he make it unconditional? Now read this with me. Just read it with me. And by myself have I sworn says the Lord for because you have done this thing. He had done this thing. It wasn't just any action. It was this thing that he'd done. And it was the sacrifice of the father of a son that gained that promise unconditionally for Abraham because brothers and sisters the fulfillment was certain and sure. That the father in the heavens like me says God. The father in the heavens addressing the father on earth says Abraham you've done this thing. It's all over for you Abraham. I swear by myself you'll have this land. And the father knew that now the rest was up to him when his son was going to come. And brothers and sisters we're here today because he's done this thing. Now that brings me to the psalm. That's the expression that takes me to the psalm. Psalm 22. And here we're going to find that Psalm 22 is largely based upon Genesis 22. Psalm 22. And who doesn't know what that's about? Psalm 22 brothers and sisters. And the psalm opens with these words. My ale, my ale, my strength, my strength. Why have you entangled me? That's the same word as the word back in Genesis 22. Caught in the thicket. Oh god why am I entangled in this? And it's not as if the son didn't know brothers and sisters that the question was rhetorical because he knew the answer. He said in verse 3 but you're holy. And there's the answer. God entangled him there because he was holy and he couldn't get out because he knew brothers and sisters that the only way out for everybody was to manifest God perfectly and lay the foundation. Not only for a sacrifice of sin but a way of life that was acceptable to the father. Who can come to God without perfection? You're holy. And you know brothers and sisters it's extremely interesting that Jesus used the title of his father only once. And he used it in the garden of Gethsemane. Right in that garden he used this title. He never used before or after. When he prayed to his father he said oh righteous father. And he was saying that because he knew why God would have to forsake him. That at that moment of death upon the cross brothers and sisters it was not the spirit to be crucified it was the flesh. And momentarily God's spirit, God didn't forsake him. Verse 24 of the psalm says that. God personally did not forsake him but he felt that spirit flood out of him and he left him a mere man. On that cross because that's what's got to die. And the son knew that the father could not be related to that. You're holy. I know why I'm entangled here. Because you're holy. And it flooded out of him. He felt alone and he dreaded that moment. And we know brothers and sisters I could show you instead of the psalm is the one thing he dreaded was that moment when the father's spirit would leave him and left him there virtually alone in that sense to die as a man. And God had entangled him because of that. And in this psalm he says in verse 4 our fathers trusted in thee they trusted and you delivered them. And he would think back of Abraham when the angel said Abraham, Abraham stop. Our fathers trusted in thee and you delivered them but me he said. Verse 5 they cried unto thee and were delivered they trusted in thee were not confounded but I'm a worm and no man. And you can see brothers and sisters he's not going to be delivered. It isn't going to happen in his case. It's all the way here. And he's not going to have the privilege that the fathers have. And the reason is he knew over in verse 27 he was the reason all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord and all kindred to the nation shall worship thee. I will make thee a father of many nations. All kindreds of the nation shall worship thee. And so he knew why it was he could not be delivered. Isaac did not affect the deliverance of mankind brothers and sisters. He merely typified the one that would and he had to go all the way to do that. And in verse 30 and 31 I want you to notice how this psalm finishes. A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. And they shall come and declare his righteousness. Romans chapter 3 to declare his righteousness. That he might be just and the justifier of all them that believeth in Jesus. And so a seed is going to come to declare God's righteousness because it was declared upon that cross and that's why he was entangled there. That a seed would serve him. The seed of Abraham. And we read that verse again They shall come and declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born. Now just have a look at the last sentence. That he has done this. How about that? Because you have done this thing. Because he has done this. And so the son of God was entangled in our transgression. He bore our sin. Our sin. In his own body. He's entangled there. Because God is holy and the declaration of the righteousness of God has got to be made that flesh profits nothing. But the life was so great brothers and sisters it would affect so many people that the seed of Abraham would develop and not only among the Jews but in the kindreds of the nation. And that seed would come and declare God's glory and thank him for the manifestation of his righteousness in his son because he's done this. And that's how that psalm finishes. What a magnificent thing. And then finally in that 22nd chapter of Genesis when God had assured him of that promise brothers and sisters and told him in verse 17 that in blessing Abraham I will bless you. No question now brothers and sisters of any doubt or if buts or maybes. I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply those seeds as the stars of heaven. It was the dust of the earth before but now through one and him as good as dead came a seed says Paul as the stars of the heaven for multitude. And his seed would have a heavenly aspect about them now. Not an earthly aspect. And as the sand which is upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. Look at that transparent thing. The gate brothers and sisters. We sometimes say oh everybody says the gate. That's where the judges sat. Brothers and sisters everything happened in the gate. The gate of the city was the only exit and egress to the city because of the defense capability and therefore everything went through and out the gate. It was the place that represented the whole city in all your gates the Deuteronomy. There the public resorted to hear the news. There the audience was held with ambassadors and with kings. There was the public marketplace and there the judges sat. Everything happened in the gate. And so when it's mentioned the gate of his enemies it means brothers and sisters that Jesus will own and conquer the world. The gate of his enemy. And the last enemy is death. And Jesus said I am he that was dead and am alive and behold I have the keys to hell and death. That's the last one. You know brothers and sisters in the life of Samson when he came out of a harlot embrace in the city of Gars at midnight and rose up to realize his folly and when they had closed that gate against him and God despite his weakness dreadful weaknesses the spirit flooded back in him despite that weakness and he burst through that gate it says and he took that gate bars and all and he put it upon his shoulder and coming from Gaza on the sea coast he made his way up the slope of the Shafila over the low hills of the Shafila and began the steady climb up the Judean hills until he was going toward Hebron. And Hebron was that way and Samson lived that way. What on earth is he going to Hebron for? It's never mentioned in his life before or since. He had no relationship to Hebron. What's he doing carrying a gate up there? And as he went up there after midnight bursting through that gate and the long walk up that hill the sun would be coming up rather than just on the eastern side of the Jordan and as he rose up to the highest point of the Judean hills, Hebron, the sun would shine across there and you would see Siluad and the rose he mourned, this gigantic man with his gate upon his shoulder, the government shall be upon his shoulder and he stood there facing Hebron, Abraham city. And there was a graphic demonstration that he would possess the gate of his enemies. He had no cause to go anywhere near Hebron. And obviously Samson thought about this marvelous incident and enacted it on that day in a wonderful enacted parable. And so it was all over brothers and sisters. Here was the prefiguring of the son of God giving his life for the sins of the world. And we read finally in verse 19 of Genesis chapter 22. So Abraham returned under his young men and they rose up and went together, they went together to Beer Sheba, the well of the oath, the promises made under the father. And the father came back with his son and joined in company with the young men, seed of Abraham I suppose, typically, and they went together all of them to the well of the oath.