The Faith of Abram

               "March of Abraham" by Jozsef Molnar

I was reading about Abram, the usual passage in Genesis 12 where God tells him to go out from his home to the promised land. Here’s verses 1-7:

1 The LORD had said to Abram,
“Go from your country,
your people and your father’s household
to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Okay, this is a pretty familiar story: Abram leaves what he knows and heads out into the unknown, because God told him to.

And we all know this as the evidence of Abram’s great faith, that before he was called Abraham, before he received the son of the promise ( a full twenty-five years before that!), he had faith in God and obeyed His word. He heard God speak and he packed up and went straight to Canaan.

As Genesis 15:6 says:
Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness.

But backing up just a bit, to Genesis chapter 11, we see a little about Abram’s family: his father Terah and his brothers Nahor and Haran.

Their native land was Ur of the Chaledeans, but they weren’t actually there when Abram received this call from God.

As Genesis 11:31 says:
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

So it turns out they were already on their way to Canaan when Abram received this call from God. Except they had stopped along the way and settled somewhere in between Ur and Canaan.

Had Terah heard the same call from God that Abram had?

This makes me wonder what would have happened if Terah had actually gone all the way to Canaan. What if he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do? Would he have been considered the father of God’s chosen people, instead of Abraham?

But that wasn’t God’s plan, or else that’s what would have happened!

So maybe God intended for him to just get started in that direction, so that Abram would be ready to carry out the rest of the journey his father had begun when the time came?

There’s no way to know the answers to these questions, but what this story shows me is the mighty hand of God reaching across history in ways that we can’t understand.

The Bible tells us Terah was 205 years old when he died, and that Abram was 75 when he received his call. That’s a lot of years, from the perspective of a human lifespan!

But from God’s perspective, of course, it’s not much at all.

God is working in ways we can’t see, all the time.

I can imagine Terah’s disappointment in never reaching his goal and never seeing the results of his journey. I can imagine Abram’s frustration, in reaching the ripe old age of 99 before he ever saw evidence that God was going to do what He’d promised. And even then he only saw partial results.

As Hebrews 11:13 tells us, when speaking of Abraham and the forefathers of faith:
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.

So we never see the final fulfillment of God’s promises in our lifetimes. We never see the end of the story.

Because of course the story isn’t over! God’s still writing it.

For our part, all we can do is trust Him, that He will be faithful to keep His promises.

Short Verse, Long Message

Image from amazon.com

 John 11:35, “Jesus wept,” is the shortest verse in the Bible.

And Esther 8:9 is the longest verse, but that’s neither here nor there. (It has 78 words, in case you‘re wondering.)

This morning I read a devotional in the Upper Room about someone who said that John 11:35 was her favorite verse.

My first thought was, This is what a third-grader says to his Sunday school teacher when she asks him to memorize his favorite Bible verse. “Which is the shortest one, ma’am? Well, THAT’s my favorite!”

But this person actually preferred John 11:35 for its content, not its brevity. She said it showed how Jesus had compassion on people.

So I looked it up to see the context of this compassion.

This verse is smack in the middle of the Lazarus story. You know, the one where Jesus’ friend Lazarus is sick, Mary and Martha send for Jesus, and then Jesus dilly-dallies for a few days so that Lazarus dies before Jesus can get there. (verses 1-16)

Now we all know this story ends with Lazarus getting raised from the dead. But that isn’t until verse 44. So let’s try to get there in an orderly fashion, okay?

So, as the story goes on, Jesus arrives in Bethany (verse 17), talks to Martha (verse 21) and Mary (verse 32), and both of them say reproachfully, “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died.”

Obviously both of them were a little peeved at Him for not rushing over as soon as they called Him. Also both Mary and Martha are crying and wailing, very upset over their brother’s death.

And Jesus knew this. He knew how the sisters would be feeling before He even got there. Just like He already knew Lazarus was going to die, and He knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead.

But the interesting thing here is, Jesus didn’t get all la-di-da about it either. He didn’t say, “It’s okay; I already know everything will work out at the end of the story.” He didn’t yell, “Calm down people! Don’t you realize JESUS is standing here with you? What are you getting so worked up about?”

What DID He do? Okay, NOW we’re on verse 35: “Jesus wept.”

Even though he knew there was nothing to cry about, He cried, out of compassion for Mary and Martha.

Even though He understood Lazarus was going to be alive again in five minutes, He wept with His friends because they were weeping.

Even though He realized the sisters’ grief was meaningless in the grand scheme of things and completely temporary, He grieved, because their grief was so real to them in that moment.

That’s the true meaning of compassion, modeled for us by Jesus Himself.

“Jesus wept.”

Let God Arise!

Image from Kol Simcha CD

Today’s Scripture is Psalm 68:1-3.

1 Let God arise,
Let His enemies be scattered;
Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.
2 As smoke is driven away,
So drive them away;
As wax melts before the fire,
So let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
3 But let the righteous be glad;
Let them rejoice before God;
Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly.

It’s always a little problematic for me to interpret passages about the “enemies” of God.

I mean, we’re always taught that God loves everyone, right?

1st John 4:8 says “God is love,” and Romans 2:11 tells us, “There is no partiality with God.” 2nd Peter 3:9 says God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” This message is repeated several times in the New Testament.

Sounds to me like no one is God’s enemy.

However, I know that in the Old Testament, pretty much everyone except the Israelites were the enemies of God. But even then, there are instances in which He showed mercy on those who were not His chosen people.

For example, He sent Jonah to preach to Nineveh, possibly the worst of the idol-worshipping cities of the day. And then He accepted their sincere repentance!

And of course, God sent His Son Jesus to die for all the world, Gentiles included, ultimately showing that He does not consider any of us enemies, but wants to bring us into relationship with Him.

So what does this Psalm above mean for us in this post-New-Testament world?

Although I don’t believe any PERSON to be the enemy of God--not even Osama Bin Laden!--He does have enemies in this world.

Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The enemies of God are not people; they are the spiritual things that separate us from Him.

And according to this Psalm, God will arise, and these lesser things--His enemies--will be scattered! They will blow away and melt before Him! (Can I get an AMEN?)

The image in verse three reminded me of a sculpture class I once took, where we learned about a process called “lost-wax casting.”

Lost wax casting is pretty involved according to wikipedia. It’s used for metal sculptures, such as bronze or aluminum. I learned a simplified version--it was a beginning class.

The basic idea is: you begin with a wax model of the sculpture you intend to make, which you encase into a fire-proof mold. (We used tightly packed sand.)

Image from wikipedia

Then you pour the liquid metal (over a thousand degrees Centigrade!) onto the wax, which will melt away, leaving behind a metal image of the thing you originally made out of wax.


When I thought of this, the spiritual implications came to me immediately.

I mean, isn’t that what we ultimately want as Christians? To have the sinful and temporal (waxen) parts of us to be lost, while we are reformed in the perfect and eternal (metal) image of Christ?

Although that doesn’t sound particularly COMFORTABLE, I know this should be my goal. So my prayer today is that I will allow God to pour Himself into me, melting away all the useless wax inside.

Let God arise, and let all that is not of Him be scattered!

"Little Ballerina of Fourteen Years," bronze by Edgar Degas