“I dare to say that as long as Believers remain ignorant of the message—the merit and unconditional nature of the promises of God to Abraham and his posterity—they will never be clear in their understanding of the Bible . . .
“God
made it clear that throughout the Old Testament He would be dealing with Israel
(the Jewish people, the Hebrews, i.e., the physical descendants of Abraham) on
the basis of that great Abrahamic Covenant.”
*****
When
Abraham goes into the land of Canaan and sees it for the first time, “the stage
for the conflict of the ages” is set.
In
Genesis 6, it was the whole human race that was the object of the satanic policy of evil
because God’s purpose was to have a “seed of the woman” come out of the human
race.
But in
Genesis 12 the seed line’s reduced down to the seed of Abraham and it becomes
the point of attack. That line results in the royal seed of David, and when Jesus Christ
shows up in the genetic line, He is the object of the Adversary’s ire.
*****
“When
God called Abraham out, he wasn’t just calling out another man to do another
job; He was calling somebody special who was going to change the course of all
of human history,” explains Jordan.
“God
was changing His dealings with men in a very special way and there’s something
doctrinally going on with Abraham; when you’re studying Abraham, you’re not
just studying Daniel in the Lion’s den, or David fighting Goliath.
"It’s not
just another Bible story; this is something that radically changes God’s
dealings with men.
“If
you’re ever going to understand the Word of God you’ve got to understand what God
does and establishes with Abraham.
“Without
understanding Abraham and the seed, and the nation that comes from him, you'll never understand God’s Word and what will happen is what Peter told people
in his day (II Peter 3)--the Word of God will become destructive in your life.
"It will actually become something where he says the unlearned 'twist Scripture to their own destruction.' It will cause your Christian life to be an absolute frustration to you."
"It will actually become something where he says the unlearned 'twist Scripture to their own destruction.' It will cause your Christian life to be an absolute frustration to you."
*****
Lot
was Abraham’s nephew and the last one of Abraham’s kindred to hang on.
Once Abraham finally separates himself from Lot, though, and he’s out all by himself
with wife Sarah, the Lord comes and renews the promise, showing
Abraham the land He’s going to give him.
“He
shows Abraham the inheritance he’s going to have and tells him, ‘Go out and
walk around in it and get to know it. Go out and enjoy it and see what it’s
like,’ ” says Jordan. “Later, in Genesis 15, God actually makes a covenant; a
written contractual agreement to give Abraham. First, there’s the promise, then
there’s the details of the promise, and then finally there’s the covenant.”
*****
(Editor’s
note: Below are a couple of old articles posted to this site that further expound
on the topic):
Unbelievably,
the Koran says Abraham took his son Ishmael, not Isaac, for the sacrifice. Just
as bad, it says Abraham was thrown into a fire by Nimrod when Abraham wasn’t
even born until centuries after Nimrod’s death!
The
events of the life of Nimrod, grandson of Ham, are recorded in Genesis 10,
where it says he established an empire in Shinar and then spread his rule
northward along the Tigris over Assyria.
“Nimrod took over that whole Mesopotamian
basin and all of that area we call Iraq, and Palestine, and Jordan, and Israel,
and Saudi Arabia—all of that area,” confirms Jordan. “You see, though, the
descendants of Ham (after the Flood) were to go south, and the descendants of
Japheth to go up, and the descendants of Shem out that way (to the east). You
say, ‘But who was to take this middle ground?’ God had a people for that.
“God
raised them up; that’s what he’s doing with Abraham! You see, there’s a satanic
policy of evil designed against God’s purpose in that part of the land and it’s
a satanic policy to contest the occupancy of the Promised Land. Satan’s policy
was to occupy the land in advance of Abraham coming into it in order to contest
Abraham’s seed taking it over.”
“Satan
understood from the very beginning the importance of that piece of real estate
over there—that part of the earth from the edge of Egypt over to the Persian
Gulf, up to the apex over there; what we call that the Fertile Crescent.”
*****
In
Genesis 12:1, God appears to Abraham in Mesopotamia and utters the famous
lines, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy
father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.”
As
Jordan explains, “That’s the first time God has appeared in Genesis since the
Garden of Eden. He appears personally to Abraham to call him out. It was at a
time when the world deserved absolutely nothing but judgment and wrath.
“Do
you know another time in your Bible where the world deserved nothing but wrath
and judgment and the Lord Jesus Christ appears (from heaven) and calls out one
man to send salvation and blessing to all men?
“In
Acts 7, the whole world is guilty before God and the nation Israel strikes out
and sends the message back, ‘We’ll not have this man reign over us,’ and
Stephen looks up and sees Christ standing at the ‘right hand of the Father.’
“Stephen
sees Jesus (ready) to come back and pour His wrath out, and just as the time is
ripe in Acts 7, a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus—a blasphemer against God
who had joined the world’s rebellion against the Savior—is made Paul the
Apostle and through him forms a new agency—the Church the Body of Christ.
“You have to come all
the way over to Acts to get to another crisis point like you have in Genesis 12
where God chooses one man out to send salvation to the nations. It’s a
wonderful parallel there.”
*****
Stephen actually makes reference to Abraham at the beginning of Acts 7 when he pleads with the Jews ready to kill him, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,
[3] And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.
[4] Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.”
What
is often not realized about Abraham is that when God deals with him in Ur of
the Chaldees and tells him to flee, Abraham is a sophisticated city-dweller in
the midst of a tremendously advanced civilization.
Jordan
explains, “We get the idea that all
these cities back there in time past—well, they were all headhunters and
cave-dwellers. That just isn’t true, though. Ur of the Chaldees has been
extensively excavated and they had running water, indoor plumbing and all kind
of things in their homes—things we only had in this country as a general rule
everywhere in the last 80 years. And yet in 2,000 B.C., Ur was a
prosperous, advanced technological city and Abraham was urbane and he leaves
there to go across the Arabian dessert to Palestine.”
*****
It
was only after the death of his father, Terah, that Abraham, then 75 years old,
“took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that
they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went
forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.”
(Gen. 12:5)
Jordan
says, “It took death to sever the natural link that bound Abraham to Haran (the
name actually means ‘barren’ or ‘parts’) and Abraham was never going to go into
the fullness of the blessings God had for him, and He was never going to go in
and occupy and have the land until he had completely severed his ties with his
family back there.
“Note that when God
first told Abraham to go out, he didn’t do that. His obedience was very partial
and it wasn’t complete obedience. It wasn’t something where he just did exactly
what God said. God gave him about three things to do and he did one of them and
two of them he didn’t do.
“God
is separating Israel away and God is waiting until Abraham is separated alone—out
here by himself—and Abraham had to take that step of faith to step out and be
what God called him to be in order to look for the program to operate. That’s
what circumcision is about!
“Later
on, when God gives Abraham the covenant, He gives him the sign of circumcision,
which is the seal of righteousness Abraham had by faith. Circumcision in your
Bible speaks to death—death of the flesh; death to man’s ability to produce a
work that God would accept.”
*****
“Calling
one of us to, ‘Move to Chicago!’ well, God wouldn’t do that to anybody,” says
Jordan in an old study from Hebrews, “But He did to Abram. He took Abraham and
said, ‘Get out of thy kindred from thy house to a land that I’ll show you,’ but
didn’t tell him where it was going to be.
“Abraham’s
over in that land some time before God shows him the perimeters of it. Now God
took him and walked him around in the land that later on He’s going to give him
and his seed forever. But when Abraham first started out he didn’t know what
was what and where was what and what was where or anything else.
“Abraham
just took God at His Word in spite the lack of details involved. Isaiah 51
says, 1] Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek
the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit
whence ye are digged.
[2] Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
[3] For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
[2] Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
[3] For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
“That
hole and that rock . . . it was a pit of idolatry that God reached down in
there and saw a man and called him out of.
“God
called him, underline the next word—ALONE. God took Abraham and set him apart
from all the other families of the earth and all the other kindred of the earth
and set him alone.
“He
sends him off, saying, ‘I’m going to separate you from everybody else and I’m
going to put you over in that land over there and you’re going to be MINE!’ You
know, you think about loneliness—whew! That’s something.
“He
doesn’t say, ‘C’mon, let’s go down here and I’m going to make you a part of a
great big influential movement of people.’ He said,
‘C’mon, Abraham, I’m going to sit you out here where there isn’t anybody else
but just you and me.’
"Hebrews
11:9 says, ‘By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of
the same promise.’
“By faith, he didn’t only obey in going out, but he sojourned in the land of promise. By the way, that’s what that land ought to be called. The land over there in Palestine is not the Holy Land. Ezekiel says it will be holy one day but it will be holy because God is going to dwell in it and sanctify it and He’s going to put His presence in it.
“Abraham
sojourned in the land and they lived in tents and tabernacles. He was by faith
saying, ‘This is MY country! This is MY land! God gave me this!’
“God
said, ‘Don’t worry about the details. Forget all the details. Just trust me. Go
out here and enjoy it!’ So he does. Well, how can he do that?
“Hebrews
11:10 says, ‘For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God.’
“Abraham
says, ‘I’m not going to be satisfied until I get the city God’s going to build.
I’m not going to build me a city. I’m going to let God build it! He said He
would. I’m going to trust Him.’ ”
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