RE-NAMING ABRAM

The re-naming of Abram to Abraham makes three lessons on the Covenant! Is it really that big of a deal? Absolutely! From Genesis 12 to Revelation 22 the entire rest of the story unpacks out of that Covenant. Remember the Old and New Covenants would more accurately name the two major parts of the Bible instead of the Old and New Testaments.

Genesis 12 tells of the call of Abram.
Genesis 15 tells of the ritual establishment of the Covenant.
Genesis 17 tells us the sign of the covenant, circumcision, and the new covenant names.
More about the last in a minute.

First let's look at Chapter 16, where Abram and Sarai become impatient and try to help God. The Lord has promised them at least one child in order to have descendants that number, but they are crowding 100! How can the Lord possibly fulfill his promise? After our second son required two transfusions as an infant, we wanted another child. Since at that time another child would have at least that many transfusions, we opted to adopt. Ancient Palestine had no adoption agencies, but surrogate parenthood was legal. Sarai suggested Abram have a child by one of her servants named Hagar, a much younger woman. He did and named the child Ismael and thereby created a multitude of problems.

Note this event, because it plays a big role later on. The couples' faith faltered here, and that failure led directly to what otherwise is a puzzling sacrifice of Isaac.

As in the Garden of Eden, God was again on the spot to tell the couple they were out of line. He repeated his intent that their own son would inherit.

Now let's look at today's scripture verses:

The Lord identifies Himself as El Shadai. “El” can mean God all by itself, perhaps short for Elohim, the word in Genesis 1:1. Shadai could mean several things, but the majority of scholars prefer “The Mountain One,” or the God of the Mountains. Remember, this is the God who later revealed Himself as law-giver at Mt Sinai.
The challenge came to live “before My face” or in My presence and be blameless. God reminds Abram He is watching the man and expecting transparency and integrity. How open do you want your life to be? Even though they asked for it, I sometimes feel sorry for the politicians running for office. Their opponents diligently research their lives to find and expose any hidden scandals, and if they don't find enough, many will make up some. How would you stand that scrutiny?

Verse 2 repeats the covenant the Lord has been promising, including the promise of a multitude of descendants.

In verse 5 The Lord seals the promise by changing his name to Abraham, which He interprets as “father of a multitude.”The Lord promises to continue to be the God of his descendants. Then note in verse 8 Yahweh promises his descendants will own the land where Abraham is not living – and all of Canaan. Here is the root of the claim of the nation of Israel in its fight against the Palestinians today – or at least the Bible believers among them.

The lesson skips, but read the next verses anyway. As a sign of the covenant, God requires all the men to be circumcised. At 8 days old, every boy would be circumcised, including any slaves born in their house.

Verse 17: Abraham fell to the ground and prostrated himself before the Lord. But he also giggled. The idea of that elderly couple having a child was ridiculous. So much so, that Abraham asked God whether he could count Ishmael as his heir. God was clear and simple – NO. The Lord did agree to make a great nation from Ishmael's descendants as well, but the Covenant would follow through Sarah's child, Isaac.

Remember, all things are possible with God. He will do things His way. Walk with Him, follow Him, obey Him, and you will find the richest life possible through His plans.

                                                         COVENANT VISION

By now, you have figured the early OT world was very different from ours. No letup today, even by that ancient standard. In Genesis 15 Abram has a vision – the only vision in Genesis and one of only two in the early part of the OT. Many scholars like to point to this vision as the origin of God's covenant with Abraham. I prefer chapter 12, but you can take your pick.

The ancients sometimes spoke of “cutting a covenant.” Perhaps a ceremony similar to the one in 15 is what they meant. In his vision Abram was instructed to cut three animals in half and leave a path between the halves. When Abram did this (It's not clear when the vision stops and starts again), at sundown he fell into a deep sleep that invoked a terror on him in great darkness. Out of the darkness, God reassured Abram that the covenant was that his biological son (as yet unborn or even conceived) would be his heir. Then out of the darkness, he could see a furnace and a flaming torch that moved between the split animals. Apparently these fires represented the Lord's binding covenant with Abraham and his descendants.

Now let's back up and take it from the top, beginning with verse 1.

The word of the Lord came... Later, we'd expect this phrase in the prophets. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. But it is otherwise rare indeed in the Torah, the Law of Moses. Remember this is the root of the story, the origin of the People of God. Yahweh Himself spoke. He had spoken worlds into existence and now He speaks Israel into being!

The Word came in a vision. Visions too are rare throughout the Bible, but even fewer in the Law. Dreams, not so much, but visions – rare. No, I don't know the difference.”Fear not...” He begins. Remember how the first words of angels always seem to be “fear not”? Medieval art portrays angels as looking rather like females with bird wings or little naked babies. In the Bible, the word seraphim relates to a serpent, perhaps fiery snakes, and cherub is a composite human/animal mixture like those Ezekel saw. The sphinx is a kind of cherub. Whether the angel of the Lord or Yahweh Himself, a theophany, a God-appearance should scare the daylights out of you. Remember Isaiah 6: Woe is me for I am  undone, for my eyes have seen the King! We can indeed sing What a Friend We Have in Jesus, but only if we also sing Holy, Holy, Holy.

The Lord then declares He will be Abram's protector and He will make a great nation out of his seed. But the not-quite-yet patriarch replied he had no seed. The present heir was one of his slaves. The Lord then reassures him that his heir would come from his loins, have his DNA. (Perhaps He should have mentioned Sara at that point and saved a lot of grief?) Then the Lord showed him the night sky with all the stars to illustrate how many descendants he will one day have.

Verse 6 – Abram believed in Yahweh, and He counted it to him as righteousness. The Hebrew has the preposition “in” before the Lord, which some translations don't. The “in” means commitment. Abram entered the covenant God offered. A life changing moment. “Counted is an accounting term.” His commitment to the Lord made him as if he were righteous. Paul magnified this verse, underlined it, and may well have screamed it when he preached. Our righteousness comes by commitment to the Lord, now as revealed in Christ.

Although Abram was committed to Yahweh, he still had problems understanding how God would carry out this promise. “How shall I know?” and the Lord created the ceremony I described at the top of this essay. Throughout the Bible, the heroes of the faith question God, argue with God, even complain to God. If He is the way, the TRUTH, and the life, we can feel free to seek the truth without fear of where it will take us. I note that God always satisfies their search, and He leads them successfully in completing His will.                                                                            

ABRAHAM

Chapter 12

We have reached a pivot point in Genesis and the Bible. We have closed out the Pre-History and move into a new section that can be dated, or at least rationally discussed dates. I personally like around 1600 BC, but many opt for 1900. But the pivot is not merely from pre-history to dated history. It is from all humanity to the family that eventually became Israel. It is about the fundamental idea of Scripture: the Covenant.

The Bible proclaims the Lord as a covenant-making God. In today's world, we think of today's categories, like omnipotent and omniscient, all powerful and all knowing. The Bible writers would agree, but that's not their primary categories. The Covenant is one. God makes covenants with his chosen people. In that society covenants that have been discovered are always from higher to lower powers. A king will offer a covenant to a people. If the people accept, both are bound by that covenant. That's how the people of that day would have read Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament. Later all Israel would enter covenant with Yahweh at Mount Sinai, and He would also offer a covenant to the House of David. Indeed, our ancestors chose poorly when they named the Old and New Testaments. Much better would have been Old Covenant and New Covenant. Testament today only means a will to most people.

The end of Chapter 11 has Abram's father moving his family from Iraq into Turkey, from Ur to Haran. Ur was an ancient civilization from which we got the Code of Hammurabi, possibly one of two or three oldest law codes we have. Haran was poised above Palestine, but well north.

Yahweh appears to Abram and offers a powerful covenant. “Look all around you – this land, your relatives, your parents and their home. I call you to leave it and follow where I lead you. If you do, your family of descendants will become a great nation, and that will be a blessing to you. Further, the whole world can be blessed through that nation descending from you.”

And Abraham does.

We take that for granted now. It's in the Bible, and we've read it many times since we were children. But suppose God came to you now and said, “I want you for missionary service?” How would you react? I have known many adults who have gone on short-term mission trips to all sorts of countries to work with established missionaries there. My own church sends youth and college groups both to the Caribbean and the US to serve during the summer and school breaks. Are you open to even simple ministries locally. I and my class are involved in a local ministry a lady in her late 50's began from scratch five years ago. We now see members of that group joining the church. What might the Lord say to you?

But consider those in “full-time” missionary service. They spend their lives in what at first is a foreign country, but later becomes home. I have a friend who raised his children in Jordan, later moved to Morocco, and completed his work in Turkey. Another pair of friends are currently in Kenya and think of it as home before they do Louisiana. How would you feel with that kind of call coming on your life or your children's lives? That's what Abram did, with no though of coming home on vacation.

Abraham took his nephew Lot, his wife Sarai, and their family and travelled south into Canaan. Genesis tells us he camped near Shechem, then further south to Bethel, and eventually during a drought into Egypt. Along the way, an angel appeared and invited him to look around. All the land he saw would one day belong to his descendants. Remember at this point he was already an old man and had no children. And the Lord promises him so many descendants they will form a nation!

Between Bethel and Ai (which means “ruin”) Abram built an altar. The altar would have been a simple crude stone affair, and it implies sacrifice, probably of a sheep. The altar was an act of devotion and thanksgiving. Planting that altar may also be compared to staking out a flag on the moon or other new territory. Henceforth we will know this land as God's land!

As a pastor I was occasionally invited to dedicate a home or a business to the Lord. From the beginning those families wanted to stake out their lives and their business as belonging to God.

How involved is He in your life?

THE  TOWER OF BABEL
Genesis 11

This story caps off the “Pre-history section, as I have called it. When we encounter Abraham in the next chapter, we hit a period where we can discuss dates. But another purpose of chapters 1-11 is to set up why God called Abraham.

In short, sin had avalanched. From Adam and Eve disobeying by eathing the fruit, sin got worse as one of their sons killed the other. Then we read of Lamech's bragging to his wife that he had killed a man for merely wounding him and will avenge himself seventy times seven. Finally, before the flood, humans had become so wicked and sunk so low we read, “every imagination of their hearts were only evil continually.” Thus the flood.  But even after the flood, evil reemerged, and in Noah's family of all places. Of course, it spread from there.

Finally, we come to the Tower story, which we will examine in more detail in a minute. But this one is different. In most of the previous stories, God has offered mercy with punishment. Banned from the garden, Adam and Eve received fur coats. Doomed to wander endlessly, God protected Cain with a warning mark. Even in flooding the world, the Lord provided an Ark.  And after the Flood came a rainbow. But after the Tower there is punishment with no sign of mercy. Yet all the rest of the Old Testament is that sign. Next week's lesson could be called, “Abraham to the Rescue!”

Now let's look at the story.

Men traveled in the East. Often in the OT the East is away from God, or outside of the Lord's territory. Remember that from Palestine, East is desert, wasteland, perhaps a source of the original chaos coming back in.

A group of people decided to become THE people, the most outstanding on earth. Of the seven deadly sins the church created in the middle ages, Pride was number one. Indeed, many maintain pride is the root of all sin, placing oneself above God's will and commands. Pride certainly led them to build a remarkable tower.

Diversion: Buildings seem important to humanity as signs of achievement. The pyramids of Egypt, the Colosseum at Rome, the Parthenon. In our day a presidential contender keeps pointing to the Trump Tower and all the other buildings with his name on them. The wealthy oil state of Dubai constructed the tallest building in the world, not so different from Babel!

For some reason, the pyramid shape affected the ancient world. In Mexico and other countries of Central and South America we find various types of pyramids. These often seem to represent mountains, lifting priests closer to the heavens to offer sacrifice to their gods. Egyptian pyramids were tombs for the Pharaohs and other royalty. The tower at Babel was likely a pyramid similar to others found by archaeologists in that general area. They were “step-pyramids,” built in levels with a “step-like” rise between each level. They may have been meant to represent a mountain to climb to heaven literally. (Remember Jacob's ladder, or stairway to heaven. He may have slept beside the ruins of such a tower.) These towers or pyramids were called ziggurats or ziqqurats.

Another possibility that some suggest was the tower was part of a wall that surrounded the city. This would be a watchtower that would make an approaching army visible for miles, the the tower would be an impressive defensive structure. The base of such a tower was found at Jericho. Ashes within it were dated by radio-carbon to 9000 BC!

“Come let us build...” Here is the idea of unity and cooperation. This is a worthy project for us as a people. If we pitch in together, we can do this. Certainly cooperation is a need for all great accomplishments. But remember, a noble effort can be undermined by a wicked motive.

Now the Lord comes down to see what His creatures are doing. They are building to the heavens, but they are so far from the divine realm that God has to stoop over to see what they think they are doing. His coming down, underlines the futility of their pride.

The Lord's statement is certainly cynical as He speaks of nothing being impossible for them. Of course, even without the limitations He was to impose, man's finiteness limits fundamentally our possibilities.

So their language is disturbed and scattered. For the Christian Pentecost reversed the scattering to unite the followers. Think about the importance of language. We wait eagerly for babies to talk. In training for a career, the lingo of the job becomes distinctive. A mechanic uses different words than a nurse. Think how electronics have added to our vocabulary. And remember lost people may not understand church talk!