- 2008 North American Bible Conference, December 28, 2008 Thus says the LORD: ‘If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.’  Jeremiah 31:37 Abraham, a Man Chosen by GodWe have already examined the love of God as expressed in the Bible through the history of one nation buy the name of Israel. This love is explained through the way in which God governed the history of Israel and the process by which He trained Israelite. We have also seen how God created Adam, and then caused a deep sleep to come upon him, took one of his ribs and formed it into the woman; Adam said that this woman was, “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23); and the words that God said to them when they sinned. We have also taken a look at how God clothed them in garments of skins before driving them out of the garden of Eden and we have seen through the Bible that events such as these will occur again in the future. The ultimate goal in these things being recorded in the Bible and their being heard and read by us is for us to be able, through the Bible, to perceive an image of ourselves living on this earth with the life contained in the blood within our flesh. This is the reason for God’s words and His works being recorded in the Bible. Previously, we discussed God’s ultimate purpose in giving the law to the Israelites. We are able to read the New Testament in its completed form after Jesus Christ had fulfilled all the requirements of the law and been crucified, and we consider the law from this viewpoint, but I asked what the purpose and significance of the law was at the time when God gave it to the Israelites, they recorded it, and it was their duty to observe it. I told you that God gave the law to the Israelites to distinguish them as His own people chosen from amongst all the nations of the world.As we read the Bible, it often happens that we do not think very deeply about the people of Old Testament times and the lives they led. Yet, the Bible tells us that when Adam and Eve encountered a new fate as a result of their sin, God spoke to them of the Seed of the woman and immediately made and clothed them in tunics of skin. Hidden within the words that tell us that He clothed them in tunics of skin, lies the blood that was shed by an animal. Then in the next chapter, blood appears for the first time in the Bible in the incident in which Abel’s blood was shed. Also, the Bible reveals the ways in which God governed history in order for the Seed of woman to be born. Yet it is difficult to see this just by reading a few chapters of Genesis. The law had served to distinguish the Israelites from the rest of the world, but even before the law was given, God continued the task of separating them from the line of the genealogy of the rest of mankind. At the time of the flood, God separated Noah’s family from the sinners of the world. As God commanded Noah to build an ark, He explained one by one all the details concerning the size and shape of it. When He said these words, it was not clear precisely what was about to happen, but when Noah acted according to God’s words and the flood came, once the ark was completed, the Bible gives a detailed account of how God saved Noah in the midst of such calamity. Such events may appear simply to be incidents that occurred in the course of history, but they are the same as the events through which we as individuals and mankind as a whole must pass. The Bible also describes the lives of Noah’s three sons after the flood. Through these three sons, nations began to spread out across the world. We read about the descendants of Ham, the descendants of Japheth and the descendants of Shem, but it was Shem that God separated out. Then, as the generations of Shem’s descendants began to unfold, God separated out one of them?a man by the name of Peleg?and from among his descendants, God separated out Terah. Then, finally, Abraham, the son of Terah, was chosen.The way in which God continually separated this one family from amongst the various nations of this world is quite similar to the flow of the blood within our bodies. The blood that is pumped from the heart flows through the aorta into the arteries, then into the arterioles and then into the capillaries. There the blood supplies nutrients and oxygen to the cells of the body and thus the life of the flesh is maintained.Like the flow of the blood as it proceeds towards the capillaries?which are not unlike the narrow gate?as history unfolded, God had His eye on one son by the name of Abraham and He called him in order to separate out the Israelites from amongst the various nations of the world. This is the way in which God looks upon the world, upon history, and upon our physical bodies. This would be absolutely impossible to accomplish through the human mind, human capability or the human concept of time. This is why we need to approach such passages from the Bible with simplicity of mind. We cannot help but acknowledge that our own thoughts, our greed, and our stubbornness are irrelevant before the Bible. This task of separating out continues right through to Genesis chapter 11. Then we read how Abraham was living in a place called Ur of the Chaldeans, and next, in Genesis chapter 12, God spoke to Abraham, saying, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you” (verse 1). First God told Adam not to eat the fruit, then He told Noah to build an ark, and then He told Abraham to go to the land that He would show him. There are many words recorded in the Old Testament, there are many laws and many other things for us to listen to, so it is possible that we do not consider these things as being of much importance. We may simply think, “Is it so amazing that God appeared and spoke to people who lived in biblical times? Isn’t this the way things were done in Old Testament times?” Yet, there is a gap in time of over two thousand years between Adam and Abraham. During this extremely long period of time, there were only a few occasions on which God appeared before man and gave commands. When the Bible says that God spoke to Noah, it means that He distinguished Noah from the rest of the world. When God spoke to Abraham and called him, this, too, signifies that He distinguished Abraham from the rest of the world. The law was given to the Israelites in the same vein, and this is also true of us; we, too, are distinguished from the rest of the world when, living in the age of the New Testament, we discover Jesus Christ and are forgiven for our sins through the power of His precious blood. Moreover, this also takes place in our bodies and we cannot help but acknowledge that our lives are maintained as a result of this. Led by God, Abraham walked from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan. Imagine this scene. It is hundreds of kilometers from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan. Today, it would only take a couple of hours by plane, but at that time, when there were not even any cars, God had Abraham walk that huge distance. What would have been the thoughts in the heart of Abraham as he walked the road in the direction of the land of Canaan? In the letter to the Hebrews it says, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (11:8). Just as Noah followed God’s instructions and built something visible that was called the ark, when Abraham was told to go, he obeyed the command and went. Then the incidents that Abraham experienced after he entered the land of Canaan in this way are set out in the Bible. He even went down to Egypt to escape a famine and then returned to the land of Canaan. But there was something that caused Abraham great concern. He was over ninety years old and his wife, Sarah, was also very old even though she was about ten years younger than he was, but they had no children. God had said to Abraham, “But one who will come from your own body shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4), but it was a long time after He had made this promise that a son and heir was born to Abraham. There was a time gap.Abraham went to Egypt and back, he fought battles and he went through all kinds of struggles in the course of his life, but it would not be true to say that these events are entirely unrelated to us. From a human point of view, we may think it would have been great if God had let the child be born immediately since He had promised the blessing to Abraham anyway. Calculating from a human point of view, we might see it in this way. The extraordinary journey of Abraham’s life until he actually had his son, Isaac, is recorded in the Bible, but his family suffered tremendously until this child was born. At one time, Abraham’s nephew Lot was captured by enemy forces, and Abraham went out to battle with his servants in order to rescue his nephew. The Bible also tells us that as Abraham was returning from the battle, he met a king by the name of Melchizedek and gave him a tithe of all that he had taken. This event occurred before the law had been given. Then when God told Abraham that He would give him an heir, Abraham believed what He said. The Bible says of this, “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Offer Your Son, Your Only Son Whom you Love, as a Burnt OfferingAfter all the hardships, Sarah conceived regardless of the deadness of her womb (see Romans 4:19), and Isaac was born. The next event after Isaac’s birth was when God told Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering. At that time, God used the word, “love”. Let’s take a look at Genesis chapter 22 from verse 1. “Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.””  Genesis 22:1-2 Now, let’s think about this. Even when people talk about their children, love is concealed within their words. When God told Abraham to offer up his son, Isaac, He was referring to Abraham’s beloved son, Isaac, but He was also expressing His love toward God the Son, who was with God the Father from before the foundation of the world and upon whom God the Father poured out all His love.Jesus talks about this love continually in John’s Gospel. The expressions, “For You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24) and, “That the love with which You loved Me may be in them” (John 17:26), ring in our ears like very beautiful music. Since God said to Abraham about Isaac, “Your son, your only son, whom you love,” we tend to think only of what was in Abraham’s heart, but these words contain God’s love that would be expressed when He gave to the world His own Son whom He loved more than anything and who was One with Him. This love is on an entirely different level from that of man. When we consider the words, “your son, your only son, whom you love,” we should not simply think of this in terms of our own feelings towards a son or the feelings of Abraham towards Isaac. We need to be aware that these words go far beyond that; in essence, they express the love of God, the love of God the Father towards God the Son?His only begotten Son?and His love for man, who was created in the image and likeness of God and yet fell as he turned his back on God and became a sinner. This is not a love that is manifest only through thoughts and feelings. This is a love that is expressed in action in that God brought His Son into this world in the body of a man, and caused Him to shed His blood and die. The love of which the Bible speaks has its foundation in the fact that “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” God set these words in motion in order to express this love. The Bible says that it is the blood that makes atonement for sins. When these words were realized in the body of the one Man, Jesus Christ, this is what God acknowledges as true love. When we discovered this love, we received a great blessing that distinguished us from the rest world.God tested Abraham in this way and, at the time, Abraham made no objections as all; he just took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac’s shoulders, and then took him to the mountain. This is just the same image as that of Jesus Christ as He carried His cross on His back and, with His flesh torn, went up the hill called Golgotha. In Second Corinthians chapter 5 it says, “God was in Christ … for He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (verses 19, 21) It says that God was in Christ.Isaac carried the wood of the burnt offering on his shoulders, and went with his father Abraham up Mount Moriah. There, Abraham bound Isaac and stretched out his hand to slay his son, but just as he was about to take this action, an angel appeared and stopped him. In this way, Abraham’s faith was assessed. In the letter to the Hebrews, it says, “Concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead” (11:19). God definitely promised Abraham, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17), and Abraham did not hesitate to act when he offered Isaac as a burnt sacrifice. Isaac was as good as dead, as it says in the Bible, “Concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from which he also received him in a figurative sense” (Hebrews 11:19).This brings us to think about the hope of our flesh. It is as Jesus Christ said, after He died on the cross, and then rose from the dead in a new body: “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). Through these words there flows the shadow of His resurrection when He rose from the dead in a perfect body complete with bones and flesh. In the course of his life, Abraham went through trials that were both distressing and seemingly insurmountable. After he went through these trials, God bestowed upon him a tremendous blessing. But let’s take a careful look at this. Abraham had no children and he had already given up on this issue. Yet, in the midst of these difficulties, God appeared to him and said, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Genesis 15:1), and Abram responded, “Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer

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