확대 l 축소

<2018.12> The Life of a Christian as Revealed through the Life of Abraham

2005 North American Bible Study Meeting
December 25, 2005, Afternoon
Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. Then He said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.”  Genesis 15:5-7
Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, 
called to be an apostle, 
separated to the gospel of God
which He promised before through His prophets 
in the Holy Scriptures, 
concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, 
and declared to be the Son of God 
with power according to the Spirit of holiness, 
by the resurrection from the dead.
Romans 1:1-4
Abraham Went to Canaan, the Land that God Showed Him
In Luke chapter 11, it says, 
That the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation.  verses 50-51 
When it comes to prophets, it is easy for us to think only of the obvious people like Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. Yet, Jesus said that the generation of Jews who lived in His day would bear the responsibility for the blood of all the prophets that had been shed from the foundation of the world. 
It is true that the prophets were people who wrote down the Scriptures by inspiration of God, as the Bible says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), but let’s consider this matter a little more deeply. After man had sinned by disobeying God’s word and eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God established a plan. He designated a nation and its history. This was after Adam failed; the Church had already been predestined before that. A prophet was a person who was used to assist in the progression of events and show us what would come about in the future. 
Abel offered a lamb as a sacrifice to the Lord, was killed by his older brother, and the voice of his blood cried out to God from the ground, and yet he appears as a prophet in the Bible. Not a single word from Abel is recorded in the Bible, yet even so, Jesus Himself included the blood of Abel in the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world.
When we look into the history of the prophets which started in this way, in other words, the course of history that God designated in order that the mistake of the Adam might be rectified, we can see that it is directly related to the matter of our own personal sins, and to the age in which we are now living. In addition, we can also see it is also related to each of us and the nations to which we belong. Beginning with Abel, there was Seth, Abel’s younger brother who was born to take his place. Then Seth’s genealogy, continues to Methuselah, and then Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. As we follow the genealogy of Shem, we come to Eber and his two sons, Peleg and Joktan, and the genealogy continues through the descendants of Peleg. In the genealogy of Peleg we come to Terah, and his son Abraham. This brings us to chapter 12 of Genesis. 
Let’s take a look at Genesis chapter 11 from verse 27.
This is the genealogy of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. But Sarai was barren; she had no child. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.  verses 27-32 
In Romans chapter 1 verse 2, it says, “the gospel … which He promised before through His prophets.” Where did the ancestor of these prophets—the progenitor of the nation of the Israel—have his beginnings? From this passage, we can see that he set out from a region east of what is now Israel—from a region in present-day Iraq, which is referred to as Babylon in the Bible. This is also the region in which the tower of Babel had been built, and the book of Revelation tells us that it is also the place where a terrible incident is destined to happen in the future. This history is continually repeating itself.
After Noah’s flood, the population of the earth spread out through Noah’s three sons. Then one man—a descendant of Shem who was living in the East—was called by God. God said to him, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). So he set off, traveling from east to west, from Babylon to Haran—in the region of present-day Syria—and then on to the land of Canaan. 
Abraham set off from the East to the West. We need to remember that at that time, he was called Abram, not Abraham. Having been called, he went to the land that God showed him—the land of Canaan—but what kind of place was this? This is the first point we need to consider.
After Noah left the ark, he planted a vineyard and made wine. One day, he drank some of the wine, became intoxicated, and in a naked state, he lay down in his tent and fell asleep. Noah’s son, Ham, saw this and went and told his brothers. So as not to see their father’s nakedness, Shem and Japheth walked backwards as they went to cover him up. Strange to say, when Noah found out what his younger son had done he cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, and not Ham himself. Later, the descendants of Canaan moved to the regions to the south and west of Israel and settled in Egypt and other parts of the African continent. 
This incident very much resembles what happened to Adam. After Adam sinned in that he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he immediately realized that he was naked. Similarly, Ham saw his father’s nakedness. 
As we are reading the Bible, we find that time and time again, a matter related in one passage will appear again in a later passage. These illustrations and repetitions foreshadow events that will occur later. We are told about this aspect of the history of Israel through the heart of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, where he wrote, “that which has been is what will be” (1:9). After Adam sinned, God cursed the ground for his sake (see Genesis 3:17) and all Adam’s descendants were born sinners. Similarly, it was Ham’s son, Canaan, that was cursed, even though it was Ham who had seen his father’s nakedness.
After being cursed in this way, Canaan had many descendants, and various Canaanite tribes lived in the land that is now Israel. Then God called one man who lived far away from there. The Israelites were God’s chosen people, but the land to which their forefather was called was not a blessed land, but a cursed one. It was the complete opposite. 
Through Abraham’s first journey, which we read about in Genesis chapters 11 and 12, we have a preview of the course of events that would later take place within the history of Israel, as well as the fate of the Messiah who would be born into that nation.
Let’s turn to Genesis chapter 12 verse 1.
Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.”
This is a reflection of Jesus coming to this earth. The world of God the Father is beyond time and space. It is a place that no one can enter in the flesh and neither can we see it with our human eyes. The Bible says, “Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?” (Proverbs 30:4). It was from this heaven that God the Father sent His Son to this earth with all the authority of the Father and in the express image of His person (see Hebrews 1:3).
The land that God showed Abraham was a cursed land, filled with people who had been cursed. God created this world and then He created man. The Adam fell into sin in that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and through this sinner, the population increased and this world became full of sin. It was to this place that God the Father told God the Son to go: “to a land that I will show you.” 
In the book of Psalms and in the New Testament, it says, “I come to do the will of the Father” (see Psalms 40:7-8, John 4:34). The Father made a plan to save us from our sinful fate, and this plan of salvation is to be seen within the history of a chosen nation, that is, through the history of the Israel. 
Among the Israel, particularly the Israel people living today, there are not many who are aware, as individuals of the significance of the nation into which they have been born or the fate of their nation. This is because the Jewish people today do not acknowledge Jesus. There are some Jewish individuals who acknowledge Jesus and have been born again through the blood of Jesus, but as a nation, the majority of the people who make up that nation do not know anything about Jesus. They know nothing about the process that brought about Jesus’ birth into this world or His life. Even though they read the writings of the prophets, they are not aware that these contain prophecies regarding Jesus’ birth, His life, His resurrection, and the fact that the One who rose from the dead in this way will some day come back to this land. These matters have not been revealed to them yet. The Bible says, they “keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive” (Isaiah 6:9).
God’s heart’s desire to save mankind who has fallen into sin is revealed in these few words: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.” The Bible says that “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Man was made in a form capable of receiving God’s love, but everyone of us fell into sin through the mistake of one man, Adam. These words are an expression of the love of God the Father for all those who were in Adam, for all of mankind. In the Bible, this love is shown to us through the life of this one individual, Abraham. 
Abraham departed from the East and went toward the West. In the book of Exodus, we find that when the tabernacle was built, the Most Holy Place was at the west end of the tabernacle and the entrance at the east end (see chapter 26). Also, the Passover lamb was to be slaughtered at twilight (see Exodus 12:6, Numbers 9:11, Numbers 28:8). The Bible tells us that even though it was broad daylight when Jesus was crucified, it suddenly became dark (see Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44). Everything in the Bible definitely corresponds one to another. This program is amazingly precise; it is not like when you look back on your life and notice that everything just happened to fall into place. 
The Bible covers a very long history. It even tells us about eternity, a time concept that we simply are not able to comprehend. As we study Genesis chapter 1, we can see that the realms of time and space within which we are living are a shadow of something that already existed within the realm of what we refer to as eternity. It is a limited period of time, but from our individual standpoint, it is an extremely long period of time that covers thousands of years. Within that time period, all these events took place in preparation for this One person’s life, with everything preplanned, the things that went before fitting in with those that came later. This would not have been possible through the power of man. 
This is why you cannot help but acknowledge the Bible if you carefully examine the history of the Israelites. Studying the Jews alone can lead us to acknowledge that the Bible is true. We study the Jews in depth in order to be able to correctly discern and understand the Bible. 
Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans and stayed in a place called Haran. Abraham’s father, Terah, died there. Simply put, it was Abraham’s former self that died. Abraham completely severed himself from everything related to his flesh, and he set off for the land of Canaan. He went toward the land of Canaan with a new purpose. This is an image of Jesus who did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it (see Matthew 5:17).
Amongst the Israel people in Old Testament times, there were many prophets, priests and kings. At times they broke the law and at times they kept it, and many customs and traditions of the elders were passed down. Yet, going beyond all of that, the Son of God came to this earth to bring us the life of God contained in the blood of Jesus. The Bible refers to this Jesus as the second Adam (see 1 Corinthians 15:45, 47). 
Similarly, in Haran, Abraham severed all ties with his father who had given him life, and then he entered the land of Canaan childless. This image of Abraham is very similar to the course of the history of Israel and the process by which Jesus would be born. 
Egypt, a Shadow of the World  
Genesis chapter 11 verse 30 tells us that “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Yet chapter 12 verse 2 continues with words of promise, saying, “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.” This promise does not seem to make sense.
In Genesis chapter 17, we find that after Abraham arrived in the land of Canaan, his name was changed from Abram to Abraham. Before his name was changed, he had a son named Ishmael, but he could not be Abraham’s heir. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah. As they received these new names, they were also given a promise which was fulfilled the following year; Isaac was born. This is directly related to the doctrine of the Bible.
If perhaps you are thinking you have lived your life knowing the Bible and, in your own way, observing the laws and commands it contains, try taking a look at yourself in the light of these words: “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” You may think you have lived your life believing and serving God, but think about whether or not there has been any life in what you have done.
During Old Testament times, many sacrifices were offered up and there were many prophets, but when it comes to giving life, that is, the life of God, to man, there has only ever been one Man who was capable of breathing into us this life of God. That Man was Jesus who was born in the land of Israel as the Old Testament came to an end, and four hundred years after the words of the prophets had come to a halt. He was the only one who could give us life. This is why believing in the people who appear in the Old Testament—people like Moses, David, and Solomon—while overlooking Jesus means missing out on the fundamental life of God. Similarly, think about how Abraham, although advanced in years, did not have a child until after he arrived in the land of Canaan.
“I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land.  Genesis 12:2-6
The people who were living in the land were the descendants of Canaan; they present an image of mankind, of us who are born sinners. Yet, if you think about it, what crime did the people of Canaan commit? They were born ignorant of the sin that had been committed by their ancestor, Canaan. They did not know who had or had not seen the nakedness of Noah as he lay there. They were born knowing nothing about such matters and before they themselves were capable of making any decisions. In short, they were born as sinners without a choice. 
And what about us? There is no one who is born knowing he is a sinner, or that he is a descendant of Adam. Everyone is just born, without any choice in the matter. As a result, God had to present us with a way of salvation for mankind. This is because He is a righteous God. 
Just as sin entered the world through one person by the name of Adam, the Canaanites were born in that land, and were simply living there and developing their tribal society. Yet, these people were used in the Bible in order to show us the journeys of Abraham, the
정회원으로 가입하시면 전체기사와 사진(동영상)을 보실수 있습니다.

확대 l 축소