"To Abraham and His Seed" 11       This is an edited version of the lecture titled, "To Abraham and His Seed," which was preached on November 10, 2007.       Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God.   1Corinthians 10:32       God who examines and controls the minuteAnd Abraham journeyed from there to the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, "She is my sister." And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, "Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife." But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, "Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? "Did he not say to me, "She is my sister'? And she, even she herself said, "He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this."  And God said to him in a dream, "Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her. "Now therefore, restore the man's wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours." So Abimelech rose early in the morning, called all his servants, and told all these things in their hearing; and the men were very much afraid. And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I offended you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done." Then Abimelech said to Abraham, "What did you have in view, that you have done this thing?" And Abraham said, "Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife. "But indeed she is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. "And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, which I said to her, "This is your kindness that you should do for me: in every place, wherever we go, say of me, "He is my brother."'" Then Abimelech took sheep, oxen, and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham; and he restored Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, "See, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you." Then to Sarah he said, "Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; indeed this vindicates you before all who are with you and before everybody." Thus she was rebuked. So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants. Then they bore children; for the LORD had closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.  (Genesis 20:1-18)   We are likely to overlook Genesis chapters 20 and 21, simply wondering, "How could  this happen?" We have examined earlier, through Abraham's life and some events that he experienced that were recorded in Genesis, the purpose God has for the world and how He has managed history to achieve this purpose. And through Abraham's household we also thought about how history would spread out in the future.One day Abraham departed Ur of the Chaldeans for Canaan where God commanded him to go. There he was given a promise from God (see Genesis 12:7). God carries out a plan through Abraham and the process of the fulfillment of this plan is declared in the Bible. God promised Abraham that He would make Abraham a great nation and give him all the land he could see (see Genesis 12:2, 13:17). We have examined, through Genesis and other parts of the Bible that further explain Genesis, why God called Abraham out from the land and let him go through all the events to achieve His will. We also saw what happened to Abraham's family and how God revealed history through the progression of the history of Abraham's household. Two great streams of history in the Bible are shown: Israel as the image of the Church and as the Jews in physical term. We have studied that God prepared a certain history to set right the problem that occurred when the man who God created sinned and turned away from God. We have also studied about Cain and Abel, and Seth who was born after Abel died, as written in Genesis chapter 4 along with the genealogy of Seth, and about Noah who appears later on in Genesis chapter 5. And we read in Genesis chapters 10 and 11 that many nations came into being in the world through Noah's three sons, and how God carries out His plans through the lineage of Seth among the three sons.God created the world and controls history. However, reflecting on the events in the Bible, we can see that God has His hand in even the minutest things. We may think it strange when we hear that the head of a large company mentions only issues related to small dealerships or minor retail stores while remaining silent about the financial management of billion of dollars. God seems to be the same way if we read the Bible. When we read the Bible, we think of God as the great One. God says in the Bible that He fills heaven and earth (see Jeremiah 23:24). How large must God be to fill the heaven and earth? We cannot but simply wonder how great God is who fills not only the heaven and the earth, but also the tremendous universe that spans out beyond the atmosphere. We can see, through several events in the Bible, that this God takes care of the smallest things, apart from the spiritual things that are invisible, which we cannot see with the naked eye; that is, the things that we can explain in the term of physical properties.There are many Christians in the world who have the wrong idea about God. They think God is just great and perfect, and stays somewhere far away from us in the heaven or way down below in the earth. But if you read the Bible carefully, you will find that God is working on a small history of a family. The nation Israel is nothing but a small country compared to other huge countries. Before the nation of Israel was formed, the genealogy of Seth continued, and by the time of Noah a huge number of children must have been born. A Biblical scholar calculated that the population of the world during Noah's time could have been as large as ten billion. There must have been a great number of people in the time of Noah, since at that time people lived as long as 900 years, and there were no traffic accidents and no fatal diseases, either.  While it is true that even then this earth was gradually being drawn into the great curse, I also think that a great number of people must have been living in the world due to the long life span. Amidst this large number of people and events God called out a family and led their ways as recorded in the Bible. This is a common theme found throughout the Bible. This is very strange. The book of Numbers mentions the number of the tribes. In First and Second Kings, and First and Second Chronicles, we read about a tremendous number of Israelites who go into battle. Eventually the Israelites multiplied this much. However, when we examine the Bible from the beginning to the end, we notice two attributes of God: God of the great God who controls the vast universe and the earth in it where we live, and God of the God who works in places invisible to the eyes of man. How God has led history is revealed from Genesis, and these attributes of God appear before us continuously. After the Flood a huge number of nations spread out around the world through Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Among them God calls out a man named Abraham in the lineage of Shem. He called out Abraham from the southeastern area of what is today Iraq into the land of Canaan. The Bible deals with such seemingly minute affairs as these.Those who understand history this way can understand when Jesus said, "Enter by the narrow gate" (Matthew 7:13). Why did Jesus say this? And He also said, "You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:21)? Why did He say this, too? He means that before coming to this world in human form, God had been working to save the spirits of mankind. In other words, He had been working to achieve this purpose. Jesus explained this in a few words.    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of AbrahamTerah's household left Ur of the Chaldeans. Of the several sons of Terah just Abraham took his wife and a nephew of his with him to Canaan. This is the beginning of the history of Israel. God planned this long ago; this is the starting point of the history of Israel as we know it. In Canaan God shows Abraham something vast. He said to him, "Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you" (Genesis 13:17), and "Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; (Genesis 22:17). What we can understand through the Bible is this: God's great promises are being carried out in the tiniest of places. It is not as if Jesus happened to be born in the midst of wars that God drew Israel and made them fight against their neighboring countries. The God as referred to by the so-called Christians under the guise of religion is very different from the God who is working through the Bible. People are to explain God in several ways with the same Bible. There is a reason why I am talking about this. When we read the Bible, we pass over many parts of the Bible without understanding them well. T

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