God had a message for
Abraham, which basically meant, "Get outta here! You don't belong here.
I've got something better in store for you." And we can derive from
Hebrews 11 that this also applies to every child of God by faith since
Abraham. He has a better place for us, and this world is not our home.
God often requires of His
men and women of faith to have a vision for things that no one else can
see, an invisible goal that defies natural reasoning, and to get there,
one has to follow Him step by step. According to Hebrews 11,
that invisible goal has been the same for each man and woman of God
throughout history: "a City whose Builder and Maker is God," (verse
10), of which we find a detailed description in the final 2 chapters of
the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22.
True people of faith are not
patriots of any earthly country, but they consider their true Home to
be somewhere else, not of this world.
There are even a few things
that we can learn from Abraham along the line of "things you shouldn't
do," such as not mentioning to the king of Egypt that Sarai was not
only his half-sister, but also his wife, but we assume that the Lord
sometimes even uses our "mistakes" to bring about His will, or at least
to teach us some valuable lessons.
Abraham was an honest man, a
brave man and a just man. When his nephew Lot wanted to part from him,
he left the choice of terrain that was to be Lot's and his people's up
to him. He wasn't bossy or "me-first" at all. He took the meek and
humble road, and even came for Lot's rescue when he got in trouble.
But the most outstanding
lesson we can learn from Abraham is definitely the tale of Isaac, his
son of promise who was to be the heir of his title, the second in the
lineage of faith, who seemed not to want to be born for a long time. In
fact he tarried so long in coming, that his mother didn't really
believe anymore that he was going to come at all, when she was in her
90s. We find the account of 2 angels and probably the Lord Himself
visiting Abraham and repeating the promise that he was going to have
another son, beside Ishmael, whom he had had with his wife's made
Hagar, on his wife's insistence. She probably figured, "Just in case
the Lord's promise won't come true anymore..." She laughed when the
Lord announced the birth of Isaac, and it was probably unheard of, that
a 90 year old woman would get pregnant. After all, this wasn't like the
good old days before the flood anymore.
But she did get pregnant.
And she did have a son; a miracle son. Maybe they named him Isaac
("laughter") because Sarah laughed at the Lord when He announced his
birth, just to show that "he who laughs last, laughs best..."
But Isaac was also to bring
some tears to old Abraham's eyes. Apparently there was a lot of
scheming going on, on Hagar's part, since she figured Ishmael was just
as rightful a son and heir to Abraham as Isaac. But he just wasn't the
son of promise. He was rather Sarah's "contingency plan," just in case
the Lord was only kidding about that son business...
So, eventually, Abraham had
to send Hagar and her (and his) son Ishmael off into the desert, which
probably wasn't easy for good-hearted Abe. But the real clinch is yet
to come. it is something that many people don't understand, and cannot
forgive God for. They figure how could a true and righteous God of Love
be so cruel to demand such a thing?
One fine day, God asks
Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice unto Him, the same way he would
offer a sheep or a goat... Human sacrifice was not part of Abraham's
religion, and this was indeed a very unorthodox thing for God to do. He
asked Abraham to kill the very son of promise, the miracle son, the
supposed forefather of countless millions. Had God gone bananas,
finally?
Abraham certainly must have
started to doubt his "link" with the Almighty. But then, everything he
had told him before had always worked out and turned out eventually; it
always made sense in the end.
So, he did it. Abraham was
nuts enough to trust God, that He knew what He was doing in asking of
him the unthinkable... the worst thing anyone could ever ask of a man
who loved his only son the way Abraham did.
Well, we all know what
happened. Abraham took Isaac up that mountain, prepared the altar and
the fire and all... he was really going to do it... and when it really
turned out that Abraham was going to do it, he was going to get that
far for his faith, defying all reason, all moral, and that he was
willing to give up the one he loved most in the world for his God, the
Lord
When we consider that the
most important commandment is to love God with all our hearts minds and
souls, in other words, above all, and that in this commandment all the
laws and prophets are fulfilled, as Jesus said (Matthew 22:26-40),
then we can understand why God put Abraham through this test which
would make him "the father of faith," and why God chose him as the
patriarch of His own people, both - His people in the flesh of the
past, as well as His people in the spirit, of the present.
I think we can certainly teach our children that Abraham was one cool dude.
