Abram faced a
significant life-crisis. The heir so long promised him was not forthcoming and
his eyes were fading. Life was passing him by, his dreams with it.
He proposed his trusty servant Eliezer, as a possible heir. That is not unfair at all.
The untold story of Eliezer is remarkable, yet he is reduced to a supporting
role. Such enigmatic souls have always stood by the
saints, but God
looked beyond Eliezer, whose name means “helper in the court”. He confirmed His intent to give Abram and Sarai a son.
Don’t tell me, show me
God told Abram to
look to the stars, which were given as signs in the heavens. “You will be as the stars for multitude and as the sands on the seashore”. It
is an interesting metaphor, for the Jews were more sand, an homogeneous nation, whilst the church is more clustered, comprising heterogeneous
cultures and scattered peoples.
Abram justly
asked God to make that official and Abram was then led to lay out five
sacrificial elements, a three year old heifer, ram and goat, a turtle dove and
a young pigeon.
He laid them out
on the altar and pared the three animals. They were symbolic of the Abrahamic,
Mosaic and Messianic covenants, which culminated in the sacrifice of the Ram. The
two birds convey a sense of the Holy Spirit (the Dove) and the Gospel (the
Pigeon, messenger of truth).
Then he waited
for the sun to set, whilst fending away the birds that tried to claim his
offering. Once again we sense the dark shadow of the raven going to and fro,
seeking its prey and dogging the vulnerabilities of the righteous. What a
contrast to the two birds of peace below.
Abram fell into
a deep sleep as a horror of darkness fell over him to reveal the four
hundred and thirty years reserved for Abram’s descendants, in the crucible of
Egypt. A burning lamp and smoking furnace, the spirit and glory of God, then walked
between the pared halves of Abram’s offering,
to effectively covenant with Himself on Abram’s behalf.
That covenant
was grasped by Abram as meaning, “do the same to me if I do not fulfill this”. Because of sin and weakness of the flesh, the covenant did fail. It
was never meant to remedy sin (Galatians), so He fulfilled His promise to Abram
by hanging on a cross.
If not Plan A, how about Plan B?
Even so, Sarai
was not satisfied. Eleven years had passed since they left Haran, yet the agony
of barrenness and the implied or spoken jests of the other women in their
community, still tore at her soul. She offered up her servant, Hagar and
advised Abram to sire a son through her.
It cost Abram
thirteen years of waiting. A son was promised and would happen, but all was on hold until Abram had raised his illegitimate son.
When Ishmael reached majority age, Sarai demanded that he and Hagar, which they
did.
Yet God, ever
faithful, reserved a blessing for Ishmael, else he would surely have died. He
was a challenge in the tents of Abram and remained a hostile rival to the
promised seed of Abram, resulting in one of the most enduring dilemmas of the
Jewish nation.
When Abram was
ninety-nine, twenty-four years after he left Haran, he circumcised his entire
household as his seal to a covenant made on his behalf. It was more of a
signature to a testament, hence the term “Old Testament”.
A version upgrade
In Verse 17:1 God uses the name for Almighty, El Shaddai. The Hebrew root is Shadayim, meaning breasts, Dai meaning to heap benefits and El, the prefix for God, as in God Almighty. It implies "all sufficiency" and suggests a multi-breasted God, an idea mimicked by Artemis or Diana.
By the time Moses heard the name it had evolved, through progressive revelation, into a profoundly holy name that venerated the almighty God.
Then God renamed
him as Abraham and Sarai became Sarah to confirm them respectively, as the
father and mother of nations. Note how God takes slow, but steady steps towards
the fulfillment of His promises, revealing His great attention to detail.
Nothing is rushed. It is too sacred.
Faith, our
signature of acceptance of the covenant of God, also invokes a testament
endowed by the death of God’s only son, when God above covenanted with God
below to ensure an everlasting covenant of grace. We contribute nothing more
than that.
In chapter 18,
three men appeared outside their tents. Yet Abram addressed them collectively
as “My Lord”. The opening verse actually says it clearer, as in “The Lord
appeared to Abraham on the plains of Mamre”. It hints at the singular-plural
nature of God.
Abraham sensed a
great moment and was anxious to detain them. He had waited so long that he dared not let them go. He rushed to prepare a
meal and to do all the right things, but Sarah hid inside her tent, bemused by
her husband’s unerring zeal.
They/He then
assured him that Sarah would bear a son nine months hence. The matter
was sealed, the waiting was over. She laughed, they gently rebuked her, but the promise stood. God would give a one-hundred year old couple
the desire of their heart.
What followed,
digresses from the poignancy of the moment, so allow me some licence. The
strangers slept and refreshed their souls after their feast, as Sarah took her
husband into her tent, bathed him in her tears and urged him to be as urgent
about making it so.
In the afterglow
she clung to her wrinkled old man and whispered, “it is done my
love, it is done. Our wait is over”. He kissed the bride of his youth and
held to her until the light faded on their greatest day. Then, as men are want
to do, he went for a short walk.
A watershed moment
The three men
stood with him as he gazed over the valley below. What followed was a rare instance of a man negotiating justice with God. Abraham successfully
pleaded for the ten souls in Lot’s household against the coming judgment of
Sodom and Gomorrah.
If you cannot
discern God’s romantic heart, His sense of occasion and His deep desire to not
just do right but to do it the right way, you have a hard heart. His tender
love is so poignantly revealed through these stories.
From Abraham arose
two streams – the Jewish people and heirs of the promise that would culminate
with the emergence of our savior, and the Arabs who would contend for the same
land in the ensuing years. Nothing symbolizes that more than the dome of the
rock.
Yet there is
more, for Abram was the headwaters of the world’s three primary religions and
the entire monotheistic worldview. That makes him one of the most significant
figures of history, despite being an ageing plains farmer in a disparate age.
(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com
