Travel back in time to witness the momentous calling of Abraham, the progenitor of faith for both Judaism and Christianity. Listen as we examine the blessings and promises that God bestowed upon him and explore the revolutionary idea that faith, not works or lineage, is the key to being a child of Abraham. Unearth the deeper connections between the gospel preached to Abraham and its expansion to all nations through faith.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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What in the world is God doing? And what does religion have to do with it? I know it may sound a little strange to ask what religion has to do with God, but asking strange questions, that’s what teachers do. The fact is that man is very prolific at religion building, but very often his religions have very little to do with what God is doing. So recently I’ve been rummaging around in the book of Genesis looking for clues as to what God’s doing, because I have the strange feeling that he runs a little deeper than we imagine that he does. But first, a question. Who is this we’re dealing with? His name is not God, you know. God is what he is, not who he is. Now, words are peculiar. They mean different things. I mean the same word means different things. You can have words that sound the same and spell differently that mean different things, but you can have words that are absolutely the same. They sound the same, spell the same, look the same, and mean totally different things. And the only way you can tell the difference is by the context. Unfortunately, God, as a word, happens to be one of those words. It’s been used so much, made its way so deeply into our language in so many different ways that you have to be careful to be sure what you’re talking about. Now, the same thing is true in the Bible. The word God, as we translate it into English, comes from the Hebrew El or Elohim, which is the plural form of it. And in both cases, it means God, exactly the same thing. And the Hebrews used the word Elohim the same way we use the word God. You can say you’re making a god out of money. They’d use the same word. If you’d say you’re worshiping a false god, they’d use the same word that we would use in that circumstance. But, having said all that, God, with a capital G, is what we’re talking about. The God, that one who is above all others, who is supreme. That’s what we mean in this context when we talk about God. So, it turns out that the name he was known by in this age was El Shaddai, a Hebrew expression that translates, God Almighty. Now later, when Moses asks him, What is your name? He speaks to Moses in Hebrew and says, And God said to Moses, I am that I am. And he said, This is what you’re to say to the children of Israel when they ask you, Who sent you? Who is this God? He says, You say this, I am has sent me unto you. Later, God will say to Moses, I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by my name, Jehovah, was I not known to them. Now, in Hebrew, Jehovah, or better, Yehovah, is a variant of I am. It’s that simple. What is interesting about this to me is that the phrase, I am, is one idea that translates into any language without confusion. I am is the first person singular present tense of the verb to be. And if you’ve ever studied a foreign language, you realize that’s the first verb you learn. And it’s the first verb and the most peculiar verb and the one with the most odd different conjugations and expressions in it. The reason being is because it is used more than any other verb in the language. It is because it is descriptive of God in the sense that says, I am means that I exist. Really, in a way, that says it all about God. He doesn’t say, I used to exist or I will exist. He says, I exist. And that’s that. And because it is descriptive and because it can be translated in any language without losing one shred of the meaning of the word, it’s a very useful way of describing God. Think of it, by the way. Do you think you could get through a day without saying, I am God? It is probably the most common expression in your vocabulary and in your speech. And as it happens, used in the sense of a name, it is the name of God. Now, why is this important? Well, it’s important because we should know that God is personal and not impersonal. He is not just a vague force in the universe. He is not just something that is sort of generally present in the trees and the grass and the air and the birds that fly in the air. He is personal. He is someone. He has a name. He sits someplace. He goes. He comes. He sees or he doesn’t see. He hears or he refuses to hear. And what may be most important of all, he’s a person and he relates. By that I mean he relates to people. He can enter into a relationship with you and you can enter into a relationship with him. And that brings me back to the book of Genesis. In the 12th chapter, the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country. Go away from your kindred, leave your father’s house, and go to a land that I’m going to show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you, and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Now, this is a startling statement that he has made here. In a sense, this is where religion began. This is not to say that Noah didn’t worship God. He did. But the two great religions we know, Judaism and Christianity, both trace back to the relationship God established with a man named Abram right here, a man later to be called Abraham. And what this passage tells us is that God made a choice among men and entered into a relationship with this man. And it’s a relationship that involved blessings, promises, duties, which we will learn probably more about Abraham as time goes by, and a prophecy that he would eventually become a great nation of and that all families of the earth would somehow, someway, be blessed through Abraham. Now, you might wonder how that could be. Well, the Apostle Paul, in writing to the Galatians, referred back to this statement that was made to Abraham and draws a fascinating connection between the relationship that God had with Abraham, one man, and a relationship that was going to extend far and wide later. In Galatians 3, in verse 1, Paul says this, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth, crucified? This only would I learn of you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? In Galatia, a terrible controversy had arisen over whether or not a man can make himself righteous by the works that he does. Can you, by keeping the law, by obeying the law, by doing works, by following rituals and ceremonies and forums and what have you, can you somehow move yourself into a right relationship with God? You who have been a sinner, can you turn your own life around without help? And Paul says, are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now going to be made perfect by the flesh? You’re going to do it yourself, right? Your works. Have you suffered so many things in vain, if it is yet in vain? He therefore, he says, that ministers to you the Spirit and works miracles among you. Do you think that he does it by the works of the law or the hearing of faith? Do you think that he goes out and kills an animal? Do you think he does some ceremony, some ritual, and that then gives him the right to perform the miracle? No. He does it by faith. And then he draws this comparison. Even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, don’t you know that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham? What he is saying is that those who are of the faith, and he means the faith of Jesus Christ, are the children of Abraham. And Paul elsewhere will say, it doesn’t matter what blood runs in your veins. It’s not a question of DNA, or it’s not a question of inheritance. It’s a question of faith. And if you are of the faith, you’re a child of Abraham. I don’t care what color you are. and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel in Abraham, saying, In you shall all nations be blessed. Paul says that this statement, I will bless you, I will bless them that bless you, I will curse him that curses you, and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed. Paul says that this is the gospel. a gospel that was first, in a primitive form, preached through Abraham. And he was foreseeing that God would justify, as Paul calls it here rather indelicately, the heathen through faith. He means the entire world, and that’s why God said to Abraham, In you shall all families of the earth be blessed, not just the Israelites and not just the Jews. God would not ultimately allow himself to be put into a box and made the national God of one people. More about this when I come back in a moment.
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Just how great is God? Really? How much power is controlled by the creator of the universe? And what does he plan to do with it? To find out, request your free CD titled, How Great Thou Art. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
SPEAKER 01 :
So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Thus says the Apostle Paul. And realizing then that he preached the gospel to Abraham when he said that in you, that is in your seed, all nations, all peoples, all families of the earth will be blessed. Well, Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Lot was his nephew. And Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran to go into the land of Canaan. And Abraham took Sarah his wife, Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance they had gathered, all the souls they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came. Sarah, by the way, was ten years younger than Abram. She was sixty-five, and he was seventy-five, and here they are starting off a whole new life in a whole new land. And they took everything they had, all their substance and all the people, servants and what have you, that were with them, and they went into the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan, the land of the son of Ham, the son who was cursed by Noah. Later, we’ll learn that what we call Hebrew, the Hebrew language is called in the Bible, the lip of Canaan. It’s never called Hebrew in the Old Testament. It’s referred to as the language of the land of Canaan. Abraham, when he came out of Haran, did not know God by his Hebrew name, I suppose because he didn’t speak what we know as the Hebrew language. In fact, there is no evidence that what we call Hebrew even existed until nearly 500 years later. By the time Moses came to Canaan to live in exile, what we call Hebrew, the language of Canaan, was probably the language of his father-in-law, Jethro. So here these people come into the land of Canaan, where the Canaanites dwelt, a people who had been cursed. And Abram passed through the land of the place of Sychim, which is the plain of Morah. The Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, Unto your seed will I give this land. Now that’s interesting. He comes marching into the land of the Canaanites. God says, look around. I’m going to give this land here to your children. Well, Abraham thought that was a good deal, and he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Now, the curse originally pronounced on Canaan at this time becomes important. Note that God says the Canaanite was in the land. He does not say that the land was theirs because he had it in escrow for Abram. Well, Abram removed from there to a mountain on the east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent, having Bethel, which means house of God, on the west, and that is a much later name for the town. He had Hai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Now this is religion. It’s another way of saying, actually, that Abraham called to Jehovah or called upon Jehovah. His altar that he built provided a focal point for his worship, a place where he could come and meet with God. Down through time immemorial, man has felt somehow inside of himself the need to have a place to worship. Now, Jesus, when he encountered a Samaritan woman, she had this idea of place. She said, now you Jews see that Jerusalem is the place to worship God, but we worship God in this mountain. And Jesus told her, well, woman, the time is coming when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall you worship God, but you shall worship God in spirit and in truth. So the place may not be that important. But it was to Abraham, and that place of worship is a part of what we call religion. For Abraham, it was an altar where he made a sacrifice to God. And Abraham journeyed on, going still toward the south. And there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt to live there because, well, there wasn’t anything to eat in Canaan, so Egypt looked pretty good to him. It came to pass when he was come near to Egypt, he said to Sarah his wife, Now look, I know that you are a good-looking woman. Mind you, Sarah is at least 65 at this time, somewhat past it. Therefore, it shall come to pass when the Egyptians see you, they’re going to say, this is his wife, and they’ll kill me, but they will save you alive because they will want you. I can only conclude that Sarah was in pretty good shape for a woman of nearly 70. In fact, judging from what he said, she was in pretty good shape for a woman of any age. So he said to Sarah, I pray you tell them you’re my sister, so that it may be well with me for your sake, and my soul shall live because of you. In other words, both of us will benefit from this. I’ll get to stay alive, and we’ll be able to stay together. So when it came to pass, when Abram was coming to Egypt, sure enough, the Egyptians saw this woman that she was really good looking. The princes of Pharaoh saw her, and they recommended her before Pharaoh, and believe it or not, he took her into his house. And since he thought Abram was her brother, well, he treated Abram real well. Abram had sheep and oxen and he-asses and men-servants and maid-servants and she-asses and camels, and I presume he had all this stuff because Pharaoh said, hey, this is the brother of a woman I kind of like. But God wasn’t particularly happy with this. He plagued Pharaoh in his house, seriously, because Sarah was there. And finally, somehow, Pharaoh tumbled to what all this meant, and he called Abram and said, What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister, so I might have taken her to me to wife? Now take your wife and go away. And Pharaoh commanded his men that they should send him away, his wife, and all that he has. What’s interesting about this is that even in Egypt at this point in time, lying was perceived to be a wrong thing to do. Pharaoh was very disturbed with Abraham because Abraham had lied to him. He said, my sister. Well, she was his half-sister, but that doesn’t count. The truth is she was his wife, and also Pharaoh realized that it was wrong for him to have another man’s wife. We’ve got two commandments involved. Not to lie and not to commit adultery. Both of which, long time before Moses, were recognized to be sin. So, the famine being over, Abram left Egypt. He and his wife and all of his stuff and his nephew Lot went with him. And he went back up into the land. Abram was very rich in cattle and silver and gold. And he went on his journey from the south back up to Bethel, right to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and Hai, and right to the place where he had built an altar. And there, once again, he called on the name of the Lord. He worshipped Jehovah, called upon his name, met him there, prayed, and offered sacrifice. When Abraham turned back into the land along with Lot, by this time, not only was he fairly rich, he had a lot of people with him. And they began to be a burden on the land. In fact, there were arguments going on between Lot and his servants and the Canaanites and their servants over wells, water. And Abraham realized there’s just too much pressure on the land right here. So he got together with Lot and he said, look, I’ll tell you what. Here’s a dividing line. We’ll draw it in here, and you have a choice. Whichever one of these you take, I’ll go to the other one, and we won’t burden down the land. We won’t overgraze. We won’t overuse the wells. Okay, said Lot, and he looked up at his eyes, and he said, I like the plain of Jordan. It’s well watered everywhere, and this is, by the way, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, which changed things rather a lot. He said it was even like the garden of the Lord and like the land of Egypt in a certain one of the best areas. So Lot chose all the plain of Jordan, and he journeyed east, and they separated from one another. Abram then dwelt in the land of Canaan. Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain. And he pitched his tent toward Sodom. Sodom, the town that has entered into our language. The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. They were truly rotten. We’re going to come back to the men of Sodom. But for right now, God got together once again with Abraham and made him another promise. He said, get up and walk. I want you to walk through the land, through the length of it and the breadth of it, because I’m going to give it to you, every bit of it. So Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre in Hebron, and he built there an altar to the Lord. Wherever Abraham was to live, he created a place of worship, a place of meeting, as it were. And his place was at Hebron. Hebron, which, if you’re paying attention, is in the news almost every week out of Israel. More about Abraham when I come back after this break.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
There were in this part of the world a large number of small, petty, warring kingdoms that existed. In fact, these were really city-states. They weren’t nations as we would call them today, and they were at war with one another most of the time. Well, it happened along about this time that a group of them got together and fought against the king of Sodom, where Lot lived. And they won. They won big time. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their victuals and went their way. But they made one mistake. They also took Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who dwelt in Sodom, and they took all of his goods and all of his people, and they took off back toward their own city. By the way, I’m in Genesis 14, verse 12. So one that escaped came and told Abram what had happened. And when he heard that Lot had been taken captive and all of his family, he armed his trained servants born in his house.
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318.
SPEAKER 01 :
You want to know how big this guy is? He’s got so many servants that out of those that had been born in his household, he could muster 318 trained fighting men. Abraham was one rich man. So he gathered his gang together, and he pursued them all the way to Dan. And he divided his troops against them by night, and he smote them and pursued them to Hobah near Damascus. And he defeated them and brought back all the goods, and he also brought back again his brother Lot and his goods and the women also and all the people. The king of Sodom, who had been totally defeated, went out to meet him after the return from the slaughter. at the Valley of Shavuot, which is the king’s dale. At this point, a very strange figure enters into this story. We really don’t know very much about him at all. His name is Melchizedek. But here’s what the story in Genesis says about him. Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. Now we find a new element entering in. a priest. For Abraham, even though he offered sacrifices, could not be called a priest. He was just the head of a family, and he worshipped God himself, and he needed no intermediator between him and God, because he and God were friends. Well, whoever this Melchizedek is, he was able to bless Abraham, and normally the lesser is blessed of the greater. And he said, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God which has delivered into your hand all your enemies. And he, that’s Abraham, gave him, Melchizedek, tithes of all. Now a tithe is a tenth. It’s a situation in which whenever certain things come into your hands, you divide them up and you take one-tenth of it and you offer it as tribute to a king or you offer it as an offering to God. Now, just understand what’s happened here. Abraham went off into battle and recaptured the goods that had originally belonged to somebody else. But… The laws of war being what they are, the spoils belong to the winner. At this point in time, all that stuff belonged to Abraham. He got carved it up and gave 10% to God. Now, the king of Sodom said to Abraham, give me the persons and take the goods to yourself. He obviously felt that Abraham was entitled to the things, and he just simply asked that the people of his family and his household and of his city be returned. And Abraham said to the king of Sodom, No, I have lifted up my hand, which means I have sworn to the Lord, the Most High, the Possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelace, and I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abraham rich. The only thing I have taken is my expenses, that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the young men that went with me. They were entitled to a portion.” Now, what he doesn’t mention here is that he also had given one-tenth of the whole kit and caboodle to Melchizedek, which constituted an offering to God. But none of this really helps us understand who is this shadowy figure named Melchizedek. For the truth is, in the Old Testament, this is all we hear about him, period. Fortunately for us, in the New Testament, there is a rather lengthy commentary about this man, Melchizedek, and we learn a great deal more. In Hebrews chapter 7, for example, we read, “…for this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom Abraham also gave a tenth part of all, first being, by interpretation, king of righteousness.” then king of Salem, which is king of peace. Now, who might this king of peace be? Well, I’d like to explain that to you, but I’m out of time for this program. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.
SPEAKER 02 :
But who is Melchizedek? The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-877-7000. 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at
