the friend of God

“Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?”

This simple question reveals the regard the person asking it has for Abraham- he considers him a friend. The person asking is the Lord and his question is letting Abraham know that because he is a friend, God is not going to keep secrets from him (Gen. 18:17).

A friendship, as we all know, is not an instantaneous thing. It is a relationship forged over time. It grows and prospers when both sides perform actions that demonstrate commitment to and respect for the other and the friendship. It is tested and proven.

Abram- as he was originally named- was called into the land where the Lord would establish his people, along with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and his family. They also brought the community they had established in Haran.

Genesis 12: 1-3: 1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: ² And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: ³ And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Abram had an interesting life to say the least. You can see the hand of God guiding, protecting, and lifting up his friend throughout his sojourn. When the Lord told Abram to pack up his family and his estate and move to a new land- full of strangers- he did it and prospered. He was sent into Egypt to survive a famine and came out much richer. So rich that he and Lot had to separate and exploit new resources in order to continue their growth. A tribal war broke out, and Lot is captured. Abram gathers his men along with volunteers from the surrounding tribes and rescues Lot, while establishing his dominance in the land. He pays tithes from the spoils to the King of Salem, but declines to keep anything for himself.

But throughout everything, Abram and Sarai remain childless- and they are getting old. Abram despairs that he will not have an heir:

Genesis 15:3-6  ³ And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. ⁴ And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. ⁵ And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. ⁶ And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

No matter what- Abram believed in the Lord. Because he was his friend.

Sarai believed in the Lord too- to a point. As the years went by, she began to reason that the promise to Abram couldn’t possibly be fulfilled through her. She remained childless. She decided to ensure that her husband wouldn’t die childless by bringing in a surrogate- Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid. The scheme worked- Abram married Hagar and she got pregnant with Ishmael- but that was not the Lord’s plan.

Genesis 17 is the Abrahamic Covenant. 1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. ² And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.

The Lord had previously covenanted to be Abram’s God, and to protect him. Later, he  promised to give him the land. He was now making a spiritual covenant- an establishment of  the covenant people, the line through which the Messiah would come. This is where the Jew-hating began- Satan’s response to the Abrahamic Covenant.

The Lord began the new covenant with new names for the father- and mother- of many nations: Abraham and Sarah.

We were told in Genesis 13:13 that “the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” Their day of reckoning has come.

The Lord has come to tell his friend. ¹⁷ And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? He has come with two angels,and they stop at Abrahams dwelling to let him know what is about to happen so they won’t be frightened.  ²⁰ And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;  ²¹ I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.

The Lord could have just gone straight to the cities of the plain and taken care of business. But, he stopped to give a heads-up to his friend. Because that is what a friend does for a friend. God will reveal everything to his friends. He will reveal to you the Truth, and the truth will set you free.

How do you become a friend to God?

Jeremiah 29:13- And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

John 15:14- Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

 

other scriptures:

James 2:23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

Genesis 15: 5-6 ⁵ And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. ⁶ And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

James 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

 

next week: a wild man

shake it up

A few months ago, Facebook tried out a program that would label news that originated from outside of their ‘trusted network’ as unverified or something to that effect. The result was exactly the opposite of what was intended- they managed to dramatically increase the number of clicks those sites got. Whereas before, users generally scanned over these links, now with the warning attached, people just had to look.

Facebook learned a lesson about human nature that will always bedevil attempts at controlling narratives- when someone in authority says ‘stop’, something intuitively compels us to ‘go’. Put a sign on something that says “Do no touch” and see what happens. (This is why I think Artificial Intelligence will always be very limited in predicting human behavior.)

It is called rebellion, and people are experts at it. Always have been. In Genesis 8:21 God observes that “…the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth;…” As the populace grew and settled into their new lives, we see that for their own good, people still have the need for the Lord to occasionally shake it up.

The period of time from Noah to Abraham, can be characterized as a time of replenishment, renewal, and re-establishment- of both good and bad.

In a prophetic, symbolic incident- one day Noah got drunk and passed out naked in his tent. Ham looked in and rather than look away, he stared in and then ridiculed his father to his brothers. Shem and Japheth took a blanket and walked in backwards and covered him up without looking at his nakedness. They respected their father. Ham dishonored him.

Noah pronounced a curse on Canaan- the line of Ham, the heathen and ungodly- declaring his descendants would be servants to his brothers descendants. As servants, they will be exposed to the covenant, but will reject it continually, out of jealousy, pride, and hatred. Noah reveals the line of Shem will be the patriarchal, covenant line (eventually, the house of Israel) and the line of Japheth (the Gentiles) will be adopted into this covenant. (Genesis 9: 21-27). But above all else, the overriding and unmistakable intention of God for these three is:  And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. (9:7)

Ham begat Cush who begat Nimrod. Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” settled in the area that later became Babylon. It was here that the next great rebellion took place.

Genesis 11:1,4- And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

There are different theories on just what the world was up to with this tower to heaven, but you can deduct from the narrative, the motivations were all wrong. Instead of multiplying and bringing forth the abundance of the earth, they are all congregating in one area, building a tower to heaven. Rather than calling upon the name of the Lord, they have determined to trust in themselves, ‘make us a name.’ They feared being ‘scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’, when that is precisely what the Lord wanted them to do. Everything about this tower is the opposite of what God wants.

I don’t know if these people really thought they could build a tower to heaven. Genesis 9:11- And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. You can be sure, that in the same hour that God promised to never again destroy the earth with a flood, Satan started whispering “the Next Great Flood is coming.” That is what he does.

The Flood was still a recent event. Nimrod’s grandfather Ham was a flood survivor. There were probably still numerous ruins and relics. It is possible they reasoned a tower up to the heavens would stay above the next Flood. Regardless of the theory, the project was a colossal waste of time, resources, and exhibited a complete disregard for God, disbelief and distrust in the words of the Lord. It was vanity.

It was time to shake it up.

Genesis 11: 4-9  ⁴ And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. ⁵ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. ⁶ And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. ⁷ Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. ⁹ Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The Lord saw that this unified, goal-oriented society would achieve great things together with the combined intellect and talents men have been blessed with. They would forget about God, having ‘made a name for themselves’. They are already using their technology to pursue madness. We’ve seen this before. Sadly, it is what men do.

The Lord’s solution has prevented a One World order to this day.

Can you imagine? Picture yourself there. You are on the 2nd shift on the tower, today you are on the hoist crew, operating the pulleys pulling up bricks from the ground. Suddenly the man next to you says “Ze zing bah doo, tigzy slew krest. Oncha!” He hears the same thing from you. Can you imagine the confusion, anger, chaos, and outright panic that ensues? Hauling bricks would be the last priority all of a sudden. And the people that built the tower lest they be scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, were thus scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth. Shake it up.

All of the rest of the Genesis narrative (ch 9-11) until the story of Abram begins, involves a recitation and establishing of the three families spreading abroad, and the genealogies of each.  Except for:

Genesis 10:25-  And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

the hole in the cornfield

Having scattered people abroad, the Lord put some separation between land masses, to further regionalize problems. I think rather than some massive continental realignment- (which certainly cannot be excluded in God’s world- Mark 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.)-  it was probably a collapse of land bridges (think Atlantis) and sea level changes. For an example (though admittedly less dramatic) of rapid earth changes, consider a couple of recent events:

Paricutin a few years later

Paricutin volcano In just a few short years, a hole in a Mexican cornfield grew into a 1400 foot stratocone that not only swallowed the cornfield, but the neighboring village.

only thing left of the village

 

 

 

 

 

2004 Indian ocean earthquake and tsunami A 750- mile section of the earth moved 40 feet instantaneously. Boulders weighing thousands of tons were pushed and rolled for miles along the sea floor.

A rapid earth change would also explain the unique ecosystem of Australia. And the habitat of penguins. Penguins not only live in Antarctica, but the south shores of Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand: Livescience penguin facts

As this chapter closes, we see the Lord shaking it up again. The future ‘father of many nations’ is being called out of the land of the Chaldees, to the land of his inheritance. (Genesis 11:31-32).

About the same time that Abram begins his sojourn home, in another part of the world, another righteous man is about to find that if the Lord loves you- he is going to shake it up.

 

next Sunday- a steady Job