Abraham's Life Journey (2): Between Bethel and Ai, Egypt, Between Bethel and Ai, Hebron
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Scripture reading: Gen. 12:8-10
From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
We’ve started the series on Abraham’s Life Journey, and last week we saw how Abraham’s life could be summarized by the ten places he lived in. We saw how Abraham’s life journey started in Ur of the Chaldeans, how he moved to Haran according to God’s calling, and how God then called him to leave his father behind in Haran. Abraham went to Canaan, and walked in the space between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. That’s Shechem, and that’s where God shows up and promises him the land. So we’ve looked at Ur, Haran, and Shechem. Today we’re looking at the next four places of his journey:
Between Bethel and Ai
Egypt
Between Bethel and Ai
Hebron
But before that, I’d like to read a poem written by Portia Nelson, the American singer-songwriter. It’s a poem about transformation. And Abraham’s life journey is a journey of faith where as his faith grows, he is also spiritually transformed.
Autobiography in five short chapters by Portia Nelson
Chapter 1:
I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in
I am lost… I am helpless
It isn’t my fault
It takes forever to find a way out
Chapter 2:
I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I pretend that I don’t see it
I fall in again
I can’t believe I am in this same place
But it isn’t my fault
It still takes a long time to get out
Chapter 3:
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the side walk
I see it is there
I still fall in… It’s a habit… but my eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault
I get out immediately
Chapter 4:
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the side walk
I walk around it
Chapter 5:
I walk down another street
Between Bethel and Ai to Egypt
Between Bethel and Ai to Egypt
From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
Bethel is beth + elohim, meaning the house of God. Ai means place of desolation or heap of ruins. Now Abraham’s been in Shechem, which is between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal, the mount of blessing and the mount of curse. Now Abraham’s moved between the house of God and the place of desolation. That’s a picture of his journey and ours. And the road we’re walking will take us to either of these destinations: the house of God, or spiritual desolation and destruction.
But the problem is that when we’re unclear about who God is, we take the path we think is right, the path we think God wants us to walk, only to end up at Ai. And we’re going to see Abraham make this mistake several times.
There’s a famine in the land, and Abraham goes down to Egypt. He goes to Egypt and tells his beautiful wife Sarah to pretend she’s his sister, and Pharaoh takes Sarah for himself. And in exchange, Pharaoh gives Abraham lots of sheep, oxen, donkeys, and servants. He’s become rich.
When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
But it was a mistake to go to Egypt. How can we know this? Because Isaac found himself in a similar situation, but Isaac chose to stay in the promised land.
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.
And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy.
So what we see here is that God comes to Isaac and warns him directly not to go to Egypt. And Isaac obeys, and has a hundredfold bumper harvest.
Back to Abraham. God intervenes at Egypt and sends plagues upon Pharaoh. Pharaoh gets royally upset at Abraham, returns his wife Sarah, and sends them out of Egypt. That’s all in Gen. 20.
Return to Between Bethel and Ai
Return to Between Bethel and Ai
Now Abraham’s been restored to the promised land because of God’s intervention.
So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb.
But now both Abraham and his nephew Lot are so rich, they have so much livestock that the land cannot sustain both of them.
And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together; for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together,
So what does Abraham do? He yields to his nephew. He gives Lot the first choice of land, even though he was older.
And as a result of this, God comes to him and reconfirms the covenantal promise by showing him exactly how much land will belong to him and his descendants.
The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.
Hebron
Hebron
So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.
There are six key events that take place in Hebron, but we cannot cover all of them today.
Abraham rescues Lot
Abraham rejects the King of Sodom
God ratifies the Covenant of the Torch (85 y.o.)
Abraham has Ishmael (86 y.o.) Gen. 16:16.
God reconfirms the promise of Isaac (99 y.o.) Gen. 17:1-2.
Judgement of Sodom and Gomorrah
Abraham rescues Lot
Abraham rescues Lot
Now Abraham’s moved to Hebron, and while he’s there one of his friends comes to him and tells him that the kings of the south have rebelled against the kings of the north, but they lost. And in the process, Abraham’s nephew Lot had been taken captive. So Abraham gathers the 318 men of his household, defeats the kings of the north, and rescues Lot.
When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people.
One thing that we should take notice is that Abraham pursues these foreign kings as far as Dan, and then defeated them and chased them even further up north to Hobah, north of Damascus.
Dan is the top-most region of the land of Canaan, which is the boundary that God had promised him after Abraham and Lot separated, back when he was living between Bethel and Ai.
So this shows us that Abraham trusted in God’s promise, and Abraham fought against these four kings, believing in God’s promise. It’s sort of like ‘God promised me this land, not you, so get out of my house.’
Abraham rejects the King of Sodom
Abraham rejects the King of Sodom
After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.)
After Abraham’s huge victory, two men appear before him.
One of them is the king of Salem, the king of peace, and the other is the king of Sodom, which represents the place of sin.
One offers bread and wine as a spiritual blessing, and the other offers material wealth.
Abraham chooses to meet Melchizedek and accept his blessing, but rejects the king of Sodom’s offer. He was victorious over the physical armies because he trusted in God and acted in faith. And it was also by faith in God that he took a hard look at the king of Sodom and said no. Why? He explains why.
And the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’
Abraham knows something that many of us know. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If he had accepted the riches of Sodom, then he would be indebted to the king of Sodom.
God ratifies the Covenant of the Torch
God ratifies the Covenant of the Torch
This takes place after Abraham chooses the spiritual blessings rather than physical blessings.
Abraham’s still living in Hebron, and one day he gets a vision from God, where God promises Abraham two things. First, God promises him many descendants.
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Abraham believes this promise of descendants. But then God makes another promise about the land, and this time Abraham’s not so sure.
And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
And so God tells him to cut several animals into half, and to walk between the pieces.
He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
Abraham has Ishmael
Abraham has Ishmael
After God ratifies the Covenant of the Torch with Abraham, Sarah comes to him with an idea. ‘Let use a surrogate.’ After all, God previously promised that Abraham’s heir will come from his own loins.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.”
And so she gives him Hagar her Egyptian maid. By the way, Hagar probably came along because of Abraham’s mistake of going to Egypt. So now they’re going to try to be faithful to God’s promise, but in a way that’s associated with Abraham’s past unfaithfulness. This is one of those things with the warning label, ‘Don’t try this at home.’ Because it never, ever, ends well.
How do we know this ends badly? Because God gives Abraham the silent treatment for 13 years.
And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Abraham’s 86 years old when Ishmael is born at the end of Gen. 16. How old is Abraham in the next chapter?
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless,
Ishmael comes about by Abraham and Sarah’s narrowmindedness. God said it, they believed it, but they believed God couldn’t possibly make a fertile garden out of a grandma’s womb. That’s being narrowminded. Their idea of God was too small, too narrow, too limited.
Why does this matter so much? Why is God so concerned with the way the promised child would come? It’s because Isaac’s miraculous birth foreshadows the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ, and not only that, but our own miraculous births too. Isaac was born by the power of the Spirit of God, and it is that same Spirit through whom Jesus was born of a virgin, without sin. And that same Spirit makes us born again into righteousness.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
If Ishmael was the child of promise, then salvation would only be for the biological descendants of Abraham. God’s not satisfied with that. He wants all of us to be saved by being spiritual descendants, born not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.
I’d now like to conclude.
Conclusion: The love of God for Abraham’s descendants
Conclusion: The love of God for Abraham’s descendants
Now imagine you have a best friend who you love so much, and you miss them so much. And one day you run into their child who looks just like them, talks like them, and walks like them. Would you treat that child badly? You’d want to do something for the child. That’s what God’s like with us, the descendants of Abraham. Look at this verse in the Bible.
For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.
Is 41:8-10 “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
God loves us so much like this. We are the children of His friend Abraham, and I believe that as God has promised in His Word, God will be with us, He will strengthen us, He will help us, and He will uphold us with His righteous right hand.