In the last message we saw that the Triune God dealt with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as one complete corporate man. If we are going to get into the last section of the book of Genesis, the section on God's calling, we need to remember that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not three separate and complete units but, under God's dispensation, are one complete corporate man. God dealt with each of them as a part of a complete unit. Their experiences are not three separate individual experiences but the aspects of one complete experience.
In this message we need to see the first aspect of the complete experience of God's called ones. This aspect is fully shown in Abraham's life (11:10—25:18). This is quite basic. Abraham's life is an illustration of the first aspect of the complete experience of God's called ones. His experience goes from being called, through the living by faith in fellowship, to the knowing of grace.
In his experience Abraham firstly was called by God. As we have seen, God's calling was not originated or initiated by the called one. It was initiated by the God who called. God was the originator of His calling.
As God's calling did not originate with the called one but with the God who calls, so the motive and strength to receive God's calling did not originate from the side of the called one but from the side of the calling One. The motive and the strength whereby Abraham could answer God's calling came from God Himself. What was this motive and strength? If we look into the situation in a detailed way, we can see three things that motivated Abraham to accept God's calling: God's appearing, God's calling, and God's promise. Now we need to consider each of these items.
The first aspect of the motive and strength to accept God's calling was God's appearing. If I were to come to you, it would mean nothing because I am nothing. If the president of the United States were to pay you a personal visit, you would be very excited. Probably you would be unable to sleep for a whole night. But who came to visit Abraham? The God of glory (Acts 7:2). Outside of Stephen's word in Acts 7:2, where Stephen told his persecutors that the God of glory appeared to their father Abraham, there is no other verse in the Bible that says that the God of glory appeared to Abraham. While Stephen was speaking, the Jesus of glory appeared to him (Acts 7:55-56). The heavens were opened and he saw Jesus in glory standing on the right hand of God. Stephen was bold to die for Jesus because, while they were opposing him, he saw the Lord Jesus. The people stoned him, but Jesus smiled at him. Because the Lord appeared to him, it was easy, even a great joy, for him to undergo persecution. There was no comparison between that persecution and the appearing of Jesus in glory. Because Stephen was in such a situation, the Jesus in glory appeared to him. Without such an appearing, his environment would have been too difficult for a human being to take.
In the same principle, the God of glory appeared to Abraham, paying him a visit with His personal appearance, because, at that time, Abraham was under the influence of a strong background in Chaldea. As we shall see in the next message, Chaldea in Hebrew means demonic. Chaldea was a demonic place, a place full of demons. Joshua 24:2 says that Abraham and his family served other gods. They worshipped idols, and behind the idols were demons.
Chaldea was in a land called Mesopotamia. The word Mesopotamia means "between rivers." According to geography, the region of Mesopotamia was bound by two great rivers, the Euphrates (Perath in Hebrew) and the Tigris (Hiddekel in Hebrew). Between these two rivers was a great plain, the land of Mesopotamia. Chaldea was a part of Mesopotamia. This means that Abraham's dwelling place was not only in a place full of demons but also in a place that was enclosed by two great rivers. It was very difficult for him or any other person to leave such a place, for the demons held him and the great rivers enclosed him. Since there was no modern transportation, the people had to walk. How was Abraham able to get out of Chaldea? Since his background was so strong, God appeared to him in order that he might come out of it.
This is a picture, an illustration, of our situation before we were saved. We all were in a Chaldea. All the young people need to realize that every junior high school is a Chaldea, a place filled with demons. So many of the students are little demons selling drugs and trying to hold you back, saying, "How can you be different from us? If you want to be different from us, where shall you go? There are two great rivers that keep you here. You must stay with us!" Sometimes the husbands are demons to the wives and the wives are demons to the husbands. As far as the worldly people are concerned, whenever a young man gets married he enters into a demonic region. The same is true for every young woman who marries. Consider the example of a young man who falls in love with a certain young lady. This young woman has a tremendous background composed of a great many relatives and friends, all of whom are demonic. If this young man were to marry her, he would fall into a demonic region. If he came to me, I would say, "Don't think that this young lady is so pretty, nice, and kind. You must look into her background. You are not only marrying her — you are marrying her with her whole background. After you marry a girl with such a demonic background, you will find yourself in Chaldea. The demons there will hold you." But God has chosen this young man. Do not think that it will be easy for him to believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved. It is not a matter of being saved and waiting to go to heaven. No, in the Bible, to be saved is to be called out of your background, region, and environment. You need to get yourself out.
As we have seen, God's promise to Abraham was a preaching of the gospel (Gal. 3:8). As part of this preaching, God told Abraham to get out of his country. What would you have done if you had been Abraham? Behind Sarah there might have been many demons, and these demons would not agree with Abraham's getting out of Chaldea. This was the reason that the God of glory appeared to Abraham. It was neither an angel nor a dignified person who appeared to Abraham but the God of glory Himself who appeared to him. That appearing was a great attraction, inciting Abraham to take God's calling.
In Matthew we are told that as Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee He called Peter, Andrew, James, and John (Matt. 4:18-22). The Lord Jesus simply said to them, "Follow Me," and they followed Him. For many years I was unable to understand this. The little Jesus of Nazareth spoke the words, "Follow Me," and they followed Him. I did not understand this until one day I noticed that the Jesus who walked by the sea of Galilee was a great light (Matt. 4:16). Peter, Andrew, James, and John were all attracted by that great light. When Jesus looked at them and called them, they were attracted to Him. Apparently, the One who called them was a poor Nazarene; actually, He was the God of glory. Likewise, the God of glory appeared to Abraham in the land of demons, a land enclosed by great waters. I believe that, in principle, we all have experienced such an appearing. To be saved is not merely a matter of hearing the preaching of the gospel, nodding your head, and then confessing that you are a sinner and that you believe in the Lord Jesus. Although this is correct, I must say that a true saved one is one who has had the appearing of Jesus.
In our conversion many seemed to see "the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). This became a great stimulation to so many of us.
We, the saved ones, have all had the appearing of Jesus. This did not occur in an outward way, but in our spirit deep within. Although we might forget the day or even the year when we were saved, we can never forget the time that, deep within, we saw Jesus. Jesus appeared to us and we met with Him. This is the real experience of being saved. To be saved is simply to be called. Before the Lord Jesus appeared to you, you found it difficult to be a genuine Christian. Your background and surroundings did not allow you to be different from others. One day, however, He appeared to you. Oh, the living Jesus in glory appeared to you. That was your calling. It was also His separating and His saving. By appearing to you in this way, He called you, saved you, and separated you. Abraham had the same kind of experience. That appearing of God strongly attracted Abraham. This appearing was Abraham's motive and strength to accept God's calling. If you consider Abraham's background and situation you will realize that without such an attraction and stimulation, it would have been impossible for him to accept God's calling.
The second factor of the motive and strength was God's calling (Acts 7:3-4; Gen. 12:1). God did not appear to Abraham without speaking to him. When He came to Abraham, He called him. God spoke to Abraham. Calling means speaking. It is not a small thing to hear God's speaking. At the time we were saved, we all experienced the appearing of Jesus. At the same time that He appeared to us, He spoke to us. There was a divine speaking, a kind of speaking in the spirit.
Many of us can testify that at the time we were saved, deep within us we had the consciousness that Jesus was speaking to us. Perhaps the Lord Jesus came to you when you were a student and said, "What are you doing here?" You answered, "I am studying to get my degree." Then the Lord asked, "For what?" You replied, "To make a good living in the future." After this, the Lord asked, "Then what? What about your future?" With others, the Lord Jesus has spoken in a different way, saying, "Look at how sinful you are, at how bad and poor you are!" In response to this, some have said to the Lord, "Don't bother me." Then the Lord said, "I love you. I want to save you. Don't you know that I'm Jesus. I want to rescue you from your poor situation. Aren't you willing to take Me?" To others of us the Lord Jesus said, "Don't you know that I am the living One. I am the only One who can give you eternal life." Many of us have heard words such as these, not out of the mouth of a preacher but out of the mouth of the living Jesus. Do you recall the kind of speaking you heard from the living Jesus when He appeared to you at the time you were called and saved? The non-Christians, including the professing Christians, have not had this kind of experience and they consider it as superstition. But it is not superstition! The God of glory has come to us and spoken to us. Abraham could say, "Don't tell me that this is a superstition. I heard Him speak. He said, 'Get thee out of thy country!' This word did not come from my father or from my wife. It was spoken by the God of glory." Tell me honestly, have you not heard the speaking of Jesus? I do not believe that any saved person will ever be lost again. Although a saved one may backslide, he can never forget the appearing and the speaking of Jesus. He might even say, "I don't believe in Jesus anymore," but deep within the Lord says, "How can you say that you don't believe in Me anymore?" You can never forget His appearing and His speaking to you.
A good number of young people have asked me what is the difference between a true Christian and a false Christian. All of them profess to believe in Jesus. The best answer that I can give is this: a true Christian has had the speaking of Jesus, but the professing Christian only has the preaching of a doctrine. A genuine Christian has, at least once, heard the speaking of Jesus by the living Spirit directly in the depths of his being. That speaking was the strength that enabled all of us to accept God's calling.
The third aspect of the motive and strength to accept God's calling is God's promise (12:2-3). Most of God's speaking to us is His promise. If God says, "I don't want to bother you; I want to save you," that is a promise. If He says, "I love you," that also is a promise. Most of what He speaks to us is a promise.
What did the God of glory say to Abraham? Firstly, the God of glory said, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred" (12:1). You may think that this was not a promise. But it implied a promise. When God told Abraham to get out of his country, it implied that God was promising Abraham a place. Otherwise, Abraham would have said, "If I get out of my country, where should I go?" God had a place for Abraham. Even the command to get out of the country implied a promise, the promise of the good land. Abraham could say, "Since God commands me to get out of my country, this must surely mean that He has a place for me." God told Abraham to get out of his country, from his kindred, and from his father's house, unto a land that He would show him. That certainly was a promise. God's promise was an incentive for him to leave his country.
In 12:2 God said to Abraham, "I will make of thee a great nation." This word was a contrast to Abraham's background. At Babel, there were many nations formed with families. Abraham lived in such an atmosphere. When God came to Abraham, telling him to get out of his country, Abraham might have said within himself, "What about the matter of being a nation?" Then God promised that He would make of him a great nation. God also said, "I will bless thee, and make thy name great." This also was in contrast with Babel. When the people built a tower at Babel, they were trying to make a name for themselves. But God, in His promise, seemed to be telling Abraham, "You don't need to make a name for yourself. I will make your name great. You don't need to form a nation. I will make a nation out of you."
God promised Abraham that He would make of him "a great nation." This "great nation" is the kingdom of God, composed of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, the church in the New Testament, the millennial kingdom in the coming age, and the new heaven and the new earth in eternity. (In the millennial kingdom there will be two parts — the heavenly part and the earthly part. The heavenly part will be the kingdom of heaven. The overcomers of the past and present ages will be in the heavenly part of the millennium as co-kings with Christ. The earthly part is the Messianic kingdom, the kingdom of the Messiah, composed of the future Jewish nation.) The nation of Israel in the Old Testament age, the church in the New Testament age, the coming kingdom in the millennium, and the new heaven and the new earth in eternity — all are included in this "great nation" which God promised to make of Abraham. In this way Abraham's name became great. Other than the name of the Lord Jesus, no name on earth is greater than that of Abraham. He is the father of "a great nation." He is the father of the nation of Israel, the father of the church, and he will be the father of the millennial kingdom and of all the redeemed ones in eternity. What a "great nation" with a great name this is!
God promised to bless Abraham (12:2). What is this blessing? It is the blessings of God's creation and redemption, including all that God wants to give man — God Himself and all that He has in this age and in the age to come. Galatians 3:14 shows us that this blessing eventually is the promise of the Spirit: "That the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Since the Spirit is God Himself, this means that God promised that He would give Himself to Abraham as the blessing.
God not only promised that He Himself would be a blessing to Abraham, but that Abraham would be a blessing to all the families, all the nations, of the earth (12:3). In His calling, God turned from Adam to Abraham. This meant that He had given up the Adamic race. But, in His promise, God made another turn from Abraham back to all the families of the Adamic race through Christ, the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:14). This is very meaningful. Firstly, God turned from Adam to Abraham and, eventually, He turned from Abraham through Christ back to the created race. By this new turn we all were captured. It appeared that God had left us and had turned to Abraham. Then God seemed to say to Abraham, "I will not only give Myself to you as a blessing, but I will make you a blessing to all those pitiful people of the Adamic race. Abraham, let us go back." We may say that God made a U-turn. By this U-turn all of the called ones from the nations have been gathered in.
Let me say a word about our attitude toward the Jews. Never mistreat the Jewish people. God said, "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee." (In this word, "them" and "him" indicates people in both plural and singular number.) If you read history, you will find that during the past twenty-five centuries, from the time that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city of Jerusalem until now, every country, people, race, or individual that has cursed the Jewish people has received a curse. However, whoever blesses the Jewish people receives a blessing. No leader in history died in such a pitiful way as Hitler did. Hitler died in that way because he was cursed for his cursing of the Jewish people. Since the United States is helping the nation of Israel today, surely the United States is under God's blessing. This is not my opinion. This is according to God's promise in Genesis 12:3.
When I read 12:2-3 as a young man, I was not inspired by it. These verses seemed to be dry bones. I did not understand what God was talking about when He told Abraham that He would make of him a great nation, and that He would bless him, and make him a blessing. Eventually, after many years, I came back to these verses with the help of Galatians 3. I came to realize that God's promise to Abraham in 12:2-3 was the preaching of the gospel. The three items of God's promise — to make of Abraham a great nation, to bless him, and to make him a blessing to all the families of the earth — were the gospel preached to Abraham (Gal. 3:8). The contents of God's promise are exactly the same as the contents of the gospel. Firstly, the preaching of the gospel opens with the words, "Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near" (Matt. 3:2). As we have seen, the "great nation" refers to the kingdom. Secondly, the blessing that God promised Abraham was the Spirit, that is, God Himself. In the gospel, after we repent for the kingdom, we need to believe that we may have eternal life, which is in the Spirit. The blessing promised to Abraham, which, according to Galatians 3:14, is the promise of the Spirit, is the very blessing of the gospel. This blessing, as the third item, is for all the nations, for it is said, "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
God's promise to Abraham implied His eternal purpose. God's eternal purpose is that man express and represent Him. God said that He would make of Abraham "a great nation" and that He would bless him. A nation is a matter of dominion to represent God, and blessing is a matter of image in the Spirit to express God. We all shall be transformed into His image by the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). This requires that we have a regenerated spirit. Some may ask why 1:26, 28 mention expressing God with His image first and representing Him with His dominion second. The reason for this is that there we see God's original purpose. But because man has fallen, in the gospel man has to repent in order to come back to the beginning. Therefore, in the gospel, dominion is first and image follows. In God's original purpose, it was image and dominion, but, due to the fall, in the gospel the order is reversed.
In God's eternal purpose, promise, gospel, and fulfillment, the contents are the same. It is very interesting to see this.
In God's eternal purpose we have two items: image to express God and dominion to represent God.
As we have seen, in God's promise to Abraham, the nation, which is for dominion to represent God, is mentioned first and the blessing, which is for the image to express God, is mentioned second.
In the gospel (salvation) with the believers we firstly have repentance for the kingdom (Matt. 3:2). This repentance is for the dominion to represent God. Secondly, we have the matter of receiving eternal life (John 3:16). This receiving of eternal life is for the image to express God.
We also see the same contents in the fulfillment, in the New Jerusalem. The entire New Jerusalem will bear God's appearance. God's appearance resembles jasper. Revelation 4:3 says that God, the One sitting on the throne, has the appearance of jasper. In Revelation 21:11, 18b, we see that the whole New Jerusalem shines like jasper. The appearance of the wall and of the entire city of New Jerusalem will be the same as God's appearance — jasper. This means that in eternity the whole New Jerusalem will express God. Furthermore, in eternity all the saved ones in the New Jerusalem will reign as kings with God (Rev. 22:5). This will be the dominion to represent God.
Although we did not care about God's dominion and image at the time we were called and saved, deep within, in God's calling and speaking, we realized that these matters were implied. After being saved, we had the realization that we needed to be under God's ruling. This is the kingdom, the dominion. Also, deep within us, we had the sensation that, after being saved, we had to glorify God. This is the matter of image to express God. However, after we were saved, most of us met some mistaken preachers who told us many wrong things that distracted us from God's purpose. Praise the Lord that in God's recovery He has recovered us to His original purpose and He has brought us back to the beginning. We the real called ones, the sons of Abraham receiving God's calling with His speaking and promise, are now in His kingdom to represent Him and have His image to express Him.
