INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN

INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN

                “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to a land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” Genesis 12:1-4

                Right now I can relate to this story like never before. I am now 70 years old and the Lord has instructed Bonnie and me to leave our place of security and predictability, to go to a far country to bless my children and grandchildren. He furthermore told me that this would be my final mission in life.

                Heading out into the great unknown at this age is not easy. It doesn’t even make sense at this stage in life unless the Lord is in it. Most people would rather punch a time clock than to start their own business. In starting your own business there are great risks and great unknowns and it usually requires investing everything you have to start and with no guarantees that you will succeed. Therefore there are only a certain percentage of people who can or even want to do such a thing and yet it is their daring venture that blesses many other people if it succeeds. So also are those who head out in the faith of Abraham.

                Abram went out not knowing where he was going or what would be the outcome of his venture. Other than the promises of God, he had no clue what to do. In fact we see him wandering from place to place as if searching for God’s promises and purposes. He parted ways with Lot and chose instead the hill country. He lived in tents. He made mistakes… big mistakes, for when he went to Egypt he told Pharaoh that his beautiful wife Sarah was his sister and allowed her to be taken into his harem. That didn’t work well, but God turned even that mistake into a blessing and Abram left Egypt loaded with gold and silver and cattle and possessions.

                His next mistake was to try to fulfill God’s promises in his own way. He produced a child through Hagar the Egyptian princess and we are all still dealing with that mistake. And yet through Abraham’s offspring all of the nations of the world have been blessed. Through God’s chosen people we received the Word of God and the Son of God and even though people tend to rebel against both of those things, I would hate to think what the world would be like and what our lives would be like without them.

                Many people try to write the story of Abraham off to the dusty pages of history. Many think that since Jesus came into the world, we don’t need Abraham anymore and yet Paul tells us that through faith in Jesus Christ we become Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise. Galatians 3:29. We as Christians today are still God’s chosen people, not because God dropped Israel and went out to marry us, but because through Christ, we become Abraham’s seed. We are grafted into Abraham’s family tree. Today we are still blessing the nations by presenting to them our Jewish Messiah and our Jewish Word of God and we are inviting them through Jesus Christ to be grafted into the family of God that started with Abraham.

                So when I read God’s promises to Abraham it gives me courage and faith to step out into the great unknown even as he did, knowing that God’s promises to Abraham, apply to me as well. I am of his offspring.

                Paul goes on to explain to us that the Law which came 430 years later did not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. So why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, (Moses) until the seed should come to whom the promises had been made.

                In other words, all of the promises were made to one Seed, to Christ so that when we receive Him we receive all that was promised to Abraham and to Israel. And Christ has become the mediator of a New Covenant and He has become our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek who was also Abraham’s High Priest. We no longer serve under the Levitical priesthood with its animal sacrifices. We serve under the Melchizedek priesthood and we are grafted in not on the basis of Law, but of the Promises. We are no longer under the Law, for we are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

                This does not make void the Law of God. He does not and cannot change His mind concerning truth. We still can’t kill and steal and lie for those things are eternally wrong and contrary to love. So if the Law cannot be done away, then what are we to do with it since we now live by promise and not by law?

                This is one of the great mysteries of God and it is solved in only one way…through Jesus Christ.      “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, IN ORDER THAT THE REQUIREMENT OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US WHO DO NOT WALK ACCORDING TO THE FLESH, BUT ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.” ROMANS 8:3, 4.

                Now, this was not a quirky invention of Paul’s. Indeed this New Covenant had been promised to Israel long before Christ came. It was given by Jeremiah for one in Jeremiah 31:31-33, saying: “Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, NOT LIKE the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God and they shall be My people.”         

                So the covenant we live in today is not like the one that was given on Sinai. That covenant was written on stone and imposed on them from the outside, but the covenant we are living with today is written on our hearts. And instead of telling us what not to do in negative terms, it now tells us how to fulfill the Law through love and the fruit of the Spirit.

                Hebrews 7:12 tells us saying: For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.”  Jesus has become our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek and so he ministers through a different covenant and a different Law. His covenant is the New Covenant based upon the eternal blood and unending life of Christ and it is no longer written on stone, but on the flesh of our hearts. The change is that we now no longer live by the flesh, but by His Spirit and that is what makes us sons and daughters of God. He has placed His Spirit within us to make it all possible.

                So therefore we can step out into the great unknown as Abraham did and we can know that all of the Promises made to Abraham and his Seed belong to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is through Christ that we are grafted in. It is through this grafting in that we become God’s chosen people.

                God has never changed His plans from the very beginning. When He said that through Abraham all of the nations of the earth will be blessed, He meant it and this has been His ongoing purpose from the very beginning. God made eternal promises to Abraham and his seed and when we receive the Seed that I Christ, we become Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to the promise. We are grafted into Abraham’s family tree.    It has never been God’s plan for us to replace Israel, but to become a part of Israel through faith in her Messiah. We should care deeply what happens in Israel and Jerusalem right now because they are our brothers and sisters.

                So if you want to be a part of the blessing you must be grafted in, for Jesus Himself said in John 4:22-24 saying: “You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” Here Jesus is promising the same New Covenant that Jeremiah was promising.

                Many churches have gotten this all wrong. That’s why they have become anti-Semitic, and anti- Law and even anti- Old covenant. They do not understand the flow of God’s eternal purposes, so they misuse the Law or ignore it altogether. They employ a lawless grace, or a graceless Law. Now many are even doing away with the New Covenant as well, by denying the eternal blood of the New Covenant and repentance and the New Birth and life in the Spirit. They have turned away from the cross through which the world is crucified to us and they pretend to please God in the flesh and since this is impossible, they do away with obedience altogether.

                So God is calling us to walk once again in the faith of Abraham, to live under the Melchizedek Priesthood, to live by the Spirit and not by the flesh… for we too are now facing the great unknown as we enter into earth’s final season. There are many uncertainties ahead and we don’t know exactly what the future holds, but we know who holds the future. Selah.