Abraham from Faith to Faith

By Harold Thompson

Abraham was not a super hero when God called him to go to Canaan. He models for us growth in his relationship with God and demonstrates to us how to endure difficulties in his spiritual journey. His life also encourages us to be more dependent on and trusting more in Gods promises and their fulfillment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512753950

Harold Thompson

Harold Thompson pastored from 1960 to 2012 and enjoyed it tremendously. His later years, especially, were years of many emotional highs. Harold loved the opportunities of ministry. Teaching the scriptures, which forms the foundation for a more godly life was his spiritual nourishment. But God took the desire to pastor from his heart and moved him into retirement, then led him to write about Abraham. The result is this book. Harold desires that He uses it to encourage others.

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Copyright © 2017 Harold Thompson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Some scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Some scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

One scripture quotation in this publication is from The Message. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Most scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5396-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5397-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5395-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016913641

WestBow Press rev. date: 4/7/2017

CONTENTS

Preface

Abraham From Faith To Faith

To the reader. It would be helpful to your learning to use the Bible as you read this book and examine the references. Doing this will strengthen your confidence in the Bible as the word of God.

Preface

I realize many books about Abraham have been written, and I do not propose to introduce another that only follows the pattern or format of others.

I have taken what I believe is a different approach in writing about Abraham. I have treated Abraham’s experience with God to be a more practical one, much as I thought I might have if I were in Abraham’s place.

Abraham knew very little, if anything, about God before he was called to leave his family, home, and land to go to another land that he knew nothing about. He was an idolater, as was his father, in the culture in which he lived. He had to learn about God little by little and grow close to Him through everyday experiences, even as we must.

No individual is called by God into His service as a mature person in knowledge and experience. Abraham had to act in faith when God called him to go to another land. We should know what that means, because we also had to act in faith and by faith when God called us into His light and life. We must remember Abraham was just a man when God called him. He was no superhero. He was not the father of those who walk by faith when God spoke to him in Ur of the Chaldees. He walked with God and proved his faith through the tests in which God challenged him. Through these trials he learned that God was faithful to His promises and that He is the God of truth.

I trust you, the reader, will be encouraged and inspired as you read the thoughts that are recorded in this book. My studies for writing this book have been very rewarding. I pass it on to you with the hope that you will be inspired to read and study God’s inerrant word and also learn more about Him who gave His best through the seed of Abraham that all who believe in Jesus Christ would be saved.

Although this book is not intended to be a biography of Abraham’s life, most of its content is that, but I also wanted to show him as a pattern for our lives as believers.

The structure of his growth in his relationship with God exemplifies how our walk with God should be structured, how we should behave as we walk with God and learn from Him. Is this not what Jesus instructed us to do so as to structure our spiritual growth by learning from Him (Matthew 11:29)?

Probably the greater focus of the book would be the Christian life, with the accent on spiritual growth. To follow Abraham’s walk with God and learn with him the stages or levels of growth is an inspiring journey.

ABRAHAM

From Faith to Faith

Second Peter 3:8 tells us that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day.

God is not limited to time or confined in time. He created time and subjected His creation to it. One day it will all cease, and then there will be only eternity.

He planned from before time that He would provide a salvation for His creation. Ephesians 1:3–4 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. First Peter 1:20 says, He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you (NKJV). Revelation 13:8 says, Whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (NKJV).

God has a plan of action. He is never without the knowledge of the enemy’s deceitfulness, and He is never surprised. He knew the world would succumb to the wiles and hostilities of Satan when he was cast out of heaven. God planned for the redemption of all creation, even before there was a creation.

God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden to oversee the tending of it. They had a rich communion with God. They were naked, innocent, and unashamed. They had no knowledge of evil or its existence. Satan was cast out of heaven and cast down to earth because, in pride, he exalted himself with the goal to be worshiped and to be equal with God. (Isaiah 14:12–14; Ezekiel 28:17). Angry and hostile, he purposed to upset and destroy the work of God (Isaiah 14:16–17; John 10:10).

Satan came to Eve in the garden with the lie that God was not honest with her and Adam. He told them they would become as gods and would know right from wrong if they would eat of the fruit of the tree of which God had told them not to eat. He was successful in enticing them to eat of the fruit, and the moment they did their eyes were opened, and they knew, for the first time in their existence, the presence and destruction of sin and the guilt and fear it brought upon their soul. Adam became the channel through which sin and death came into the world (Romans 5:12). The misery and weight of their guilt must have felt like their consciences had been seared with a seven-times-hotter iron. God knew they would succumb to Satan’s lie and He already had a plan of redemption that He would begin to execute. All who have walked in intimate fellowship with God know the heaviness and misery that guilt of disobedience brings upon their souls.

I imagine Adam saying to Eve, What have we done? We have done something that can’t be taken back; it can’t be undone. God told us to rule over all His creation and to take care of His garden, as well as to populate the earth, and now we have, in the most vile way, disobeyed God and relinquished our authority to one who is the enemy of God. How deep and strong will the effect of our disobedience go? Eve, I think we have opened the gate for Satan to have dominion over all our posterity and we have relinquished to him the authority that God intended for us to have over His creation. All of a sudden I am afraid to confront God when He comes to fellowship with us. I don’t like the idea of our eyes being opened and to have the knowledge of right and wrong, to know the difference between good and evil. The wrong we see and know is the pinnacle of devastation. We have given our honor to another through his deception and lie.

God, instead of destroying all He had made, chose to use this tragedy of disobedience to show His great love and unbounded mercy and abundant grace. Adam and Eve would continue to live, but what they had done was not without an extreme price. They would no longer enjoy the rich and sweet communion with God. They would know the pain of laboring in childbirth and in the labor of providing their food from the earth, which would oppose them by producing thorns, thistles, and unwanted weeds. They were going to experience an endless depth of Satan’s lies and deception. They would not escape the curse of God on their disobedience by casting all the blame back to Satan. They would feel the woe of their disobedience. Their’s was to be an entirely different direction of life from what they would have had by resisting Satan and being faithful to God.

Adam and Eve began to reproduce according to God’s instruction to populate the world. Cain and Abel would represent the two powers of opposing factions that would be active in all the history of creation.

Adam and Eve experienced spiritual death in the garden, which had wreaked havoc on their fellowship with God. They would also experience the pain of grief and loss when Cain killed Abel, which was Satan’s next attempt to upset God’s plan. Cain’s murder of Abel is the most extreme gesture and expression of what Adam’s violation and disobedience of God’s command has wrought in his seed. The first gesture was the weak offering of worship Cain offered to God and became angry when God did not accept it. This is the first recorded manifestation of sin in the seed of Adam and Eve. It began with the offering of Cain being rejected and then progressed to the act of murder. Adam and Eve were seeing what the fruit of the flesh is. Not only did they grieve because one of their children had separated himself so far from the fellowship of God that he resorted to murder, but they grieved for the loss of the one that was murdered. Their sin of disobedience was now framing itself and displaying its presence in the actions of their offspring.

Then Adam and Eve had another son whom they named Seth. The mother grieved over the death of a son, but now she was comforted because God had given her another son. Seth would be the one through whom God’s plan for redemption of His creation would come to fruition in Jesus Christ. Genesis 4:26 tells us that it was Seth’s son Enosh who began to call on God. We never see or read in the history of Cain that one of his descendants ever called on the name of God. We follow Seth’s lineage into Noah’s family and from this family the son to emerge to continue God’s plan to bring forth His supreme offering for sin was Shem. The descendants of Shem are given in Genesis 11:10–26. God’s plan to redeem all His creation, man being the main object of redemption, had been put into motion and would progress to the time when God would bring the ultimate sacrifice into the world.

As we hear Cain’s response to God’s rejection of his offering, we are made to remember that a most favorable past time of humanity is self-pity and talk about how unfair they have been treated. The person of the world naturally thinks that everything should revolve around him or her. Cain talked about the judgment of God upon him and implied how unfair it was. Sin does not add anything positive or constructive to the individual.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis leads us to chapter 12, which records in greater light and focus God’s activity. God stepped into His world that He created, and He did it at different times to bring humankind into check, such as His confrontation with Cain, His judgment on His creation by means of the flood, confusing the languages because of the tower of Babel, and at other times also.

In chapter 12 and beyond we see more of the activity of God dealing with His creation in progression toward His plan of salvation.

There was a man whose name was