Message Title: God Making a Covenant with Abraham concerning the Promised Land and Bringing His People out of Egypt into a Good and Spacious Land
Genesis 12:7 And Jehovah appeared to Abram and said, To your seed I will give this land. And there he built an altar to Jehovah who had appeared to him.
in Genesis, God promised to give Abraham this land. later in Exodus, we see God's people Israel were in Egypt under Pharoah's tyranny. then God sent Moses to lead them to come out of Egypt, passing through the wilderness, to bring God's people to enter into the good land, the land flowing milk and honey. we need to be aware how many people are still in Egypt under Pharoah, who need the salvation of God.
Acts 7:2 And he said, Men, brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,
when Abraham was still in the Ur of Chaldea, a place worshipping idols, God of glory appeared to him, gave him a promise, attracted him to leave the place of idol worship to go to the good land. Abraham believed the word of God and left his hometown and his family with faith.
I. in order to to strengthen the faith of Abraham to believe God for the promise concerning the land, God was compelled to confirm His promise to Abraham concerning the land by making a covenant with him.
many times, we are like Abraham, not having faith in us to believe God. so God has to infuse faith into us, enabling us to enter into the covenant, to inherit our allotted portion, to enjoy all the divine blessings God has prepared for us in the New Testament. it is not we who try so hard to enter into the good land, but it is God who brings us into the land, who put us into Christ, to enjoy all the unsearchable riches of Christ.
if we read the record in Genesis 15, the covenant God made with Abraham. it shows us that God made the covenant with Abraham through the crucified and resurrected Christ. the price which the Lord paid for us to establish this better covenant is far far higher beyond what we can think or imagine. only God the Father knows what a price He has made by giving us His only Begotten Son.
in enacting His covenant with Abraham, God came passing through as a smoking furnace and a flaming torch. this shows us that when God's people pass through sufferings and afflictions, God will come to refine and enlighten them that they may fulfill His purpose. many times we all have this question, why this happen to me? why I have to suffer all these? like the great question in the book of Job. the great answer to this is that God wants to refine us and enlighten us, to purfiy us to get rid of all the dross so we will produce the fire refined gold, for the accomplishment of His great purpose. the only thing we can do is to worship God for the outcomes of all these that we pass through. we are entering in the narrow gate and taking the constricted way that leads to life. indeed we do need to pay the price, but the reward is that we will enter into the millenial kingdom, to enter into the joy of our Master.
II. God delivered His chosen people out of the tyranny of the Egyptians and brought them out of Egypt, the land of bondage, and into Canaan, the promised land
Revelation 18:13 And cinnamon and amomum and incense and ointment and frankincense and wine and oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargo of horses and chariots and slaves and souls of men.in Revelation chapter 18, we have a very clear picture of the wordly Babylon. among all the items that they sell, the last item is the souls of men. today, in the present evil age, many people are pursuing super hard in their careers. actually, they do not realise that they have sold themselves to be under the slavery of Pharoah. God is calling His people to get out of this Babylon. through the ten plagues God sent to Egypt, to expose the world to His people, so that they would want to get out of Egypt. we need such a vision to see what the world is. the world is not a place of enjoyment, but a place of tyranny. we can have a job like Daniel. Daniel had great responsibily during captivity in Babylon, but the king Darius mentioned Daniel as the servant of the living God. Daniel had such a testimony that, though he was living and working in Babylon, he was still serving the living God. Daniel sets a pattern to show us how we should live today in the world. outwardly, we may look the same as everyone else, having a normal job for our basic living; but inwardly, we are living to the Lord, serving the living God. we all need to ask ourselves this question, do we exist for God's purpose?
we can only bring others on to the extent where God has brought us on. therefore, for the sake of those who are under our care, we need to go on and on in our pursuing and enjoyment of Christ. even the apostle Paul said in his epistle that he does not count himself as arrived, but he forgets all things behind to press on toward the goal. we should also has such an attitude in our pressing on, so that we will gain the reward the Lord has called us.
Ephesians 3:18 May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are
Christ's dimensions are the dimensions of the universe. this means that Christ is our real universe. this One is the all-inclusive and all-extensive Christ. the Christ we have received is not a small, narrow or limited Christ, but an unlimited, extensive, all-inclusive Christ. such a One is now living in us and waiting for opportunities to spread into our entire being. we need to open our being to Him to receive His dispensing, and we must give all the room in our being to this spreading Christ in us, so that Christ may make His home in all our heart.
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