ABRAHAM'S DWELLING PLACES
ABRAHAM’S DWELLING PLACES
Genesis 13: 12, 18; Genesis 20: 1, 2; Genesis 22: 19
I wish to speak about Abraham’s dwelling places. As “father of us all”, he is to be learned from, and in this respect he is a type of Christ who said, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me” (Matthew 11: 28, 29). Abraham is called “father of us all”, that is, all believers; and he is presented to us in this sense as a model. The Jews had claimed the fathership of Abraham, but the Lord points out that what they were doing is not in accord with Abraham’s works: “this did not Abraham” (John 8: 40). So that they had no moral claim on him at all as a father. The Jews were ready to put the Lord to death, and did put Him to death, but He said of Abraham, “Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, and he saw and rejoiced” (John 8: 56).
Abraham’s dwelling places are particularly interesting. I hope it will be profitable for us to consider them and to consider ourselves comparatively; because the idea of dwelling has a great place with men; where we live, our houses, neighbours, social links — these are all of great importance in the ordinary man’s and woman’s minds. So that it is well for Christians to have a lead as to this, as well as to other Christian features. The first scripture speaks about Abraham dwelling in the land of Canaan. He is the first person, indeed, who is spoken of as dwelling there and the land itself is designated in connection with him. He set out on a long journey to go into the land of Canaan with his wife and his nephew, and Scripture says, “into the land of Canaan they came” (Genesis 12: 5). He had it in his mind, but stopped on the way. The word to him was, “Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, to the land that I will show thee” (Genesis 12: 1); but Stephen says more than that; he says, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia” (Acts 7: 2); not, ‘when he lived’ there, he was just ‘there’. Genesis also tells us that instead of Abraham leaving by himself in obedience to God’s commandment, his father Terah took him, implying that he failed at the very outset in answering to the divine word. Instead of going by himself, his father took him, meaning that his natural relations had swayed him. Our natural relatives tend to hold us back, even if they are Christians, and so Abraham was detained considerably. His father and the family had set out on a long trek from Mesopotamia; they were really, you might say, migratory in their aspect. And they came to Haran.
I refer to this because it affects many of us here, perhaps each of us at some time or other, the undue place that our parents and families have with us, thus holding us back from God’s thought for us. God’s thought for us, I may say at once, is always better than anything we already have, be what it may. God’s word as disclosed to us has an end in view, and in order to reach it we have to learn to obey, and not to compromise. One man said to the Lord, “Lord, suffer me first to go away and bury my father” (Matthew 8: 21); that is, he put the burial of his father before the following of the Lord, which would commend itself to most. I do not suppose the father was dead; he would, therefore, have to remain there until he died. The man might have died before his father, and he would then never have followed the Lord. There was a brother living in this town, he lived here for thirty years, and his dear wife is here tonight. He was interested in the truth, but he never broke bread. I saw a letter that [p. 365] he wrote before he died saying he had it in mind to begin breaking bread, but that he had been holding back for thirty years or so. That was not good enough for the Lord. It was not good enough for him either. We cannot afford to hold back one minute if the Lord says, Come forward; we are robbing Him and we are robbing ourselves and we are robbing the brethren if we delay. We think, maybe, that it is an optional matter; we have good intents, but we put it off; pursuing this way of the brother I mentioned who never broke bread in the fellowship of God’s people. He is with the Lord now; he will never break bread. Thus he will never remember the Lord according to His request. There are many like him. I would not like to be among them, and the urgent word is that none here should be among them. If Abraham had died before his father he would never have come into the land of Canaan; it was after his father died that he came to Canaan (Acts 7: 4), but his father, alive, kept him back. And yet the glory of God had shone into his soul years before in the land of Mesopotamia. Stephen alone tells us that, I suppose it was the best bit, up to that time, that he could give us about Abraham: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia”. He had had that impression all that time, however many years it was, and yet had not responded fully to His word, never put his foot in the land of Canaan to which he had been directed until his father died.
The land of Canaan, in that respect, represents the purpose of God, that is just what it is; it was the purpose of God for Abraham and it is the purpose of God for me. It is a type of heaven as a realm or country, the very best that God can devise for us and direct us to go into; and yet one may say, Well, I intend to go there, but I will wait a while. It is abhorrent to heaven for us to be delaying in appropriating [p. 366] the best things God has provided for His people. However, Abraham came finally into the land of Canaan. “and into the land of Canaan they came”. So the first scripture I read says that “Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan” chapter 13: 12. He dwelt there. It is not sojourning; sojourning is not exactly dwelling, dwelling is a fixed position as selected and that is what he took up. That is to say his outlook was Canaan. God said to him later, verse 14, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that thou seest will I give to thee, and to thy seed for ever”. He was to look throughout the hills and dales of Canaan. It has to be taken in a spiritual sense, dear brethren; God says, “a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the ornament of all lands” (Ezekiel 20: 6). And now Abraham is directed to look throughout the whole area, north, south, east and west, All is yours, God says. But he was already dwelling there and his nephew Lot had just separated from him. Natural relatives are unreliable; Terah had been one and Lot was another and he was a trial to Abraham. We may think we are doing them good in keeping them near us because of natural links, but in the long run they usually cause us sorrow. Lot finally separated from Abraham, and now God says, as it were, I have relieved you of your nephew who was causing you trouble, and the whole land is yours. We must be watchful of our nephews and our cousins; let us influence them, of course, but on divine lines, counting that unless God is working we shall never really bring them into the land of Canaan. No one can but God, because it is a spiritual matter.
Well, now, Abraham was dwelling in the land of Canaan, and that is the first point I make: Are we all in that setting? It is no question of what street [p. 367] we live on, or what accommodation we have in our houses, or how we entertain; the question is the outlook, — the sidelook and the backlook, too. I mean to say this was the centre of all the points of the compass; as it says, “look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that thou seest will I give to thee, and to thy seed for ever”. God says, It is all yours. It is a question now of faith laying hold of what love provides; Canaan is what love provides. God says, I have espied it for you and now I am offering it to you; you are right in the midst of it; you are dwelling there, and I want you to look in every direction and see what there is for you. It is all yours. But this will deprive me of much, it will deprive me of many things I may be enjoying as a half-hearted Christian. There are half-way persons, real Christians going only half or a quarter of the way; they are very numerous. But God is saying to us all now that the whole land is ours, and that it is the very best: “a good land, a land of waterbrooks, of springs, and of deep waters, that gush forth in the valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey ... a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose mountains thou wilt dig copper. And thou shalt eat and be filled, and shalt bless Jehovah thy God for the good land which he hath given thee” (Deuteronomy 8: 7 - 10).
Hundreds of years after this the Lord said to certain sceptics in His day, “Have ye not read ... I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22: 31, 32). Abraham, Isaac and Jacob belonged to the land of promise. They are not there yet bodily, they are with the Lord Jesus according to His word to the thief: “today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. That is a temporary [p. 368] matter, pending the resurrection. They are all waiting and we are waiting for the Lord Jesus to come out and raise the sleeping saints and change the living ones, and then we shall all be caught up. That is the great idea, eternal life is involved in that. In Luke 20: 35 the Lord speaks of “that world, and the resurrection”. You say, I am one of the sons of God; I must go to heaven. But how are you one of the sons of God? According to the Lord’s word we are sons of God because we are sons of the resurrection. Is the thought of being one of the sons of the resurrection any glory to your mind? It is to mine. It is a state qualifying me to be one of the sons of God, a state suitable for sonship to God: “and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection”. The Lord says that those who are accounted worthy to be regarded as of that world and the resurrection do not die any more: “for neither can they die any more, for they are equal to angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20: 36). This is a very practical matter. The apostle Paul says in Romans 8: 23, “we ourselves ... awaiting adoption, that is the redemption of our body”. There it is not the redemption of the soul, it is the redemption of the body. You enquire, Do you mean that you are not a son today? Not fully. I am not a son in the sense of having a body fully suitable to the relationship, because my body is liable to death. A son of the resurrection shall never die, he is as the angels, he is a son of God because he is a son of the resurrection; that is a great fact. And we are not sons in that sense yet because we are liable to death, to be disembodied, to be left without a body; it is only temporarily, of course, but still, if only for an hour, I am without my body. I have only a spirit and a soul, I am deprived of a body. But we are awaiting adoption, as the apostle says, “awaiting adoption, that is the redemption of our body”. ‘Adoption’ there is ‘sonship;’ the word is ‘sonship’. That is to say, without a body, without a resurrected body I cannot be fully said to be a son. I am a son really, I serve God in this body, but it is a provisional condition. God accepts this body and it is to be holy, we are to be holy, spirit, soul and body; but nevertheless I may be deprived at any time of this body. You may say I am forcing this a little bit, but I am not. I am a tripartite creature and as a son of God according to divine purpose I shall have a body like that of Jesus, a “body of glory”. Think of that, a body like Jesus! That is the fulness of God’s thought.
And so the Lord says to these Sadducees, “Ye err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God”. They had presented to Him the case of a woman who, as they alleged, had seven brethren as her husbands. He hears what they have to say as to it: In the resurrection, whose wife shall she be? They thought they had the Lord cornered, but He says, “Ye err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God”. How many millions there are like that! How little intelligence there is about the Scriptures and the power of God! Here the Sadducees challenge the truth of the resurrection. There is no such thing, they thought; and they did not believe in angels or spirits. But “the section of the bush” is conclusive; and what did God say to Moses at the burning bush? Think of the Lord condescending to reason with these sceptics! He says: “Do not ye therefore err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God? ... But concerning the dead that they rise, have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the section of the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Ye therefore greatly err” (Mark 12: 24 - 27. He does not say, I am the [p. 370] God of Cain, or the God of Nimrod; He is the God of living people. You say, They have not bodies. No, they have not, they are all in the cave of Machpelah as to their bodies, but they are with Jesus: “the dead in Christ”. As in their graves they are fallen asleep and they are with Jesus, but they are living. They have not got bodies, but that is only a matter of just a little while. The thing is as settled as it ever can be in the mind of God, and God is all-powerful. That is what the Lord means when He says, You do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God. God will take all His people out of their graves and give them bodies of glory, being sons of the resurrection. This is a very great and blessed fact.
But I am speaking now of Abraham and where he dwelt; he dwelt in the land of Canaan. The Lord says of him, “Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, and he saw and rejoiced” (John 8: 56). What did the Lord mean? What did Abraham see? I leave that with the Lord’s words. Abraham saw the Lord’s day and rejoiced, that is enough for me; and if he dwelt in the land of Canaan there is something of value there. God says, You go there, Abraham; and it is to be yours. “Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan”, not ‘sojourned’ but “dwelt”. So that I come back to my enquiry as to where we are dwelling — as to our associations, whether we are living as Christians in the light and apprehension of heaven, our place being there, in spirit dwelling there; the land of Canaan, north, east, south and west, being a type of it. Is that my dwelling sphere? Or is my outlook like Lot’s? Am I aiming at political honours in this world? Am I aiming at being a social man in my neighbourhood, including church-going and the like? All such things may be true of me and yet I may not be a true Christian at all; but how sorrowful to be in such circumstances and yet one of the Lord’s people! That was Lot. Lot separated from Abraham. He went down to the plain of Jordan, a well-watered plain, “like the land of Egypt” (verse 10). That for the moment was his land, and he went and dwelt in the city of Sodom. But Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan. What an outlook! It was God’s land. If you look at Deuteronomy 8 you will get a description of God’s land, as I have already noted.
Then the last verse of our chapter says, “Then Abraham moved his tents, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron. And he built there an altar to Jehovah”. You may say, There is not much difference between one place and another if it is in the land of Canaan. Of course, Hebron is in Canaan; it is just a comparatively short distance south of Jerusalem and a good deal more elevated than Jerusalem; but what is particularly important about it is, that we are told it was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt; Numbers 13: 22. That is, as a city it has a status before the world. It is not a matter of “that world” now exactly, it is before the world, that is this world. I can say but little about this world. I have already touched on it as to what we are likely to desire naturally, to be men of prominence and distinction in it, even if it only be locally. But the Spirit of God says through John the apostle, “Love not the world”. Now when the world is compared with Hebron it is not simply to tell you not to love it, but that it is not good enough for you, however good it may be from man’s stand-point, for Hebron represents what was before the world (see 1 Corinthians 2: 6, 7). The world as it is has no status with God at all. God began, as it were, with Hebron; it was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, the latter representing the present world. And Abraham is viewed here typically as living in relation to eternal things. As already alluded to,
Paul says, “But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, that hidden wisdom which God had predetermined before the ages for our glory: which none of the princes of this age knew, (for had they know, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;)” (1 Corinthians 2: 7, 8. Why did they crucify the Lord of glory? They did not know the wisdom of God, the hidden wisdom which God had reserved for us. What was Calvary? It was the place of a skull, a remarkable word, clearly meaning an empty skull: there is nothing in it. The natural mind has no ability to understand the things of God. All this enters into Hebron as compared with Zoan in Egypt; Hebron points to the hidden wisdom of God, it is the very best. It is what was before the world. The world has no status with God at all compared with Hebron for Hebron is above the murky level of this poor world. It is what God has prepared for those who love Him, and I want to be among those. “Things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him, but God has revealed to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10). That is one of the most remarkable statements in Scripture. The Spirit that dwells in us searches all things, even the depths of God; not, of course, the depths of hell, but the depths of God. Think of having the Holy Spirit in us, and of how He leads us into eternal things!
That is where Abraham is typically: “Then Abram moved his tents, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron. And he built there an altar to Jehovah”. That is, he is before the world. You say, Whatever does that mean? It means this for one thing: “Because whom he has foreknown, he has also predestinated” (Romans 8: 29. Think of being foreknown of God before the world [p. 373] was! Let us wake up and think of the magnificence of this. “Whom he has foreknown” — that is, millions of years ago God knew every Christian here, knew us in the sense in which I am speaking tonight; He foreknew. And then we are told, “Because whom he has foreknown, he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son ... But whom he has predestinated, these also he has called; and whom he has called, these also he has justified; but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified” (verses 29, 30). Now that is Hebron; that is how I understand my position before the foundation of the world. I had a status before the world. Abraham is saying in effect, This is my place; those who live here are my relations. The world will take on Nimrod and millions of others like him — great men — but Abraham says, They are not good enough for me. And that is the way to look at these Scriptures and many others like them; we cannot settle down and become what other people are. We are Christians. We were in the mind of God before the world was, and Abraham says, I am one of those. There are oaks there, which would mean stability, while this world is tottering to its doom; there are no foundations to it. Not that God is not holding it provisionally, maybe for a few years, but there is no hope of a millennium after this terrible conflict, no Utopia in sight. It will never happen. Not that I would weaken the hands of the men who are standing for right in so far as right in this crisis is to be understood, but there is no millennium awaiting men save what God has foretold in the prophets; that is to say, the Lord Jesus will come out and inaugurate a thousand years of blessing and rule in it; that is the only one there will ever be, we may as well accept it. But for the moment God is in charge; in a providential way He is holding the reins tightly and surely. If He intends we should stay here a little longer, we [p. 374] shall stay here; and we shall sail the oceans again according to His ordering. We may as well look at the facts as they are.
But Abraham lived there, by the oaks of Mamre he did not simply sojourn, he was dwelling there, still, as Scripture indicates, maintaining his pilgrim character, dwelling in tents. Jacob built a house and came into sorrow; as soon as you stabilise yourself as part of this world you come into sorrow. Abraham’s affections were in Mamre, in connection with eternal things. He would say, I belong to the ‘before’ people; those that were known beforehand, before the world was. Personally I make no hesitation in saying I had a status with God before the world was. Think of that! All depended on the incarnation of Christ and on redemption, but every true believer had a status with God before the world was; he was foreknown. God saw us as we are, He saw everything from beginning to end. The verse before us should be read: “Then Abram moved his tents, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron. And he built there an altar to Jehovah”. There is the suggestion of growth and stability. Isaiah 65: 22 may be compared in this connection.
The next dwelling place of Abraham is mentioned in Genesis 20: 1, “And Abraham departed thence towards the south country, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned at Gerar”. His dwelling place was between Kadesh and Shur, which is in the south, but he sojourned in Gerar which is a Philistine town. Why did he go to Gerar? By his own statement, we learn that danger existed in Gerar. He says, “Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will kill me for my wife’s sake” (verse 1). Naturally we all like company and so the town is attractive; but it is clear that enquiry should be made before we place ourselves where [p. 375] natural links are likely to be formed. Abraham had, in this connection, bitter experience in Egypt, and now a recurrence is about to take place in Gerar. Has he not some need for self-examination in that he has selected a city where the Philistine influence exists? He says, If I say, She is my wife, I may suffer. Why should he be in a place where he is forced to tell a lie about his wife? Let us be on our guard to maintain our heavenly position and leave the Philistines alone. Of course you respect them, they are men, but to be on social terms with the world is abominable to heaven, and it is a snare to Christians. Through such associations their heavenly colour fades and their joy ceases; and they also lose their power of testimony. They deny the fellowship, they deny the assembly, they deny that they belong to the bride of Christ. That is what Abraham did in Gerar, and many Christians have been damaged in this way.
Finally, I wish to remark on the verse in chapter 22 which I read: “And Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba. And Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba”. Beer-sheba was the well of the oath. There is no town today like that. There is not a safe town in the world, not one in which I am protected by God. I am not speaking now of military attack, I am speaking of corruption, of the influence in the towns and the cities. The history of Beer-sheba in this book denotes that it refers to the city of God; it has foundations. It is a small place away in the south, but Abraham dwelt there. Where was he just before? He was just offering up Isaac. He had clean hands; he could lift up holy hands. He did not spare his own son, acting like God Himself who delivered His Son up for us all. Abraham was a worthy object for heaven as he went down from the mountain where he had been offering up Isaac, and [p. 376] where he received him back in a figure, as a type of Christ risen from the dead. Where is he to go? Is he to go to some wilderness city and be linked up with it, and become defiled with it? No. It is Beer-sheba, named by himself-meaning, “well of the oath”. There Abraham had called on the name of Jehovah, the Eternal God. Let us get that designation into our hearts — the Eternal God. I have been speaking of what was before the world: the God that we worship is the God that was before the world and will be after the world, “he who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1: 8). Earlier the Philistines had come up and said, Let us make a covenant; Abimelech said, You make a covenant with me, Abraham, that you will never do any harm to me, or my son, or my grandson. Abraham says, I am ready to do that. The Son of man did not come to destroy life, but to save. Abraham says, I am not here to slay you, and he goes and calls on the name of the Everlasting God. That is Beer-sheba.
And now he is offering his son in obedience to God’s commandment: “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and there offer him up for a burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Genesis 22: 2). He reached forth his hand to slay his son. That was a wonderful testimony to Abraham’s obedience; not only to his faith, but to his obedience to God. Heaven honoured him, calling his name out twice in the wonderful way recorded here. And where is he going to live now? He has a great sense of God’s pleasure in him as we have seen, and great promises made to him because of his obedience. God commits Himself to him, saying, “By myself I swear, saith Jehovah, that ... I will richly bless thee, and greatly multiply thy seed, as the stars of heaven ... and in thy seed shall all the [p. 377] nations of the earth bless themselves, because thou hast harkened to my voice”. With all this precious light in his soul Abraham went to Beer-sheba and dwelt there. It was where he had made a covenant with Abimelech, where they had sworn together and where, as we have seen, he called on the name of Jehovah — the Eternal God. The name Beer-sheba had been given because he and the Philistine king had together sworn there, entering into a covenant acknowledging that Abraham had dug the well. Thus Beer-sheba had the character of a covenant city, and evidently Abraham had this in mind as going there to dwell after the great happenings on the mountain in the land of Moriah. Later events in the histories of Isaac and Jacob confirm all this. The faithfulness of God was involved. Speaking spiritually, were I to go to Abraham in later years when Isaac and Jacob were there, and enquire of him as to his affairs, he would say, I am dwelling with these two, my son and grandson, and in my house all is well. I am proving constantly the faithfulness and mercy of God. “By faith”, we are told later, “he ... dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11: 8, 9). This is the last reference to his dwelling. You know how beautifully the Lord speaks about Abraham’s bosom in Luke 16. Isaac and Jacob knew it well.
And so, dear brethren, let us dwell in Beer-sheba, in the place of divine protection and stability. There we older ones may gather the young saints under our wings, and give them a place in our bosoms, corresponding with Abraham’s bosom. The Lord Jesus had John in His bosom, reflecting the Father’s bosom, in which He Himself was. And so in spite of the storms that are raging the Lord would urge us to dwell in Beer-sheba, the place of the oath. When Jacob was going down to Egypt Jehovah said to him, “I am God, the God of thy father” (Genesis 46: 3).
[p. 378] That means that in Christ every promise is Yea and Amen. “Wherein God, willing to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his purpose, intervened by an oath, that by two unchangeable things, in which it was impossible that God should lie, we might have a strong encouragement, who had fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us, which we have as anchor of the soul, both secure and firm, and entering into that within the veil, where Jesus is entered as forerunner for us, become for ever a high priest according to the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 6: 17 - 20.
I think what I have said ought to help us as to the sense of security, the dwelling relations which we are brought into, and what God looks for in us.