Thank you all for being here tonight. This week, we are going to be looking at what is (for me, anyway) a particularly interesting aspect of Scripture. One thing that is often noticed, even by many of it's critics, is that the Bible has a unified, underlying message; it is given in different words, by different people, but the spirit of it is always the same.

One of the most striking demonstrations of this is found in Paul's letter to the Galatians. Namely, this verse: "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, 'In thee shall all nations be blessed.'" (Gal 3:8)

What does that mean, that the Gospel was preached to Abraham? We have a fairly "New Testament" concept here, for Paul is declaring that even the message of salvation to the Gentiles was not unknown to the early patriarch. How different this is from those who had not received this ancient Gospel even by Christ's day: "They answered and said unto Him, 'Abraham is our father.' Jesus saith unto them, 'If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.'" (John 8:39)

Speaking to the Gentiles, Paul explains: "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." (Eph 2:13-14)

This is the fulfillment of the promise, he says, given to Abraham about 4000 years ago. But is this the only aspect of the Gospel that was preached to Abraham? Yes, that salvation would go to the Gentiles is an integral part of the Good News about the Father, but what of the news itself, what of the message? Was this also given to Abraham?

It is written of the people whose lives are recorded in the Old Testament: "Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted." (1 Cor 10:6)

Of course, we can also look at the positive side of that statement. Those things, basically, were written for our education, so that we could learn from them. But the ancient peoples had no "It is written" upon which to fall back. Instead, the Almighty showed them who He was using symbols, things in nature, and occasionally a personal appearance. For example: "And Gideon said unto God, 'If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.'" (Jud 6:36-37)

So with Abraham, we read that the Creator had great things in store for this individual, but before that... Abraham needed to know who his Father was, and so... by a series of symbols, the Almighty revealed Himself unto him.

Already, Abraham had one vital symbol of Christ's ministry. That of the sacrifice. Although he was to receive a sharp reminder of the cross's significance later on, even from the beginning, he most likely knew the story of the fall of our first parents.

"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." (Gen 2:25)

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were innocent, were perfectly sinless, and had no sensation of shame, and therefore no need of any artificial covering. We find that immediately after their transgression, this situation had changed. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." (Gen 3:7)

Immediately the impulse set in to be covered, to be hidden from scrutiny and judgment. But look at what Yahweh Himself does: "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." (Gen 3:21)

Where would one get a coat of skins? In the Hebrew, the word is "owr," which means "hide," in this case, of dead animals. There needed to be a death to cover the shame of mankind. Every human being since then has had the invitation to be "covered" by the death of Christ, either in looking forward to it, or reflecting upon it's having taken place in the past.

The Lord Himself performed that first sacrifice, but thereafter the ordinance passed unto Adam's faithful sons: "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, 'I have gotten a man from the Lord.' And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." (Gen 4:1-2)

Abel was a keeper of sheep. A lot of people don't put this together, but why would human beings keep sheep? No mention of cold weather is made until after the flood... humans and animals were all vegetarian: "And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat:' and it was so." (Gen 1:29-30)

Now there was no "death" before sin... notice that God considers animals to be "everything... wherein there is life," but there was the consumption of plant matter for food. Even so, Abel kept sheep. It wasn't for food, and it wasn't for wool. It could only have been because the ordinance of the sacrifice was already a divinely established institution. The passage directly following backs that up: "And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell." (Gen 4:3-5)

Now, there is nothing mentioned as being "wrong" with Cain's offering, it just didn't fit the pattern that the Father had given them. He didn't offer it in faith of that Promise. The lamb was not slain, and Cain could not be covered by the sacrifice which pointed forward to the Cross.

Although Cain fell away, and Abel was slain, nevertheless Seth took up the cause of the faithful, and Genesis traces the line from Seth to Noah, and from Noah's son Shem to Abraham. Unfortunately, by this point the line had been somewhat polluted by the nations around them falling away: "And Joshua said unto all the people, 'Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.'" (Jos 24:2)

Although they no doubt knew the faithfulness of Yahweh unto their parents, they were nevertheless influenced by their time in the land that would later become Babylon, and so Abraham was "called out" to begin anew a faithful line of people to reach out to the world with the truth.

In order to do this, our Father needed to start again with the basics. The blood-covenant, which would signify the coming Sacrifice: "And He said unto him, 'Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.' And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away." (Gen 15:9-11)

Seeing that Abraham had been faithful in this first step, Yahweh even threw in a vision of coming events, to continue to reassure His servant that all He said would come to pass: "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And He said unto Abram, 'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.'" (Gen 15:12-14)

Even down to the time of Moses was this follower of the Most High able to see. The lessons did not end there, however. Abraham even got a foretaste of the "Christian life," including the hope of the coming resurrection.

"And God said unto Abraham, 'Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.'" (Gen 17:9-12)

Everyone in the house of the faithful, all the males, that is... were to have this sign in their flesh. Those born to the father specifically, and even those bought with money. And the penalty for not carrying this out was fairly severe: "And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." (Gen 17:14)

Have you ever wondered what circumcision means? And it's significant also that the newborns were to be circumcised on "the eighth day." You'll find that numbering in a couple more places in the Bible, and they all mean the same thing. Where as 7 is the number of perfection, 8 is the number of transcendence, of going beyond the abilities of the flesh... of going on into eternity. Circumcision is one place where there was a foreshadowing of the "putting off of the flesh." This is not only important during life, for a Christian must consider his sinful flesh "dead," but also for the afterlife, as we await our new bodies, given when Christ returns. Even in the Old Testament it was explained thus: "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked." (Deu 10:16)

In the New Testament, Paul completes the picture: "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God." (1 Cor 7:19)

After Christ's death, and "national identity" as a concept of God's people ceased, for the Body of Christ is the Church, and outward circumcision likewise was no longer useful as a symbol. That particular aspect is now to be understood only in it's spiritual application, that of the heart, as is written in Deuteronomy and a couple other places: "And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all Principality and Power: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." (Col 2:10-12)

The outward symbol has changed a bit, and now baptism is the sign to others that you have "died to self," and become a member of the Body, joining in His death that you may be part also of His resurrection. But again, we see the idea death to self linked to the hope of resurrection, and to see that connection clearly, we must go to the "8th day" concept.

Not only was a male to be circumcised on the 8th day of his life, but looking at the annual feasts of Israel, we find something written about the Feast of Tabernacles: "Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of Tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord." (Lev 23:34)

Now to understand the application this has to the time of the end, and the Gospel's connection to it, it must be realized that this is also the feast of the year's harvest: "Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine." (Deu 16:13)

And the week was extended to an "eighth day:" "Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein." (Lev 23:36)

Even in the New Testament, this "last great day" had not lost it's significance. John's Gospel records an interesting event that took place in the Messiah's ministry on the 8th day of the Feast of Tabernacles: "But when His brethren were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret." (John 7:10)

Early in this Gospel, we find a rift appearing between Christ and His earthly family, and the fact that He went to the Feast of Tabernacles (established as such in verse 2) apart from them was rather significant. Nevertheless, at the end of the feast we find this: "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' (But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) " (John 7:37-39)

On the Eighth day of that feast, He began to speak of Himself in more than fleshly terms, as the "fountain of living waters," and to preach about the Spirit in parables. It was a turning point in His ministry.

Something else also happened on an "8th day." On a particular day, Christ called twelve of His disciples together, to begin their ministry: "Then He called His twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases." (Luke 9:1)

This was also the day He fed many followers using only a few loaves and fish, and also the day Peter confessed that He was indeed the Messiah. After that, He began to teach them of His coming death and resurrection. In connection with that, Luke goes on to add: "And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, He took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment was white and glistering." (Luke 9:28-29)

Again, on an "eighth day" we see Christ putting off His "flesh," and letting His divinity, His true nature, shine out for a time. This, to His disciples, would be a symbol that man is indeed more than just what appears on the surface, and that in the last days, we have this expectation: "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (1 Cor 15:51-53)

This is the same expectation of the resurrection that Job held, as we looked at last week: "If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come." (Job 14:14)

We could go on for quite a while on just this subject, but essentially, as Baptism is a sign for Christians that they have entered into Christ's sufferings and death, that they may also enter into His eternal life, so was the Circumcision covenant a sign to Abraham of the same thing - a life lived in surrender to the Father's will, and a hope for the coming eternal future.

By contrast, Abraham also saw a sign of the destruction to come on those who would NOT enter into the relationship that the Almighty was offering to all men. Anyone know how he received this? In the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"And the Lord said, 'Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?'" (Gen 18:17-18)

This is the verse Paul cited in Galatians, equating the phrase, "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him" with the message going to the gentiles. If that's true, then we must see also the destruction of these two wicked cities as signs of things to come, and they certainly are, as Jude declares later: "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 1:7)

Abraham got to see these cities burn first-hand: "And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord: And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." (Gen 19:27-28)

And so he received a sign of what would happen to those who rejected the Gospel, who turned their backs on the Father and His Son; as Jude says, they suffered the punishment of "eternal fire," which can only be an expression referring to the destruction of Hell. As it says of the wicked after the second resurrection of the unsaved: "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." (Rev 20:9)

Time would fail us to go into details of all the symbols Abraham received. He also got a witness toward tithing, as he paid a tenth of the spoils of war to the priest Melchizedek in Genesis 14:20, but let's spend some time on the last "big" symbol that Abraham received, for it includes both the death and resurrection concepts again, and in a way that the patriarch would never forget.

"And He said, 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'" (Gen 22:2)

What a price! And yet we find: "And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him." (Gen 22:3)

A couple things to realize. First, Abraham was old at this point. Isaac, by contrast, was over 30. He wasn't the little 12-year-old we see in the diagrams and illustrations of Bible stories. Isaac, the son, was about the age Christ was when He died, and both were able to avoid their appointed fate if they wished to. Isaac, like the Messiah, had to offer himself willingly.

Secondly, this was not a short journey. "Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." (Gen 22:4)

Abraham had at least 3 days to think about what he was doing. He had three days to ask himself, "Am I sure about this? Did He REALLY ask me to sacrifice my son?" More than that, Abraham had already received the promise that Isaac would be his heir. If he wished an opportunity to justify a temptation to think that he had somehow been deceived, that would have been a terrific excuse.

But this was not the nature of his relationship with Yahweh: "For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." (Rom 4:3)

Abraham believed the two promises, both at once. He believed that Isaac would be his heir, and he also believed that he was to sacrifice this very son. But how could that be? Paul explains in Hebrews that he continued with his intention to sacrifice him: "Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure." (Heb 11:19)

This was the way in which Abraham reconciled the two promises, and such was the nature of his love. When we love the Father and Son, we don't go around looking for reasons why the Scripture might be wrong, or why his messengers might be mistaken. No; rather if we love, we will decide to believe, and we WILL believe, even if we don't fully understand at the time. Such is the nature of a covenant, and for a Christian, the root of our relationship with Yahweh must be this: "If He said it, He meant it, regardless of what my own reason, understanding, and senses tell me." As it is written: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Pro 3:5)

Had Abraham not done this, he would never have received that beautiful symbol of the Christian hope, and if we do not do this, we will never raise our eyes to Heaven with true love, for we would not have the necessary relationship with the One who is there, and who awaits even now to take us home.

Let us therefore take a cue from the example of this patriarch. We find ourselves in a time when the world is in it's darkest hour yet. The night is upon us, but... we await that 8th day, we await that harvest, and we have the opportunity now to learn who our Father is by reflecting with prayer on the signs and symbols of His love as recorded in the Word. And by trusting in the Lord with all that we are, we too will soon put off this sinful flesh: "Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." (1 Th 4:17-18)

That is the true end of the Gospel, both to Abraham, and ourselves.

David.