Finding Jesus in the Life of Abraham, Part 1: Beginnings

A Sermon by Pastor Joel Christian Glenn

30 April 2017

We all know that the Word, or the Bible, is about God. That’s not hard to believe. But shortly after His resurrection Jesus pushed this idea to another level. When He appeared to two disciples on the way to Emmaus, it says, “Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). From this we can gather that all of the Scriptures are not just about God, but are about Jesus Himself. That’s a concept that is harder to grasp. Yes, there are the prophecies that are clearly about Jesus. But what about, say the story of Creation? Or the Exodus from slavery in Egypt? The many kings of Israel, both good and evil? Or all the many lists of laws and genealogies, are even those about Jesus?

The truth of the matter is that the whole of the Word is not just about Jesus, it is Jesus. Listen to these verses from the opening of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-4, 14)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is a clear reference to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the eternal Word, the Word that is also embodied in the Word of God, our Old and New Testaments.

If you feel that it is hard to grasp how Jesus and the Word are one and the same, you are not alone. It is difficult to comprehend how a living, breathing, person and an apparently lifeless slab of paper can be one and the same. The Writings for the New Church acknowledge this difficulty and offer a way around it. This is from the Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture:

Few understand how the Lord is the Word, for it is generally supposed that the Lord, by means of the Word, can enlighten and teach people, and yet He cannot, on this account, be called the Word.

So as we’ve said, it makes sense that the Word is about the Lord, and it is the Lord’s way of teaching us, but that doesn’t mean He is the Word. The passage however continues:

It should be known, however, that every person is his own love, and consequently his own good and his own truth. A person is a person for no other reason than this, and there is nothing else in him that is a person. For the same reason that a person is his own good and his own truth, angels and spirits also are people; and for all good and truth proceeding from the Lord, is in its own form, a person. But the Lord is Divine Good itself and Divine Truth itself; thus He is Personhood Itself, from whom every person is a person. (Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 100)

There is a lot going on in that passage. What it all boils down to is a definition of humanity that transcends having a physical body, a definition that helps us see how a book and a person can be one and the same. As the passage said, a person is a person because of his loves, and therefore because of all his good and truth that stem from that love. In short, you are what you love, and what you love makes you human. Think of it this way: if we were to transplant your brain from your body into someone else’s, and this new person loved the same things you love and in the exact same way, and so behaved as you would behave, wouldn’t we say that it is still you, even though the body is completely different? Take that a step further and think of death. Even your brain will die, but your spirit, your spirit in which resides everything of your love, will carry on. Even though there will no longer be a shred of “you” left on this earth, you will still live on. So that’s what makes a person a person: the mind, especially the love within the mind.

If a person is a person because of what he or she loves and so thinks from that love, then anything that reveals our love or our thought reveals us. We know this instinctively from other books we encounter. Have you ever read a book that you loved immensely, and felt that in some way you were connected to the author, as if you understood each other even though you’d never met? I’m not just talking about biographies either. You can read a book that never once refers directly to its author and yet still feel connected. That can happen because the book is a kind of extension of the author, since it reveals the authors loves and ideas.

We now come to the Word. The Word, more than any other book on earth, reveals the mind of its Author. This is so deeply the case that we say that the Word is one and the same with its author, the Lord. Yet unlike with some books that engross us, the Word can feel like a tangled mess that reveals little about the true character of God, much less the inner workings of the mind of Jesus. I have here two images that can help us understand this. On one side there is a brain scan. On the other, an open copy of the Word. At first glance these pictures have little to do with each other. But think about what this brain scan really is. To you and I and most other people it reveals little. But to a trained doctor it would reveal a great deal about what is going on in a person’s mind at a given time. It is a snapshot into someone’s inner life, but one that we can only read if we have the proper training to understand it.

On the other hand we have a copy of the Word. As with the brain scan it reveals what is going on in someone’s mind at a given point. In this case it is the mind of the Lord that is being revealed. And like the brain scan, even though any particular story we might open up to reveals the Lord’s mind, we need the proper training to understand it. If we read this document correctly than we will discover the loving mind of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Every page, every sentence, contains insight into how He thinks and what it is that He loves and cares about. The purpose then of exploring the stories of the Word in light of how they reflect the life and mind of Jesus Christ is that we will then be better equipped to follow His example, not only following the path He set with His words and actions, but going deeper to follow the path He set in His mind.

With this in mind, over the next three weeks we will be looking to the story of Abraham. Even though Abraham lived thousands of years before Jesus was even born, his life perfectly reflects the inner life that Jesus experienced. When we can see this connection we will be better able to not only understand the Lord, but to understand how to model our lives on His. This week we will spend a short time getting a glimpse of how this works. Over the next two weeks we will go deeper into the story of Abraham and into the mind of Jesus. We begin with the first inkling that Abraham had that God had chosen him for a special purpose. As a side note, early on Abraham was known as Abram:

Now the LORD had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,

From your family

And from your father’s house,

To a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation;

I will bless you

And make your name great;

And you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

And I will curse him who curses you;

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran….

Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. (Genesis 12:1-4, 7-9)

Prior to the moment described here Abraham did not know of Jehovah in the slightest. He was in fact an idol-worshipper like most people of His day. Yet when he heard the call from the Lord he responded and moved with his family and everything he owned into a new land. This moment may not seem significant but it is the beginning of the epic saga of the Children of Israel, and the land to which the Lord sent Abraham would one day become the Kingdom of Israel. What began as the simple travels of one man from a faraway country into the heart of the Holy Land would lead to momentous things in the future. What we see here is simply the seed being planted, but a seed that would grow to become a great nation, a nation of which the Lord said it would become a blessing for all the nations of the earth. That is the reason that God called Abraham in the first place.

What can this simple beginning tell us about the mind of Jesus? Like the Kingdom of Israel, the great works that Jesus would do needed a beginning: a seed had to be planted that would grow into something greater. That seed was planted in Jesus early childhood. Just as Abraham was called to enter into the heart of what would become the earthly Kingdom of Israel, Jesus from the very beginning was brought to the heart of His own heavenly Kingdom. That heart, the heart and soul of heaven, is childlike innocence and love. Now as with Abraham, the journey does not end there: for Abraham, many centuries would pass before his people were a great nation. And for the Lord it would take years of temptation and struggle before He could fulfill His mission. But all of it, every last bit, stemmed from that first seed planted in childhood.

It might seem odd to think that everything the Lord needed to face the hells, to put them in their place, and to conquer them was established while He was still a little boy, but it is so. It is in fact the case for each of us that something essential to our life is planted within before we are even aware. Listen to this passage from the Teachings of the New Church that speaks to how powerful our childhoods are for our later lives:

The Lord had first of all to be endowed from infancy with the heavenly things of love - the heavenly things of love consisting in love towards Jehovah and love towards the neighbour, and in innocence itself present in those loves. From these, as from the very sources of life, flows every single thing, for all other things are simply derivatives. These heavenly things are implanted in a person primarily in the state of infancy through to childhood. (Secrets of Heaven 1450)

As a child Jesus received deep stores of love and innocence. This took place before He could even talk or conceptualize these things in His mind. They were simply blessings of love that would remain with Him for the rest of His life, and indeed, to eternity.

This stage of the Lord’s life was not trivial. Without these perfectly innocent and heavenly remains sitting at the core of His being He never would have been able to face the onslaught of hell later in life. That which would later give Him strength in temptation, even on the Cross itself, had been received in childhood innocence and stored away, hidden, until such time as it would be needed. Every loving word and parable, every miracle, every demon cast out and every sickness made well, all flowed from the fountain of love, a fountain established in His youth. We all know the power of little children and their heavenly innocence. There was never a moment that that innocence of infancy dissipated. We don’t often think of the fact that while that innocence recedes and is hidden, it never leaves us.

We all have those same heavenly remnants left over from our childhood. Before we were born the Lord was with us in the womb. He has blessed us, as Jesus was blessed, so that now we have all the innocence and power of a child. As does every human being you will meet. The boss who frustrates you to no end, the spouse that drives you crazy, the acquaintance you can’t stand, all were once little children that would have been beautiful to hold and love, that were beautiful and were held and were loved. None of that goes away. It is always there, part of you, making you who you are. And any time you make an effort to show true love, you are only able to do so because love was once the only thing you knew.

So what do we do with this information? Abraham heard the call of God and left his home to dwell in a new land. Jesus felt a call from deep within His soul and left his own desires to accept the heavenly love that was welling like a fountain within Him. Can we follow the example of both Abraham and Jesus? Will you answer the call? Will you remember when times are hard that once in this life all you knew was love? That deep within your heart beats the love and innocence of childhood? That every human you ever meet has that same source of love and innocence within them? And finally will you use that love to become a blessing to those around you? Jesus answered this call. He continues to answer this call. And He calls on us to do the same. Will you answer? Amen.
(Read the next sermon in this 3-part series, about Bargaining)

This explanation was first giving as a sermon following the new year.

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten: and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” Psalm 90:10

We are at the threshold of a new year. What it holds for us we cannot know. But we can look back upon the year that is passed, and see the Lord’s goodness to us.

World cooperation is a slogan of the day. More and more we are coming to realize that the day of isolation is passed and that what happens in the world at large affects us as individuals, and affects the future. We do not live to ourselves alone. In this larger field also we can look back and see the loving providence of the Lord, leading nations out of sorrows and conflicts, and causing them to hope for better thing to come.

If we can see that “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27), leading men by the way that the Lord alone knows to be best, and if we have been brought to a deeper trust in Him, the year that is closing could have brought no greater blessing.

The Psalm from which our text is taken sets before us in a most striking way the weakness of man, the shortness of his life, in relation to the infinite power and eternity of the Lord. Man is like “the grass which groweth up. In the morning in flourisheth and groweth up: in the evening it is cut down and withereth.” “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” but God “is from everlasting to everlasting.” In His sight, a thousand years are but as a watch in the night. He is the one source of life to the entire universe. Whatever life we have is His gift to us, and not our own.

“So,” the Psalmist writes, “teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

There is always an impressiveness in the passing of the years. They slip by with such swiftness, each one seeming shorter than the last. It is not for the purpose of casting a shadow over life that this Psalm was give. It is not to make us look forward with dread that we are told that the gates to the eternal world are near. The message is for the happiness of childhood, for the enthusiasm of youth, and for the enjoyment of our labors in the world. It is to help us to regard and to love natural things in their relation to higher things. To see them so is not to rob them of their charm, but to fill them with deeper purpose and greater happiness.

The Psalm is a prayer, a prayer that the Lord will teach us to number our days, that we may see their relation to spiritual life, that we may not be misled by our own shortsighted view, and that we may learn the true relation between this life and heaven from Him Who created us for heaven, to Whom there is no yesterday and tomorrow. From the Divine point of view the few days of earthly life are nothing if they do not prepare for the eternal life in the heavens.

The prayer “teach us to number our days” does not mean that we should realize how short our life here is compared with the infinite Divine life, but is a petition to the Lord asking Him to enlighten us to see the nature and quality of the states through which we are passing, so that we may use them wisely and live as He would have us live, that we may attain the true measure of adulthood. It is this that is spiritually meant when we pray, “So teach us to number our days.”

Our text reads, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.” From this Scripture seventy years has come to be regarded as the natural span of life, and when one has passed the seventieth year, we say that he is living on borrowed time. But this is not the spiritual meaning of the text. It really tells of a week of labor in which heavenly states are laid up culminating is a Sabbath of rest. It calls to mind the seven days of creation by which a heavenly spirit is built up within us till life’s work is ended in victory over evil, and the soul enters into rest from temptations.

This is the meaning of the seventy years as the measure of person’s life. Our life here, whether long or short, is still seventy years if we are faithful in learning and keeping the Commandments. The promise, “Your days shall be long,” is not necessarily a promise of many earthly years, but of years few or many filled with the life of heaven. “Your days shall be multiplied, and the days of your children, as the days of heaven upon the earth” (Deuteronomy 11:21).

For some the hours of labor are long, and the burden of the day heavy; for others life seems easier; but however long or short, hard or easy our years, they are the way which the Lord sees best for us to the eternal peace of heaven.

There is only one thing that blasts life and makes it really too short: that is sin, absorption in self. That alone destroys its happiness and usefulness, and makes it of short measure.

Whether the years are seven or seventy, life may be full. The Lord’s life on earth was thirty-four years. It was not cut off in its prime. He left no work undone; He said of His work, “It is finished” (John 19bb30 ). His earthly life was full and complete. He had overcome the world, and could say, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (John 14:27).

Earthly life is short only if its opportunities are neglected. The days of every faithful life are seventy years. The preparation for one may be short in calendar years; another’s preparation may include the labor and burden of many years. Still to each there is nothing lacking necessary to the attainment of heaven, for the Lord knows what is best for each. Everyone is given the means to the attainment of heavenly life.

This thought is expressed in the Psalm, for it adds, “and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow.” Each extension of life, while it brings its blessings, brings also its temptations, its labor and sorrow, and in seventy or eighty years we are no nearer heaven than in seven or eight, unless the tasks which long life brings are faithfully borne. However great our strength of mind and body, we are not so near to heaven as the little child unless we meet faithfully the responsibilities which such strength brings.

There are temptations which come with every year of life, with every gift of ability, with every gain of worldly wealth or position. These are the burden and heat of the day that are meant by the eighty years to which the life of some extends, bringing apparent strength, but accompanying temptation and trial.

This psalm teaches us how each life can be full, how we can number our days. It enables us to see that if opportunities are used, every life is long and leads to the peace of heaven. It teaches us that though some lives seem specially favored in years, in strength, in worldly possessions, yet the Lord’s ways are just and equal. The adult’s way to heaven is through labor, the child’s through innocence.

Whatever length of days is given us, it is that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Life is too short to be wasted in anxiety and worry. It is too short for envy and revengeful thoughts. It is too short to be wasted in unkindness, or in striving for that bread which satisfieth not. When we see and seek to realize the Lord’s purposes for us, we are applying our hearts unto wisdom. We cannot know the future, nor should we desire to know it. But we are told how we can make our way prosperous during the year that we are about to enter, and during every year. It is by reading the Word, and taking heed to do according to what is written therein.

The Lord says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5). So close is He to us, vitally connected to us as the vine to its branches. The purpose of the vine is that the branches shall bear fruit. And if we realize that we can do nothing without Him, we shall realize also that He needs us. This will give a new dignity and meaning to life.

In the new year that is about to dawn let us look to the Lord, in full confidence that He rules all things, that our individual souls and the whole world are in His hands. And as we put our trust in Him and seek to do His will, He will give us that true peace and quietness of soul which the world cannot give, and which the world cannot take away.

Additional readings: Joshua 1, John 14:1-17