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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

 

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Christadelphian Bible Studies


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7. A Man In A Million


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How foolish can you get? Some people never seem to learn the lessons of life and run through the years making and meeting trouble. There is the meddler in other people's affairs, prying around unwanted and causing endless unhappiness by his gossip and interference. There is the lazy, good-for-nothing who has no intention of doing a hard day's work but becomes a burden to others and complains when things do not come his way. And, you will have read about the drunkard, the housebreaker, and others like them who are constantly appearing in court and prison for their repeated offenses. Why are they like this?

Why indeed! But let not any of us imagine that we belong to a different race of people. The trouble with all the human race is that it will not or cannot learn the lessons which God is trying to teach it. Think about it for a moment. Adam's children would certainly learn from Adam and Eve how wonderful life had been in the garden of Eden before they sinned and lost the pleasures of that paradise. But that did not deter men from sinning and sinning and sinning again in the years which followed.

You would scarcely believe it possible but within seventeen hundred years of the day of Adam there was only one righteous family in all the people who lived on earth. Only one! Not that God had ceased trying to teach and purify men. God was working all the time. He instructed the one righteous family, Noah's family, what to do and told Noah to preach repentance and righteousness to everybody he met. Not only that: God gave Noah a message of warning - repent or be destroyed. But Noah became a laughing-stock. Men and women and children ignored him, refused to believe God's word through him, scorned his righteousness and went their own way. Not that it was a better way they had invented: they did all the usual things such as marrying, having parties, building homes and so on. Not that there is anything wrong in that. But they did it in an utterly godless way. They lived just as though God did not exist. Living like that is atheism (without God). Make a note of that. Atheism in the Bible is not simply saying, there is no God. Not may people say that. It is living as though there is no God. Never thinking about Him, never asking what God wants us to do. That is atheism. And there are a lot of people like that.

Now, I want you to notice something very important, what is known as a principle. When men live without God something happens to them in this life. It happened in the days of Noah too. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5). And what was the result of that? "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." (verse 11). Make a very careful note of that. Men became violent towards one another. All their lusts were roused and there was strife. Men killed one another or threatened to do so. Men were terrorizing women, young men were lawless and there was death in the streets at night. That was four thousand five hundred years ago thereabouts. Are things very much different today? Perhaps they have not yet gone quite that far but we can see all the signs of it. Not merely among wild head-hunters in Borneo where savages know nothing better: no, in our own cities where robberies with violence, attacks on women, cruel hooliganism among young men take place. And in the great wars which have taken place and the small ones which are smouldering or flaring up all over the world.

Men cannot have tranquility without God. God puts it this way: "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." (Isaiah 57:21). You will find that true in your own life. Peace, inner serenity, quietness and assurance come through believing and obeying God. Strife, restlessness, anger and violence come through neglect and disobedience.

But to go back to Noah for a moment. Noah was right and God loved him. God's love is a practical thing as well as a state of mind. God told Noah that He was going to destroy all mankind because of its persistent and unrepenting wickedness. And God did just that. He opened the clouds of heaven and the great underground lakes and fountains. For forty days the rains and released waters surged upon the land called Earth. Noah and his little family and the gathered animals brought to him there were secure from tempest and destruction in the ark which Noah had built at the command of God and to God's specifications. "And all that was upon the dry land died." (Genesis 7:22). Thus God exterminated the violence and godlessness of man. Godlessness leads to nothingness, like the candle flame snuffed out between the finger and thumb.

Noah and his family emerged from the ark into a new world. There was a new beginning. Do you think Noah's children could ever forget the flood? They forgot it quickly. Like the drunkard and the housebreaker, like the smoker who knows that cigarettes can bring cancer, they turned their backs on the knowledge of the flood and went their own way. It would be unbelievable if we did not see the same thing happening before us every day in one form or another.

In less than five hundred years the light of God in the world was beginning to go out once more. Darkness and ignorance were spreading over the face of the earth. Men were worshipping the sun, the moon and the stars. They became interested in their own ways once more -- building, business, pleasure, and the countless other activities of man which turn to poison when man leaves God out of account.

What was God to do? How could He extend the lifeline down the ages when so many spurned His lovingkindness and grace?

He chose a man in a million.

A man in a million. A man who would listen and be obedient (who although he was a sinner believed in God). Make a note of his name -- Abram (God made it a little longer and called him Abraham). God made him the treasurehouse of God's knowledge. Although we know hardly another name from those distant years -- 2000 B.C. -- Abraham's name lives on. Why is this? What is there different about him? What did he do? Did he write a book? No. Did he build a city? No. Did he become a king? No. Was he a hero in great wars? No. What then?

HE BELIEVED GOD.

Make a note of that. It is the greatest honour a man can pay to God. It is known as having faith. Let us repeat it and let it stick to your mind. Paste it to the walls of your thinking and look at it:

ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD.

Let us look now at this man in a million and see what happened to him. He lived near the great river Euphrates in Mesopotamia. in the fine city where he lived (men have found it and dug it out of the desert sands in our own century) men worshipped the moon and had a cultured and pleasant existence (between the wars and troubles which came). Abraham lived there with some of his relations. Then God spoke to him. Abraham had a vision by which he knew that God was speaking to him:

"Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee." Genesis 12:1.

What would you have done? What did the man in a million do? He knew that God had spoken to him and he did just what God told him. He left his city, Ur, took his relations with him, and with Sarah his wife set out on the journey.

They travelled many hundreds of miles under God's guiding hand until they came to Palestine. Is it not wonderful that the land in which Jesus was to be born was the land to which God brought Abraham?

Abraham and Sarah and their nephew named Lot stood together in the land of Palestine and let their sheep graze there. We look at him and wonder why God has brought him all this journey. Was there a reason? Of course there was. God does nothing without reason. By faith Abraham has been separated from the idols of his homeland and brought to a new land trusting in God.

Pause for a moment. How are you going through life's journey? Like the men of Noah's day? Like the men of Abraham's day? Just getting along without God? I am sure you are not. If you are following these letters you will be drawn nearer to God. You will hear him say

"He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them which diligently seek Him." Hebrews 11:6.

Now read for yourself: Genesis chapters 6 and 8 and 12.

 

Next page: An Unbreakable Promise

 


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