God’s Folly
It is only a week until “Straight to the Heart of Genesis” and “Straight to the Heart of 1&2 Corinthians” become available from book stores. I’m posting one of the chapters from “Genesis” here to whet your appetite ahead of next week. I hope you find it a real encouragement that God’s Folly is far wiser than our wisdom.
ABRAHAM: GOD’S FOLLY
“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1)
In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska for the United States. Not everyone could see why he did so. Pilloried widely as “Seward’s icebox” and “Seward’s folly,” it was despised as nothing more than an over-hunted frozen wasteland. To William Seward, 600,000 square miles of territory was worth far more than the $7,200,000 dollars which he paid to the Russians, but few people in the nation could follow the direction of his gaze. In the midst of post-Civil War reconstruction, Seward’s use of public money seemed nothing short of madness.
Abraham was an even stranger choice for God to make than Alaska was for William Seward. He had very little to his credit with which to attract the Lord’s particular attention.
For a start, he was an idolater. The Lord told the Hebrews in Joshua 24:2 that “Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshipped other gods.” Since Ur of the Chaldees was a city dominated by the moon-god Nanna, Abraham was probably brought up to worship the moon at the temple with his father. He was not looking for God when God came looking for him.
What was more, he was asophisticated urbanite in a city like the one which the Lord had just thwarted at Babel. Ur of the Chaldees was famous for its ziggurat-tower and for its kings who liked to pretend that they were gods. The people of Ur were as wicked as the builders of Babel, and Abraham had grown up as part of that society. Married to his half-sister and raised with an instinct to lie and deceive, he was steeped in the sin of self-sufficient Mesopotamia.
What was more, Abraham was not even Terah’s firstborn. In our culture, this may not matter – my second-born son and third-born daughter will inherit as much of my estate as my firstborn son – but in the ancient Middle East it was a massive limitation. Abraham would not inherit his father Terah’s estate, because under Mesopotamian law those rights belonged entirely to his elder brother, Haran. The Hebrews in the desert had just seen all the firstborn sons of Egypt slaughtered in one night, so they knew that a second-born was worth nothing compared to his beloved older brother.
Finally, to finish off Abraham’s profile of natural inadequacy, he and his wife were childless and infertile. Whatever else God might be looking for in a patriarch for his Holy Nation, the ability to have children was an essential prerequisite. The Lord was looking for a couple who could found a mighty chosen race, but Abraham and Sarah were in their sixties and seventies, and even Abraham confessed that this disqualified him. When the “New York Tribune” wrote off Alaska as a “sucked orange” which had already seen its best days, it might as well have been talking about Abraham. The New Testament tells us twice that this idolatrous urbanite, who stood to inherit little and had no one to bequeath it to, was “as good as dead.” There can scarcely have been anyone in the ancient Middle East who looked less qualified to become God’s patriarch than him. Except for two important details, that is.
First, Abraham was descended from the line of God’s promise. He was the descendant of Shem, Noah’s second-born son whom the Lord had turned into his spiritual firstborn by grace. That made him part of the backslidden remnant of the Family of God.
Second, Abraham was a man of faith, who took God at his word and was prepared to do as he commanded. He may have been steeped in false religion and compromise in the city of Ur, but it only took one encounter with the Lord to convert him thoroughly. In the words of Hebrews 11, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” He traded in the civilised comfort of Ur to become a tent-dwelling foreigner in a land which he had never visited, because his eyes were fixed on the God who had appeared to him and the heavenly promises which he had heard from his mouth. He knew better than anyone that he was a spent and childless has-been, but he had faith in the power of the God who had called him to obey. Paul explained to the Galatians that the Lord “announced the Gospel in advance to Abraham,” when he told him that he would bless all nations through his offspring. That was what Abraham had stacked in his favour.He “believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
This should encourage you when you look at your own life. If you feel about as useful to God as Seward’s hunk of frozen wasteland, then it should give you hope that our usefulness begins with God. The Lord did not choose Abraham to be the founder of the Hebrew nation because he was devout or virtuous, well-connected or fertile. He chose him because he was a weak man who had faith that God would be strong on his behalf. He chose him because he was a man who knew he could not chart his own way towards a glorious future, but who was painfully aware that it had to begin with God. He chose him because he was a man who would obey his words with childlike faith. The builders of Babel had longed to build a name for themselves through their own effort, but here was a man who would let God build a name for him through his undeserved favour. God is still on the look-out for modern-day Abrahams.
William Seward’s purchase of Alaska was actually an act of financial and strategic genius. Underneath its frozen surface lay reserves of oil and minerals, and its geography offered a priceless advantage when Cold War began with the Russians who sold it. The Lord’s choice of Abraham, as we will see in the rest of Genesis, was also vindicated time and time again. God has chosen us as well, and told us plainly the Gospel which Abraham merely heard as a distant echo from the future. It is time for you and me to respond to the Lord with the same faith as he did.
God is not looking for heroes who possess great natural promise. He is far too great to need the help of those he chooses. He is simply looking for nobodies who will believe his Gospel promises. Abraham heard God’s voice and believed what he said – and that was credit enough to find a place in God’s great story.
