Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God. (Genesis 21:331)
Abraham, the first man to be called a prophet in scripture (Genesis 20:7) received significant revelation into the attributes and personality of God. God had told him His name "Yahweh" (Genesis 15:7 and 18:14, rendered as "the LORD" in most translations2), had communicated that He is a Rewarder of those who seek Him (Genesis 15:1), that He is "Almighty God" for whom nothing is too hard (Genesis 17:1 and 18:14), and that He is the ultimate Provider (Genesis 22:8,14). Abraham had also discovered, perhaps through the priest Melchizedek, that God was the Possessor of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:22, 24:3). He had even received revelation, according to the writer of Hebrews, that God would raise the dead, and so he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, the son God had promised him and with whom all his destiny lay (Hebrews 11:19, also note "we will come back to you" in Genesis 22:8).
With all of this revelation, we might say of Abraham what A.W. Tozer wrote of the Church looking at the scriptures:
"The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that God possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness, it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is assumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures."3
We learn that Abraham had received revelation of God's eternity by the time he made his covenant with Abimelech and Phichol in Genesis 21. We do not know whether Abraham learned, as Moses did later, that God had no beginning, but was "from everlasting to everlasting" (Psalm 90:2), nor whether he understood as Isaiah did that God's eternity is not an endless extension of time as we experience it, but actually outside of time ("…the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity…" Isaiah 57:15). The revelation that Abraham received, however, was sufficient for those promises in which God had asked him to trust. God had given to Abraham an "everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:7,13,19), and had promised him the land of Canaan as an "everlasting possession" (Genesis 17:8). What kind of God can enter into an everlasting covenant and be able to perform what He promises? Only an everlasting God!
The letter to the Hebrews gives us additional information about Abraham's revelation of God. According to the writer of Hebrews, Abraham "waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10), he was seeking a homeland (11:14), and desired "a better, that is, a heavenly country" (11:16). Here we see how high the revelation of God's everlastingness will take us. As soon as the revelation that God is eternal is taken seriously and sinks in, human life immediately takes on new meaning – or to put it more clearly, human life sheds all kinds of false meanings that our darkened minds have created for it. When we grasp that God is everlasting, then human life – no matter how long – is revealed to be a vapor (Psalm 39:5,11), and human glory to be a flower that blooms overnight and then dies (Isaiah 40:6, 1 Peter 1:24). The only thing that matters is the everlasting reward that can be given only by the everlasting God. And thus Abraham found strength to be steady throughout his life. Abraham was not the one who wrote "one thing I do… I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God" (Philippians 3:13-14), but he would have agreed!
The Everlasting God of Abraham is the same God who lives inside of us if we belong to Jesus. Let us also press on to know this One who has eternal reward for those who seek Him!
1 All scriptures quoted from the New King James Version, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), unless otherwise noted.
2 Note that Exodus 6:3 seems to say that Abraham did not know the name Yahweh (YHWH – an abbreviation for "I AM THAT I AM" – Ex 3:15), but this cannot be reconciled with Genesis 15:7 and 18:14. The best understanding seems to be that God revealed the Name to Abraham, but did not explain it.
3 Tozer, A.W. The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1961), p. 38-39
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