Abraham, my Friend 02

In the beginning God…

Every Christian biography should begin with the words “In the beginning God…” Our Bible begins with these words and, on reflection, it could begin with no others. How else would anything ‘begin’? The gospel according to John mirrors Genesis and expands it:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without him nothing was made that was made.  (John 1:2–3 NKJV)

It is the only explanation for everything; without him there is nothing. It is the only explanation for anything; without him was not anything. That’s a question that atheistic cosmologists refuse to ask; ‘why is there anything?’ It was said of such cosmologists, by a fellow cosmologist, that they are “often in error but never in doubt”. Ask them ‘how?’ and you will hear the most extraordinary explanations of quantum theory and oscillating super-strings expressed with absolute certainty. Ask them ‘why?’ and there is no answer. Their calculations take us to the first microseconds of the cosmos but only revelation can take us back to the beginning where God already was.

For the child of God, this truth is both humbling and exhilarating. In comparison to the vastnesses of the cosmos the human race is totally insignificant: if those cosmologists are right, just star-litter. Sometimes our confident knowledge blinds us to more profound realities.

Three thousand years ago a shepherd boy lay on his back and looked up:

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him but little lower than God,

And crownest him with glory and honor. (Ps 8:3–5 ASV)

Pre-creation delights

The Bible’s timeline too is overwhelming. God’s ‘mindfulness’ of man is not some sudden thought pressed upon Him by the pains of the human race. Before anything was we were in His thoughts. The Bible captures this sense sometimes in plain words and sometimes in amazing imagery. The book of Proverbs takes us back to the beginnings and we hear the ‘testimony of Jesus which is the spirit of prophecy’. He is conscious that He belongs to His Father before any creative acts have occurred:

Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way,

Before his works of old. (Prov 8:22 ASV)

The extraordinary testimony continues as the creation is about to be brought into being:

 Then I was by him, as a master workman;

And I was daily his delight,

Rejoicing always before him, (Prov 8:30 ASV)

What a wonderful picture this is of Father and Son ‘daily delighting in each other’s company’ and ‘eternity ringing with joy’: Father and Son in perfect fellowship. God, the only self-sufficient Being, needing nothing outside Himself, needing no heaven, no creation. Perfectly at home and fulfilled in Himself.

 Rejoicing in his habitable earth;

And my delight was with the sons of men. (Prov 8:31 ASV)

That is to say ‘Before ever the earth was: when there were no depths, no fountains abounding with water, no mountains… while as yet he had not made the earth…’ ‘his delights were with the sons of men.’ He loved us long before He made us. He delighted over us: can you hear the excited anticipation? Oh, what a heart-break we have been to Him. What glorious plans He had for us; what a bitter disappointment we have been.

This is no isolated text, John captures another for us in his record of Christ’s prayer:

You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

You loved Me before the foundation of the world.  (John 17:23,24 NKJV)

As they say, “do the math(s)”. If ‘He has loved us as He loved Him’, and ‘He has loved Him from before the foundation of the world’, how long has He loved us? Our failures have not taken Him by surprise nor changed His love for us. The Old Testament comes to the end of its record of failure after failure with a simple word of testimony from God to His own people:

 I have loved you, saith Jehovah. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?  (Mal 1:2 ASV)

Again?

His world has conspired together against Him and against His Christ (Ps 2:2) and yet His testimony is unchanged; I have loved you. It is from this unchanged and unchanging love that all those ‘agains’ in the Bible come. To a prodigal world, God has reached out again and again. The book is full of them.

  And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time, saying,  (Jonah 3:1 ASV)

And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. (Jer 18:4 ASV)

And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.  (2 Kgs 19:30 ASV)

And he prayed unto him; and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that Jehovah he was God. (2 Chr 33:13 ASV)

And we hear it again in the words of those who have His love shed abroad in their hearts:

My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. (Gal 4:19–20 KJV)

Pigs’ ears and silk purses

While there is God there is hope, because where there is God there exists the possibility of a new beginning. So we will discover it with Abraham.

And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor: and they served other gods. (Josh 24:2 ASV)

Not a very promising background is it? Far off in a pagan land, serving other gods; many of us had our beginnings in such places, and God took us and led us…

Perhaps, as you read, you feel yourself to be in such a place now, with nothing to offer and under the rule of alien powers. You feel that God may do something with others but not with you. The English have an old pessimistic saying “you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear”. Don’t be discouraged; God can! From your impossible situation, God can take you and lead you. Your future is not determined by your past experiences but by today’s response to God. Where God is, there is always scope for a new beginning.

They say that every journey must begin with a first step, but the pilgrims do not mark the beginning of their journey with their own first step. In one way or another they sense a divine imperative. They may not use the exact words but, if you look under the skin, their testimony will always start at the same point.. “In the beginning God..”