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Old Testament 12 Patriarchal Stage 2 Liberty Home Bible Institute HL Willmington
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This is a summary of a lecture on the life of Abraham and the significance of Genesis 14. It discusses the first war recorded in the Bible and the continuing presence of war in the world. It also mentions a prophecy conference in 1914 that predicted future wars, which came true shortly after. The lecture highlights Abraham's character traits of sympathy and preparedness. It then explores the encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek, speculating on the identity of Melchizedek, including the possibility of him being Christ. 12 in a series of 80 Old Testament lectures. We've been studying the life of one of the greatest men that ever lived, Abraham by name, and thus far we have seen his conversion and his calling, his commission, his caution, his canin, his carnality, his condensation, and now in Genesis 14, his courage. This chapter is a rather important one for several reasons. One of the reasons is that it records the first war in the Bible. Of course, the last great battle in the Bible can be found in Revelation chapter 19, when the Lord Jesus Christ soundly defeats the devil and the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon. Until that time, until the time when the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, until that time, human wars, of course, will continue. You know, on the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, there is inscribed the words of Micah chapter 4, verse 3, which says, And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. This, of course, will be literally realized some glorious day, but not until the Prince of Peace comes to reign on this earth. Until that day, both Daniel and the Lord Jesus warned of continued war and rumors of war. I believe the first prophecy conference ever to be held in North America was held in April of 1914 in Los Angeles, California. On that occasion, a group of Bible believers got together and had a week of meetings concerning the great matters of eschatology and the tribulation and the last days and the second coming of Christ. They went on record during that meeting that they believed in spite of the fact, now this was in 1914, that at that time no major war had been fought in the world for nearly 50 years. Of course, the last war at that time was fought in 1865 when General Lee surrendered his sword to General Grant at Appomattox in Virginia. So they said, in spite of the fact that we have not seen a great bloody war in some 50 years, yet we still believe, if Jesus tarries, that wars will be fought and that other wars will come. Well, with those words, they folded up the organ, as it were, and went home. There was a liberal organization out there, and they had a magazine. This magazine was called The Christian Advocate. It should have been called The Devil's Advocate. But at any rate, it ridiculed this fundamentalist prophecy conference, and it referred to it as a pathetic conference. The article went on to say, don't those Bible bangers know that we've outlawed war? And in the 20th century, mankind is simply too civilized to go around killing his fellow human beings. Well, that was in April of 1914, and scarcely three months later, during the summer of that year, the sneers were wiped from the faces of the agnostics because the Archduke of Austria was assassinated as he made his way along an open convertible in the Straits of Europe. And shortly after that, the guns of August, as it were, in 1914, began belching out their deadly poison, and World War I began. And from that point on until this very moment, when I speak and when you will listen, war continues here, not only in western Europe or in Ireland, but in Angola, and then we've had bloody wars in Korea, and all these, and Vietnam, and the Middle East, and these vicious wars, men killing men. And the Bible says that this will continue until the Lord Jesus Christ comes. In fact, in our notes we have this that has been pointed out by the Society of International Law at London, that there has been only 268 years of peace during the past 4,000 years of human history, despite the signing of more than 8,000 separate peace treaties. And so then, what we're trying to say, until the coming of Christ, the United Nations should have more correctly inscribed not the words of Micah 4, verse 3, but the fearful words of Joel, verses 9 and 10, chapter 3, where Joel says just the reverse of Micah. He says, Prepare ye this among the Gentiles, prepare war, or proclaim ye this among the Gentiles, prepare war. Wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears. Now, in this chapter, chapter 14, nine nations were involved in this war. And it begins when five kings located in the Dead Sea area revolted against four nations in the Mesopotamia area. And the Dead Sea Confederation, which included Sodom, was wiped out during a pitched battle by the Mesopotamian kings. And Lot, who was the nephew of Abram, who had moved into this wicked city, was taken captive, along with thousands of others. And you know, God would have scarcely bothered to record this pagan dogfight between these nine heathen cities were it not for these four little words in Genesis 14, and they took Lot. You see, Lot still belonged to God. He didn't act like it, he didn't look like it, he didn't talk like it, he probably didn't walk like it, but God knows his own. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 19, the Bible says, The foundation of the Lord standeth sure, God knoweth them that belong to him. And sometimes only God knows them that belong to him, because even the world, the watching world, can't tell in the life of some Christians. But at any rate, Abraham learns about this, and immediately he arms his 318 trained servants for battle. We learn a number of things about Abraham's character from this single action. We can just point out two of them here. Number one, he was a man of sympathy. He could have said, Well, that young punk serves him right. He made his bed, let him lie in it. Or he could have said, It had it coming to him. But he didn't. You see, Abraham was fulfilling, I think, the truth that would be later written in Galatians 6. And that says, If a saint, a Christian, or brother be overtaken in a spiritual fault, then he is to be, or be taken, overcome in a fault, then he is to be restored in the spirit of meekness and godliness. And so this is what Abraham was doing. So he's a man of sympathy. And the second thing we learn about him, he was prepared. The Bible says that he kept in shape, physically, spiritually, mentally, and socially. And you know, God often cannot use a Christian, not because he's unclean, but because he's unprepared. Some time ago I did a study of some of the kings in the Bible. There was a number of kings of Judah and also kings of Israel, the northern southern kingdom, after this tragic civil war. And often you find that this statement is made, And such and such became king of Israel, and he was a wicked king, because he prepared not his heart before the Lord. Or a statement will be made, And such and such became the king of Judah, and his ways were pleasing in the sight of the Lord, because he prepared his heart before the Lord. So I think the message that God would have for the unsaved is prepare to meet thy God. But the message that God would have to the Christian is to prepare to serve thy God. So he was prepared. All right, now after a forced night march, Abraham catches up with this Mesopotamian king just north of Damascus, and he defeated him in a sudden guerrilla surprise attack. And so he wins the battle, and he recaptures, or he frees Lot, and they start back toward the land of Palestine. As he returns from defeating this Mesopotamian king, he is met by another king, a very strange character. We don't know a lot about him, but maybe we better read this. In verse 17 of chapter 14, And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedor Laomer. That's the Mesopotamian king we've been talking about. So the king of Sodom now goes out to express his appreciation to Abraham for what he's done. And then in verse 18, he's met by another king, and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him, that is to say, Melchizedek blessed Abraham, as he's returning from the spoils of war, and said, Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he, that's Abraham, gave him, that's Melchizedek, tithes of all. Now, who is this mysterious Melchizedek, the king of Salem? And by the way, he was king of Salem. Most Bible students, as far as I know, all Bible students, I think I can say, are pretty well agreed that this is the first reference to Jerusalem, even though it's just referred to as Salem. Jerusalem. There's Melchizedek, whoever he was, was the king of Jerusalem, and he was also a priest of God. Who was he? Well, there is at least three main theories concerning his identity. Number one, that he was Shem, who would have been the great, great, great, great, great, great granddaddy of Abraham. And this is an old Hebrew tradition. If this is the case, he would have been the world's oldest living person at the time, because Shem died at the age of 600. However, that's only a tradition, and I doubt if too many Bible scholars would go along with that. But some do. Secondly, that he was Christ himself. And if that be the case, this is referred to, could be considered by theologians as a Christophany, or literally a theophany. Christophany is a pre-Bethlehem Old Testament appearance of the Savior. And we do know that Jesus did appear in the Old Testament later on in the book of Daniel, where Nebuchadnezzar threw three young men into the fire, and later on he looked into the fire and he said to his crony friends nearby, did not we throw three men in the fire? And yet I see the fourth, and the fourth is likened to the Son of God. Apparently, Nebuchadnezzar actually saw the Lord Jesus. And so that was a Christophany, a pre-Bethlehem appearance of Christ. And many believe that this is what we have here in Genesis 14, a Christophany. And those who advocate this theory offer the book of Hebrews chapter 7 verses 1 to 4 to support their claim, because the author of the book of Hebrews uses Melchizedek and says that Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek, without natural descent, without father nor mother. But of course this could also mean that there's simply no genealogy, no record that have been preserved of the life and early history of Melchizedek. We don't know, but the second theory is that he was Christ himself. And then the third theory, concerning his identity, is that he was simply the first mentioned king of Jerusalem, just some godly priest-king by the name of Melchizedek. The word Melchizedek literally means king of righteousness. Melchizedek, as we said, is already mentioned, or is mentioned later on the book of Hebrews, and also in Psalm 110. I know several interesting things about these verses. We're told that Melchizedek brings Abram bread and wine and blesses him. This is the first mention of bread and wine in the Bible, and I think it's safe to conclude that this depicts, in shadow-like substance here, the future work of Christ on the cross. Well, we've announced this title study, Abraham's Communion, because he takes communion out here in the desert near Jerusalem. So it's the first mention of the words bread and wine. It's also the first mention of the word priest in Genesis 14, verse 18. This was one of three great offices mentioned in the Old Testament. There's the office of the priest, the office of the prophet, and the office of the king. Here we find the word priest and king mentioned for the first time in this chapter. I'm not sure we should push this any further except to say that the difference between a prophet and a priest, and this needs to be kept in mind, is that later in the New Testament, Abraham is pictured as a prophet, but he's never pictured as a priest. A prophet was one who represents God to man. A priest was one who represents man to God. So there's the difference. And a king, of course, was one who under God ruled over man. In the New Testament, all three of these offices belong to our Lord Jesus Christ. We're told that he was a prophet, that was his past ministry, and that today he is a priest, that's his present ministry, and in the future he will become and be a king. So he was a prophet, he is a priest, and he will be a king. Here is a godly king of Jerusalem. And after Melchizedek blesses him, we're told that Abram gives him tithes of all that he had. Some Christians still believe that the practice of tithing, giving one-tenth of one's money to God, was only be done by the nation Israel under the law, and therefore is not for us today. But this is really not the case, because Abraham tithed long before Israel became a nation, and some 400 years before the law was given. In fact, when we come to the New Testament, we're told that not just a tenth, but everything that the Christian has belongs to God. But at any rate, concerning tithing, we don't want to get off into this too much, except to say that how could I under grace do less than the Saint in the Old Testament did under law? Or someone has said, can I do less for God than I do for a Howard Johnson waitress who waits upon me? I give her a ten percent tip. Can I do less in giving to God that which I give to perhaps an unsaved waitress who may not give me good service? And I think the answer to that question is obvious. Now, in chapter 15, we have his covenant. Notice it reads, after these things, after what things? Well, after the victorious battle with the Mesopotamian king, and after this time of fellowship in Jerusalem with Melchizedek, after these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abraham in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. Here we read for the first time in the Bible, these two wonderful little words, fear not. I think Abraham needed reassurance at this time, for he had made some powerful enemies as a result of his actions in Genesis 14. Now, in these next few verses, Abram reminds God that he and Sarah were still childless, and suggests that a young servant boy named Eliezer of Damascus become his adopted heir. That's what he's saying here is this. He's saying, Lord, I appreciate so much the conversation here, and I won't be afraid because you tell me not to be afraid, but I am thankful that you're my shield, and you're my exceeding great reward. But Lord, I've got a little problem here. You're going to make of me a mighty nation, and I'm getting to the age where my wife and I, normally, we cannot expect a child. So I'll tell you what, and let me just paraphrase it here, students, sort of give you a Wilmington translation here. Let's just say that, actually, this is what he was saying. Lord, we have this cutest little baby, and he's born in our own tent, and one of our tents, he's named Eliezer. God, I know that you're so busy making all the galaxies and the Milky Ways and creating new stars, and Lord, I just don't know how you get everything done that you have to do anyway. So I'll tell you what, rather than bother you, why don't I do this? Let me adopt this little boy, and we'll raise him, and we'll change his name to Abraham, Jr., and when he becomes old, then he can carry on the family tree here, as it were, and you can use him to become the heir of the covenant of the promise. And God says in verse 4, he says, Behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir. Now, later, God's going to use him, Eliezer, for something very special in Genesis 24, but God says, Abram, this is not my plan, but he that cometh forth out of thine own bowels, that is to say, out of the womb of your wife, shall be thine heir. Then in verse 5, God brought Abram forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. And he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. Listen, when we read this verse, I think we may not understand, we may not realize that here is another little proof of the Bible as the word of God. Notice what he tells him to do. He says, If you're able to tell the number of the stars, then you'll be able to tell the number of this mighty nation, the citizens in this mighty nation that I'm going to make you the founder of. Well, what does this mean? It means that when Abram lived, astronomers of the day did not think there were very many stars in the heavens. In fact, even the 2nd and 3rd century B.C., there was a Greek astronomer, and that was years later after Abram's story here, by the name of Ptolemy. And he counted the stars, and he recorded some 1198 stars, and that's about what was in heaven. And I doubt if Abram realized there were very many more, because that's about all you can see on a clear night by counting, and they had no other way of knowing that beyond what they could see, there were countless stars out there. And I don't know what Abram thought, but he might have thought, Well, Lord, I'm not sure whether I can get too excited about that or not, because 1100 or 1200 at the most, that's a pretty good-sized family, but that's not a very big nation. I mean, the nation Egypt is far larger than that, and the Philistines, and here that you're going to make me a mighty nation, but it's going to be the number of the stars. Now, I don't know whether Abram thought of all this, but he might have concluded by saying, Well, I suppose that I must by faith believe that maybe there's a few more stars out there beyond the ones that I can actually see. Abram, of course, had no way of knowing that scientists now tell us today there are probably as many stars in the heavens as there are grains of sand on all the seashores of the world. You see, so God told him, and he compared here this great multitude that would be born with the number of the stars in heaven, because God knew how many stars there were. In verse 6, one of the great verses in the Bible, chapter 15, we read, And he, Abram, believed in the Lord, and he, God, counted it to him, Abram, for righteousness. This is the first biblical mention of three great words, and each deserves our consideration. By the way, does this mean that Abram just now gets saved? No, we know that he was saved a few years before that. It was around 70, 75, when he left the land of Ur of the Chaldees, and he was a saved man before he left that place, according to Stephen in Acts chapter 2 in the New Testament. But here is the official record now of his salvation. He believed the Lord, and God counted this faith for righteousness. Notice these three great words, believed, and counted, and righteousness. The word believed, let's consider that. This does not mean that Abram was the first man to believe in God, but rather that his faith is to be a pattern for all future believers. Notice it does not also say that Abram pleased God, or that he appeased him, but that he believed in God. Then the second word is count, and God counted it. In the New Testament, this word counted is translated imputed. He imputed it to him for righteousness. To impute simply means to add to one's account. You know in the Bible class there are three great imputations in the Bible. First of all, there is the imputation of Adam's sin upon the human race. God imputed Adam's sin upon you and upon me, because there is an Adam all die. So there is the imputation of Adam's sin upon the human race. That would be very unfair, wouldn't it, to send me to hell for something Adam did, had it not been, or were it not, for the second great imputation, and that is the imputation of the race's sin upon Christ. Adam gave me my sin nature and caused me to sin, in a sense, but God took my sins upon him in the form of Christ on the cross. So you have the imputation of Adam's sin upon the human race, you have the imputation of the race's sin upon Christ, and finally you have the imputation of God's righteousness upon the believing sinner. So these three great imputations. And here we say, here we have it told us, Abraham believed God and God counted it, or imputed it, to Abram for righteousness. And that's the third great word, for righteousness. Now this word simply defined means right clothing. You see, the Bible teaches that all sinners are naked before God. And some sinners, of course, realize this, and they attempt to make their own set, as it were, of spiritual clothes, like Adam and Eve did when they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves aprons. But God looks upon such clothes as filthy rags. In fact, the Bible says in Isaiah 64, all our righteousness, that means the things that we try to do that are good, not our bad things, but all our righteous acts, the scripture says, are as filthy rags in the sight of God. And therefore, whenever a sinner like Abram now realizes his nakedness and calls upon the mercy of God, God gives him a new suit of clothes. So God imputed it to Abram for righteousness. Now, in verse 8, God, or Abram asked God, he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? All right, Lord, you said you're going to save me forever. You're going to give me the land of Palestine. You're going to allow my wife to bear me a child in our old age. How can I know? Can you give me a sign that you're going to confirm all this? And in verse 9, God said unto him, take me a heifer of three years old. Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse has written the following about this verse. He says, this is one of the strangest answers ever given to a question. Yet it was the only possible answer. The question was, Lord, how am I to know that I shall possess the promised land? The answer is, bring me a heifer. One might think that the dial of the radio had slipped from one program to another. The question is asked on a program of legal advice. The answer comes from a broadcast of a department of agriculture. But as we shall soon see, says Barnhouse, both the heifer and the inheritance are bound together in the mind of God. So Abram gathers the creatures as ordered. I think he probably realized or thought he knew what God was going to do. You see, in our day, if two men decide to enter into a covenant, they could go to a courthouse and sign a paper and have it legally ratified, and they would both be bound by that contract or that covenant. But in Abram's day, they didn't have the courthouse arrangement, and so they had what they called a blood covenant. This is very well known in the Mideast, and it's still carried out in some areas. I understand some tribes still carry out the blood covenant arrangement. What happened was this. If a man decided to enter into a contract with another man, what he would do is that both men would take sacrifices and lambs and goats and whatever, and they would slaughter them and then hack their bodies into bloody chunks. Then they would arrange these bloody pieces of sacrificial animal into two piles, or actually two lines, I should say, and two rows. Then both parties would walk in the middle of these two rows hand in hand. What they were actually saying is this. We pledge our faithfulness, one to the other, to fulfill the terms of our agreement here, and we call upon our gods to make our bodies like the bodies of these animals if we fail in our obligation to this contract. So what they were doing, you see, in the midst of suffering and sorrow and blood and suffering and death, they were pledging to be faithful to their end of the bargain. And this was called the covenant of blood. And I'm sure Abram knew about this, living in the Middle East, and he might have thought, you know, I'll get to see God now, because God wants me to take these animals and I'll line them up as a blood covenant arrangement would have it, and then God himself will come down and walk with me hand in hand through these pieces. Well, something strange happened in verse 12, the time when the contract was to be ratified, and when the sun was going down, a deep sleet fell upon Abram. You see, apparently what had happened is this, that God, of course, realized that if he came down and walked with Abram, this would be a conditional covenant, which would mean that God would only be bound by it as long as Abraham was faithful to his end of the bargain. But God knew the future, and God said, now, I know that rascal. He's going to get away from me. The next few chapters, he's going to take a mistress whose name is Hagar and raise a child, and that won't be my perfect will. And then Genesis chapter 20, he's going to lie about his wife again to a Philistine king. And so if I go down, this will be a conditional covenant, so what I'd better do is give him a little divine sodium pentothal and put him out. And this is what God did. And then God walked through the pieces by himself. And this was to demonstrate, students, the immutability, the one-sidedness of this blood covenant. God was saying, I'm going to keep you saved, Abraham. I'm going to give you this land to you and your seed forever some day, and I'm going to do all these things that I promised you simply because I'm going to be true to myself, and I'm not going to be dependent upon somebody else. The immutability of the contract here. There are three great covenants mentioned, immutable covenants in the Bible, unconditional covenants. This is the first. It refers to the Abrahamic covenant, and it refers to the fact that God promised Abraham to give him the land of Palestine forever and to his seed. And later on, some ten centuries later, God will issue the second great covenant in the Old Testament, an unconditional covenant. This will be to his servant David, and this is called by the theologians the Davidic covenant. And this covenant promises David that someday from his seed, one will come that will rule over this land of Palestine forever. And then that refers to Christ, of course. And then the third great unconditional covenant in the Bible is found in Jeremiah chapter 31. By the way, the Davidic covenant is found in 2 Samuel chapter 7. But the third great covenant is found in Jeremiah 31, and this is a covenant that refers to saved hearts, to cleansed hearts, to new hearts of the Jewish people. God will give them inward purity, and this is called the new covenant. So you have these three important covenants, and we'll be discussing them many times in these Old Testament lectures. The Abrahamic covenant assuring Abraham of the land of Palestine forever and his seed. The Davidic covenant assuring David that someday Christ himself would come and rule over that land. And then the new covenant assuring that someday God would redeem Israel and bring them back into the land and give them brand new hearts. And this third covenant is sometimes referred to as the first historical record of guaranteed heart transplant. You know, down here on earth, when a doctor can give a man a new heart, that new heart might stop beating after a few months or a few years. But here we have these three great covenants, the end being a new covenant in the book of Jeremiah. By the way, there was another covenant mentioned or an agreement called the covenant of Eshu, and this was sort of a legal arrangement, and we'll find that later in the book of Ruth chapter 4, concerning the story of Boaz and Ruth. They exchanged shoes, Boaz and somebody else. But here we have the covenant of blood, the Abrahamic covenant. Now, as Abraham now realizes that he will now be the covenant bearer, that is to say that he will someday inherit the land of Palestine, you would think that this would give him the faith to, as someone said, to keep on keeping on. But in chapter 16, he listens to the advice of his wife. Now, I think that often a man should listen to his wife, but here is a case where Abraham should have listened but not heeded the advice of his wife. Let's read about this, and this brings us to the next division in our study entitled The Compromise of Abraham. Let's just look so far and see how far we've come. We've discussed his conversion and his calling, his commission, his caution, his Canaan, his carnality, his condensation, his courage, his communion, his covenant, and now his compromise in chapter 16. Let's read about this. Now, Sarai, Abraham's wife, bear him no child. Apparently, she's beyond childbearing now. And she had a handmaid, an Egyptian whose name was Hagar. We've discussed this before. Apparently, he picked Hagar up, or Sarah did, when they went to Egypt in Genesis chapter 12. And Sarai said unto Abraham, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing, and I pray thee, go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abraham hearkened to the voice of Sarai. Actually, she's saying this, there's no way that I can bear you children now, husband. So what you need to do is take Hagar as your handmaiden, as your mistress. She's young, she'll be able to bear you a child. If it's a son, we'll adopt that son. And the great promise that God has already assured you of can be fulfilled. You see, in Genesis chapter 15, Abraham offered God an alternate solution. He said, Let me adopt Eliezer. God says, No, I'm going to do things my own way. Sarah will bear you a child. Now in chapter 16, Sarah offers him a different choice here. She says, Let's do it this way. And he listens to his wife. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. So he marries now Hagar, and this is the second of three wives that he'll have. Sarai and Hagar, and later, after Sarah dies, he marries the third wife, whose name is Keturah. And in verse 4, he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived. But notice now, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. You see, now she begins to lord it over her mistress, Sarah. She probably says, Well, you're more experienced and you're more educated and cultured, and you've been a lot of places that I have not been, and you know a lot more than I know, but at least I can bear a child, and that's something that you can't do. And so in verse 5, and Sarah then, she regrets what she's done here. She said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid unto thy bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. In other words, you got me into this. Why did you let me do this? Why indeed, Abram, did you let her do this to you? Often there's a group of people, a cult, that says that God permits men to marry many wives. In fact, they say it is God's will that one man have a number of wives. In fact, there's one state in the Union, the state of Utah, that for some years was denied statehood because a religious group of people in that land, on that state, practiced polygamy, and until they promised not to do that, the state was not allowed to become a part of the United States. And their argument is this. Well, Abram was married several times, and Isaac, well, not Isaac. Jacob had four wives, and you take Solomon, who had at least 700 and 300 handmaidens, and then David had a man after God's own heart. He had a number of wives, that's true. But every single case where you read of a polygamous arrangement in the Bible, you read of heartache and sorrow and suffering and sometimes even death itself. And we must be careful to distinguish in the Bible those things that God permits and those things that God approves. He permits polygamy. He never approves it. We have only to check with the first marriage, God created one woman for the man. And we have only to compare that passage in Genesis 2 with the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3. One of the requirements for a bishop and a pastor and a deacon is to be the husband of one wife. That was God's original perfect plan. Here now, though, you have a believer entering into a polygamous situation, and all involved will suffer. And so the Bible says in verse 6, Abram says unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand, do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarah dealt heartily with her, she fled from her face. Now she goes to the desert here, and I suppose Hagar feels she's just going to die. And then we read something very wonderful here in verse 7. We read this, chapter 16, And the angel of the Lord, and this is the first mention of this individual, this very important visitor called the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. You read about him many times from this point on. And let me just say that many Bible students feel that this is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, another Christophany, that the angel of the Lord is indeed the Savior. I remember that I was taught this years ago at the Moody Bible Institute, and that bothered me somewhat before I really understood the situation, because I thought, now wait a minute, I know a group of religious people that believe that Jesus was simply an angel, and he was like the archangel Gabriel and Michael. Now what does this mean? Does this mean that I am to believe that Jesus was an angel? But the word angel often simply means messenger. It means the messenger of the Lord. And I believe when we get to the book of Judges, we'll be able to prove to you, at least to strongly indicate, that the angel of the Lord is simply another name for Jesus, and it means God's special messenger, God's servant. And in the book of Isaiah, God describes the Lord Jesus in Isaiah 40 as his servant. We read that in Isaiah 52. My servant in whom I delight. That definitely is a reference to the Lord Jesus. So if this be the case, here we have the angel of the Lord appearing now and comforting a pagan girl named Hagar. So in this verse, the angel of the Lord locates and comforts a pagan Egyptian woman named Hagar. Someone said that Hagar does not fare well in the Bible, for she possesses little or no spirituality, and yet God loves her and sends his blessed messenger to help her. And you know, in closing, we could say that this is a classic example of heaven's women's liberation movement. Father, we ask a blessing upon this lecture, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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