“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” Isaiah 61:1,2
When God revealed Himself to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, in the midst of an idolatrous people, He did so in order to reveal to the world that He WAS, and IS God, the Almighty God who alone can redeem and save. How did He begin to do this? It was to the man Abram that the Lord appeared, revealing Himself to him, identifying Himself clearly, and then by the work that He did in Abram’s heart, would eventually lead him out of his homeland to a land that he did not previously know, but where His promises to Abram and his descendants would be realized.
It was Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who in his defense before the Sanhedrin, declared to them the following: “The God of glory appeared to our father, Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.” (Acts 7:2,3) After Abram obeyed God, and had resided for a time in the promised land, God spoke to him concerning a historical event that would occur with regard to his descendants. He said to Abram: “…your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.” (Gen. 15:13) He would tell Abram that the nation that the people of Israel would serve would be judged by God, and that Israel would come out of that nation with great possessions. Many years would pass, but eventually the descendants of Abram ended up in Egypt, where, according to the word of God they multiplied and became a great nation, or people. However, they would be greatly persecuted, and oppressed by the Egyptians. Their cry, as a result of their bondage, suffering, and sorrow, would be heard by God. It was then that, according to the Scriptures, He “…remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” (Ex. 2:24) It would be at that time also that He would reveal Himself to Moses, who had escaped Egypt at least forty years before, and dwelt in the land of Midian, there learning to be a shepherd of sheep. When Moses was about eighty years old, while tending the sheep on the backside of the desert, near Mt. Horeb, “the Mountain God,” God revealed Himself to him. In that revelation, He not only unveiled to Moses that He was holy, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but as the great “I AM.” When Moses was commissioned by God to go back to Egypt and be God’s instrument to save and deliver the people of Israel, he was instructed by God to tell the people that His name was: “I AM THAT I AM,” the eternal, Almighty God (Ex. 3:14). This God, the great I AM, the only true and living God saw the need of the people, intervened after four hundred years by calling Moses to be His instrument by which the people of Israel would be delivered from the bondage of Egypt. This eternal God, this I AM, was and is Christ. The Apostle Paul would affirm this to the Corinthian believers when he wrote: “For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. 10:4) So, how does this knowledge apply to the living church of God in Christ today, where she lives at this time in history?
The God who faithfully promised hundreds of years prior to fulfilling the promise of deliverance, is the same as the very present help of Christ today. For now, not only is He with the believer, but IN the believer, having been made complete in Christ. All things are possible to him that believes.
Dear Father, Strengthen us to believe. In Jesus’ name, Amen.