5. Get out of Your Country
5. Get out of Your Country - for Notes
5. Get out of Your Country - PP
Hebrews 11 in the JSV
God begins His true covenant relationship with His elect with an overwhelming command. – Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
I have long thought that this was a critical statement for us, but only now do I know its glorious meaning. And, in fact, much of what the writer of Hebrews says about Abraham’s faith is an expansion of this first word God spoke to him.
Jesus is the WAY from one place to another place.
An Instantaneous Transfer. Let’s get the full picture first.
Being called through [full assurance of] faith, Abraham responded by going out into the place he was about to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he was going. – Those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking their own native home. – Therefore, God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for He has made ready a city for them (Hebrews 11:8, 14, & 16b).
This is clearly speaking the same thing as Passover, that is, an instantaneous transfer from a kingdom and city of death to a kingdom and city of life, though we do not yet see it.
We Are Abraham’s Seed. Before looking at the specifics of Abraham, let’s position ourselves in relationship to him and him to us.
Paul makes it clear in Galatians and in Romans that you and I ARE the seed of Abraham because we believe in Jesus. – If you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s sperm, singular, and heirs according to Promise (Galatians 3:29).
More than that, the blessing given to Abraham to be a blessing to all nations, according to Paul, is the promise of the Spirit, now given to us. This blessing towards all and this poured-out Spirit is our synergeoing with God to make all things good.
Abraham Is Our Father. Then we see that, according to Paul, the covenant God made with Abraham is the Covenant of Christ that God makes with us. And, if we are of faith, then Abraham IS our father (Rom. 4).
Abraham, then, is unique of all the human race. God wants us to honor Abraham in the same way that we honor Him, and at a personal level, as father.
We realize, then, that the life of Abraham is more significant to us than that of any other Bible character save Jesus. And every aspect of his life story speaks to us of our Covenant with God, and especially at a personal level.
“Get Out” Three Times. In Genesis 12 & 13, Abraham “gets out” three times.
First, he gets out of Ur of the Chaldees and travels to the land of the Canaanites, modern Israel and Palestine. Then, looking for provision, he wanders off into Egypt, where he has to “get out” a second time, to return to the land God had promised him. Finally, he discovers that he had not fully “gotten out” of Ur, because he had brought his natural family with him, and so he separates himself from his nephew, Lot.
Abraham separates himself from his home country, from the provision of this world, and from his natural family.
Seeing the Land of Promise. Here, then, is what God said to Abraham when he had finally gotten out of all that was old. – Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your Seed, singular, forever (Genesis 13:14-15).
The Covenant means this line is critical to our own lives.
It is clear, however, that neither Abraham nor God saw that physical landscape as the “land of promise.” – For he was expecting the city having foundations, whose engineer and builder is God (Hebrews 11:10).
The Power of Seeing. In the remainder of this lesson, then, we will look first at the three aspects of “getting out,” and then spend a bit of time considering this “city” that is our inheritance.
“Get out of your country.” – I have presented the concept of “two universes,” a universe of death and a universe of life. This concept is figurative. In actuality, of course, there is only one universe. The difference between the two is how one SEES.
Lift your eyes – all the land that you SEE I give to you. I have not fully considered the power of our seeing, and that is why we speak Christ our life, that we might SEE.
Christ Must Be All First. There is a popular saying that I reject because it is false. “The old must vanish before the new can come.”
That’s not how it works in nature or in our lives, rather, the old vanishes because the new has already come and is now ready to appear. – Christ must be all, first, before anything not Christ could ever vanish away. –
The issue of our seeing and knowing, however, does remain. I now clearly understand the difference between living in the old and living in the new applied to our lives inside these three arenas.
Accompany Me. Here is the same thing that God required of Abraham as it is found in the gospels.
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him disregard his origin of self, take up his cross, and accompany Me. For whoever desires to save his soul, his story of self, will lose it, but whoever loses his soul because of Me will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
The moment we were born again, in one mighty and instantaneous stroke, God took us out of self and put us into Christ, out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of His dear Son, out of a world of death and into a world of life, the city of Abraham.
Connecting through Christ. Our problem has always been that we hardly know Christ, though, as Paul said, we know Him better than when we first believed.
Let me explain God’s contention with every human; in fact, it is Abel who shows us the Way.
When we connect with something or someone through Christ, it or they belong to us as from Father in all joy. When we connect with anything or anyone separate from Christ, attaching that thing or person or memory or circumstance to ourselves, then it MUST prevent us from knowing Christ.
Blessing or Curse. And this connection begins with our own story of self. If I call myself by myself, then I lose everything. But if I call myself by Christ, my only life, then I discover ME as I truly am in all joy, and utterly with Jesus forever.
I lived for many years inside the first, that is, in my thinking. I now live in the second, and it is more wonderful than I could convey. The story of my life, then, is how God got me to let go of one way of thinking and to live, now, in the other.
Everything is a curse in self for self; everything is a blessing in Christ my only life.
Exchanging Curse for Blessing. That is what God sets in place with Abraham right from the start, that which is blessed and that which is cursed. God blesses only Christ, and we inside of Him.
Until this year of 2020, every part of my life contained cursing such that I could not look at it without pain. Some things I never considered at all, but only bore the pain. This exercise of placing every moment of my life into Jesus, and placing Him upon me in every moment, as I write my life-story, has removed every real circumstance and person in my life out from grievous curse and into joyous blessing.
Yet I find every next chapter as difficult as those before.
Self-Delusion. And so Abraham’s first departure was from his own origin or source of self.
Self for self, self generating self, self putting self to death, self getting self under control, self exalting self, I am my own source, I am responsible for my self, all of this exists in one place only – in the delusions of the human mind. – Those who exist according to flesh, think about and out from the flesh… For death is the thought of the flesh (Romans 8).
“Flesh” is NOT a “fallen human nature,” for there is no such thing; “flesh” is imagining self as source or “god.”
Escaping a False Country. “I am my own source; I am responsible for myself,” versus “I come always out from my Father through the good-speaking of Jesus, who becomes all I find myself to be.”
The first is your own country, the second is the land of Promise. The first is Jesus’ warning, “saving to lose,” the second is “losing to find.”
How did I escape this first issue? That’s easy – it was always the seed God planted in my heart when I was fifteen years old – “Give thanks in and for all things.” A seed that became later – “Justify God in all things and find Him right and true.” And now – “All of His ways concerning me are perfect. He has never led me wrong.”
Jesus’ Parable Examples. We must condense the other two “attachments” in order to finish in this space.
The second mental delusion is attachment to the world as provision and identity, and the third mental delusion is the hard and sick attitude found in the attachment to natural family as “mine” and not through Jesus.
Consider Jesus’ parable of the great supper in Luke 14. The three who refused to come all held an invitation, that is, they were born again and filled with the Spirit. The three different things of themselves to which each were attached fit exactly with Abraham’s story.
Fake Attachments.
(1) “I have bought a piece of ground.” – I am my own source. – “Get out of your country.”
(2) “I have bought five yoke of oxen.” – I must provide for myself. “Get out of Egypt.”
(3) “I have married a wife.” – The people in my life belong to me and I control them. – “Separate yourself from Lot.”
These fake attachments blind them, as they blinded Abraham, and they cannot see or know what is real. Yet these deluded souls imagine that they gain something important by clinging to the delusions of their mind. The truth is – none of those things has ever belonged to them.
What Do You Want? “I am my own source; I am responsible for myself” is the primary human delusion that has become the hard refusal to know God.
Let’s consider some specifics from the New Testament. – If anyone should love the world, the love of the Father is not inside of him (1 John 2).
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink (Matthew 6:25). – He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10).
All Things Are Mine. My life and source, my provision and identity, my family and all my brothers and sisters in Christ, belong to Jesus first, and then all of it comes back to me inside of Him. My life and source, my provision and identity, my family and you, all belong absolutely to me forever, but only inside of and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what is it that causes me to know the wondrous truth of all things belonging to me (1 Corinthians 2)?
It is the cross I cannot carry, carried by Father all the way. To “accompany Jesus” is to stumble with Him under the cross that neither He nor we are able to carry.
Gethsemane. What does that mean? It means two things, a lesser and a greater. We will look at the greater meaning in Genesis 22. The lesser issue for us now is a letting go of our mental delusions of self-ownership and control that have seemed to us to be our life and self-preservation.
One thing only allows us to make this great exchange, and that is the truth of Galatians 2:20, specifically, “He traded Himself for us,” there on His knees in Gethsemane. – “Here am I. I and the children whom You have given Me.”
We cannot carry this cross, yet we are pressed to the dirt under its weight.
Carried by Father. Carried with Jesus by Father. This is what Jesus really meant by “accompany Me.”
Every time I look at myself, this is the only thing I see, that I am utterly carried by my Father who carries all, but especially me inside of Jesus, this Father who lives at home in my heart and fills me full with all of Himself.
And there I have described the first part of the city having foundations, whose engineer and builder is God. You see, I am not alone inside my Father inside of Jesus, for you are here with me as well. And our relationship together, God among us, is this city.
Walk through the Land. “Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.”
Being called through [full assurance of] faith, Abraham responded by going out into the place he was about to receive …not knowing where he was going. – They eagerly yearned for a better homeland, that is, a homeland of the heavens [the Promise of the Spirit]; therefore, God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for He has made ready a city for them.
The writer of Hebrews is NOT saying that we also look for something “not yet come,” but rather the opposite.
Where We Live NOW! Hebrews 10:19-22 is that place in which we live NOW, inside the Holy of Holies, inside of all the fullness of God filling us full. And we, with Abraham, walk through the land that is Father Himself, seizing as our own everything we see, for all that we see belongs utterly to us.
This is what the writer of Hebrews is arguing.
This city, then, whose engineer and builder is God, is both personal and together. It is each one of us possessing all of God as our own, and it is us together, knowing one another as Jesus Himself.
Living in the Land of Promise. Everything I wrote in Symmorphy V: Life is an attempt to describe the workings of this city.
We will know God, and ourselves as well, by knowing one another, walking the same land together; and we will know one another, and ourselves as well, by knowing God, by seizing hold of all that He is, personally and together. This city, this land of Promise, is all around us right now, for it is the only thing true.
And because we have desired to see as Jesus sees, through eyes of fire, we are discovering realities of the Spirit through us in every direction that we never knew existed.
Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled “Split Wide-Open.” It is the topic of the covenant God entered into with Abraham.
So, for next time, read Genesis 14:18-24. Then, all of Genesis 15 – 17. Along with that, read Galatians 3 & 4 in the JSV. I will include it as a PDF when I post the next lesson on the webpage.
Galatians 3-4 and Romans 4 in the JSV