Dr. Lawrence Butler

The Bridge Church, Pembroke

After the Dispersion (the scattering of people upon earth) with all the diverse languages, people began to seek new and unsettled lands. They quickly reached from the Euphrates River to what came to be known as Egypt. Nimrod, a descendant of Ham founded an empire on the Euphrates. It was named the Chaldean or Babylon Empire. Of course, the chief city was Babylon with its roots in the failed, idolatrous Tower of Babel.

Misraim, another son of Ham founded the great Egyptian Empire which became one of the centers of early civilization. However, wherever men went, they forsook the God of Noah and turned to idolatrous religious worship, continuing to invent their own new practices.

As the wickedness of man was rapidly expanding across God’s beautiful earth, He decided to separate a family to preserve the knowledge of Himself with the pure and holy worship He had given earlier in man’s history.

The patriarch of this family was Abram, later known as Abraham. God called him out of his idolatrous family and country, intending to send him to a new land which He would give Abraham’s descendants. This new land would later be known as Israel.

Abraham began his journey, leaving behind everyone he knew except those travelling with him.

His was a journey of faith, because he never received the promised land himself, but it was guaranteed to his descendants. However, he also received other great promises from Almighty God which would be fulfilled many years later. Such as, his offspring would become a great people, but even more importantly, would present to the world a Savior through whom all the world would be blessed. Through Abram’s family would come the promised seed of whom the Lord spoke as Adam and Eve were being removed from the Garden of Eden (Gen.3:15), the One who would bruise the head of the serpent. Christ would many generations later suffer horribly on the cross as the serpent (Satan) bruised “His heel.” However, through His death and then resurrection from the dead, Christ bruised “the head” of the serpent and forever broke the power that death and sin held over God’s creation. We are now set free from the power and condemnation of sin through the same type of faith Abraham exercised in his day.

Through Abraham’s obedience and faith, he became the “father of faith” to believers (Rom. 4:16).