Category Archives: Morning Musings

Morning Musings

God Speaks Again….

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                                                 God Speaks Again.

Genesis 17,  Verses 1-8, 15….

   Thirteen years had passed since Ishmael’s birth and things seem to have settled down again…Abram had his son Ishmael, and Sarai had to make do with this and still have Hagar as her maid. This seemed to be the way it was meant to be….

   We often seem to have plateaus in our life where there are periods of quiet and peace, and then suddenly, boom! Something happens to shake us up! So it was with Abram and Sarai….God was now ready to do something else in their lives in His timing.

  Once more God spoke directly to Abram. He told him who He was ….”God Almighty”, and what He expected Abram to do…. “walk before Me and be perfect (sincere with no pretence)”. We too, have to realise the might, majesty and power of God and relate to Him in sincere repentance and honesty, before He can bless us and lead us on. Again, God gave Abram the same promises, but this time He changed his name to Abraham (meaning “Father of many nations”) and Sarai’s name to Sarah (meaning “Princess”). We too, are not only given a new name (Christian, Christ’s one), but made a whole new creature to walk a new way of life with God (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Abram received from God that day, A promise and new name for aye, “I am God, the Almighty One, Walk with Me and evil shun”.

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Morning Musings

Wait!

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Genesis Sixteen….(v.1-4)                       

   What a mix up of events in this chapter! All because Abram went into Egypt! If we backslide into the world, and then come back to the Lord, let us beware that we bring nothing back with us. Abram and Sarai brought back an Egyptian maid with them…harmless thing? Let’s see…..

   Abram and Sarai were both desperate for a son. They couldn’t see how God’s promises were going to come true unless there was a son, and Sarai was well past child bearing time even though she was fit and well. It seems that a woman’s childbearing years then were much the same as now in spite of their longer lives.    Now we see the same pattern of things as with Adam and Eve…Abram didn’t really believe what God said and Sarai had a bright idea…. “Take my maid and give her a son…perhaps this is what God meant!”    We never need to help God out with our good ideas…they don’t work!  What a lot of trouble this thought of Sarai’s caused and is still causing today with the Arab nations coming from this son! Abram got his son (not of God’s choosing); Hagar despised her mistress and Sarai treated her harshly. God could have prevented Hagar from having this son, but He sometimes allows these consequences of our foolish actions and disobedience to bring disastrous results. God knew this was all going to happen, and in spite of it, His purposes would still come to pass.

Abram listened to Sarai his wife, The results have caused much sorrow and strife, From Abram’s time to the present day, All because it wasn’t God’s way!

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Morning Musings

God’s Time….Not Yet!

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Genesis Fifteen….(v.1-21)      

   Abram’s life seemed to be one series of tests after another….some he passed and others he failed. Whenever he passed a test, God spoke to him again and re-iterated His promise. Sometimes many years passed before he heard God’s voice, but still Abram remained faithful to God and kept his faith in Him…..

   By this time Abram was around 84 years of age with Sarah ten years younger and he was resigned to the fact that he was still childless and planned to give his faithful steward his inheritance. This, in spite of all the promises that God had already given him about his descendants!  Now God was telling once again that he WOULD have children of his own. Abram was no different to the rest of us. “How can this be so? How can I know for sure?” he asked.    God told him to prepare a sacrifice, and after doing this in the evening, Abram fell into a deep sleep and felt a sense of great horror come upon him. God then spoke to him again and told him plainly what the future held for his descendants. Abram then saw a flame and a fiery light pass through the sacrifice pieces, and knew it had been accepted by God. We also see that God’s patience with nations runs out in the end, and that one day in the future, the nations would be conquered and their land given to Abram’s descendants.  So we know for certain today, that the land of Israel was given to them by God, and it truly belongs to them!

Abram heard God’s voice once more, Just as he had the times before, “A son you’ll have, descendants too, This is the thing that I will do!”

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Morning Musings

The Love of Money….

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Genesis Fourteen…. Verses 21-24….
How much do we love our money? We are told that the LOVE of money is the root of all evil and causes people to err from their faith (1 Timothy 6:10). Notice it is not the money that is evil, it is the love of it. It all depends what place it has in our lives….the believer is to love the Lord with ALL his heart, soul and mind and keep his thoughts of money to a minimum. Here we see Abram doing just that. When the king of Sodom offered him all the spoil, he refused to take it. He had already made a pact with God that he would not accept even a shoe lace from this wicked king, in case he said later, that he had contributed to Abram’s riches.
Abram only wanted what God provided for himself, but he saw to it that those who helped him were well paid and he accepted the cost of the army’s food. What a lesson this is to us! Not only that, but Abram gave a thank offering to God through Melchisedek. Abram kept his money in the right place and his faith remained in God, not in his money. The more money we have, the less we have to look to the Lord to provide for us!

Is our heart towards the Lord, With all our thoughts towards His Word?
Does love of money come between, And cause our souls to be quite lean?
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Morning Musings

Melchisedek

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Genesis Fourteen….Verses 17-20….

   We have here the only historical mention of this man Melchisedek He is called the King of Salem (Peace) and was also a priest of the Most high God…

   This shows us that there were others besides Abram who worshipped the one true God at this time. In Psalm 110 we read that David referred prophetically to the One Who would one day come to earth saying, “The Lord said unto my Lord” (verse 1) and we see the capital letters of the title showing the Persons of the Godhead filling different roles. In verse 4 he writes, “The Lord has sworn and said and will never change, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek’ “.

    In the book of Hebrews 6:20-7:1-27 the writer enlarges on this and says more than once that Jesus Christ is a high priest after the order of Melchisedek, not Aaraon. So we see that the order of Melchisdek was higher than that of Aaron’s and that Melchisdek was not only called the King of Peace, but also the King of Righteousness. Who else but our Lord Jesus fills this role?

   This man met Abram and blessed him, and Abram gave him tithes of all his spoil. How much more has our Prince of Peace met us and blessed us! What can we do but take the cup of salvation that He offers us and worship Him!

Abram fought and won the war, Brought Lot back and still far more, The Priest of God met him that day, And blessed him fully in the way.

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Morning Musings

Lot Rescued…

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Genesis Fourteen….. Verses 1-16….

   We have just seen how Lot separated from Abram and chose the easy land of the plains, BUT there were dangers there, the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah……

   This reminds us that the easy ways of life are not always the best ways. It is easy to sleep in, in the mornings rather than to get up and spend time in God’s Word; it is easy to work church life around what we want to do rather than make church central and work other things around it!

   Lot thought he could handle the temptations of these places, but we see him getting closer to Sodom all the time ….it was more convenient, and easier to conduct his business to be there, so he told himself. Then he met and married the girl who became his wife, and he raised his family with Sodom’s values. No wonder the Scriptures teach us to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers! In this chapter , we see him living right IN Sodom. If we aren’t constantly on our guard, this is what can happen to us…we can be sucked in by the world until we find ourselves right in its midst, looking and sounding just like everyone else! We can be totally captivated and captured by the evil one, just as Lot was taken captive by the pagan kings.

It took righteous Abram with his trained servants to rescue him and bring him back, restoring his goods to him.     Notice that Abram was on the alert, with his servants trained and ready to fight. This is how we should be as believers (2 Timothy 2:3-6). We should be on the alert to not get tangled up in the world’s pleasures, but to strive to please our Master at all times. We are told in Ephesians  6:10-18 how to be armed and ready for this fight, and this doesn’t happen by just drifting along!

Lot’s way was easy on the plain, But soon he moved in ways so vain, All his goods were taken away, But Abram got them back one day.

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Morning Musings

Abram Returns….

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Genesis Thirteen….(v.1-18)    

   Abram now retraced his steps and went back to the place where he had last built an altar. So we too, when we backslide, must return to the Lord and to a place of worship….

   But Abram still had a hanger-on that was not of God’s choosing….his nephew Lot. Abram had been told to leave his family behind, but he took Lot with him. Now the time had come when Lot was forced to leave him. Sometimes we hang onto things that are harmless in themselves, but we know they are not of the Lord for us.

    Sometimes they are removed forcibly from us, but how much better to give them up voluntarily for God! It might be an ear-ring for a man, or some bad habit not becoming to a believer (smoking, the odd drink or bad language). These things which are OK for the world, will always hold back a believer from growing in the Lord.

    When Abram was back at the altar, then Lot left him and God once more gave Abram the great promise he had started off with and expanded it even further. We cannot grow in the Lord until we leave these things behind us.

Abram now retraced his way, Looking to God for ev’ry day, Back to the altar he’d  had at Bethel, Where God was able His promise to tell.

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Morning Musings

Enter Abraham….

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Genesis Eleven….                         Verses 10-26….

   Verse ten is interesting…it states that Shem was 100 years old at the end of the flood and that two years later his first child was born This would have given him time to get established with gardens (food) and somewhere to live. We then see the direct line from Shem  to Abraham that was ten generations…. So we can see from this that Shem outlived all of these patriarchs except for his great-grandson Eber who died in the 531st year after the flood…..he even outlived Abraham! Man’s life span was getting gradually less until David could write that a person could only expect to live seventy years or maybe eighty with great difficulty (Psalm 90:10)

All these who lived so long ago, Shem lived enough to see them grow, From Babel’s time when scattered all, Till Abram went where God did call.

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Genesis Eleven….          Where Lot Fitted In.

Verses 27-32….

   We see that Terah had three sons (verse 26) Abram, Nahor and Haran, and they lived in the city of Ur which was on the river Euphrates near its mouth into the Persian Gulf. These three sons married….

   Haran had  at least three children (Lot, Milcah and Ischar, verse 29) and then died comparatively young. Nahor took his niece Milcah as his wife and Abram married his half sister Sarai who was a beautiful girl. Terah and some of his family left the city of Ur and travelled for 600 miles up the river Euphrates to the city of Haran. We aren’t sure whether Terah left in response to God’s first message to Abram, or whether that message came to Abram for the first time in Haran. But Terah felt he had gone far enough, and he settled there until he died in the year 427 after the flood. In the year 367 after the flood, God spoke to Abram again (Abram was 75 at this time, chapter 12:4) about leaving his relatives and Abram moved on, taking his wife and nephew Lot with him. We can see from chapter 12:5 that they all must have been in Haran a few years as it tells us that Abram had got together a team of servants and animals and took them with him. Maybe he thought Lot could be a help to him on the journey to where God was directing him. It seems that Lot was still unmarried at this time, as there is no mention of a wife in this account. Many people say that Abram stayed in Haran until his father died, but that is not correct when the times and dates given here are checked out.

Abram obeyed what God had said, Leaving home, by God was led, Travelled far to the Promised Land, Trusting God’s protecting hand.

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