Separation and Self-Surrender the Key to Abraham’s Life
By R. D. QUINN
“As an educator, no part of the Bible is of greater value than are its biographies.” As we are all learners in the school of Christ, all things that were written aforetime concerning these Bible characters were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. In the early dawn of history, the first great character that arrests our attention for any length of time is that of Abraham. We are surprised to note that God has devoted almost one fourth of the sacred history of the first twenty-five hundred years to him who is spoken of as the “friend of God.” Certainly there is much in the experience of Abraham worthy of our most careful study. Isaiah recognized this when he said: “Harken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” Isa. 51:1, 2. Stephen began his masterly defense before the Sanhedrin by the words, “Men, brethren, and fathers, harken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia.” Paul tells us that God preached before the gospel unto Abraham, and that he is the father of all them that believe. The key to Abraham’s life is in the word “separation.” God says that he called him alone, and blessed him. He was, from first to last, a separated man,—separated from his kindred and his native country; separated from Lot; separated as a pilgrim and stranger, without any certain dwelling place; separated from his own methods of fulfilling the promises of God; separated at last from Isaac, the son of his old age. Of all the separations and surrenders that Abraham was called upon to make, this last one is perhaps the hardest to understand. It may be that Abraham was looking more to Isaac than to the God who gave him, and so once more, in the evening of his life, God called upon him to stand alone. It is a noticeable fact in Abraham’s life that whenever he fully obeyed God, the Lord appeared unto him and blessed him. When he had separated from his fatherland in obedience to the divine command, the record is that the Lord appeared unto him and blessed him. The next time we read of God’s meeting12with him is when “Lot was separated from him.” Slow to comply with the divine call to separate from his kindred, he had at last obeyed, and then it was that God especially undertook his training, and showed him the land that he was to possess; and that land is the world to come. He was met and blessed again on his return from the slaughter of the kings. The obvious reason for this meeting and blessing was because he recognized that the Most High God is “possessor of heaven and earth.” And in grateful recognition of this fact, and of God’s ownership of all things, “he gave him tithes of all.” The last recorded meeting of God with his “friend” was when he “did prove Abraham.” Next to God, who offered up his only begotten Son, Abraham was called upon to make the mightiest surrender that any man has ever been called upon to make. When his all was upon the altar of loving service, God said to Abraham, “Because thou hast done this thing, . . . I will bless thee.” “And what was this thing upon the doing of which the blessing of God came to him as never before? It was the yielding of his all to God in the surrender of his son. Child of God, have you done this thing? No other thing will avail. Constant prayer, importunate entreaty, wearisome waiting, attempts at believing, reckoning it done,—all these are of no avail if you will not do ‘this thing.’ This unyielded life is the very citadel of self. God will not force it; but when its key, the will, is voluntarily handed over to him, then he floods the life with his fulness of blessing. Would you know his ‘I will bless thee’? Then do ‘this thing,’ absolutely, unreservedly, confidingly; yield yourself, your life, your all, into his hands for time and eternity.” “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” God does not create a blessing and put it upon men. Instead, he calls men to the place where the blessing is. Abraham found that place on those untrodden heights of communion and privilege of Mount Moriah. Jacob found it at the Jabbok, when, through humiliation, repentance, and self-surrender, he had prevailed with the Majesty of heaven, and the record says, “And he blessed him there.” There is plenty of blessing in the place of blessing; and as long as one remains in the channel of blessing, he is blessed according to his needs; for when we have fully complied with the conditions of blessing, God has said, “I will bless thee.” And he can not and will not reverse it. So then our place of blessing is found in Jesus Christ and his righteousness, for “unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.” This first blessing of deliverance from sin and sinning, when realized and enjoyed, will bring the fulness of the latter rain, and all other blessings in its train. Then, in an emphatic sense, the responsibility of this fulness of the Holy Spirit rests with us. Not that it is not all of God. Certainly it is, for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” And he “hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Consequently there is but one thing left to do, and that is to act our part. If we attempt to throw the responsibility of our lack of power on God, he will throw it back upon us, and rightly too, for that is where it belongs. It is not so much a question of receiving the Holy Spirit, as it is of yielding and surrendering to the Holy Spirit already received. The blessed truth is that we may have all the blessing we will make room for. Then let us be emptied of self, and filled with the light of the divine.