Weekly Pursuit – Week 4 of September
Verses:
Gen. 12:7 “And Jehovah appeared to Abram and said, To your seed I will give this land. And there he built an altar to Jehovah who had appeared to him.”
Excerpts:
An altar means that we do not keep anything for ourselves. Our life is for God, that God is our life, and that the meaning of our life is God. So we put everything on the altar. After Abraham built an altar to the Lord at Moreh, he came to a place that was between Bethel and Ai. Here Abraham built another altar. Bethel means “house of God,” and Ai means “a heap of ruins.” Bethel and Ai stand in contrast one to another. This contrast means that in the eyes of the called ones only God’s house is worthwhile. Everything else is just a heap of ruins. With Abraham, the primary matter was to consecrate everything to God, to worship and serve God, and to have fellowship with God. Only then did Abraham pitch a tent for his living. Abraham’s dwelling in a tent indicated that he did not belong to the world.
Whenever we answer God’s calling and God reappears to us and we build an altar for God, telling Him that everything we are and have is for Him, we shall immediately erect a tent. Spontaneously, people will see that this is an expression, a declaration, that we do not belong to this world. By pitching a tent we declare that we belong to another country. We are living in the tent of the church life today, waiting for its ultimate consummation, which will be the New Jerusalem—the city of God with foundations. Abraham’s tent was a miniature of the New Jerusalem, which will be the ultimate tabernacle of God in the universe. (Life-study of Genesis, msg. 41)
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