July,.1942
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with him. When God told Abram to go into the land of Canaan, He gave him a great promise. He said, “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.” When the way was long and hard, this promise was like a hand for Abram to hold to, guiding him into an unknown land. So sure was he of God’s presence that whenever he stopped he built an altar to worship the Lord. We are all going on a long journey into a place we know very little about here. As we wander through the world here, we are moving toward eternity. I would be afraid to go into eternity unless I knew that the Lord Jesus was holding my hand, wouldn’t you? If you will let Him take your hand, He will lead you safely. Will you, like Abram! make an altar for Him by the way? Get Mother and Father to join you in meeting God at your family altar.
at Haran? He was in charge of this leg of the journey <11:31). Golden Text Illustration G enesis 1 5 : 1 ' In the early spring of 1881 Captain Catherine’ Booth and her intrepid lieutenants, Florence Soper, Adelaide Cox, and Ruth Patrick, began life in Paris. . . . The bulk of the audience that gathered night after night were of the artisan class. Some were young men of a lower type, and from these came what disturbance there was. The French sense of humor is keen, and there were many lively sallies at the expense of the speakers and singers on the platform.. . . The. Capitaine had to fight first her own heart. She knew her capacity, and God had done great things through her in England. The change from an audience of five thousand spellbound hearers in a cir cus of Leeds to a handful of gibing ouvriers in the Belleville quarter of Paris was indeed a clashing antithe sis. A fortnight passed without a single penitent, and Catherine was all the time so ill that it was doubtful if she would be able to remain in the field. That fortnight was probably the supreme trial of her faith. The work appeared so hopeless! There was nothing to see. But for the Capitaine faith meant going on. It meant say ing to her heart, “You may suffer, you may bleed, "you may break, but you shall go on!” She went on, believing, praying, fighting, and at last the. tide of battle turned, and God honored His Word in bringing many to Christ.—J. Strahan in One Thousand Evangelistic Illustrations, by Webb. On a Long Journey G enesis 12:1-9; H ebrews 11:8-12 MEMORY VERSE: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee” (Num. 6:24). APPROACH: Patsy was having a birthday party. Her mother1said to her, “Now, Patsy, we want you to go into the next room, but before you go I will blindfold you.” Patsy hesitated.
“We lie to God in prayer if we do not rely on Him after prayer.” — David Livingstone. with His covenant with Abraham, and therefore He names Himself “Lord” or “Jehovah,” the name which suggests His covenant relation to the chosen nation. 2. "Get thee out of thy country" (v. 1). “Thy country” may indicate that the family of Abraham were not re cent settlers in Ur, but that the line of Shem to which he belonged had been there a long time. It was his country, a fact that makes even more commendable his faithful obedience to the divine command. 3. "Make thy name great" (v. 2). Certainly this promise and prediction have' been more than made good. This patriarch is revered by thé three great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In all three, Abraham is counted the father of the faithful. 4. "Thou shalt be a blessing" (v. 2). In the King James Version this reads as. a prediction, while in the American Revision it reads as a command, “Be thou a blessing.” The latter is un doubtedly the correct translation, and suggests that Abraham as the bene ficiary of God’s covenant had a defi nite responsibility in its fulfillment. This does not mean that the fulfill ment is uncertain (v. 3). 5. "I will. . . curse him that curseth thee" (v. 3). The verbs here represent two different Hebrew words. The first means to pronounce a curse upon one in a judicial manner as a judge might pronounce the penalty of a court upon an evildoer. This, only God can do. The other word means to revile, or treat contemptuously. Man is able to do this. Thus the passage might be paraphrased thus: God will pronounce judicial sentence upon any one who dares to revile or treat contemptuous ly the chosen people. This is God’s answer to Mein Kampf and its author. 6. “He departed out of Haran" (v. 4). What was Abraham doing in, Haran? Had not God told him to leave Ur and go into a land God had chosen? Why did he stop at Haran? See Genesis 11:31 for the brief story of how they started for Canaan, ap parently got sidetracked at Haran, and stayed until Abraham’s father died. Archaeology has shed an inter esting light on this delay. It has been found that at Haran there was a tem ple erected for the moon-god Sin, and that this was the same god wor shiped in Ur. Recall that Abraham’s family originally had been idolators in Ur. May it not have been the pull of the old religion that stopped Terah
Object Lesson
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F our -I n -O ne OBJECTS: A capital “A,” a pair of scissors, a large piece of cardboard, and a jar of paste. (Make the “A” by using a piece of paper 8%x21 inches. Fold the paper three times, making the size 8%x2i& inches. Keeping the paper thus folded, and with the single fold and two edges to the right and covering the double fold, begin % inch from the bottom, and cut up to the top, 1% inches from the upper left-hand corner. Five-eighths of an inch below the upper left-hand corner cut to within % of an inch of the right side. From this point cut down ward 2% inches, then to the left edge. Five-eighths of an inch below this point cut to the right as before, and downward along a line running % of an inch from the right side. Open one fold and you will have the “A.” LESSON: What Old Testament per son do you think is represented by this “A” that I hold in my hand? “Abraham.” You are right. There is more in this “A” than appears. There are four “A’s.” [Hook over thumb tacks pre viously placed in the cardboard.] We will let the first stand for “ABRA HAM,” the second for “ACKNOWL EDGED,” the third for “ALTAR,” and the fourth for “APPROVED.” These 'M
“Then I won’t know where I am go ing,” she said. “N e v e r mind, I’ll take you by the h a n d a n d l e a d you, dear.” Patsy w a s n o t afraid to go when her mother led her. A n d w h e n t h e blindfold was re- her lovely presents her.
moved, she found spread out before
LESSON STORY: Today we have the story of a man who was told to go on a long journey into a land he had never seen before. Do you think he was afraid to go? Well, he wasn’t, because he knew that God would go
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