Why Abraham?
What was it about Abraham that God chose him to be the father of our faith? Romans 4:16 Besides the nature of his character, “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him”Genesis 18:19.. There is the issue that God inspired the entire Bible narrative to be a type or sign of His Eternal plan for the redemption of Creation. The Old Testament prefigures what is coming to pass in the New Testament. Authors Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet write that Scripture is written in the Eastern fashion of “ring composition”, common in the ancient literature of India, Homer’s narratives in Greece, and texts from Egypt, China, Indonesia, and Russia.* This complements the way in which one section of the Scripture completes or informs another, even as the New Testament writers interwove portions and quotes from the Old Testament.
In Hebrews 11:13 It speaks of Abraham and others as being “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”. In “The Daily Bible, commentary by F. LaGard Smith”, Smith notes that though Abram was from the eastern Fertile Crescent, he was not an Elamite, descendant of Ham, he was an Aramean, descended from Shem. Smith writes, “…it appears that Abram belongs to a rootless, unsettled, and seminomadic people who wander about among more settled people in search of food and water for the flocks which they tend.” It seems to me to be very appropriate for God to choose a man from a nomadic tribe to be the father of our faith… The Scripture states: Hebrews 11:8 “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
This is fulfilled in Revelation 21. Johns states: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.”
Hence, Abraham’s nomadic background is consistent as a type, with how a Believer is called out of Ur, “… you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world…John 15:19 The Bible is a unified whole.
- “Jesus, A Theography” ; Leonard Sweet | Frank Viola, Introduction pgg. xix -xx