Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament: Abram Counts the Stars | Rev. Malcolm G. Smith

Good morning and welcome to the adult service.

The story we're going to be focusing on today is taken from Genesis 15, and that's our first reading.

The word of Jehovah came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am a shield for you.

Your reward is multiplied exceedingly.

And Abram said, Lord Jehovah, what will you give me since I go childless, and the son, the steward of my household, is Eliezer of Damascus?

And Abram said, Look, you have given me no descendants, and behold, a son of my household will inherit from me.

And behold, the word of Jehovah came to him, saying, This one shall not be your heir, for he that shall go out from your own body shall be your heir.

And he brought him outside and said, Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to count them.

And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.

And Abram believed in Jehovah, and Jehovah counted it as righteousness for him.

Amen.

Reading further from Arcana Celestia or Secrets of Heaven.

He brought him outside, symbolizes the sight of the interior self, which sees internal things from external things.

Internal things are brought outside when we contemplate the starry sky or the heavens with our physical eyes and allow it to direct our thoughts to the Lord's kingdom.

Our interior sight, the sight of our spirit or soul, is brought outside whenever we view something with our eyes, and it essentially disappears as it leads us to see or think about things having to do with the church or heaven.

The eye itself is really just the sight of the spirit brought outside.

In fact, its main purpose is for us to see internal things from external things.

In other words, the aim as we look at objects in the world around us is for us to reflect constantly on everything that exists in the other life, since that life is the goal of our life in the world.

That is how the earliest church or most ancient church looked at things, that is how the angels with us look at things, and that is how the Lord looked at things.

When people who see internal things and external things look at the sky, they do not think at all about the starry sky, but about the angelic heaven.

In fact, when they see how vast the sky is, they do not think about its immense size, but about the Lord's vast, infinite power.

When such people see the sunrise, they do not think about the dawn, but about the way everything rises out of the Lord, and the way wisdom advances day to day.

Again, when they look at gardens, orchards, and flower beds, their eye does not cling to any tree or to its blossom, leaf, or fruit, but to the heavenly attributes these represent.

Nothing beautiful or enjoyable can possibly exist in the heavens or on earth that does not in some measure represent the Lord's kingdom.

Amen.

And finally, reading from the Gospels, the Gospel of Luke, chapter twelve.

And Jesus said to his disciples, On this account I say to you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about the body, what you will shall put on.

Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap.

They have neither storehouse nor barn, and God feeds them.

Of how much more value are you than the birds?

And which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to his stature?

If you then are not able to do the least thing, why are you anxious about the rest?

Consider the lilies, how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin, but I say to you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

And if God so clothes the grass in the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith?

And do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink, and do not be unsettled.

For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your father knows that you need these things, but seek rather the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.

Amen.

Here end our readings from the Lord's Word.

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

In the brief moment of Abram's life that we're focusing on today, we find him struggling to believe in the future that Jehovah had promised him.

He had been promised he would be father of a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed.

But at this point in the story, he's rather old, still has no children, let alone the beginnings of a great nation.

And so he's experiencing doubts and anxiety about whether these good things he's longing for will ever actually happen.

On its own, this story might not seem particularly remarkable.

In the history of the world, there have been countless people who have struggled to have children, and there are many other hardships that people have experienced that are equally hard, if not much harder, than what Abram experienced.

However, the incredible thing that the teachings for the new church reveal to us is that in this episode and in every detail of this story, and in fact the whole story of the Old Testament, we are given a window into the experience of Jesus Christ when he was on earth, including the doubts and anxieties that he experienced.

It's always a privilege to be invited into someone else's inner world, for them to have the vulnerability to share something of what is on their mind or on their heart.

And the same is true here with the Lord in his word.

It will take work for us to understand the Lord better, just like it always takes work for us to listen carefully enough to really understand someone better.

But the reward of doing that kind of work is that we feel more connected to the other person and we gain a richer sense of what it is to be a human being going through this life.

And that reward certainly applies to growing in our understanding of the Lord.

This is the second sermon in a series of sermons on discovering Jesus in the Old Testament.

And throughout this series, we will regularly remind ourselves that the reality is that our puny little brains can only get so far in understanding our God's infinite experience from our own very limited experience.

And yet, any progress we can make in understanding our God is worth it.

Even a poorly drawn sketch is better than nothing.

And once we have a poorly drawn sketch, we can work on improving it, fixing parts that are a little bit wrong.

So let's see how much we can improve our sketch by working our way through this story of Abram counting the stars.

The simplest way to discover Jesus in the Old Testament is to look at the different parts of a story and say something like this happened to Jesus or something like this happened within Jesus.

The book Arcana Celestia often does tell us in detail about what the different characters in a story represent in Jesus.

Abram means one thing, Abraham something else, Isaac another, Jacob another, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, etc.

They all have specific meanings.

And sometimes in this series we'll dig into specific meanings.

But if you don't remember or don't understand really the specific explanation, you can use the shorthand of saying, something like this character was present in Jesus.

So in the story from Genesis 15, there are two main characters, Jehovah and Abram.

Something like Jehovah was in Jesus.

And that part was in communication with something like Abram in Jesus.

Jesus talked about the Father and the Son, and there's something like that going on here.

Arcana Celestia 1815 explains that there was part of Jesus that was, quote, Jehovah in him, because he was conceived of Jehovah.

That part was divine.

And there was also part of him that he received through Mary.

And that more external part was going to eventually be united to the divine part, Jehovah within him, but it wasn't united yet.

And so, quote, it could not help seeming to him as though he was talking to another person when he talked with Jehovah, despite the fact that he was talking to himself.

Another passage says that Jesus had, quote, a perceptive sensation and knowledge of all things that were taking place in heaven, and a continual communication, an internal conversation with Jehovah.

So Jesus had this divine part within him that was Jehovah, and he also had this external part that he'd received from Mary that was like Abram.

And those two parts of him were in continual communication, and he was working to unite them, but before they were united, they seemed separate, and so there needed to be conversation.

And so we get to watch this interaction back and forth, Jehovah talking to Abram, Abram talking to Jehovah.

The first piece of communication between Jehovah and Abram in this particular chapter is the word of Jehovah coming to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram, I am a shield for you.

And Arcana Celestia explains that a shield protects a person's chest, and a person's chest contains their heart and their lungs, which symbolize the goodness and the truth with them.

And so Jehovah saying he's a shield means that he is protecting the goodness and truth within a person from the attacks of the evils and falsities of hell.

Store that idea away for a minute, and we'll come back to why it's significant in a little bit.

Next in the story, we learn why Abram is anxious.

And within that, we can learn something about why the Abram part of Jesus was also anxious.

Abram says to Jehovah, Lord Jehovah, what will you give me since I go childless, and the son, the steward of my household, is Eliezer of Damascus?

As an aside, Lord Jehovah is a term used for Jehovah when a person's going through temptation or crisis.

So if you see Lord Jehovah, someone's having a hard time.

So the thing that Abram is upset about is that when he dies, his Syrian servant will be heir instead of a child of his own.

And we can say, oh, okay, sorry.

But what Jesus was upset about is something much deeper than just that.

The Abram part of Jesus was worried there would be no internal church anymore.

He was worried that there would only be people who were going through the motions of religion and nobody taking it to heart.

The rituals and practices of religion, the passage even talks about looking after a building and things like that, that's all fine and good, but that stuff is meant to be in service of, like a servant, in service of the real purposes of religion.

Repentance, salvation, loving the Lord, loving the neighbor, doing judgment, loving mercy, humbling ourselves to walk with our God.

That's the internal church where the teachings of the church are inside a person, changing their heart and changing their behavior for the better.

When Jesus was on earth, the religions of the day had so atrophied that people were just going through the motions, trying to do things to appease God or to please God, so that God would give them some good stuff in response.

Like employees whose heart is not in the work, who are just doing the bare minimum so that they can make a buck.

But the Lord wants children of God, not just selfish hirelings who only care about themselves.

This is what he was concerned about.

Was there a future in which people would take the church to heart, or was that just a naive dream, like a man in his 70s or 80s still hoping to have children?

Now we might also worry and feel anxious about similar things.

We might worry about the state of the church or the state of the world.

We might long to have a good marriage or a good relationship with our parents or our children, but sometimes it feels like all we can manage is going through the motions.

It's only external.

Where's the heart?

We might long to feel useful, but feel like we spend most of our days doing pointless things.

We might long to be good people, but feel not so sure that that's actually possible given our track record, our flaws, and our mistakes.

Can we become genuinely good people?

Or are we going to be stuck faking our way through for our whole lives?

Do not be afraid.

I am a shield for you, says Jehovah.

You don't have to be anxious, says the Lord.

I am a shield for you.

I will protect the goodness in your heart, the goodness I put in your heart, and the truth that I put into your lungs.

I'll protect those from the evil and falsity of hell.

The word of Jehovah came to Abram and told him that his servant would not be his heir, but a son born from his own body.

And to Jesus this meant that the church would have people in it who were born again, who were regenerated, whose hearts were made new by the Lord.

And to reinforce this promise, Jehovah brought Abram outside.

The meaning of this bringing outside was explained in the lesson we read from the Arcana Celestia, the one that's printed in your pamphlet, so you can go home and contemplate it.

To be brought outside is, quote, whenever we view something with our eyes, and it essentially disappears as it leads us to see or think about things having to do with a church or heaven.

The passage even says that the main purpose of our eyes, even our physical eyes, is for us to see internal things from external things.

Our eyes can do this.

We can think about heavenly things when we look around the natural world, but we have to let the Lord lead us outside so that we can see what he wants to show us.

It's hard to see the stars if we refuse to leave our dark little rooms.

It's also hard to see the stars when we go outside if there's too much light pollution from the things and priorities of the world.

We have to get away from all that so that he can show us something different, so that we can look to the heavens and count the stars.

That's what he said to Abram.

Look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them.

And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.

Abram looked at the stars and thought of his thousands of descendants.

We can look at the stars in the sky and think about heavenly things.

Arcana Celeste says that Abram's descendants, being like the stars of heaven, mean all the countless goods and truths that make up the wisdom, intelligence, and happiness of every angel.

So if you're feeling like there's not enough goodness or truth in you, look up at the night sky on a clear night and think about the immensity of the universe, and think about every point in the night sky being another good love or true belief that the Lord wants to give you.

Now, interestingly, we don't have any stories in the Gospels of Jesus looking up at the stars, but we do have plenty of examples of him seeing heavenly things in the natural world around him.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.

And the passage from our lessons said, nothing beautiful or enjoyable can possibly exist in the heavens or on earth that does not in some measure represent the Lord's kingdom.

Now, what about if we're feeling anxious and want to be reassured about the Lord's providence and care?

What could we look at in the natural world?

Well, Jesus told his disciples to consider the ravens and consider the lilies how they grow.

And these are familiar words and even some of people's favorite teachings.

But they take on a different significance when we think of the Lord Himself considering the lilies as a way of being reassured when part of him was feeling anxious.

Because we know from the teachings for the new church that the Lord, at least at the Abram level of him, experienced the worst possible temptations, including terrible doubts, terrible anxiety and despair.

And we know from the explanation of this story in the Arcana Celestia that that Abram part of Jesus found reassurance by being brought outside to see heavenly things and the natural world around him.

So when Jesus told his disciples to consider the lilies, he was not telling them to do something that he'd never done he thought might be helpful to them.

He was telling them something that he knew from difficult, difficult experience was actually helpful in reconnecting to that reality that the Lord is in charge, the Lord cares.

Try it, consider those lilies, it works.

After Abram looked toward heaven and counted the stars, it says simply, and he believed in Jehovah, and Jehovah counted it as righteousness for him.

Somehow, in our current world, belief in God can seem like something that doesn't really matter.

It doesn't make that big of a difference either way.

But that is not the way Arcana Celestia talks about what believing in Jehovah meant for Jesus.

It says, quote, the love from which a person fights reveals what faith that person has.

When we're going through something hard, what makes us choose to keep fighting for what we want anyway?

Love.

Because what we love is at stake, we believe it's worth continuing to fight for.

In the Lord's case, he fought, quote, from divine love, that is, from love toward the whole human race, whose salvation was the only thing he desired and burned for in his conflicts.

This was not a flimsy, meaningless belief.

It was a belief that came from the infinite divine love of God that was present in Jesus, flowing into him and through him to all the people around him.

It was the light that comes from a million suns.

We are not the Lord.

But we can and should try to follow his example in our own small ways.

When we're experiencing anxiety and doubt about the future and feeling like the things that we care about are under threat, we can try to look at the flowers or the birds or the stars in the heavens and be reminded of our Creator's love and care at the largest and most minute scale.

And we can try to believe in Jehovah, to connect with his divine love as our reason to keep fighting.

So think about what is it that I love that feels under threat right now?

Does the Lord care about that thing too?

Connect with his love for it.

For example, if your marriage is feeling under threat, you might feel anxious because you care about your marriage.

But, no offense, your love for your marriage is kind of puny.

See if you can connect with the Lord's love of marriage and the Lord's love for your marriage specifically, and keep fighting from his love.

Maybe you being a good person feels under threat.

Your love of being a good person feels kind of puny and maybe somewhat self-centered.

Try to connect with the Lord's love of your salvation, the Lord's love for having you be a useful angel in his heavenly kingdom.

Keep fighting the good fight from his love.

Believe in Jehovah.

Believe in that divine love.

To wrap this up, it is such a privilege that the Lord has given us this window into his internal life.

And it's amazing that it's all laid out there in the stories of the Old Testament.

I pray that we may be worthy of this knowledge, and that we don't just file it away as more religious knowledge, but instead use it as motivation to live differently, to follow his example, to see heavenly things in the world around us, and to face our doubts and anxieties with a steadfast faith that's grounded in his infinite love for the whole human race.

Amen.