Origins: The Promise (Genesis 12–25)Sample

By Pastor Jeff Seward

“Thus, they made a covenant at Beersheba. So Abimelech rose with Phichol, the commander of his army, and they returned to the land of the Philistines. Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines many days.” Genesis 21:32-34 (NKJV)

All of creation points to and worships God. You were designed for worship. God did not create you for your own self-interests and self-glory. The Westminster Confession states: “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” 

AW Tozer writes, “After God created everything else, He said with a smile on His face, ‘I’ll make me a man.’ He shaped and formed man and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God said, “Look around, this is yours; and look at Me, I am yours; and I’ll look at you, and I’ll see in your face the reflection of My own glory. That is your end, that is why you were created, that you might worship Me and enjoy me and glorify Me and have Me as yours forever.”

Abraham was in the land of the Philistines. While there, he picked a place to plant a tamarisk tree as a special location for his personal worship to God. That land was symbolic of Christians living in the world where God was not sought, worshiped, or honored. 

Why did Abraham plant a tamarisk tree? Acts 242 Study explains that the tamarisk is “an extremely slow-growing tree and has to be cared for in order to do well. Very few grow in wilderness settings; they are usually around communities where families plant them on their property. To a Bedouin or a Jew, you don’t plant a tamarisk for yourself, you plant it for the generations to come. From the Abraham story, they took the idea that I am planting this tree to say, ‘for generations to come, my family is going to be here.’ ‘This shade is for the generations to come, I’ll never get to use it.’”

Worshipping the Lord should happen daily and throughout the whole day. Like the tree Abraham planted, our intentional worship needs to be attended to. For your spiritual well-being and the honor of God, you need to have a consistent place to worship Him. Find a special location and time that you regularly sit at Jesus’ feet. Perhaps, it’s in your backyard, or walking on the beach, or strolling through the neighborhood. Your altar is the place you go regularly to meet with the Lord, a place to praise and worship God in His goodness and to intercede for your family.

The rich reward in personal worship is to experience the presence, tender mercy, and joy of the Lord. “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy . . .” (Psalm 43:4 NKJV).

DIG: Read Isaiah 43:7 and think about this: Your created purpose in life is to worship God with your whole being.

DISCOVER: Ponder the statement of the Westminster Confession: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

DO: Find a practical way and place where you can go daily to worship God.