Chuck Swindoll’s Abraham: A Book Review

Last updated on: October 22, 2014 at 12:05 pm by David Swartz

Chuck Swindoll’s Abraham: A Book Review 2014-10-22T12:05:09-06:00 David Swartz

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Abraham. A major figure in three of the world’s major faiths, this quite ordinary man from the Early Bronze Age (circa 2000 BC) touches us (including many who don’t know him) in many unexpected ways. His life doesn’t stand as removed from us as we think. Many outside the West (or First World) live very similarly to the life he played out. Second, Abraham was simply human and humanness remains constant in spite of advances in civilization. Third, and most important, his soul became the contact point for the Living God to penetrate time and space, transcend the cosmos and breathe His love, holiness, power, truth and beauty into everything moving on this planet. With Abraham, something very new, powerful and unimaginable breaks loose in embryonic form and runs afoot among people.

In Genesis 12:1-3, Abraham takes center stage. And He begs a few questions. Just who in blazes is this guy anyway? What in the world did he ever do to earn or deserve everything God promised to him? The answers are “nobody” and “nothing.” That immediately makes him interesting and more. And this is where Chuck Swindoll steps in with his fine book Abraham: One Nomad’s Journey of Faith. Chuck does with Abraham what he has done with other lives from the Bible (Paul, Jesus, Joseph, David, Job and others). He probes and mines Abraham’s life for that both timeless and contemporary. He insists especially on telling this story the way the Bible tells the story of everyone in it – with transparency, warts and all. Critics of the Bible say that the early Christians just made all this up to make it sound good. To choose one answer among many broad intellectually sound responses, if we Christians had fabricated the Bible to make everything look good in order to con people into believing, we’d have covered our own tails one whale of a lot better.

Abraham’s life becomes the pallet where God swirls three premises into an amazing portrait of power, mercy and love sparkling through human clay. First, the Living God is the seeking God; He’s not sitting on His duff waiting for someone to peel Him a grape only to throw back a crumb of token favor if He’s pleased. In a world broken since the Fall, He comes seeking us. Even in the garden in Genesis, God came seeking Adam and Eve – knowing both that they were hiding and why. In Genesis 12, He breaks over Abraham like an unexpected summer thunderstorm. We see no indication whatsoever that Abraham was looking for God or even a good latte. He, like many of us, was treading water, merely existing. In the garden, with Abraham, with Moses, with the prophets and finally with Jesus, God not only comes in search of us. He positively chases us down.

Second, God makes incredible promises to ordinary people. “I will make of you…” God promises gallons of what Abraham cannot imagine that simply cannot be contained in the pint jar of his life. Eugene Petersen, the writer who rendered “The Message”, says,”What we imagine for ourselves always waxes transient and shallow. God’s plans for us are always grand.” We expect of God and ask of Him too little. Left to ourselves, our perceptions of God and His ways can’t escape the gravitational pull of self. Whatever Abraham believed or thought about God, God Himself blew the socks off it.

Third, meeting God is risky. “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” These are the first words even before the promises of the good stuff. Abraham isn’t asked what he wants. God isn’t a genie in a lamp. There’s no negotiating, no guarantees and no extended details about the agenda. Kind of like life, isn’t it? When some talk about what it might be like to meet God, they imagine something along the lines of questions they always wanted to ask. “Gee, I always thought He would be taller.” In the Bible, when people (as in Isaiah 6) met God, they often marveled they were alive to talk about it. Seeking God is dangerous; we might find Him. Even more unnerving, He might come to us when we’re not even looking for a good latte.

The rest of the Bible tells the story of how God kept His promises to Abraham, right down to the last period of the last verse of Revelation. Here’s where it gets personal. Followers of Jesus Christ, including the one whose face peered at us from the bathroom mirror this morning, are part of God’s fulfilled promise to Abraham. And His promises have exploded in both number and magnitude. Chuck Swindoll traces well the mapping of God’s way with one man, our spiritual forefather. He writes to help us see why God (who calls us to go out not knowing where we go) is worth following. And to assure us that His promises stand more than good – they stand strong enough to hold us.

Read an excerpt from Abraham at the Patheos Book Club here!

David Swartz pastors Bethel Baptist Church in Roseville, Michigan. He thinks that jazz is sacred music, that books are better company than most people, and that university towns rock. He blogs at geezeronthequad.com.

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