The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 9 – 6
God is building a house. You just read in Series 7, in I daresay mind-blowing detail, about some of the symbols of that house – the Garden of Eden, the temple of God, the human body, and so on. And all of these are indeed types of the house of God.
And when the word “house” is used in the Bible, all of these are meant, in some subtle way at least – because God’s words are true on every level. But I’ve left out one of the most important types of houses; I’ve left out the one you are most interested in… the church.
Start by reading Matthew 7:24-27. Do you know what this says? Are you sure?
When you read that, you probably imagine – as every Protestant in the world does – a man erecting a literal house in a valley, then watching it fall over – or not – based on how it was constructed. And like every Protestant in the world, you can draw thin conclusions about our obedience to God and trusting in the Rock. And sure – in the most superficial and shallow way possible, that is what Jesus meant.
You can go a little deeper, and show, as Jesus explained, that this was a metaphor of our bodies, houses for God which are constructed by wise men for Him to live in… provided we can resist the spirits of the world.
You could even have some fun with it, and say that it is speaking about how well we take care of our bodies, physically, so that we have a place to live in in this life. After all, a foolish man builds his body upon soda and fries and cigarettes, and great will be the fail of it. (Get it? Fail of it? Sorry.)
And all of these ways of looking at the parable are true. But none are really what Jesus was telling us. Jesus was telling us to build our house upon the rock. Not our physical shelter, nor our body of flesh, nor our spiritual body for Jesus to dwell in… but our house.
But what does that really mean?
Consider 2 John 1:10 – is God really that concerned about your roof shading an unbeliever? Does it really matter to Him that you mumble a formality like “goodbye” (a contraction from “God be with you”) to a heretic? Or is there a lot going on here that doesn’t meet the eye?
What does shaking the dust off of your feet really do to hurt someone who rejected you? Matthew 10:14. Specifically… how does that hurt a house? Matthew 10:12-13. And what sort of nut job goes around saluting houses, anyway??
So obviously, there’s something going on here that’s beyond the understanding of “house” you’ve grown up with. And it should come as no surprise that you already know what that is.
HOUSE
Consider the phrase the “house of Israel”. That means the house that Israel built, obviously. But also obviously, we’re not talking about the pile of stones he called a house in Genesis 33:17. So what is it, really?
Read Psalms 135:19-20. We certainly aren’t talking about buildings here, but rather, about households – the descendants of a certain man. So all they of the house of Israel, which is to say, the children of Israel; they formed the nation of Israel… or Israel’s house.
Thus, a house is not simply a man’s home, nor his possessions, nor even his immediate family; his house is all descendants who still use his name. That distinction is important; all of us are descended from dozens of people only a few generations back; yet most of us only carry the name of a single one of them.
Thus, my last name is Burson, or “son of Bur”. So I am of the house of Bur. No one knows anything about him anymore. Perhaps he was just in the right place at the right time – who knows, but regardless Bur made a name for himself… and built a house in his name.
On the other hand, my paternal grandfather’s name is almost lost; I know it, but my children probably wouldn’t. He just wasn’t remarkable enough for his memory to survive more than 3 generations. So as with so many dozens of generations before him, his name won’t survive the ravages of time. But somehow, Bur stuck.
Likewise, consider the tribes of Israel; Israel had twelve sons, most of whom weren’t that interesting. We know they existed, but beyond that…what is there to say about, say, Issachar? Issachar the tribe is mentioned solely in lists of movements and blessings given to all the other tribes, with one notable exception that suggests they may have been involved in astronomy and figuring the calendar (1 Chronicles 12:32).
There is not a single word said about the actions of Issachar, the man. But you have heard of Job, son of Issachar (Genesis 46:13). He outshone his father, and made a better name for himself – which happens sometimes (1 Kings 1:47).
Job’s adventures are worthy of a book. But if Issachar had not been the son of a great man, Israel, his name surely would not have survived today. Much like we would never have heard of Paris Hilton had not her great-grandfather built Hilton Hotels (and that would have been… OK).
THE HOUSE OF ABRAHAM
Like all children, Abraham was born into his father’s house. But God called upon him to leave it (Genesis 12:1-3), and promised to make Abraham’s “name great”. This is important, because what binds a house together is a name.
By definition; for what do you call, say, Texans if you can’t use variations on the word… Texas? So if your family no longer uses your name, then they no longer are bound together by your identity; which means really, they’re no longer your family.
After all, your grandchildren are only one quarter you, genetically, anyway. So for them to be your family, to the exclusion of the other three-fourths stakeholders, must mean they use your name, and follow to some extent your way of life.
Naturally, the more famous the founder, the greater his name was, the longer it would bind together his descendants; the more pride they took in being called by his name, the more generations would want to be called by that name, and the greater the number of children he could claim in his house.
To this day, people spend countless hours searching their family trees, hoping to claim some faint connection to Napoleon, Henry VIII, or George Washington. Because they want to be part of a better house, and share the fame of some ancestor’s great name! (Isaiah 4:1).
But when God called Abraham to leave Terah’s house, it was to leave behind Terah’s name and make a better one of his own; so that Isaac would not be known as “Isaac, the Terahite”, but Isaac, the son of Abraham.
So Genesis 12 records the founding of a NEW house, the house of Abraham, independently of the house of Terah. What was wrong with Terah? Joshua 24:2. So what would happen to Terah’s house? Proverbs 14:11.
Terah was an idolator – he had left Babylon behind but not enough for God to name a house after him! (Genesis 11:31-32). How many semi-Christians might fit that description today? And how many of our own parents might fit that description?
How many of them did some right things, did the best they could… but didn’t take enough steps, not leaving Babylon far enough behind? Even when, after we learned the truth, we tried to drag them the rest of the way? Matthew 23:37-39 comes to mind.
Still, Terah couldn’t live forever, so why not just stay and inherit Terah’s house in due time? Proverbs 15:6. So for Abraham to make a great name, and be the father of a great nation… a great house… he had to be free to follow God without Terah’s idolatrous presence looming in the background.
How is that accomplished? Proverbs 24:3. Abraham had the wisdom to rule his fractions; the strength of soul to make good judgments (Genesis 26:5); the will to break his spirit and understand God; and the persuasive wisdom in his soul required to convince the heart to trust God (Genesis 15:1-5).
And that wasn’t easy – he was already too old to have children (Genesis 17:17), and his heir was a servant in his house. He was already resigned to having his name disappear from history! Who would make his name great, if he had no children to remember it? Proverbs 19:14.
So how could God build him a house? Obviously, he had to have a son come from his own loins. Abraham needed descendants who would remember his name (Genesis 31:42). A son who would honor and trust him; and Isaac seems to have offered no resistance in Genesis 22:8-10, just as Jesus whom he foreshadowed (Isaiah 53:7).
Talking to that same son, Isaac, God made promises in Genesis 26:3-5; some of these promises Isaac no doubt merited on his own, but others, as God said, were largely due to his father’s obedience. And again, the next generation, the same promises were confirmed to Jacob (Genesis 35:10-13).
Jacob was something of a sketchy character – a liar, cheat, and profiteer – but God saw in his soul someone who could overcome that; for whatever else was wrong with Jacob, his soul WANTED the birthright and blessing of Abraham (Genesis 32:26).
This is why God said “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”, before they were even born (Romans 9:11-13), because even while still unborn, Jacob WANTED the promises of the firstborn! (Genesis 25:21-26). Jacob wanted the house of Abraham!
And God knew that no matter what Jacob was like, if his soul wanted what God had to offer enough, he would change to be what God needed him to be, and rule his fractions until he got there! Because… you get what you want. And Jacob wanted a house. That house, in particular.
Again, let me stress that Jacob wasn’t lusting after the goatskin tent Abraham lived in. Yes, that was one meaning of house and yes, that would have gone to him after he received the birthright; but Jacob could have built his own tent; what he really wanted was to bear the name of Abraham.
That name rightly belonged to Esau, but Jacob was desperate to carry within himself the fame of Abraham, and with it the leadership of the household (Genesis 27:29 – and be heir to ALL of its best blessings (verses 36-37). And as everyone does… he got want he wanted.
THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL
But Jacob wasn’t worthy of a house. Whatever his soul may have wanted, it cut too many corners to get there. God didn’t want Abraham’s legacy passing to Jacob, whose name and lifestyle was “deceiver”. So Jacob’s name had to die. His HOUSE had to end (Psalms 9:5).
Yet God loved Jacob; because He thought his soul could be counted on to teach his heart not to deceive, given time; because his soul wanted the promises of God so much. And so God gave him a new name… and with it, the house he coveted so much. For a man who prevailed with God was worthy of having his new name remembered (Genesis 32:28).
Which meant that three great men in a row, each of whom were worthy of the promises of God, each of whom were worthy of a house of their own, had their blessings stacked on top of one another. And that’s why God identified Himself with each of them individually, even though they all were of the same house! (Exodus 3:15). Because they each deserved to be remembered!
In that verse, note that He was the God of Jacob… but they were the children (and therefore, belonged to the house) of Israel. Because it was Jacob who deserved credit for killing his beast to become a new person. Yet it was that new person Israel whom God wanted the world to remember.
Within Jacob’s house there were twelve sons. Yet a few stood out among them, Joseph in particular (Genesis 48:21-22). Jacob loved Joseph, and God did as well. And so when it came time to pass on the house that Isaac and Abraham and left to him, Jacob gave most of it to Joseph (Genesis 48:15-16).
Note that Israel was giving Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, his name. The right to be called Israel. The right to be thought of as Israel! The other sons all got blessings, but only Joseph got the name of Israel, for he inherited the house of Israel!
…but only the house itself. Not the leadership of that house. For that was given to Judah in Genesis 49:8-12. Israel said “thy father’s children shall bow down before thee”. So the house belonged to Joseph, but the rulership of the house belonged to Judah.
This promise wasn’t fulfilled until the time of David, which is another story altogether. Or rather, the same story all over again, but we’ll get to that in a second. First, note that Judah is a lion’s cub. And cats in general picture spirits, but lions picture the king of all cats – rulers of spirits.
So Judah was here appointed as the soul of Abraham’s house in perpetuity. But notice the details: Judah, the man, was a lion’s cub – a young lion, one not yet prepared to take control over his father’s house. But when Shiloh, the true lion of the tribe of Judah, comes, then Judah, the house, will take his rightful position through Jesus.
Now if Israel as a whole was ideally to be the house of God (Exodus 19:6), and thus a type of God’s body, then Judah was Israel’s head, its soul; which means Joseph was the heart, while Levi was its spirit.
As we see clearly portrayed in the temple, where Joseph, heir of the name of Jacob would picture the twelve loaves, the body of Israel; Levi would be the seven candles, who brought light to Israel; and Judah, root of Jesus, is the golden censer who will judge Israel and rule over the other two fractions.
These three tribes wound up splitting the leadership of house of Abraham among them, a division which wouldn’t be repaired until Jesus came and repaired this breach in the leadership (Isaiah 58:12), uniting all three fractions behind Himself.
Which He did in a very real sense; for He was the direct descendant of Judah through both parents; but His mother was also descended from Aaron, and thus Levi; and his human father’s name was… Joseph. Uniting three lineages in one and repairing the breach (this is, of course, only one of many fulfillments of this prophecy).
THE NAME OF DAVID
Your average Israelite, of whom there have been no doubt hundreds of millions over the millennia the Bible spans, wasn’t important enough to remember. Scarcely a few thousand people are even named in the Bible, and only a few hundred merited more than the bare fact of their existence. Most we know only because someone up or down their family tree was interesting.
David was an exception, a man worthy of note; the branch of Jesse – a scion of Jesse’s house (Isaiah 11:1). The smallest, youngest, least-impressive branch (1 Samuel 16:6-12). Which makes his rise to king all the more meaningful; God chose, as always, the weak things to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:25-29).
Because it is not what you are that merits a name; it’s what you do with what you were given. David was never, ever, going to inherit Jesse’s house as the youngest of eight brothers. Yet he rose, not only to head the house of Jesse, but over the whole house of his ancestor Judah (2 Samuel 2:4)!
His fame was such (1 Samuel 18:7-8), that for a time the entire nation was called, not the house of Judah, but the house of David (2 Samuel 3:1-10). For David’s faith and righteousness had eclipsed all the men that came before him, as far back as Judah himself!
His house replaced the house of Saul (2 Samuel 6:21), and the whole house of Israel followed him, and became a part of David’s house (1 Kings 11:38). Obviously, the people in this nation were, first and foremost, Israelites. So why call them, in effect, Saulites and Davidites?
David’s actual descendants were a much smaller portion of that tribe; but as king, David was acting as one of the firstborn princes from Numbers 1:16, 44. And as a stand-in for Judah himself, he was acting as father of the entire nation… making them all part of David’s house!
Because David was the king of the house of Israel, he was the soul of the nation, the head of the house, the contemporary patriarch of the people. And the whole household served him, thus, were his ministers… and thus, were called by his name!
And while he didn’t build the house, he was acting-owner of it (Luke 12:42-44). But if David did the job better than Judah or Jesse, then Jesus said the Lord would make him the actual owner. Which in fact is exactly what He did (1 Chronicles 17:10-27). And nothing his heirs could do would cost David his name in God’s family… it would just cost them their name.
David’s sons did in fact squander the inheritance, and so God took the tribes of Israel away from David’s house, gave them to the house of Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:7-10). Who, in turn, lost the house to someone else ( 1 Kings 14:14).
And so it goes; how many poor men have done something meaningful with their lives? Immigrants with nothing who built world-girdling corporations, dropouts with no money who built tech empires, and so on? Thousands, easily. And yet how many of their children do the same? Ecclesiastes 2:18-21.
How many children are worthy of their father’s name, how many add to it, build upon it… and how many make that name to stink? Genesis 34:30. Most heirs never work for anything – and so their name disappears as soon as their father’s money does.
This is what Esau would have done; we know that for sure, for he sold his inheritance at the first sign of trouble (Hebrews 12:15-17). If he would sell it to Jacob, he would sell it to a stranger just as easily. And then Abraham’s house would have been lost to his heirs, and his name would have been forgotten.
THE DEATH OF A HOUSE
Contrary to what the human beast thinks, most houses don’t last forever (Psalms 49:11-13). Some houses wither and die slowly on their own through generations of apathy and mismanagement; some die suddenly through extreme acts of stupidity; some, God actively destroys.
In Judges 19-20, in a story eerily reminiscent of Sodom, God took just such vengeance on the tribe of Benjamin; and trimmed the tribe down so much that it never fully recovered. And this troubled Israel, and God (Judges 21:6) – not for that generation’s sake, which totally had it coming, but for the original Benjamin’s sake.
It wasn’t fair to his name, nor fair to his father Israel who loved Benjamin second-most (Genesis 43:6), the only other son of his favorite wife Rachel. And so a clever if not-entirely-honest method of rebuilding the house was found in Judges 21.
In spite of this, Benjamin remained the smallest tribe in Israel, with a name so small it was barely mentioned as part of Judah’s name (Psalms 68:27), for Benjamin was the one tribe God left to be a part of Judah’s house after Solomon’s sin (1 Kings 11:32).
But his name did survive, because every man who makes a name in the house of the Lord is important to God (Ruth 4:10). For if any part of God’s house is cut off forever, it reflects badly on the name of the whole house (Joshua 7:9). That’s why God goes to great lengths to avoid it happening (Deuteronomy 25:5-10, 24:5).
It’s also why Exodus 12:15 (and many other verses like it) is such a potent threat. We’re not just talking about exile from the nation; we’re talking about what the Romans would have called “damnatio memoriae”; obliterating all evidence that this person ever existed.
For when you are cut out of the house of Israel, it’s as if Israel had no son. As if you had never been (Psalms 109:12-15). As it will be to all the wicked whom God cuts off ( Psalms 109:1-3, 15). A textbook example of this is Jehu.
He was given a limited contract – a guarantee of at least four generations on the throne of Israel. A good start to a house! (2 Kings 10:30-31). It could have been more than that… but Jehu allowed it to rot (Proverbs 10:7), so God executed his descendant to cut off his house (2 Kings 15:8-12).
Likewise, Solomon had sinned, and God had to punish that; His promises to David prevented Him from completely cutting off his house, but He could certainly trim it a lot – and did, giving 10 of the 12 tribes to Jeroboam to rule after Solomon’s death.
Now Jeroboam had been handed a nation intact, with great wealth and power and God gave him a promise to establish his throne forever if he acted like David had instead of acting like Solomon (1 Kings 11:31-36). Spoiler alert: he didn’t. So God said He would cut off the house of Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:7-13). What does that mean, exactly? 1 Kings 15:29-30.
Everything that breathed in Jeroboam’s lineage was killed. No one was left to celebrate his accomplishments, because “The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psalms 34:16).
All these terms are bound up together; for if God “cuts off the remembrance” of your name, then your house – if your descendants are even allowed to live – will not be called after your name, so you’ll receive none of the credit, which means it won’t really be your house (Jeremiah 22:30).
DAVID’S HOUSE
In 2 Samuel 7, David lamented that God did not dwell in a house, and wanted to build one for Him (verses 1-3). Now this misses the obvious impracticality of this (1 Kings 8:27), which God pointed out (2 Samuel 7:4-7). It also misses the fact that David was already building a house for God (1 Corinthians 3:17).
And yet, because David felt that way about God’s house, because he wanted to build a house of God, it shows that he was capable of maintaining a house of God. Of ruling over the house of God. And so God promised to build him a permanent house (2 Samuel 7:8-16).
This prophecy, as always, has a lot of layers of meaning, all of them true. But for right now, focus on the fact that David’s house – not Judah’s house, of which he was caretaker, but David’s own seed would build a house that would never end.
Obviously, the principal meaning of that was Jesus, the “seed” and the “he” of verses 12-13; as Paul said “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). Jesus would inherit the house of David, just as David inherited the house of Judah, for Jesus was the “Shiloh” of Genesis 49:10.
But now an interesting quirk; as David was part of Judah’s house, so Judah was a part of Abraham’s house. But even though he stood out within the house, he could never become greater than the house that bore him (Hebrews 3:3).
Thus, Abraham will never be a part of Judah’s house; for everything Judah had came from Abraham, and the lesser is always blessed by the greater (Hebrews 7:7). Which sets the stage for Jesus’ question in Matthew 22:41-46.
Jesus was the son of David; therefore, Jesus would always be a part of the house of David, and thus, always subject to David as a son should be. How then, is it possible, for David to call Him “Lord”? The Pharisees couldn’t answer… but we can, easily.
Remember how a family tree works; a branch is a descendent of his ancestors. But a root is the ancestor of the branches. As you read already in Isaiah 11:1, Jesus was the branch of Jesse (through David). But as Isaiah 11:10 says, He was also the root of Jesse (and thus of David), because He was the Creator of all!
Said differently, Jesus’ beast was a part of Abraham’s, Isaac’s, Israel’s, Judah’s, David’s, and finally Joseph’s house (Hebrews 2:16). Jesus was a branch of all of these houses… in body.
But David himself belonged to the house of Judah, and of Israel, and of Isaac, and of Abraham… who, in turn, belonged to the house of Melchizedek who had blessed Abraham! Making Jesus’s soul the root of all these houses… in spirit!
It was Jesus who was alive before Abraham (John 8:56-58), Jesus who told Abraham the same things He was telling the Pharisees in this chapter; the hard truth about his nature, that his soul was in bondage to his heart and spirit… for which Abraham was grateful, and glad! ( John 8:39-40).
Grateful enough to become part of Melchizedek’s house, making his spiritual descendant David glad to call him Lord! Because like Abraham, David knew that the only way out of this bondage to sin and death was to leave his father’s house ( John 8:44).
If David was to have a greater name than Judah, he had to leave Judah’s house, and become part of Melchizedek’s house, and call Him Lord! Because Melchizedek outranked Judah as much as He outranked Levi (Hebrews 7:5-10).
So while David, as the physical son of Judah, could never outrank him… by being adopted into a better house, that of Melchizedek, which outranked Judah… David could become Judah’s spiritual ancestor in the resurrection… just as Jesus did!
…because even the son of Melchizedek outranks the great-grandson of Abraham.
WHAT IF YOU’RE NOT EXCEPTIONAL?
So the goal is to become famous, build a name for yourself, build a house with children, servants, riches, create a legend that lasts through the ages by being exceptional in some way. But what if you’re not? What if you, like most everyone else, are, well, like most everyone else?
Even the greatest of names will, in time, fall upon the rubbish heap of history. So what’s the point? Why bother? Why not, as Solomon’s beast encouraged, simply “eat and drink and enjoy the good” (Ecclesiastes 5:18). Just accept that you’re unremarkable, embrace it, and take the pleasure you can get where you find it.
Let’s face it, your name is going to disappear inside of a century unless you give the world a compelling reason to keep it alive, like putting your name on a bridge, a book, or a species of toad. Even then, it’s scarcely you people remember – just the toad named after you.
The extraordinary among us will, perhaps, build a name to last a few hundred years or so; people like Martin Luther King (and his namesake the reformer), Henry Ford, various Rockefellers and Kennedys, Bruce Wayne, George Washington (and Carver), Twain (both Mark and Shania), etc.
Some houses last for millennia, and some houses are gone in a single generation. Are you capable of creating a godly seed, a house to stand the test of time? Will you leave behind you a wealth of riches, either physical or spiritual? Proverbs 13:22.
Or are you like the grasshopper, so busy enjoying your own life that, when you die, you leave your heirs, if any, no reason to remember you? (Ecclesiastes 9:5). This is the natural order of things. This will happen to all of us, eventually. We will be forgotten, if not by our children, then by our grandchildren.
We simply aren’t that special, aren’t that important, and our descendants will have too much to do to spend their time thinking about their great-great-great grandpa and all his wonderful skills and wisdom and quirks. No one will care.
So was Solomon’s beast right? Of course not. For Solomon also knew the way to make a name that would last forever (Proverbs 10:7). Unfortunately, we have already missed the opportunity to be just. We have all sinned, and our name will rot, as it should – and as Jacob’s did.
As always, use the golden rule: if you wanted a great name, but knew you didn’t have what it takes, what would you do? You would seek adoption in a more famous house, with a better name, so that you could be famous through it.
If you are desperate to be remembered, as Jacob was, but know you don’t have what it takes to make your own name, as Jacob knew, you would seek to inherit someone else’s name… as he did! And that is why God promises us a new name, as He gave Jacob (Revelation 3:12).
A new name, a name uniquely ours, within in the house of Elohim – just as Jesus is named Yahweh Elohim, a special name within the name of another Being! A special house of His own, within the House of His Father! (Hebrews 3:6).
As for how you do that… every lesson in this series has given you that answer already, and they will continue to do so until the answer is inescapable.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The first 11 chapters of the Bible cover about 2,000 years of Earth’s history, passing over the lives of millions, possibly billions of people and naming scarcely a hundred. In Genesis 11:26, we meet Abraham for the first time… and the entire rest of the Bible is about him and his house. Which makes Genesis 12:1-3 the one verse for this lesson.
Think about it; the entire Old Testament exists to chronicle the repeated failures of his descendants to live up to his example. Other nations are mentioned only as they interacted with his offspring, mostly to punish them or, rarely, be punished by them, or, ultra-rarely, to be inspired by their example.
The NT appears to open up the gospel to the Gentiles; but not to create a house for the Gentiles! No, their hope is to be adopted as Abrahamites! (Galatians 3:29). God does not offer to make the Gentiles a house… but He does offer them a chance to come and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in their kingdom! (Matthew 8:11). In THEIR HOUSE!
It is by the adoption into the house of Abraham that all the world, whether of the literal seed of Abraham or not, can become heirs of the house of Abraham; the house of faith, so named, because Abraham believed God (Romans 4:3).
We are not going to be the savior of mankind, the one just man who ever lived. We’re too late – it’s been done. We were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and let’s face it – we weren’t man enough to have done it anyway.
We are not going to be the father of the faithful, the one man on Earth who merited the promises in Genesis 15; we’re too late – it’s been done. We were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and let’s face it – we weren’t man enough to have done it anyway.
So like Issachar, if we are to be remembered, it will have to be, not by our own name, but by the name of someone famous; sad though it may be to admit, the name of Nathaniel Burson will not reverberate through eternity as I’d like it to do; but the name of Nathaniel, Son of God, might. Nathaniel, of the Els. Nathaniel Elohim. That name has a ring to it.
[“Someone already has that username, see John 1:47. Try another? Available usernames include: Nathaniel Son Of God 564, Gods Son N123, Nathan Rulez 777”]
And so if we are remembered, it will not be because of our achievements, but because of our Father’s achievements, and our Brother’s achievements. Like Jacob, we may contribute in a small way to the building of the name of our Father’s house…
But Jacob wouldn’t have had a house (nor have existed at all) had not Abraham first built a name for himself. Likewise, none of us would have had the opportunity to stand out, if it were not for the house our spiritual ancestors pried out of the grudging hands of the spiritual Canaanites (Genesis 48:21, Colossians 2:15).
We all lost any hope of building such an inheritance by sinning, by working the works of the devil and not of Abraham (John 8:39-40). So if we are remembered by the population of the universe, it will be because we are given the privilege of adoption into the house of better men (Galatians 4:5).
Thanks to the power of adoption, we can be grafted back into the family of Israel (Romans 11:17-24). Meaning we would be part of the house of Israel, who was of the house of Isaac, of the house of Abraham; who was himself of the house of Melchizedek, whose very name means that he belongs to the house of Zadok, the righteous one, the Father of all…
Ephesians 3:14-15 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.