Genesis 31

The time has come for Jacob to return home. There is trouble in the extended family in Aram, but more than that, God has said, “Return to the land of your fathers.” That needs to be enough for Jacob, but the Lord has also added this word of encouragement: “I will be with you.”

Because of the way that Jacob has prospered, his father-in-law's family is increasingly against him. If he is to leave, he concludes that it must be done with some measure of secrecy. He makes the case to his wives, noting that their father, Laban, has cheated and deceived him. But there is more to Jacob's words than a recounting of the abuse that he has suffered at the hands of a man who should have been on his side. Jacob says, “God did not permit him to harm me.” That is a wonderful statement of spiritual awareness for Jacob. Jacob's flocks increased not through schemes or magic tricks, but through the hand of Almighty God. God directed him in dreams, and blessed his pathway in the land of a man, Laban, who only wanted to take advantage of him. Jacob reminded his wives that the God of Bethel, the God he had met on the way into Aram, the God who had blessed him during all those years of working for Laban, was the one who had commanded that this was now the time to return to the land of his father Isaac.

What would be the response of Rachel and Leah? Would they be loyal to Jacob and to Jacob's God, or would they display a greater loyalty to their father Laban at this critical juncture in the history of salvation? In their united response to Jacob they recount the facts about their father. “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house? Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money. All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.” They will stay with Jacob, and go where he goes.

So they left. Just like that. They left Aram and headed toward the land of Canaan without taking the risk of even saying goodby to anyone. But Rachel, Jacob's most beloved wife, took something with her that was not hers. How disappointing that she would steal Laban's idols!

When Laban found out what had happened, he came with his kinsman after them as if he were leading an attacking band of raiders against his own flesh and blood. But this time God spoke to Laban in a dream and warned him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”

When Laban finally overtook his son-in-law's camp, he still accused him and spoke against him, but he also acknowledged the Word of God pressing him to watch his step in this encounter. He said, “It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’”

But the disappointing fact of the stolen household gods remained between them as a matter that Laban was unwilling to ignore. Jacob unknowingly put Rachel's life in danger by promising the death of anyone who had stolen these idols. Rachel's further deception and the Lord's protecting hand enabled this important woman to live who would yet be the mother of the final son of Jacob, Benjamin.

Both Laban and Jacob expressed their anger and intransigence at this moment of conflict. Laban really wanted those gods, and Jacob was very indignant at the suggestion that someone among his household had stolen them. What a story! God carried His people again through this web of danger. Jacob says, “What is my offense? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me? For you have felt through all my goods; what have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen, that they may decide between us two.”

For Laban's part he offers this obnoxious claim like a slave owner who has sold his human wares and still has the nerve to think that he retains perpetual ownership over every last servant he every counted as his own. “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine.”

Jacob's word is better, but it is still very sad when a family has come to this fatal divide. “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.” The two men are able to make a pact to stay away from one another, neither crossing a given point between them with the intention of harm for the other.

Is that the best we can expect? But Rachel must live and not be found out. And Jacob must return to Canaan. Generation must follow generation until the gift of Messiah comes. For now, divine protection must be the aim of the Lord's protective providence over His people.

Yet a day will come when the sword of the Lord will come against His own perfect Son for our offenses. Then the protection of God must be put away, and Labans, Rachels, Jacobs, and many, many other sinners all over the world will be saved by the trouble that comes upon Jesus for us. Israel would yield a Messiah, and that Messiah will bring forth a whole new world.

Jacob made a pillar with Laban in order to celebrate and remember a truce. We have the cross and a meal of bread and wine, and we rejoice in the achievement of a perfect eternal peace. Eat, drink, and live in Jesus! In Him, God is with us for the greatest of blessings forever.

Genesis 30

Rachel was the love of Jacob's life, but she could not bear him children. This had been a problem for both Jacob's mother and grandmother as well, and God was able to take care of their infertility. Their trials only made the eventual blessing of children more wonderful and worthy of praising God.

Nonetheless, when someone is saying to her husband, “Give me children, or I shall die,” it may not be the best time for them to hear about how God will eventually hear her cries and provide. Jacob was frustrated too. He said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” Rachel's answer was not theological, but practical. She gave her husband her servant Bilhah just as Sarah had given Abraham her servant Hagar. From this union came Dan and Naphtali.

This struggle between sisters continues as Leah, also now barren after the birth of Judah, gives her servant Zilpah to Jacob. Once again, God gives more boys, Gad and Asher, and the stories of these tribes begin in this struggle between sisters. The lives of their servants are in their hands, just as the lives of Leah and Rachel had been in the hands of their father, Laban.

The petty squabbles continue, and intimacy is sold for mandrakes, of all things! But God gives the gift of childbearing again to Leah, and first Issachar, then Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah, are born. At this late date, when it might seem hopeless that Jacob's first love, Rachel, would ever bear him children, she does give birth to a boy who will be the apple of his father's eye, Joseph.

With the birth of his pride and joy, Jacob's thoughts turn toward his home in the Promised Land of Canaan. Under the extended family structure of life under Laban, he appeals to his father-in-law for a release that is not immediately granted. The enticement of ever-changing wages become a way for Laban to try to abuse his son-in-law, for Jacob to try to trick his father-in-law, and for God to bless Jacob and his family despite all of the messiness of their motives and actions.

Laban knows that God has blessed Jacob. He believes that there are great riches that have come to him from an association with this chosen servant of the Lord, so he does not want to let him go. Whatever else may be said of the struggle that follows, it is enough for us to know that Jacob's magic tricks are not the ultimate power in the universe. God is the one who gives children, and He is the one who makes flocks and herds increase. He is able to thwart the plans of enemies who come against His people. When we seem to lose, and we can find no ground for hope, remember God. He made the world and everything in it, and He worked out our salvation through a very powerful death. Don't give up on God.

It is a horrible trial to know that your extended family is working against you for their own profit. There is something very unnatural and evil about that. Families should sacrifice for the good of one another. When they forget how to do this, God still knows how to care for His children.

After all those years of labor were over, and Jacob had been away from home much longer than anyone could have expected, he had become a very prosperous man. He became wealthy under the noses of close relatives who wanted what God was giving him, and who were hoping to take advantage of him.

That kind of evil plan can never finally succeed. Normally, cheaters will only prosper for a season. Even if their estates grow throughout the course of their lives, how will they answer God when they die? He knows not only the secret actions we have taken against the weak; He also is an infallible judge of the intentions of every heart.

In the strangely dysfunctional story of Jacob, Laban, Leah, Rachel, their servants, and their children, there was no one who was a shining example of holiness, goodness, and love. If all of God's actions toward the descendants of Abraham and Isaac were based entirely on personal merit, who would God have been able to bless? But there is a principle at work here that is better than reward for our personal goodness. Grace. Sovereign, merciful, marvelous grace. God's grace. What made all the difference in Jacob's life was the determination of the Lord to bless him and his descendants forever.

This does not change the fact that God has requirements. God is not loose with His judgments and His blessings. The reason why the Lord could be so bountiful and free with His grace to Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their children, is only this: Jesus provided all the merit necessary for them. Because of the beautiful holiness of Jesus, God will freely bless His people now and in the life to come.

This is such happy news for sin-sick souls. We who would have been slaves to sin, stuck forever in some Laban's house of horror, are freed from bondage because of Jesus Christ. We are loved. The Lord visits us, resides in us, moves us out of the tangled webs we have made for ourselves and others, and He blesses us. This is why the world continues to turn, children are still being born, and every new day dawns. Without the beauty of Jesus, none of this would make any sense.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Next post will be on 11/29/2010. Have a wonderful time with friends and family. People are good gifts from God, even if we don't agree about everything. :-)

Genesis 29

With the strength that came through His recent encounter with the God of heaven and earth, Jacob continued on his journey to his grandfather's homeland, Aram. There he almost immediately met the love of his life, Rachel, a shepherdess and the daughter of Laban, Rebekah's brother.

When Jacob arrived in Aram, he had nothing. By the time he left he would have two wives, two concubines, many children, and many animals and other possessions. Yet the time he spent in Laban's world would be a period of suffering and abuse at the hands of his kinsman. But God blessed Jacob, and God blessed others around him who were caught up in a web of serious trouble.

Everywhere we escape to in this world, we find that the world is still there when we arrive at our destination. The Hittites were not the only sinful people on the planet. The Arameans who were Jacob's relatives also were sinners, as was Jacob himself. God's chosen flock are being led by Him on their journey to a better land than Canaan. In this world we will have tribulation, but the Lord is able to bless us greatly through all kinds of troubles and despite all manner of sin both inside us and in the lives of those around us.

Jacob served Laban seven years in order to gain one woman, but her father deceived the deceiver who had forced a blessing out of Isaac. He received a less desirable sister instead. But it would be through that older sister, Leah, that Christ would come. The Rachel of his dreams would be his in exchange for seven more years of hard work, but she would not be able to bear children at first.

The conflict between the two sisters would lead them to give their servants to Jacob as concubines that they too might conceive, as each sister attempted to gain a more advantageous position in this family struggle. It is from this story of heartache, rejection, envy, and petty unbelief, that the tribes of Israel were born.

From Leah would come Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, the three oldest sons of Jacob. But it would be the fourth son, Judah, who would be the ancestor of David and all the kings following Him, including Jesus. With the birth of Judah, Leah seemed to put away her strife and affliction that came from being the victim of her father's deception and her husband's rejection. She named her fourth son based on the word “praise,” saying, “This time I will praise the Lord.”

In all our troubles, we have an opportunity to do something that is not normal among men. We can praise the Lord. To even say such a thing seems inhuman, naïve, and unattractive. Perhaps this is because we imagine praise in a time of grief as necessarily an ugly show of hypocrisy. It can be just that, a denial of the obvious that all can see. To praise the Lord rightly, and to eventually count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds (see James 1), we must first acknowledge evil, injury, death, and abuse to be the truly bad things that they are, for anything less than this is dishonest, and will not lead to spiritual victory, but only pretense that must soon crash and burn or smolder in the depression of anger that turns inward.

First we must feel what is happening and give full weight to the evil of a father who treats his daughter as an object of his own prosperity, and a husband whose resentment is obvious in every longing look he gives to another woman that he loves more than his first wife. First feel the pain and admit the evil of the facts, not only in others, but also in the collateral damage of our own semi-sanctified hearts. Once this is accomplished, then we can look at the rest of the story.

There is more here beyond what Leah feels from Laban and Jacob. There is the overwhelming fact of God who sees and knows. There is the fact of God who makes promises to his people, and who is able to take suffering and turn it into something much more fruitful than bitterness. Once we honestly admit the truth of grief and evil, we are in a far better position to feel the greater facts of God's power and God's heaven. Then the testing of our faith will produce steadfastness, and steadfastness will have its full effect, that we may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. We can learn, in trial, to praise the Lord.

This is impossible without faith. We must believe that God is, and that He will certainly hear those who diligently seek Him, especially in their darkest moments. Could it be that even we will be able to sincerely rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us? See Romans 5.

Jesus came into this world as the descendant of Judah, a man whose name has something to do with praising the Lord in the midst of honest suffering. If Jesus did not have perfect trust, we would still be in our sin. But the trust of Jesus was not naïve. He was a man of sorrows who was well acquainted with grief. He knew what it was to be sold by men, betrayed by friends, misunderstood by family, and forsaken by the Father. He felt grief at the wounds and trials of others, and he pressed on to the end with love that was born in the perfect praise of faith. Let this mind of Christ, then, be in us, and may that good seed of heaven yield much fruit for eternity.

Genesis 28

When Isaac blessed Jacob in the previous chapter, Jacob had to deceive his elderly father into thinking that he was his brother Esau. Once Isaac had spoken those important words of covenantal blessing and understood what he had done, he believed that Jacob would actually be blessed. Nonetheless, we cannot help but feel that something was missing in that blessing because of the way that it was obtained. Now as Jacob is sent away from the region of too many Hittite women, his father blesses him with the blessing God gave to Abraham, and this time he knows who Jacob is. Isaac is now knowingly agreeing with the Word of God to Rebekah. It is now a settled fact that Jacob is the child of promise in his generation.

Jacob must go to Aram in order to find a wife. God must be his Help in this endeavor. When Abraham needed to find a wife for Isaac, he would not permit his son to go back to the Arameans. Only his servant could go, and Abraham was confident that God would provide the right woman for Isaac. Rebekah was that woman. Now, because Esau's hatred against Jacob is so intense, Rebekah and Isaac agree that Jacob himself should go.

This ends up being a very costly decision, since Jacob will be gone for many years. In the meantime, Esau will have a chance to make his own decisions without the irritant of the constant presence of his chosen brother. He understands that his parents are not pleased with the women that he has married, so he takes a daughter of Ishmael as an additional wife. Jacob will not have any knowledge of what is happening to his brother, and Esau will have no understanding of what is taking place in Jacob's life. Both men will prosper greatly and will change as men during these years of separation.

Jacob's pathway of change brings him to travel by himself to the place where he will prosper and grow through suffering. On the way there, the Lord meets with him in a dream in a place that Jacob will name Bethel, meaning “house of God.” In this dream angels are ascending and descending on a ladder that stretches between heaven and earth.

Jacob is deeply impressed by this dream, but he could not know what we now know. Jacob could not be aware of what Jesus, his descendant, would say so many centuries later to a man who would be one of his disciples: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” See John 1:51. The Son of Man is the Lord's title for Himself taken from Daniel 7. Jesus is saying to a new follower that He, Jesus, is Jacob's ladder; He is the stairway between heaven and earth. Angels come back and forth on Him, the unique Son of Man, in order to do heaven's work among the sons of men.

In this dream recorded in Genesis 28, God affirmed to Jacob directly what Isaac had pronounced, and what Rebekah understood from the Lord's Word to her before the birth of her two boys: Jacob was the one. The man whose name would one day be “Israel” was the chosen servant of God, just as his father and grandfather were before him. Each man serves for a time, and then faces his own mortality. Jesus, the resurrection Man, the Stairway to heaven, serves as our High Priest forever. He has the power of an indestructible life. All the families of the earth will be blessed through Him. He is God with God from the beginning and forever and ever. Jacob could not know all of what we now know. Yet he knows that something very extraordinary and life-changing has happened to him. He feels the wonder of this place where God met him, and he commits to give God a tenth of all that the Lord blesses him with as he goes forward into a land that he has never seen before. He has spent time at the gate of heaven, and his life will never be the same.

Jacob's solemn promise at Bethel was very significant. It was the first vow in the Bible. To give a tenth of all of our prosperity to God is a symbolic gesture of the Lord's ownership over all of our resources. Through a man's willingness to give a tenth, he testifies to the Lord and to the world that God is the one who will give him anything and everything, and that he will give himself fully to God as the Lord leads. The tenth is only a symbol of the whole. The Lord owns all, since He is the sole giver of life. Any increase that we have experienced is entirely His. We only borrow what God owns. When we give a tenth we are acknowledging this.

It is not much harder to live on nine tenths than it is to live on the full ten tenths. We give one tenth to God, and we can surely continue with what remains. If we can't live on nine tenths, it is only because we are so destitute that the full ten tenths would not be enough for our survival. To give a symbolic tenth to God is not that much to do.

When the Way to heaven came in person as Jesus of Nazareth, God would not be satisfied with a symbol of the full gift of consecrated living. Tithing would not have been enough in order for Jesus to secure our redemption. The full price had to be paid.

Jesus gave the fullness of what Jacob's promise only symbolized. The Son of God was sent forth by the Father into this world of danger. Here He gave it all for our sake, especially including the fullness of what was accomplished on the cross. This is why He always has been and always will be the only Ladder to heaven. He will save His people from their sins. In that effort no half-way measures could have ever been successful. Jesus gave it all.

Bible Survey - #9 - Exodus 1-4

The People of the Promise in Bondage

A new dynasty came to power in Egypt, with a new king who had no special appreciation for the heritage of Joseph and the Hebrews. The Lord's people became a despised and abused minority. Baby boys were marked for destruction, but the Lord spared one in particular, Moses, who would be a special deliverer for the Hebrews. Though he grew up in the most exalted home in Egypt, he chose to identify with his own people and the God of heaven rather than set his heart on the fading glories of this world.

God called him back from a place of self-imposed exile in order to stand before Pharaoh as an ambassador of the King of kings. This was a calling he did not want, yet God used this meek man who was slow in his speech as a bold representative of His own glorious majesty. The Lord sent Moses to bring His people out of Egypt.

Jesus is far superior to even this great man Moses. He delivered us from a slavery to sin that was far worse than the cruel bondage of any human servitude. He came in even greater humility, and more willingly embraced a calling that was more costly than any other servant of God before or after Him. We were marked for death in Adam's sin, but now we have been kept for life in Jesus Christ.

O hear us Lord and rescue us again!

The wicked would destroy Your Israel,

But you have sent a Moses for our day,

And life has come, through Jesus, for the world.

Genesis 27

God's Word wins despite man's opposition. We ultimately do not have the power to overrule God. He makes even the wrath of His enemies to praise Him. Yet those whom God has determined to bless may still be convinced that they will only receive what they desire through their own schemes. Even these strange plots of man will somehow fit into the great decrees of the Almighty.

God revealed to Rebekah before Esau and Jacob were born that the older would serve the younger. But how would this come about? Would Jacob have to buy the birthright from his brother at a moment when Esau was famished? How would the blessing of Isaac come upon Jacob? Would it be necessary to deceive his elderly father into thinking that he was his brother, the favored older son?

Isaac's intent, as his life comes to a close, is to pronounce the covenant blessing upon his son Esau. Was he unaware of the Word of the Lord given to Rebekah before the two boys were born? Rebekah hears of Isaac's plan, and moves quickly into action with an effort to lie to her husband so that Jacob will receive what God has promised.

Jacob is concerned that his mother's idea will not work; that he will be found out by his father, even though his father is nearly blind at this point in his life. Rebekah says something shocking in response to Jacob's concern: “Let your curse be on me, my son.” Could it be that she knows that she is working in accord with the purpose of God on this matter; that her husband's favoritism toward Esau is misplaced, and that her determination to protect the interests of Jacob is well-founded?

Rebekah's plan does work perfectly. Though Jacob is questioned by his father, he plays the part of Esau well enough to receive this astounding blessing from Isaac: “God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.” Jacob will have the bounty of fertile land together with the Lord's heavenly blessing. “Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you.” Jacob will have the preeminence over his older brother Esau. “Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!” The words of covenant blessing for the child of the promise have now come to Jacob. God spoke these words to Abraham, and in the next generation He spoke them to Isaac. Now Isaac has bequeathed them to the one whom God chose before the birth of these twins. The descendants of Jacob would be the people of the promise. The Messiah would come through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not through Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. This happened through the words of Isaac, and yet it was in spite of the will of the man who uttered those words.

The deception was barely accomplished before it was discovered. Yet when Isaac and Esau found out the truth, Isaac did not move to change his words. Did he suddenly awake to the reality of this Word from the Lord that came again as a result of these bizarre events? He says, speaking of Jacob to a distraught Esau, “Yes, and he shall be blessed.”

What was left for the older brother now? Isaac finally has words for him, but they are far from the bounty of the message he mistakenly bestowed upon his younger son. “Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be.” Esau will live in a place that will not be bountiful in produce. “... Away from the dew of heaven on high.” Is there more here that will be lacking than the condensation from the skies? Is there something missing in heaven's blessings for the Edomites as compared with the Israelites? “... By your sword you shall live.” Esau can count on providing for his needs only through the use of force. “... And you shall serve your brother.” Just as had been spoken to Rebekah so many years before, the older boy would serve the younger. “... But when you grow restless you shall break his yoke from your neck.” This is a word for generations to come as the Edomites will have times when they are able to gain some measure of liberty from their servitude.

How would Esau react to these words? Had he also known of the word of God to his mother Rebekah? Would he be able to humbly take his appointed position as one who would accept his divinely appointed place beneath Jacob and Jacob's descendants? We immediately learn of Esau's fierce hatred. His only comfort is the thought of killing Jacob. Rebekah knows this, and she again takes steps that will protect the interests of her son more than she could have realized at the time.

Jacob will go to Laban. Before he returns he will have a large family and many blessings. The words of Isaac will be fulfilled. Jacob will be blessed. The determination of his mother will direct his steps, and the decrees of God will be fully accomplished.

Esau will fold into the people all around him among the Hittites. Jacob will take more wives than he wanted from the Arameans that are in the old country out of which Abraham had originally journeyed. It will be from Jacob that the Voice of God will come in person, that unstoppable Voice that can shake the cedars of Lebanon. This same Voice had blessed Abraham, sending him out of his father's land. That Voice had spoken blessing to Isaac, and now through Isaac, and in spite of Isaac, that Voice had revealed the bounty of the Lord toward the chosen seed of the first woman, Eve. Jesus is the Voice that will not be stopped. No power among men can prevent the accomplishment of His eternal and sovereign will. This Voice speaks peace to us this day, through the Word of the cross and the preaching of the resurrection.

Genesis 26

Frustration and fear are regular features of a world that is under the Lord's sentence of futility. Since the fall of Adam, God's most favored servants have had to navigate their way through many trials. Even the Lord Jesus Christ warned His disciples, “In this world you will have tribulation.”

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were greatly blessed by God, but they did face troubles. They lived in a hostile environment among nomadic tribes where envy might mean murder, and where everyday dangers were serious. As Abraham once had fears for his safety on account of his wife Sarah, Isaac now faced the warlord-kings of his day who might want Rebekah for their great harems.

Yet the promise of God is greater than the power of the greatest kings among men. God said to Isaac, “I will be with you.” The Lord reiterated to Isaac all the promises that He had spoken to Abraham. So Isaac followed the instruction of the Lord, and stayed in the land of Canaan, yet he was afraid. As his father and his mother before him, Isaac and Rebekah pretended to be brother and sister rather than husband and wife.

Eventually the Abimelech of that time and place noted the close behavior of Isaac and Rebekah, and the two were found out. But rather than bringing upon them some harm, this awareness of the truth was regarded with surprising respect by the powerful man, and he announced to all, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

Rather than suffering forever as a victim of the earthly powers all around him, like Abraham before him, and Jacob after him, Isaac was blessed by God. The Lord was able to protect Isaac and Rebekah through serious situations of danger, and to prosper them in places where they were strangers.

We are told that Isaac sowed in that land and reaped a hundredfold in just one year. It was the Lord's determination to be true to his promise. Isaac would be blessed. This would not happen because the man was congenial or clever. The Lord blessed him. So Isaac became a very wealthy man.

With wealth can come significant troubles. The forerunners of the Philistines who were already living in the land at that time envied Isaac. They made trouble for Isaac by trying to limit his supply of water, filling with earth all the wells that the servants of Abraham had dug in earlier years. Isaac attempted to live at peace among hostile people groups. He moved to land that must have seemed less desirable to his enemies. When they wanted him to leave, he eventually left. He attempted to dig again the wells from his father's days, but those who hated his success continued to plague him. Through all of these challenging years, Isaac was trying to be a man of peace, yielding to others, and suffering their abuse, until he found a spot where thy would leave him and his people alone. He received that place with thanksgiving and expressions of faith, saying, “The Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

God was with him, appearing to him again and reassuring him of the certainty of his covenant blessings. He spoke to Isaac of fear. God knows what we feel like when powerful people are against us and we are chased into situations where we are left alone only because others see our condition as undesirable. The Lord can prosper His people very well in such situations. Therefore, He says to Isaac, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake.” Isaac responds with worship. Are your enemies against you? The Lord God is your friend. Fear not.

In his place of exile, despised by the people in authority, Isaac received a visit from Abimelech. Why wouldn't they just leave him in peace? This time the ruler had come to acknowledge the blessing of God in Isaac's life, and to make a covenant of peace. Now fear had fallen on Isaac's enemies, since it had become obvious to them that the Lord was the Helper of this son of Abraham.

This covenant between Isaac and Abimelech was sealed with a feast and with the exchange of public promises. The Lord continued to bless Isaac with water and prosperity. But Isaac's son Esau, whom he especially loved, became entangled with the people of the land by marrying two of the local women. This disturbed Isaac and Rebekah.

The Lord is able to bless His servant even in this world that is under His judgment. Though God's enemies drive His chosen one into the most despised corner of creation, God will surely bless the one He has promised to bless.

There has never been a less desirable place to be than the cross of Christ. Those who were envious of Jesus of Nazareth and of the obvious blessing of God upon Him, conspired together to bring Jesus to a place of death. Though Christ came to Calvary through the hands of wicked men, it was also according to the plan of the Almighty Himself that our Savior occupied the worst space of all time, a Roman cross where the Lamb of God would take the sins of His people upon Himself. Yet God has made that place of shame into a place of glorious blessing. Out of defeat, the victory of resurrection has come to us. We can follow Jesus into places of lowliness and disgrace in our own lives with faith that even there, the Lord will surely bless His people.

Genesis 25

Even though a man may live a very long life beyond all of his companions, eventually every generation that has come, must also go. Abraham, the man who fathered Ishmael by Hagar who was then given Isaac be Sarah, took another wife, Keturah, and fathered several children by her. After giving his other sons gifts, he sent them far away, but he left all the rest of his possessions to Isaac, in accord with God's revelation to him that Isaac was the bearer of the promise for the coming generation. Then, after 175 years of life on the earth, he died, and his remains were brought to the same family burial plot where Sarah had been buried.

Meanwhile, not only would Isaac prosper, but as the Lord had promised, Ishmael would have a very notable group of descendants. His sons are listed here, and the author of Genesis notes that they lived in a certain region “over against all his kinsmen.” As with the descendants of Keturah, there is much that the Lord knows about all those who count Ishmael as their ancestor, yet recounting the progress of those lives will not be the direction of the the remaining chapters of this book. The promise of God through Isaac will be our chief interest. Why should that be? God is preparing a particular individual, a Seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent. He will be a people and a person; a chosen person who comes from a chosen people, who unites to himself a far more diverse people. This Messiah will accomplish the eternal purpose of God, and he will come from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The revelation of the third man on that list comes to Isaac's wife Rebekah before Jacob was born. Rebekah was originally unable to conceive a child, but now as a result of Isaac's prayer, the Lord has granted her twins. These two are struggling within Rebekah, and the Lord reveals to her the reason why. “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.” This division, felt by Rebekah and announced by God, was shown forth in the birth of the boys. Jacob, the younger brother, came out grasping the heel of his older brother Esau's foot.

The order of their birth was very significant according to the customs of the day. Though it was only a matter of minutes, Esau was the firstborn, and had the rights of the firstborn, yet God had revealed to Rebekah that Jacob, the second son would be the promised son of the covenant in his generation.

Despite this Word from the Lord to Rebekah, Isaac, the father of these two boys, preferred Esau. Rebekah, we are told, loved Jacob. When these boys grew up they showed their character and priorities. Esau prefers a bowl of stew to his birthright, and speaks as if there is nothing for him to consider about his own life or the life of anyone else should he die. This is faithless and very short-sighted. Jacob tries to take advantage of his brother's hunger and spiritual foolishness to purchase Esau's birthright.

Though it may seem to us to be a childish prank, this is a very significant episode in the life of these two young men. In the New Testament, the author of Hebrews calls Esau “unholy,” referring to the fact that he “sold his birthright for a single meal.” Jacob's actions were also revealing. Was he trying to secure through his own clever machinations what could only come to him through the hand of God? The Lord had already revealed the fact that the older would serve the younger before either child was born. Why was everyone rebelling against the prophetic Word that was spoken to Rebekah, or did she keep it all to herself, sharing it with no one?

The apostle Paul uses this revelation to Rebekah as proof of God's electing love. He draws upon Malachi, who would record these surprising words by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” God made a choice between these two boys before either one had done anything good or evil. That choice had implications not only for them as individuals but also for the nations that would come from them. Esau would be the father of the Edomites, and Jacob would be the father of the Israelites.

Hope comes to us through Jacob, not through Esau. This should not shock us. We have already seen that God made a distinction between Ishmael and Isaac. In this chapter we know that Isaac was treated differently than the son of Hagar and all the sons of Keturah. The Lord has His plans. Who can accuse Him of wrongdoing or stop His powerful hand?

Any blessing or security for any of us, including the joy of even one good meal, comes to us from the gracious provision of Almighty God. But God has more for us than just one meal. Through Jesus, the chosen Redeemer, the Lord is gathering His people from all the nations of the world. His story is not about the strong taking advantage of the weak in order to grasp what is not theirs by right. The power of His death on the cross is the way that God has chosen that the last shall be first according to His great electing love.

The blessings of Jesus' resurrection come to us by God's eternal decree. They are not won by our clever schemes. We receive His love as a certain gift, free to us, but very costly to Him. Through Jesus, we have come to know that there is more to life than what we are able to see with our eyes or grasp with our hands here below. We believe in heaven and the resurrection of the dead.

Bible Survey - #8 - Genesis 37-50

From Canaan to Egypt through Joseph

God brought Joseph, the favored son of Jacob, very low before lifting him up on high. Even as a a very young man, Joseph received the Word of God through dreams, indicating that the Lord would put him in a special position of honor, and that his brothers would bow down before him. They envied Joseph, and brought great grief upon their father's life by selling the boy as a slave, and then lying to their father about his son's death.

From that moment of brutal rejection, Joseph was brought even lower, first as a slave in an Egyptian household and then as a prisoner in Pharaoh's jail. As a stranger in a land that was not his own, Joseph lived honorably and submissively. He suffered because of the sin of those who abused him or who forgot about him.

Yet Joseph was a man who knew God, and who knew that God could reveal the mysteries of other people's dreams. From the depth's of a dungeon, God lifts Joseph up to the king's right hand. This son of Jacob is given all power and authority in Egypt under Pharaoh.

His heavy suffering and his later exaltation to such a powerful position in one of the most dominant empires of the ancient world prepares us for the coming of Jesus. Our Lord was brought down to the manger, the cross, and the grave, but now He is our King at the right hand of God.

The favored son of Jacob was betrayed,

Abused by men, forgotten, and alone.

But God who knows the secrets of our dreams

has raised the lowly One to heaven's throne.

Genesis 24

Not only was Abraham grieving over the death of his wife; so was Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah. His mother was gone, and his father Abraham was getting old.

Abraham knew that it was important that Isaac find the right wife. One generation leads to the next, as the Lord blesses. The choices that young people make regarding wives and husbands are very important to the future of their families.

Because he understood the way of mankind and the calling of God upon his son, Abraham sent his servant on a mission to identify the right woman for the future of the Lord's work in this extended family. Abraham sent a trusted servant back to his home country, a man who knew that it would only be by the hand of God that the right woman would not only be selected, but also that she and her family would agree to her departure. She would be called to live as Isaac's wife without every having met the man she would marry.

Abraham solemnly instructed his servant on two very important matters: He should not find a wife for Isaac from the Canaanite women around whom they lived, and he should not take Isaac back to the land of the Arameans when he went to find a wife. Isaac would live in the land that God had revealed to him, Canaan, but his wife would absolutely not be a Canaanite.

Abraham counted on the help of heaven to guide his servant to the right girl, and Abraham's servant had no recourse but to turn to God for his supernatural aid in a task that seemed very likely to result in failure.

Abraham's servant went back to the land in Mesopotamia from which they had come so long ago, but he did not go empty-handed. His master was a wealthy man, and he used that wealth in accord with the customs he understood. Even today there are many lands where one who seeks a bride must bring the bride price. This was the case in Abraham's day as well.

But Abraham's servant was seeking more than money could buy: the blessing of God that cannot be purchased. He sought God in prayer and asked for a confirming sign. The right woman would show care not only for him as a thirsty man in the desert, but she would take initiative to care for his camels. Anyone can think what they wish about this test, but the proof of the process would not come in a woman showing commendable care for the beasts, but in her willingness and the willingness of her family to give a favorable response to the man's unusual proposal.

The Lord led him to just the place at just the right time. Of all the girls in the ancient Near East, Rebekah, a relative of Abraham, came to that very well as soon as Abraham's servant finished his prayer. She took care of his thirst first, but then also drew water for his camels.

Decisions of marriage are never just the private concerns of a boy and a girl. These are family matters and even community concerns. Even to this day, traditional marital rites reserve a special opportunity to show approval for this relationship by the father of the bride, the relevant religious authorities, and the public more generally. Rebekah's family would have to agree with this plan, and they would insist that Rebekah show her own willingness to go to another land to be the wife of a man whom none of her immediate family had ever seen.

Abraham's servant did not delay in revealing his errand and in seeking the approval of the girl's family in this important mission. The men who seem to be in charge of Rebekah's family hear the story of what has transpired, and they note the hand of God in all that is taking place. This is the key for us in every step of significance in our lives. Is this thing from the Lord? Do we have the patience to wait for God's good provision?

Rebekah's brother and father give their consent, but is it still provisional? We will not really know what is happening here until Abraham's servant is allowed to go in peace with the woman who will be the mother of Esau and Jacob. It is the next day when that clarity comes, when Abraham's servant insists that he must go back to his master. They try to delay him, but he will not agree. Then the matter of Rebekah's full willingness to go immediately is addressed. Will she actually leave her family and her home and be the wife of Isaac? They call her and ask her. This blessed provision is not actually concluded without her full agreement. Yes, she will go. The Lord has blessed this great endeavor. The girl who gave water to the camels will be the mother of the man who will be Israel. From her line shall come the Shepherd of all the Lord's sheep.

When she says, “I will go,” a new chapter in the history of salvation begins. They send her away with words of blessing that fit this great occasion, and when Isaac sees this beautiful girl who is his wife, he is comforted in his grief that he had from the death of his mother.

The story of the Lord's people is a wonderful love story. It is the story of a holy union between the Prince of Peace and His glorious bride, the church. We have been brought into such an astoundingly advantageous marriage! This has surely come to us entirely by the hand of God. This costly wedding, paid for by the precious blood of our holy Redeemer, is not against our will. The Spirit has oriented our hearts toward a new and better home. We have happily agreed to our blessed relationship with Jesus, and He has brought us near to Himself with joy.

Genesis 23

Sarah died in the land of Canaan after 127 years on this earth. Where did she go after that? Was her soul extinguished with the death of her body? Jesus once said that God is the God of the living. God said to Isaac in Genesis 26 after Abraham had died, “I am the God of Abraham your father.” Present tense. He is the God of a man who is. Abraham is. Sarah is.

When Sarah died, shed died as a stranger and an alien in a foreign land. After so many years of following Abraham as He followed the Lord, Abraham did not even own a burial plot in the Promised Land. Therefore he went to the people of Canaan and bought a plot of land.

How humiliating. When you lose someone you love, and their souls go to be with the Lord, their bodies remain on earth. Many people say they don't care what happens to their bodies after they die, but this is not considerate. People who love you will want to know that they have done everything they can to show respect for the body of the person they have loved. We cannot keep their bodies alive any more, but we can dress them nicely, respectfully, place them in an appropriate coffin so that people can come to say goodbye, and then have a dignified ceremony to celebrate together what we believe about heaven and earth. But then what do we do? What do we do with the bodily remains of the ones we love? God has told us the truth that our bodies return to dust. We bury our loved ones according to passages like this, and we place our hope in God who raises the dead.

Meanwhile Sarah is alive in heaven with the Lord, with angels, and with many people who have trusted God and finished their days on this earth. We who love and who miss those who have died feel the emptiness and the loss. We may praise the Lord, but the Lord who cried at the grave of His friend will understand if our “Hallelujah” is cold and broken. We cannot do much for the ones we love in our grief, but we would like to show our tender care for the bodies we have loved by burying our dead with dignity.

Sarah was dead, and Abraham was still alive on earth, and he had no place to his name that he could use to bury his beloved wife's body. So he went to buy a piece of land according to the customs of his era. He mourned for her. He wept for her. But then he went to get a small piece of land to do the right thing.

In doing this small task, the purchase of a suitable piece of ground for a family burial plot, he had to do what missionaries all over the world must do as they travel in lands that have become their temporary homes. He had to humble himself before the people of his day and follow their cultural practices. This is the only way for us to get by. As we do this, we have an opportunity to live honorably even when we may not feel like we can take another step. In buying this land, Abraham was respectful of the memory of Sarah, he was respectful of the people around him, and he was respectful of the promises of God, who is the God of the living.

Through this public and appropriate procedure, Abraham lived out his faith at a time of great personal loss. It may not seem like very much of a spiritual victory for this man to be able to speak to the people around him, finding the right price through a system that was polite and cordial toward others. Sometimes being able to stand and to keep on going in faith is worth noting.

The end result of this transaction is that Abraham owns his first piece of land in Canaan. He was a wandering Aramean, but now he owns a plot of ground in what will be Israel. That ground will hold the remains of his wife Sarah. She would be buried there in the hope of the coming resurrection.

When Jesus came to that land as the long-expected Messiah, the great descendant of Abraham and Sarah, he came as a citizen of a better Promised Land than Canaan could ever afford. He sojourned during His days of suffering in order to be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He Himself confessed to those who were following Him that He had no place to lay His head.

Yet He was given a cross, and He was willing to own that tree of death for us. He did not wander anymore once He came to that tree, yet ultimately death could not hold Him. For a time His body was kept in the borrowed grave of a rich man. Yet He did not need that space for very long.

In three days, Jesus rose from the dead. After He had taught His disciples and displayed the reality of the resurrection with man convincing proofs, He went to the true Promised Land of heaven in order to make a place for us.

For now we live in this world of death here below. Yet in Jesus Christ, we are already in the heavenlies. While we remain here for a few decades, we try to live in a peaceful way with those around us. We try to show appropriate respect for both the living and the dead. If we must choose, we will leave the dead to bury the dead, and we will follow the man of resurrection to our true heavenly home.

In all that we do we testify to the truth that Christ has won for us a resurrection life in a world beyond the present day of tears, a world that is. In that place Abraham is, Sarah is, and most of all, Jesus is. One day there will be a final resurrection at the reclamation of the earth. That is why we respectfully bury our dead, and that is why we continue to live as people of life in a world that is passing away.

Genesis 22

Through all the challenges of his new life, God has been with Abraham, showing him the way of faith, and helping him to stand in a day of trouble. The Lord has blessed His servant. But now, after the gift of the promised son has been given, the voice of the Lord instructs Abraham to do the unthinkable: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

The mountain chosen by God for this sacrifice would have a great future significance for the people of God, since at a later moment of crisis God would reveal this place as the site of His temple in Jerusalem. Centuries later it would be on the outskirts of this same city that the Son of God would die for our sins. The story of the sacrifice of a beloved Son begins here, with this heart-breaking instruction to Abraham.

Abraham obeyed the voice of God as an outworking of his faith in God. What was he thinking as he moved ahead to obey the awful Word of the Lord? God had made promises concerning Isaac, promises that required that the boy would live. Now the Lord was commanding that the boy be put to death. God would provide somehow. The Lord's servant reasoned that God could raise the dead. See Hebrews 11:17-19.

So Abraham rose early in the morning. He took steps of trust in God. When he left his young men behind on the last leg of his journey to the appointed spot, he and and Isaac went on alone. But he spoke these words of faith to his servants: “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” I and the boy will come back to you. Abraham knew that this was the way it had to be. God would not abandon His promises.

When young Isaac questioned his father about the absence of the animal for a sacrifice, Abraham replied, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” This is what the Lord did at the very last moment, when it was clear that Abraham was ready to obey in full the Lord's instruction. The Lord provided a substitute.

Everything that we believe about the way of salvation finds its center in this horrific episode. That ram in the thicket that was given through the voice of the Lord, stands for the one Substitute provided by God to take the death that was coming against us according to His Word.

“Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” We hear those words and see the provision of a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. But at the decisive moment when Jesus was on display on the cross before the watching world, there was no ram in the thicket to take His place. He is the Lamb of God. No one stopped the hand of God that day, and the Son of God willingly and knowingly took our place, completing what Abraham and Isaac never had to finally do.

As with Isaac, the promises of God required that Jesus live. Abraham's reasoning concerning resurrection, revealed in Hebrews 11, found its perfect fulfillment in the Savior who died and rose again from the dead.

The Lord has provided for us in the death of Christ, and yet Jesus lives. 2000 years before, Abraham was commended as a great man of faith, showing the reality of his living trust by the fruit of obedience that flows from a heart that believes the Word of the Lord. God will bless his servant in this walk of living faith. As He has promised before, He repeats again, the Lord will bring a great host forth from Abraham. Even all the people groups of the earth will somehow be blessed in the gift of Abraham's son.

We now see in the brilliance of resurrection light what Abraham saw so long ago in the day of shadows. Jesus is the promised Savior. He is the true Isaac, but He must actually die. He is the ram in the thicket, but He is really a Man. He is also the beloved Son of God. The Father will suffer too in the death of His Son. According to the Lord's great plan for mercy, the Father must face what Abraham was finally spared, and the Son will, with full knowledge, take a penalty that Isaac could never have begun to fathom.

Meanwhile, life must go on now with Abraham and his son. And life continues in the world around them. Generations will come into being, with all of the people that God creates playing the parts designed by the Lord who loves us. If they see anything at all of His great purposes, they only see in part. He knows it all, and His purposes will surely be accomplished. The death of His own Son assures us of the seriousness of His intention to accomplish all His holy will.

Bible Survey - #7 - Genesis 25-35

The Next Generation of the Promise

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob and his twin brother Esau. Before the two boys were born, God revealed to their mother Rebekah that Jacob, the younger, would be the child of the promise in his generation.

The way that this was fulfilled was not automatic or easy. Jacob took advantage of his brother's weaknesses in order to purchase a claim to the birthright that Esau did not at first value. Much later, when Isaac was reaching the end of his life, Rebekah and Jacob schemed together to deceive Isaac into giving his blessing to the younger son that God Himself had chosen so long ago.

Esau hated his brother, and he wanted to murder him. The Lord was with Jacob throughout decades of difficulty and struggle. God spoke again to him the promise that was given to Jacob's father and grandfather. More than this, He showed Jacob a ladder reaching up to heaven, that would one day be revealed to be Jesus, the Son of God. Jacob knew that he had seen the house of God.

Through the struggles of His life, and ultimately through His wrestling with God, Jacob became Israel. He learned that there was nothing more important to His future than the blessing of God. He became a man who could instruct His family to turn away from false gods.

The path of life is not an easy road.

The promise that we have by grace is sure,

But we must learn to follow Christ the Lord.

Through trial Jacob would be Israel.

Genesis 21

God made a solemn promise to Abraham and Sarah, and at the time appointed, the Lord visited Sarah, and she bore Abraham a son in his old age. The Lord is faithful. He keeps all his promises. Before the birth of Isaac, the Lord sent an angelic destruction team to Sodom and Gomorrah. Also, before the child of promise was born, Sarah was rescued from the harem of the king of Gerar. In other words, their time of waiting was dangerous and eventful, but at the appointed time, the baby with the name “He laughs” or “Isaac” was born.

Abraham's new son was marked with the sign of the Lord's covenant in accord with God's earlier command to Abraham. They had been through so much, but now the Lord had truly placed laughter in their hearts as they looked at the miracle baby whom they held in their hands.

When the child was weaned, his father Abraham invited everyone together for a celebration. On that occasion there was someone else who was laughing, not at the wonder of the gift of Isaac, but in mockery at this favored half brother. Sarah saw the son of Abraham and Hagar, Ishmael, making fun of her boy, and she did not like it. She said to Abraham words that the Apostle Paul would quote 2000 years later: “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

God confirmed the words of Sarah, instructing Abraham to do whatever Sarah said to him. As the Lord had made clear, the promised seed would come through Sarah. There would be a separation between the seed of the slave woman and the seed of the free woman.

Our deepest problem with slavery is not the scandal of one person owning another person. It is the bondage that comes to us because we are slaves of sin. The singular seed of Sarah, Isaac's greatest descendant, Jesus Christ, has delivered us out of that bondage. All who live by faith in him are counted as children of freedom. Those who reject the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, no matter how wonderful their ancestry may be, are still slaves of sin. They stand with Hagar and her son, and must be cast off. Thus those who may have their physical descent from Sarah, may sadly reject the Jewish Messiah, and find themselves to be children of spiritual slavery. But those who are descended from Hagar and Ishmael may find life in Christ, and may be counted as the true spiritual descendants of Sarah.

God had a plan for both Isaac and Ishmael. Both would be great nations. But no man's eternal hope comes from his ancestry. Either we are sons of God through Jesus Christ, and thus children of the promise through faith in him, or we remain in the bondage of sin.

Many people may applaud the Law of God with their minds, but only one Man has kept the Law with His life. He is our only hope. We need to be connected to Him. Jesus had no physical descendants. He died as a man who had never fathered a child. Yet He has looked upon millions of spiritual descendants with love, and all kinds of people who have descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth have been given the name Christian. Through Jesus they are a part of God's family.

God hints at the hope that He will extend to the nations of the world by His promise of special care for the descendants of Hagar and Ishmael. Now for the second time, the Lord has affirmed that their great multiplication will be a part of His eternal purpose. Surely it is the Lord's intention that many from their number will be represented in the new heavens and the new earth, where there will be a great multitude from every tribe and tongue and nation.

As Abraham awaits the further fulfillment of the Lord's promises to him that will only come to pass after his lifetime, Abraham does what he can to live out his days in peace with the neighbors who are around him. The Lord has blessed Him greatly, but he is not to be just another mighty man on the earth who uses his wealth and numbers to force other nations to do his will. He wishes to live as a free man in all godliness and honesty among other clans who would also be free. He is willing to swear to this lifestyle of mutual peace and liberty among the other peoples where he journeys.

Others may deal with him falsely, as did happen when Abimelech's servants repeatedly stole the precious gift of water from the people of Abraham. Yet despite these difficulties, Abraham attempted to live at peace with everyone. His day was not a day of conquest against the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. That special picture of God's eternal judgment would come at a later time. Abraham was to be a man of peace. He would defend his family against enemies as he did when Lot was captured, but he would not be a man that sought advantage over quiet neighbors through superior force.

Abraham traveled through a land that God had promised to him. During his lifetime he lived as a stranger, facing many dangers and attempting to live as a good neighbor to others in a land that he could not secure even for himself. Eventually one of his descendants would secure for Abraham and for all the true children of promise an everlasting land in the heavens. Christ, the King of Peace and Eternal God, was the one casualty in that war that has won for us our freedom. But now He lives again forever and ever. We have been delivered from the ultimate house of bondage and are citizens of the very best Promised Land because of Him.

Genesis 20

Abraham experienced many events over the course of his life, events that changed him, shaping him into the man he would become. A number of those events had to do with the people around him; especially his nephew, Lot, and Sarah, his wife. This chapter describes an event involving Sarah, an event so strikingly similar to one that took place in Egypt in Genesis 12, that we might wonder how it is possible that this man could still be living in fear rather than in faith after God has shown him so much. Can the leader of God's chosen ones who had seen the Lord's destructive power over the cities of the plain not be moved by the power of that display to follow God in a better way than he did when he first began this amazing journey of hearing the Lord?

We should not be so surprised. The Lord's best servants may fall into the same sins repeatedly. The reason for this lack of progress is that the same idolatry still has a powerful hold over us. What is more shocking than a repeated pattern of sin is when the power of God rids us of our faithless fear and causes us to walk in the joy of the Lord. That is astounding! Through the entire pathway of Abraham into familiar sin, God is with him, and He continues to bless Him as the chosen man of faith, despite Abraham's obvious failings. That is good news!

This passage contains the first use of the word “prophet” in the Bible. God identifies Abraham as a prophet, despite the fact that it is someone else who has a special dream from the Lord. That dream was a frightening word of caution and correction, and the man who received it was the King of Gerar who had the common royal name Abimelech, which means “my father is king.”

This Abimelech had taken Sarah into his harem. Abraham, in fear that he might have been murdered if people knew that he was Sarah's husband, asked her to go along with the half-truth that Sarah was his sister. God warned Abimelech, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” It is Abimelech who converses with the Lord, defending himself in the dream, but it is Abraham who is God's prophet, His chosen spokesman. The king pleads his own innocence and integrity, yet he will have to go before the Lord's chosen man, Abraham, the man behind this problem, in order to be saved from the wrath of God. Abraham will pray for him, and the death that had come among his people will be turned to life. This king must humble himself before the Lord's prophet. If not, he will die.

The king hears and obeys the voice of God, and he speaks of what he has heard to those around him. They are all filled with the fear of the Lord. This story is not given to us primarily as a guide to our morals. Of the two men, was Abram the more honorable? Yet God will not turn away from His promise to this man.

Here we have powerful grace. The lower man is lifted up as the Lord's chosen mouthpiece; the one through whom the blessing of God will flow to the nation of Gerar and to her king. The man who was higher in the eyes of his people, Abimelech, will be frightened before Almighty God and before the agent of God's Word, Abraham. The first will be last, and the last will be first. No one can stop this. No one is in a position to judge it. It is the sovereign will of the Ruler above all rulers. Everyone must bow before Him and receive the blessing that He provides through His appointed representative.

Abraham admits the truth of his fears of what would happen to him as he journeyed among the kingdoms of the world. He has not been a great protector of his wife. Someone else has stepped into that holy place to be the good husband. Abraham did not bring that dream into the heart of Abimelech by night. God did. Abraham did not fill the hearts of the people of Gerar with fear. God did. Abraham did not save Sarah, the future mother of Isaac, from disgrace and danger. God did. God showed Himself to be the Husband of the church. He was her Protector. He was the Being who filled the hearts of dangerous men with fear.

Shouldn't Abraham be disciplined by the Lord who had instructed him in another place to walk before Him and be blameless? Shouldn't he face some consequence for trying to save his own neck at the cost of serious danger to Sarah? Shouldn't he face some calamity that would be an example to us of the danger of idolatry, since He seemed to fear man more than God? Yet there is not a word of this in the account that we have in Genesis. On the contrary, the entire episode ends up with Abraham alive and safe, Sarah alive and safe, and their estate more bountiful on the way out of Gerar than it was on the way in. And Abraham's prayers for the healing of the nation of Gerar were heard and answered.

God loves the church. He is her great Husband. Where Abraham failed to show forth that sacrificial love, Jesus has more than made up for what was lacking. He gave the full measure of devotion for us, and He has spoken peace to the nations through the merit of His life and death. His Word is sure. He is the true Man of God. Everything that is lacking in Abraham, and in you and I, is more than made up for in the perfections of the great Husband of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Genesis 19

There are moments in the history of salvation when the normal rhythms of life after the fall are suspended, and we are granted a glimpse of what Judgment Day will be like. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of those moments.

If the Lord had found only ten righteous people in Sodom, ten people calling upon the Name of the Lord and yielding themselves to the gracious work of God's Spirit, then God would have spared the entire region. God is the one who raises up nations, and He is the one who takes them down. The time had come for these cities to be destroyed. But the Lord knows how to rescue the few righteous people who live in that place.

The Lord's team came to Sodom as if they were strangers passing through who were looking for the hospitality that would have been an appropriate expression of common mercy to those who were far from home. Lot attempts to extend that mercy, prevailing upon his guests to stay in his home. But the men of the city seek to abuse the guests, rather than care for them, and they take offense at Lot's strange efforts to protect his guests, as if his pleading is an intolerable insult to their own freedom and dignity. They say, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” They were ready to heap violent abuse upon Lot as a punishment for his reproof of their wicked actions.

The Lord came to visit this place through these heavenly ambassadors. They have seen what they came to see, and now they will do two things: First, they will get the few in the community of the righteous out of the pathway of the judgment of heaven soon coming upon the earth. Second, they will destroy this place with fire.

As a beginning step, the aggressors at the door are struck with blindness, and Lot, his wife, and his daughters are given some brief moments to make an escape. These daughters have men associated with them who they would have married, but these two boys are not able to understand the seriousness of the moment. They will die with the city when it is destroyed.

Next, the small band who would survive set off to safety, too slowly for their own good. The angels seem to have to drag them away from their undue attachment to a place that has come under God's judicial curse. Lot's wife looks longingly back on the place that her husband chose years ago, and she faces immediate destruction. She ignored the express warning of the Lord, and became a signpost to all in every generation who would love this world without a due regard for the fear of God.

Lot is a physically weak man after his years in this place, and he pleads and receives a closer safe destination, taking refuge in the small city of Zoar. This little hole in the field of God's wrath will be saved because of Lot's weakness.

With Lot and his daughters safe in Zoar, the “Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” The beautiful plain was destroyed. Lot's life in Sodom was over. Even his wife was gone.

Abraham looked over the land of judgment and saw the devastation of what had happened. “The smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.” (The Lord would one day speak of Abraham being able to see events transpiring in hell. Note Luke 16:19-31. One day the judgment smoke of God will rise forever over a place of eternal torment. Will Abraham and others in heaven be able to see?)

God remembered Abraham and his pleading. Sodom was not saved forever, but God sent Lot out and delivered him from certain death.

What followed in Zoar was an abomination. Lot's daughters panicked, and they worked out their quest for a future in their own way. The result was the beginning of two peoples, the Moabites and the Ammonites.

We will follow the story of these peoples throughout the history of the Old Testament. They will be enemies of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but there is much more to that story which will be told in its place. For now we see the beginning of two peoples in fear and immorality. This is reported by God, and it is part of His inscrutable providence, but it is against His Law. It is a great example of a very bad heritage that is used by God for His own perfect purposes.

Lot's treatment of his daughters, and his daughters' treatment of him are not recorded in the Scriptures for our imitation or for our general moral instruction. They are on the pages of the Bible because they really happened and because they are relevant. They testify again to the problem of the human heart, which is very depraved. It is sin this base that Christ took upon Himself for the elect.

What is required now is for us to turn away from the beauty of the cities of the plain, to turn away from the gross immorality of man, and to look to our Redeemer, a descendant of Lot through King David and Ruth. All of the Davidic kings came from these events from which we turn away our eyes in revulsion.

The Lord knows about the ugliness of sin. But He also knows about the power of redemption. He can bring good things to pass out of a very messy world. He can touch the unclean, and make it clean. A judgment is surely coming upon the earth, but God has provided us a Zoar in the cross of Christ. Flee to Him and live. He can take away your disgrace.