907 Biblical Characters - Abraham & Isaac
Exploring Biblical Characters • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 10 viewsNotes
Transcript
- Do you know that when we are tested, it reveals something to us about our character that we may have not seen prior to the test
- Usually, we can cope with a bit of trouble when other aspects of our lives are intact
Q. But what happens when times of testing come & we have a number of stressors already current in our lives?
- The children are ill; our financial debt is out of control; a persistent troubling ailment is restricting your life; there is a death in the family
- Any number of issues can come upon us at the most unexpected of times
-----------------------
Q. How do we cope in these times?
Q. What mechanisms or support do you have in those times?
Q. The bigger question is what part in your life does God have during those times?
Q. When troubles come - & unfortunately, they do – do you draw nearer to God or further away from Him?
- This is not a question a person can dismiss – it’s very real
- It’s a question that goes to the heart of our faith
------------------
- In my experience in ministry, I have not only experienced hard times myself & had to wrestle with my relationship with God during those hard times, but I have seen people, in those times, either draw near to God or away from Him
- I have heard people say that they have not drawn away from God, but away from the church
- But that is totally out of place
- Biblically speaking, you cannot draw away from the church community & still think you are in a good place with God
- The Scriptures – our absolute authority on matters pertaining to God – will not allow us to think that we can be good with God & not good with the church
-----------------
- Now I know there can be some terrible things that happen in a church & I can well understand why some people would want to withdraw
- But we must not & cannot withdraw when we understand that the deliverance from sin & the reconciliation that we have through Christ rests first & foremost on the people of God – plural
- After the church was formed, in the NT, individual Christians are spoken of in the context of the local church
-----------------------
- My point here is that a person, under duress, needs to consider how they can draw near to God – rather than pull away from Him
- It might mean confronting those people who have hurt you & finding reconciliation
- As a last resort, if that cannot be resolved, it might mean having to find another local church
- God will take us through testing times – you cannot escape that
Q. The question is, will you go through those times drawing closer to God or away from Him?
- The final evidence of whether you have drawn near or pulled away, will be about obedience
--------------------
- Now reflect on some terrible times in the past – you may have scars, but are you in a reasonable state now to live your life?
- Most people, are able to get on with life & to live with those scars
- Parents understand the need to move on with life as they want their children to experience the best of life without having to inherit some of the parents past trauma – which may express itself in various ways (through attitudes & actions) to a child who is untainted by those things the parents experienced
--------------------
- It’s one thing to read the stories of Abraham & be moved by God’s work in & through Him, it is another thing entirely to experience the ups & downs that Abraham experienced
Q. How did he survive his trauma & how did he move closer to God?
Q. What is the answer to moving through times of testing & trauma?
-----------------
Q. Have you ever noticed that testing comes when you least expect it will?
- Here is Abraham – buoyed by the wonderful promises of God
- He received visitations by God; he received a visual act by which God bound Himself to this promise with a Covenant
- God calls for Abram to bring animals & Abram brings them & cuts them in two & lays them opposite each other – then we read...
17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:
- The smoking oven & the torch are symbolic of the presence of God
- That day, God bound Himself with a Covenant to Abram that He will fulfil His promise
- Abram also witnessed the miracle of God when he & his wife Sarah have a son while in their old age & way passed the age of having children
-------------------
- Yet, Abraham’s first son – his firstborn & the one he wanted as the promised child is now banished - sent away from him
- He loses his firstborn son who was so dear to him
- Now, God tells him to lose his second son – the one who is deemed “son of the promise” – which means he will have none left
--------------------
- Let’s see if we can learn from what God does here with Abraham & see if we can’t implement what we learn here into our own lives
- For surely Abraham was certainly wondering - “what is God doing” & furthermore “what is this He is asking me to do”
1. The Loss of Abraham’s First-born (Gen. 21:9-21)
1. The Loss of Abraham’s First-born (Gen. 21:9-21)
- Abraham has to face the reality that he must separate himself from his dearly loved son Ishmael – his firstborn
- I dare say that Abraham never figured that he would be in this predicament when Sarah gave her maid to him as a wife
- Polygamous marriages we see in the Bible are usually shown to cause trouble in the family – namely through jealousy & rivalry - & that is exactly what we see here today
-----------------
- In our 1st reading, we see that Ishmael was mocking Isaac
- Ishmael was, at least, 14 yrs old – he, we assume, would know that Isaac is the son of the promise & now that Isaac is born, he would have to take a backseat to him
- Obviously, a hard thing to do if you were the firstborn & father’s favourite
------------------
- If you think this jealousy could exist in a boy, then double that for their mothers
- Catty, bitter & jealous of each other, Sarah felt deeply the least little intended barb from Hagar
- Hagar would strategically be jockeying for position in the family hierarchy
----------------------
- But Hagar was a maid – a servant - & Sarah was her master
- But Abraham was head of the house & he was Sarah’s master
- Sarah had had enough & appealed to Abraham to drive them away
10 Therefore she said to Abraham, “Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.”
- This statement pained Abraham to his very core
- It is expressed in our reading as “the thing was very displeasing to Abraham” – it was so unjust & painful as he did not want to be separated from Ishmael
- The NASB says, “The matter distressed Abraham greatly…”. How could it not!
------------------------
- But in his pain of heart & the wrong he believes that would be done to Ishmael, God comes to him & approves of Sarah’s demand
- Reiterating again to Abraham that Ishmael will not be the son of the promise & will, in fact, not have one iota in it
- For the purposes of the promise, Ishmael had to be separated from Isaac
- However, God will look after Ishmael & make him into a nation for he too is a descendant of Abraham
- Such, I guess you could say, was God’s connection with Abraham that He will even make Ishmael – the child of the flesh (of their own making) – into a great nation
------------------------
- When we come to the NT & the apostle Paul does a bit of fancy work with what is written here in Genesis
- He interprets this passage here allegorically – that is, this thing here, represents that thing there
- Allegorical interpretation goes something like this...
- A girl sends a text to her friend – “Do you want to go with me shopping in Big-W on Saturday”?
- Let’s allegorise that text: What she probably really meant was that her mother had a list of chores for her to do on Saturday & Big-W was coded language for a Big wipe that off my list for Saturday. That is, I’m staying away from home (so I miss my chores)
-----------------------
- To read Scripture that way has been the Achilles heel of the church throughout the various times
- For example – the 153 fish that were caught in Jn. 21:11
11 Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn.
- Augustine says that if you add 1 + 2 +3 + 4 etc up to the number 17 then you end up with the number 153
- Now the number 17 represents 2 significant numbers in the Bible of 10 & 7
- So, according to Augustine, 153 represents the 10 commandments (OT) & the 7 fold Spirit of God (NT)
- Or as some others say, 153 = 3 lots of 50 (150) + 3 = 153
– 3 lots + 3 - 3 lots are emphasised - it has got to represent Trinity – Father, Son & Holy Spirit
- Don’t do this, Ok?
--------------------
- They counted 153 to prove that it was a miraculous catch of fish & that the net did not break with such a large amount of fish
- They had caught no fish that night, but this person on the beach in the morning called out & said to cast net the on the other side of the boat & hey presto, 153 fish without a broken net – guess what – it is the resurrected Jesus
--------------------
- The apostle Paul does not interpret Scripture loosely but for this occasion he speaks anecdotally (illustratively) about what Sarah & Hagar represent – but he tells the church that he is speaking allegorically
28 And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, For the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.” 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.
- In other words, he is saying that Ishmael - Sarah’s plan for Abraham to marry Hagar to have a child - was of the flesh (a human plan)
- But the promise with God’s miracle of Isaac born to two old has been’s is of the Spirit – divinely ordained (divinely planned & purposed)
--------------------
- In Galatians, Paul is associating – get this – Jews who are persecuting the church with Ishmael – the child of the flesh & Christians - associating them with Isaac, the child of the Spirit
- That’s quite a contrast isn’t it – technically, Israel are suppose to be descendants of Isaac
- But Paul says that they are descendants of flesh, along with Ishmael because the Spirit & the promise reside in Christians not in Israel of the flesh
2. The Loss of the Promised Son
2. The Loss of the Promised Son
- Abraham has lost his beloved son Ishmael
- Now as if that is heart-breaking enough, the Lord is now asking him to sacrifice, as a burnt offering, the son of the promise!
Q. What would you be thinking if you were Abraham?
- God tells him to leave his homeland to go to a land where he will have future descendants
- He tells him to walk before God & be blameless as a marker of being the people of God
- He makes a Covenant with Abraham & God binds Himself to that Covenant to reinforce the nature of His promise to Abraham
- He gives him the rite of circumcision for all his male descendants after him – to distinguish between those who are Abraham’s & those who are not
- He promises him & Sarah a miracle through the birth of a son in their old age & that this son would carry the promise of descendants & blessing to the whole world
------------------
- Now, God asks Abraham to throw it all away & to decapitate the promise of descendants & blessing to the world
Q. What on earth is happening here?
Q. Is it a test? Does Abraham perceive it as a test?
- Surely, Abraham has shown his faith in the Lord & believed by obeying everything the Lord has asked of him!
------------------
- When God asks Abraham to leave his country & his relatives & his father’s house, to go to another country, he packs up his stuff & leaves (Gen. 12:4)
- When God gets Abraham to look up into the night sky & tells him that he will have descendants like the stars in the sky, Abraham believes & accepts that there on the spot to which God credited it to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6)
- When God says to circumcise all the males in his household 8 days old & beyond, Abraham does what God tells him that very day (Gen. 17:23)
- When God says to Abraham to do what Sarah asks & send his beloved son Ishmael away, bang, the very next morning he sends them off (Gen. 21:14)
- Now, when God tells him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering, again, the very next morning he gets up & goes to do it
Q. Wouldn’t we, at least, be asking, “Oh Lord, please give me a few more days to think about it?”
----------------
- You probably have the question in your mind about how God could ask for a human sacrifice – how grotesque!
- What we don’t usually understand, however, was that human sacrifice was very alive in paganism & so it may not have been so obnoxious to Abraham as it is to us
- Human sacrifice was given to the gods because it was the dearest & best thing you had & could give
- If you gave the gods your best, then there was a good chance that they will grant you your prayers & requests
-------------------
- The Law of Moses which came some 430 years after God’s Covenant with Abraham forbids human sacrifice but not, so it seems, in Abraham’s time
29 “When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, 30 beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’ 31 “You shall not behave thus toward the Lord your God, for every abominable act which the Lord hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. 32 “Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.
2 “You shall also say to the sons of Israel: ‘Any man from the sons of Israel or from the aliens sojourning in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
- The law, however, didn’t stop it completely
- The reason is that the people never stopped worshipping idols & the gods of the pagan lands
- Like the Baal worship that Jezebel brought into Israel
- Like the worship of Molech, called the detestable idol of the Ammonites
--------------------
- But when an existential threat came upon a weak faith-ed king, panic sets in & any chance of obedience to the Lord God fails
- Ahaz was such a king who received words from the prophet Isaiah, yet he failed to heed the prophecies of Isaiah
3 Then the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller’s field, 4 and say to him, ‘Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah. 5 ‘Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying, 6 “Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,”
7 thus says the Lord God: “It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass. 8 “For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people), 9 and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.” ’ ”
- Now the question is – does Ahaz believe the prophet? Does he believe the Lord? He doesn’t – he gives into pagan ways
- We have a sad commentary on the life of Ahaz in 2nd Chronicles
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do right in the sight of the Lord as David his father had done. 2 But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel; he also made molten images for the Baals. 3 Moreover, he burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons in fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel. 4 He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills and under every green tree.
- This man Abraham is a very different character from Ahaz
- Instead of ignoring the word of God; contradicting the word of God; defiantly rejecting the word of God, Abraham received that word from God & was obedient to it
- Abraham was indeed made to stand & stand firm he did
- Like Job who also was tested, yet stood firm in his integrity of heart-obedience to the Lord & we see what God brought about through the lives of both those men – in spite of the pain & troubling times they had to endure
- But this is the essence of faith & to this, we have been called
- This is what sets us apart from everyone else
- Faith, faithful, obedience - all fit in the same glove
-----------------------
- Abraham leaves the next morning with Isaac & some servants & heads for the land of Moriah as instructed by God
- Jerusalem sits on top of the land of Moriah
1 Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
- The Jews associate the Temple with the place that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac
------------------
- This place is where the big religious dispute is happening between Jews & Muslims
- Muslims constructed the dome of the rock as the place where they say Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse
- What this does tell us is that there is indeed a history to the Jewish line (Isaac) & the Muslim line (Ishmael)
- This animosity can be traced right back thousands of years to this passage where Ishmael mocked Isaac & was then exiled from the family
- Jealousy, bitterness & anger permeate this relationship between what are actually racial siblings
-----------------
- Now Isaac is a pretty cluey kid – he sees the wood that they gather
- He sees the flint by which to light the fire; he sees the knife with which to sacrifice the lamb, but he sees no animal to sacrifice & asks the piercing question of his Dad – “Father, where is the lamb for the burnt offering”
- Little did he know that he was it
-------------------
- But Abraham makes an unusual comment: “God Himself will provide the lamb, my son” - God will provide the solution
- This is an amazing statement when we think about it
- We would think that, for Abraham, there is little hope – yet he has utter confidence in the fact that the Lord will make the situation right if I only follow His word
- I think that is something we need a good dose of ourselves
- You see, part of this faith of Abraham; this obedience of Abraham is that he is totally confident that though the situation around him seems hopeless, he refuses to believe that it is so
--------------------
- To Abraham, God is greater & better than anyone could ever expect
- But do we think that – we get ourselves into little pickles about life & things not going well in life; not going the way we expected it to go
- The tragedy about this is that it is all so unnecessary
- God will provide...
- Actually, as you go to the NT, the Hebrew writer understands that Abraham believed in the resurrection from the dead
- That if God was asking him to do this & God cannot lie – the judge of all the earth cannot do unrighteousness – then He must be bringing Isaac back to life
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18 it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.
-----------------
- As we know, it never came to that – an angel calls from heaven “stop”
12 He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Q. Wouldn’t God have always known what Abraham would have done?
- Yes, but it needed to happen in real time & space to have any meaning - it had to play out in real time & space
- With weak excuse, we say that God knows what I would have done anyway
- How convenient – we can recuse ourselves easily like that
--------------------
- But faith & doing go hand in hand – Abraham had to be obedient & it was through that obedience that his faith was made complete
15 Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, 16 and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
-------------------
Q. What a lesson for all who hear – “because you have obeyed My voice”
- God will provide the lamb, my son, said Abraham & He did provide – by coincidence? - rather by design, a ram had caught its horns in a thicket & hey presto, the provision of a sacrifice to God
----------------
- Now the question comes to us regarding what God is asking of us today?
Q. What is our response to God in real time & space? How may we approach Him?
- Well, thankfully, we do not have to sacrifice our son as a sacrificial offering to God
- God will provide the lamb – and as you know that “lamb” is Jesus Christ
- He is that atoning sacrifice needed to bring me & you into a right relationship with God – our sins needed atonement & the death of Jesus provided that atonement
-----------------
Q. What is God asking of you now?
23 This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.
Q. How do you demonstrate to God your belief & has God been specific in what He has asked of you?
- Yes He has – very specific & it is revealed all throughout the NT
- Your baptism - that is your response to God in real time & space
16 “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.
- You can’t get more clear than that - here is the “now I know moment” when your response to God in baptism has verified your faith in Jesus Christ
Q. What are you doing about the call of God to you to come to Christ?
Q. Are you like Abraham ready, willing & able to respond to God immediately upon His request, or do you love the world too much to respond in faith?
- It’s a challenge, but I hope you will follow in the footsteps of Abraham, the man of faith!