Abraham

Isaac, the Limp Rag

The promise was given to Abraham. Through Jacob, it expanded to include the entire Israelite community. Then there is Isaac.

Abraham is a man of action. The man who attacked the army of four kings with only 318 men, and prevailed, also made a point to ensure his son had a suitable bride, one that was not a daughter of the native Canaanites. Of all you could say about Abraham, you could not call him passive. He had all his Egyptian plunder in a row.

Jacob also is an active agent to the point of wresting God himself, an event that branded the name of his descendants for all of eternity.

And then there is Isaac, the limp rag in the middle. When we get to his account, he rarely does anything on his own volition. He rarely even speaks. Rather, it is Rebekah who seems to be the primary mover of the promise in this portion of the story of the patriarchs.

When Laban wants her to stay ten more days, Rebekah decides to leave the next day with Abraham’s servant, ready to begin her own pilgrimage. When she is called to leave, she doesn’t delay. (Gen. 24:55-59)

When Isaac plans to bless Esau, Rebekah, knowing that God had told her “the older will serve the younger,” forms a plan to correct this action so the promise is passed through the correct son. Jacob has the birthright, and so he should receive the blessing of the first-born.

Unlike Abraham, Isaac doesn’t secure wives for his sons, and Esau marries Hittite women. It is Rebekah who prods Isaac into sending Jacob to the land of her father, to first ensure that Esau does not become another Cain, but also to ensure that Jacob does not marry a Canaanite woman. (Gen 27:46)

Isaac abdicates. Rebekah picks up the slack and thereby ensures that the covenant family will continue. Without Rebekah, Isaac would probably have never left his tent.

Pilgrims in the Promised Land…Just a Passing Through?

It is appropriate that Abraham, the father of our faith, should be listed in Hebrews 11 not just once, but twice. The writer gives more words only to Moses. The first time deals with Abraham’s call to leave his father’s house.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. (Heb 11:8-10)

Abraham was a sojourner. A pilgrim. More than that, he was a sojourner in a land that God promised him, and since God promised him, he knew that, in a sense, it belonged to him already. God blessed him so much that the Hittites called him a mighty prince (Gen. 23:5), powerful rulers sought to make alliances with him and his offspring (Gen 21:22,23), and he defeats an alliance of five kings with only 318 men (Gen 14:15). Not bad for a sojourner.

Not bad, at least, when compared with the kind of sojourner we normally assume the New Testament writers are talking about, especially when referring to Christians. Peter tells us to “pass the time of your sojourning here” (1 Peter 1:17) and then again saying “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

A whole tradition has grown from the idea of being a pilgrim or alien of the world, sharpened by Paul’s language of citizenship, and colored with Greek and gnostic philosophy in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. It can be summed up nicely in the song “This World is Not My Home.”

This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.

In essence, our true home is in the heavenly realm, and someday, we will finally leave this wicked, corrupt world and be able to return home. Our pilgrimage will be over. The rest of the world can literally go to Hell.

But is this the picture we get? Is this really what being a pilgrim in the world means?

Was Abraham, the first sojourner of faith and the context for the New Testament use of these terms, just a passing through the promised land?

To ask the question is to answer it. Abraham even performs a symbolic act of staking his claim in the land of Canaan. He buys a field from one of the Hittites to bury Sarah, and then his own bones are laid to rest in the same tomb. The conquest didn’t start with Joshua. It started with Abraham after the death of his wife.

Abraham is a pilgrim in the promised land, which means he is called a pilgrim in his own land. And he knows it.

How does this relate to the children of the promise today?

First, we must realize that just as Abraham buying a plot of land was a symbolic act of conquest, the later conquest of the promised land by the Israelites was also a symbolic act of something greater.

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. (Rom. 4:13)

Abraham was not just promised Canaan. He was promised that all of the nations through him would be blessed, and according to Paul, this means that he would inherit the world.

And we are inheritors of the same promise.

And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal 3:29)

Christ himself says that the meek will inherit the earth. How much time have we spent explaining away the plain sense of this beatitude, when the plain sense fits so well with the promise of Abraham?

Christ has risen. All authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18). The new order has been established, God has named his king, and his king will rule at his right hand until all of his enemies bow in homage (Psalm 110:1). And what is the domain of the king?

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. (Psalm 2:8)

Through Christ, the promise of Abraham will come to fruition. We are pilgrims now in the promised land, heirs of the promise. But that means we are the advance guard, building wells and establishing alters like Abraham our father, knowing that we wander in our inheritance. For he “hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:10). Creation itself longs for the final victory.

For the creation waits with eager longing forthe revealing of the sons of God. For the creationwas subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know thatthe whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Rom. 8:21-22, ESV)

As someone once said, the world is not God’s Vietnam. He is not scrambling to bring the troops home from a theater of war that is crumbling, in some kind of strategic retreat.

Pilgrimages of the people of God don’t end with a whimper and a sigh. They don’t end with a rescue.

They end in conquest. They end in victory.

“That God may be all in all.” Amen.

What about you? Have you viewed the call to be a sojourner in this world as a call to simply “hold down the fort?” Do you believe the promises that “the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world”(1 Jn. 4:14)?

Sarah was Right to Laugh

In Genesis 18, Sarah overhears God telling Abraham that this time next year, she would have a son. She laughs. There is then a reaffirmation by God when, after Sarah denies her act, He says “No, but you did laugh.” (Gen 18:15)

Typically, this is read with a tone of rebuke. Sarah is lacking in faith when she shouldn’t doubt that God can turn the death of her womb into life. But is this a reprimand?

After all, Abraham himself laughs when previously told the same thing , and then points to Ishmael.

Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! (Gen. 17:17,18)

Its as if Abraham thinks God is mistaken. “You misspoke, God. Ishmael is Hagar’s son, not Sarah’s. And he is right here.”

Yet there is no rebuke or other response directed at Abraham’s laughter, and as in other places, we should take notice when God himself later focuses attention.

The emphasis on Sarah’s laughing in the exchange points to something else, and we see the fulfillment after the birth of Isaac. First, Isaac’s name means “he laughs.” And then in Genesis 21:6,

And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

Sarah’s initial laughter is prophesy. It is right for her to laugh. She didn’t know it at the time, but her incredulous laughter was really the laughter of celebration. And even now, the same incredulity underlies the laughter, for Sarah asks in the next verse “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?”

Part of the lesson we can learn from this is that since God is faithful to his promises, that what seems impossible becomes reality, even before our senses perceive it. When God give Abraham his new name, He speaks in the not only in future tense, talking about what he is going to do, but also in the present tense.

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. (Gen. 17:5)

God declares it. And it is so. Simple as that. We should treat the promises God makes to us as good as fulfilled, and we should be even better prepared than Abraham to do so. One, the Resurrection of Christ, the climax of the fulfillment of all things, has happened. Can we think of anything that is beyond His power? And two, God has been merciful enough to give us the Spirit as a deposit or down payment, which is for us a guarantee for the future(Eph 1:13,14). He has much invested in us already, and he will complete his work (Phil 1:6).

The Arbitrary Beginning of the Gospel

R. R. Reno, in his Genesis commentary, calls attention to the “scandal of particularity” that is the call of Abraham. Up to this point, the text deals with a broad look of humanity. The curse of Adam and Eve spreads out to their children, encompassing the entire race.

We have the very first murder, then the founding of the first city by the guilty. The descendants of Cain then forge the first instruments, both musical and of bronze and iron. The narrative sweeps us in the global flood, and after the children of Noah spread out on the new earth, the story of Babel tells us of the origin of all languages and cultures.

These have the feel of legend. The stuff myths are made of. We are reading history from a cosmic perspective.

Since the fall, the story has given us several false starts. How is God ever going to put things to rights? But whatever we think, we expect that whatever God does to begin the reversal of the Fall will retain the same epic, universal feel.

And then suddenly we get to Abraham. One man. One family. And God tells him to just start wandering in the the land of Canaan. Abraham is special only because God says he is, declared with the same voice that brought the cosmos into existence. Why Abraham and no one else? Because God declared it. The theme of election, which is a major theme of the rest of the book, is introduced, and this shift is important.

Because the divine plan, of course, is still universal in scope. Through this one man, the whole world will be saved and the nations blessed. God instills the promise of the future in flesh and blood. And what does this prepare us for?

In other words, Genesis 12:1 is the beginning of the gospel itself, both in form and method.

As will happen time and time again in Scripture, God is the God of the unexpected. He will continuously surprise us.