 |
| Timeline |
Abraham - A Profile of Faith
Last week, Noah’s descendants spread out over the earth. As time passed, people again rejected God’s way for their own way. God chose a man for a special purpose: building a nation to represent Him.
Chapter 2 of The Story starts with Moving Day for Abraham. Now, you have moved before and you know all the preparation necessary before leaving. Weeks before you start going through your stuff - three piles, right (keep, sell, throw out). And then there's the yard sale to get rid of the junk. Packing boxes (color coded stickers for rooms). Now, imagine being all ready to move and not knowing where you were moving to?
I mean the boxes are full, the U-Haul is packed and you don’t know where to go - this is what happened to Abraham: "Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you." Genesis 12:1 (NASB)
When describing faith, the author of Hebrews used Abraham as an example: By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. Hebrews 11:8 (NASB)
Abraham faithfully followed God. He was building his relationship with God on the foundation of trust and by the way, he was 75 at the time.
The prophet Abram was seventy-five years old when God told him to leave his home and go to Canaan. His wife Sarai was sixty-five, still beautiful, but barren. After Abram arrived in Canaan, God showed him the land He would give Abram’s offspring, who would be more numerous than the dust of the earth. The Lord blessed Abram by keeping him safe in this dangerous land, just as He promised. In fact, God enabled him to rescue his nephew Lot from the armies of four strong kings with only 318 men. God gave Abram a miraculous sign. When people made covenants in those days, they sacrificed animals, cut the carcasses in two, and laid the pieces across from each other. The parties spoke the terms of the covenant and walked between the pieces. God told Abraham to sacrifice and lay out animals. He told Abram to know for certain that his descendants would possess this land in four hundred years. Then a smoking firepot and blazing torch appeared and passed between the animal pieces: all would come to pass.
A decade passed and Sarai thinking she had no chance of bearing a child for Abram, offered her servant Hagar to mother a child for her.This was a common practice. Hagar became a wife of lower status than Sarai. When Hagar became pregnant, though, she acted haughtily towards Sarai. They argued and Hagar fled. The angel of the Lord came to Hagar. A long thirteen years later, the Lord appeared to Abram. God told Abram to call himself Abraham. Abram means exalted father and Abraham means father of many. He made a covenant with Abraham in which God would make Abraham the father of many nations and kings. Abraham’s part of the covenant was to circumcise himself and all the males of his household. Every baby boy descended from him was to be circumcised at eight days old.
God also told Abraham to call his wife Sarah instead of Sarai, and said He would bless the approximately eighty-nine-year-old Sarah so that she could bear a son within a year. They were to name him Isaac, and he would be the child through whom God would establish his covenant. Though such a pregnancy was humanly impossible, Abraham trusted God and circumcised all the males in his household. And so, twenty-five years after God told Abraham to go to Canaan, when Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah ninety, God miraculously blessed Sarah and she bore the child of promise: Isaac.
Isaac
Abraham watched Isaac grow up. He’d seen God’s miraculous hand in his life many times. He was a prophet who had talked with God and with angels. He’d received astonishing blessings. God had promised Abraham that Isaac would be his heir and the child of the covenant. But then God tested Abraham’s faith in this promise by asking him to do something that appeared to make the promise’s fulfillment impossible. You know the story of Abraham's sacrifice of his only son Isaac. The angel of the Lord stopped Abraham before Isaac was harmed.
God sometimes asked prophets to perform actions that foreshadowed and explained important future events. Abraham and Isaac were both prophets, and their actions told their descendants that God can provide a substitute for someone destined for death. They didn’t know it yet, but their actions also foreshadowed how the seed promised to Eve and now to them would one day crush the serpent and bless all peoples.
Jacob
Isaac married Rebekah when he was forty. She, like Sarah, was barren. Isaac prayed for her, and finally, twenty years later, she became pregnant. God told her she carried twins, both of whom would become nations, but the older would serve the younger. She gave birth to Esau and Jacob. They grew into manhood, with Isaac favoring Esau and Rebekah favoring Jacob. Esau was born first and normally would have received both a double inheritance and the covenant promise of fathering the nation that would belong to God. But he came home hungry one day and found Jacob cooking red lentil stew. In exchange for a bowl, he swore an oath giving Jacob his birthrights, thus despising God’s covenant and showing himself to be godless.
When Isaac was old and blind, he asked Esau to hunt game and fix him a meal, after which he would bless Esau. Rebekah overheard, and she and Jacob tricked Isaac into blessing Jacob. Isaac blessed him with the riches of the land, with ruling over his relatives, and with blessings for those who bless him and curses for those who curse him—all aspects of God’s promises to Abraham and an unwitting affirmation of God’s promise to Rebekah. When Esau discovered Jacob had received the blessing Isaac intended for him, he was furious and said he would kill Jacob after Isaac died. Wanting to keep Jacob safe, Rebekah convinced Isaac to send Jacob to her brother to marry one of her nieces. As Jacob journeyed, the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him the covenant promise would be through him, and God would watch over him and bring him back safely. Jacob named the place where God spoke to him Bethel.
Jacob fell in love with his cousin Rachel and arranged to marry her in return for seven years’ work. But after the seven years, his uncle deceived Jacob into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah. When Jacob discovered he’d married the wrong girl, he angrily confronted his uncle. The girl’s father agreed to let him marry Rachel a week later in return for Jacob’s promise of another seven years’ labor. Through the years, the sisters’ dad repeatedly tricked and cheated Jacob, but God intervened and made Jacob wealthy at the expense of his deceitful uncle. Twenty years later God told Jacob to return home. Jacob feared facing Esau, but obeyed. The night before reaching his brother, a man wrestled with Jacob until daybreak.
Jacob had used trickery to get the blessing his father wanted to give Esau, and suffered the consequence of estranged relationships. Jacob learned what it was like to be at the receiving end of deceit and trickery when he suffered under his uncle’s treachery. But though God disciplined Jacob, He also blessed him and showed him repeatedly that it was He who was the true source of blessings. Instead of trying to kill him, when Esau met Jacob, Esau embraced and kissed him. God had changed Esau’s heart and kept Jacob safe, as He promised.
Israel
Israel means “God struggles” or “he struggles with God.” God appeared in the form of an angel so that Jacob could wrestle with Him (see Hosea 12:3–4). Some Christians think such appearances are of the pre-incarnate Christ.
God sent Jacob back to Bethel, where He had appeared to him previously. There He told him again that his new name was to be Israel, and that He would give his descendants the land promised to Abraham and Isaac.
Which one of the following attributes of God that we have read about this week do you most need to remember today?
God is your shield
God is your very great reward
God credits your faith as righteousness
God has power to do what He promises
God hears your cries
God sees you
God is faithful
God will provide
God is almighty
From the twelve sons of Israel would come a nation of twelve tribes. But there would be hard times first. When the Lord made his covenant with Abraham, He told him this:
Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. Genesis 15:13–16
The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob needed to remember the miracles the Lord had done in the patriarchs’ lives if their faith was not to waiver.
As God builds a
people to be His own, He gives them all the reasons in the world to believe in
Him. He is building a strong relationship
with His people based on their willingness to trust Him to be faithful.
You and I have the
great opportunity to walk with God day-by-day leaning firmly on this great
foundation of trust.
QUESTIONS AS YOU READ CHAPTER 2
1. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, for two reasons: First, to test his faith, and second, to point to the future sacrifice of the heavenly Father’s only Son. Is there an area of your life that God is calling you to “sacrifice” or entrust to Him? Identify the next step you need to take.
2. God’s chosen people are both faithful and flawed. List the “faithful” attributes of either Abraham or Sarah that you see. List the “flawed” attributes and mistakes of either Abraham or Sarah that you see. What ways do you see this same dynamic play out in your life, faithful and flawed? How have you seen God show up despite this in your own life?
3. When God does not deliver on His promise to provide offspring for Abraham, he becomes impatient and starts to take matters into his own hands (p. 15-16). Despite his good intentions, this caused several complications for Abraham domestically. When have you tried to take things into your own hands, or force God into action? What was the result?
4. The maidservant Hagar fled from Sarah’s harsh treatment. Alone, hurting and in despair, God saw her. But she also saw Him and declared, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” When have you seen God most vividly acting in your life when despair and pain were present?
5. Esau and Jacob are prime examples of sibling rivals. We learn from the Story (p. 21-22) that they were estranged for more than 20 years. What life lessons can be gleaned from observing each character throughout their reconciliation? What does this tell you about any estranged relationships you might have?
6. In the midst of a deep, personal crisis in Jacob’s life, we read about a curious struggle in the wilderness (p. 23). In the end, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel because he struggled with God and man and overcame. (In the ancient world, a name represented the character of a person.) Identify a crisis in your own life that entailed “wrestling” with God. If God was to change your name to represent the outcome, what do you suppose it would be?
7. Nearly everyone has experienced the playground process of “choosing teams.” Compare the way God chooses His “team” with the way you choose your “team.” Who in your life do you need to see from God’s perspective?
As you think about this week's lesson.
Think about this...
Think about this...
How would the broken relationship between God and man ever be restored in such a sin-sick world? How would fallen people learn to live in a fallen world? This lesson offers a two-word answer: “By faith.” Adam and Eve became unrighteous because they disbelieved God’s word. By contrast, Abraham believed God’s word and was declared righteous. Since the expulsion from the Garden, salvation has always been by faith.
What sin changes, faith overcomes.
Chapter 2
The Upper Story of God’s pursuit and redemption of the world is on grand display in Chapter 2 because God takes things into His own hands.
The two key words that form the basis of the entire chapter are: “I Will ”
And so God says:
I will - Make your descendants into a great nation
I will - Give you a land in which to dwell
I will - Bless all other nations through the nation of Israel
The first thing to note about this chapter (on outline) is this:
1. God’s covenant is a Personal one.
God could have rearrange the stars where they spelled the words, “GOD IS” or “I EXIST.” There would be no need for a personal revelation, really no need for the Holy Spirit to take up residence within us—just a permanent celestial billboard. In effect, God would outsource the proof of His existence to the universe. Some would think it was a hoax, but I suspect most people would walk outside and fall to their knees. Some would run back into their houses in sheer terror, but eventually everyone would see the words “GOD IS” blazing in the heavens. Wars would stop, crime would stop, and churches would fill to overflowing.
For a while, that would be enough. Decades, centuries later, every night, God’s proof of Himself would be blazing away in the heavens. But there would still be something missing: while God was demonstrating Himself to be Lord of the Heavens, what I need to know is, does His Spirit move within ME, over the turbulent waters of my life. God may prove His existence with a message in the stars, but unless He speaks to me and my circumstance, unless His existence changes MY world, does it really matter that He set the whole thing spinning millions of years ago?
The first lesson of how God builds a nation: Individually —one Person at a time.
He appeared and spoke to Abraham and Jacob several times.
Instead of writing an impersonal message in the stars, God comes to us, one-by-one, in the circumstances of our lives.
Where has He appeared to you?
Perhaps through the tough but honest counsel of a friend? Through your wife? I can’t tell you how many men I’ve met who have humbly labeled their wives the Holy Spirit. They see and hear God speaking to them daily through a woman who knows them completely, and who has permission to speak the truth openly. Does your wife have that permission? Perhaps God has personally appeared to you through an obstacle, a defeat—some sort of setback that stops you dead in your tracks and requires you to work out some character issues.
Where has He met you, challenged you, broken you, for His sake?
The first lesson of Chapter 2 of The Story is that God is so gracious, so loving, that He meets each of us not through a celestial text message, but in the daily events of our lives.
Takeaway #2 in this story of Abraham and his family is this:
2. God purposely works through broken vessels.
You know, after reading Chapter 2, it would seem God’s choice of a nation and a people, with all due respect, wasn’t all that solid. These guys were a mess!
Look what happened:
Now remember, this is the family through whom all nations of the world would be blessed!
God uses broken people to fulfill His unbreakable promises.
God’s people continue to make bad choices that expose their sin nature. And from Chapter 2 through the rest of the Bible, God uses deeply flawed people to illustrate the Upper Story of His pursuit and redemption of the world.
If you leave with nothing else this morning, leave with this: if God could use the liars, cheats, cowards, swindlers, and fools from this chapter to build a nation, He can use you.
This is why Paul says: But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. -2 Corinthians 4:7
It’s not about you, or your competence, or your personal toolkit. To be a man of God requires you to do the hardest thing possible: give up your self-sufficiency and admit you’re a mess. Then, you’ll start to resemble these guys. God’s selection of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not based on their IQ but on one thing and one thing only: their faith.
Which leads us to point #3:
3. God’s promise is not dependent on our performance, but our faith.
"Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." Gen. 15:6
After such a devastating start in Chapter 1, what could Adam and Eve do? What could the people do to restore what was lost?
The answer: believe. Look at the title of the lesson today: What sin changed in the Garden, faith overcomes for the rest of The Story. In spite of their failures, God’s people respond in faith. It turns out the people of the Old Testament were saved the same way you and I are: by faith.
He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. -Romans 4:20-21
The key verse of the chapter is: "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." -Genesis:15:6
Therein lies the Gospel itself. Abraham had faith in God, and God deposited righteousness into Abraham’s account. It was unearned—it was a gift. God took something that belonged only to Jesus—righteousness—and gave it to Abraham as his own.
The signs and the clues of God’s grand plan of forgiveness and redemption are woven throughout chapter two…which brings us to our weekly Equipping Point.
Today’s Equipping Point - No Outsourcing
And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. -Ephesians 1:13-14
No outsourcing.
God could have easily written a message in the stars and outsourced His revelation to the Milky Way galaxy. But He said, “I will…” He inspired and laughed with Abraham. He personally wrestled with Jacob. And now He personally resides in every believer by depositing His essence into each of us:
Final Thoughts and Implications
A. As fallen people, we do not seek God until He seeks us first. When He does seek me, I should respond by faith.
B. Faith is always based on the Word (promise) of God or a revelation about His character. The believer is to trust God to be who He says He is and to do what He says He will do.
C. Faith is believing and obeying God as He reveals Himself and His plan. Obedience is an outward expression of an inward faith.
D. Following God takes my life in a different direction.
E. Nothing we do merits God’s favor. His grace seems perplexing because we do nothing to earn it.
F. Faith in God is the only requirement for righteousness and salvation. Faith is a sinner’s only hope for salvation.
G. Our relationship with God does not necessarily get easier over time. It will continue to be tested.
H. God can be trusted with our most precious “possessions.”
God, thank You for the older people You have placed in our lives who have been a model of faith for us. You call each of us, at various times, to follow You in ways that are risky and demand faith. We confess that we have missed opportunities in the past to step out in faith. When You call, help us to sense where You might be leading and to take a bold step of faith and follow You with confidence. We pray for Your strength. Amen
See you on Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
This lesson’s focus is on faith: man’s belief and obedient response to God’s revelation. God’s relentless pursuit of humanity becomes more evident in His great narrative as He initiates the relationships characters who then (and only then) respond to God by faith. Thus, faith overcomes the brokenness in humanity’s relationship to God. God’s revelation ALWAYS precedes faith. Faith is never blind. Whether through word or through deed, God reveals Himself before human beings can believe.
Question: "What should we learn from the life of Abraham?"
But why did God choose Abraham?
It was not Abraham’s plan to leave Ur and then Haran, and eventually settle in the land of Canaan. In fact, when he left Ur he had no idea where he was going. He was called by God, and only God knew what was in store for him. It may have taken several days, or even weeks or months, to make final preparation for the trip, but in his mind he was already on the way. From then on, everything he did revolved around obeying God’s call.
Abraham was a sinful heathen who grew up in an unbelieving and idolatrous society. We do not know exactly how or when God first made Himself known to Abraham, but he was raised in a home that was pagan (Josh. 24:2).
Isaiah refers to Abraham as “the rock from which you were hewn” and “the quarry from which your were dug” (Isa. 51:1–2), reminding his fellow Jews that God sovereignly condescended to call Abraham out of paganism and idolatry in order to bless him and the world through him. He may have had higher moral standards than his friends and neighbors, but this was not the reason God chose him. God chose him because He wanted to choose him. And when God spoke to him, he listened; when God promised, he trusted; when God commanded, he obeyed.
When any person comes to Jesus Christ, God demands of him a pilgrimage from his old pattern of living into a new kind of life, just as Abraham’s faith separated him from paganism and unbelief and started him toward a new land and a new kind of life. “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Salvation brings separation from the world. The Lord works in the heart the total willingness to leave behind everything that is not pleasing to Him. He cannot lead us into new ways of living until He leads us out of the old. We should respond, “I don’t know what You are going to do with me, Lord, but I’m going to drop all those old things. I don’t know what You’re going to substitute for them, but I’m going to let them go.”
That is the attitude of the faith pilgrim. The life of faith begins with the willingness to leave one’s Ur, one’s own place of sin and unbelief—to leave the system of the world.
Giving up the old life is one of the greatest obstacles to coming to Christ, and is also one of the greatest obstacles to faithful living once we are in Christ. From the perspective of the old life and the old nature the new life in Christ can appear dull and unexciting. When we think this way we fail to understand that, once we become a Christian, we are given a new set of values, interests, and desires—which we cannot experience in advance. We cannot “see” the blessings and satisfaction of life in Christ before we trust Him as Lord and Savior. We believe and then we experience. We must first be willing to “go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come” (Heb. 13:13). Often the reproach is all we are able to see at first. We look forward to the “city which is to come” by faith.
The force that makes us want to hold on to the old life is sometimes called worldliness. Worldliness may be an act, but primarily it is an attitude. It is wanting to do things that are sinful or selfish or worthless, whether we actually do them or not. It is wanting men’s praise whether we ever receive it or not. It is outwardly holding to high standards of conduct, but inwardly longing to live like the rest of the world. The worst sort of worldliness is religious worldliness, because it pretends to be godly. It holds to God’s standards outwardly (usually adding a few of its own), but it is motivated by selfish, worldly desires. It is pretentious and hypocritical. This was the Pharisees’ great sin, as Jesus so often pointed out.
Worldliness is not so much what we do as what we want to do. It is not determined so much by what our actions are as by where our heart is. Some people do not commit certain sins only because they are afraid of the consequences, others because of what people will think, others from a sense of self-righteous satisfaction in resisting—all the while having a strong desire for these sins. It is the desire for sin that is the root of worldliness, and from which the believer is to be separated. “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15; cf. James 4:4). The root meaning of holiness is separation, being set apart for God.
One of the surest marks of the demise of worldliness is a change in desires, in loves. As we grow in Christ and in love for Him, our love for the things of the world diminishes. They will simply lose their attraction. We will not want to do them like we used to. The pilgrimage of faith begins by separating ourselves from the world, and as we concentrate on Jesus and fellowship with Him, soon we do not care about the things we once loved so much. When we slip and engage in them, we hate what we do in the weakness of the flesh (cf. Rom. 7:14–25).
Paradoxical as it may seem at first, the highest mark of spiritual maturity is being able to do what we want to do. “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (Heb. 11:24–26). Moses did not forsake Egypt because he had to or because he felt obligated to, but because he wanted to. Egypt had lost its attraction. It could not compare with what Christ offered. In this regard the spiritually mature Christian is like the worldly person—he does what he wants to do. The great difference is that the mature Christian wants what God wants.
Question: What should we learn from the life of Isaac?
The name Isaac, which means “he laughs,” was derived from his parents’ reaction when God told Abraham that he, at 100 years old, and his wife Sarah, at the age of 90, would have a son (Genesis 17:17; 18:12).
Isaac was Abraham’s second son; his first, Ishmael, was by Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar, as a result of Sarah’s impatience to give Abraham a family (Genesis 16:1-2).
As a teenager, Isaac was taken by his father up a mountain where Abraham, in obedience to God, prepared to sacrifice him (Genesis 22:1-14). There is an interesting analogy in this account that mirrors God giving up His only son, Jesus, to be sacrificed. When Isaac was forty years old, his father sent one of his servants to find a wife for him from their clan, as Abraham was determined his son should not have a Canaanite for a wife (Genesis 24:1-51). And so, Isaac married his cousin Rebekah.
Rebekah bore twin sons, Esau and Jacob. While Isaac favored his elder son, Esau, Rebekah’s favorite was Jacob.
We might think there is little for us to learn from such a character as Isaac, and yet this isn’t the case. When Isaac discovered, for instance, that he had been deceived by his son Jacob, he accepted and submitted to what he recognized as God’s will, in spite of it being completely against the accepted tradition at the time. Just as Isaac discovered, we, too, must always remember that God’s ways are not our ways or His thoughts the same as ours (Isaiah 55:8).
Question: What should we learn from the life of Jacob?
Jacob’s life began with a struggle. As a twin in the womb with Esau, he jostled for position and was born grasping his brother’s heel. Jacob’s name is translated as “he deceives” (Genesis 25:26). When his mother, Rebekah, asked God during her pregnancy what was happening to her, God told her that there were two nations within her womb who would become divided. One would be stronger than the other, and the older would serve the younger (Genesis 25:23).
Esau was his father’s favorite while Jacob was favored by his mother (Genesis 25:28). This destructive favoritism would follow the family into the next generation, most notably with Jacob’s son Joseph. Such was Jacob’s favoritism for Joseph that it caused great resentment among his brothers and nearly cost Joseph his life.
Jacob is sent off to his uncle Laban who lived in their ancestral home of Haran (vs. 43). During Jacob’s journey, he has a dream of a ladder to heaven with God at the top and angels ascending and descending. This imagery is mirrored in Jesus’ words to His disciple Nathanael (John 1:51). God gives Jacob His assurance of His presence and the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham (Genesis 28:13-15). As a result of this experience, Jacob renames the place “Bethel,” meaning “house of God,” and he makes a vow to serve God.
After Jacob settles in Haran, Laban offers him payment for the work he had been doing as a shepherd looking after his flocks. And Jacob agrees with Laban to work for seven years in return for Laban’s daughter Rachel, whom he loved deeply. However, Jacob was to discover that his uncle Laban could be just as much a deceiver as he had been. On Jacob’s wedding night, Laban substitutes his older daughter, Leah, for Rachel (Genesis 29:23-25). However, Jacob agrees to work a further seven years for Laban to marry Rachel, which he does a week after marrying Leah. And Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (vs. 30).
While Rachel remained barren, Leah gave birth to Jacob’s firstborn son, Reuben. Then followed the birth of 11 more sons from Rachel, Leah, and their two handmaidens. These sons would be the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel. Eventually, Jacob receives God’s command to return to the land of his father’s accompanied by His promise “And I will be with you” (Genesis 31:3).
Jacob’s next highlight comes when he has to face his brother Esau. Though twenty years had passed since they had last seen each other, the memory of Esau’s threat to kill Jacob had never left him (Genesis 32:11). To Jacob’s relief, the reunion with Esau is a warm one.
When Jacob is fearful for his life and his family, he prays a humble prayer to God, reminding Him of the promise He had made to him for his safety (Genesis 32:9-12). The Bible is full of promises that God has made to those He has called. So, when we are in times of trouble and fearful of the outcome, like Jacob we should humbly call on God and remind Him of His promises to us, and as with Jacob, God will fulfill them.
Chapter 2: What Sin Changes, Faith Overcomes
What to do? In Chapter 1 of The Story, everything had started so well…so much promise.
God had given Adam and Eve every chance to succeed, but instead they chose for themselves. Their sin nature was passed down to such a horrific degree that God shook it until the earth literally had a clean slate. But as we saw last week, He saved a remnant—Noah’s family—to give us a do over. The only problem was that sin remained—not even the flood could wipe out the evil inclination of man’s heart. What now?
GOD BUILDS A NATION
Is
there any special way that you might wish God would use to communicate with us?
- Who wishes God would phone?
- Perhaps a text message?
- Maybe an email?
- Possibly a GodTV cable channel?
God
has chosen to reveal Himself in various and often creative ways in the past. In
chapter two of The Story, God reveals Himself in very personal
ways to the various characters.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
Question: "What should we learn from the life of Abraham?"
- Aside from Moses, no Old Testament character is mentioned more in the New Testament than Abraham.
- James refers to Abraham as “God’s friend” (James 2:23).
- Believers in all generations are called the “children of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7).
- We know little about his birth and early life.
- We’re not told anything about the religious life of Abraham and his family prior to his calling.
- Another example of Abraham’s life of faith is seen in the birth of his son, Isaac. Abraham believes the promise of God, and it is credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
- Abraham’s faith would be sorely tested regarding his son, Isaac.
- To be sure, Abraham had his moments of failure and sin (as we all do), and the Bible doesn’t shrink from relating them.
- One obvious lesson to draw from Abraham’s life is that we are to live a life of faith.
- Abraham’s life also shows us the blessing of simple obedience. When asked to leave his family, Abraham left. When asked to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham “rose up early the next morning” to do so.
- Theologically speaking, Abraham’s life is a living example of the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith alone.
But why did God choose Abraham?
It was not Abraham’s plan to leave Ur and then Haran, and eventually settle in the land of Canaan. In fact, when he left Ur he had no idea where he was going. He was called by God, and only God knew what was in store for him. It may have taken several days, or even weeks or months, to make final preparation for the trip, but in his mind he was already on the way. From then on, everything he did revolved around obeying God’s call.
Abraham was a sinful heathen who grew up in an unbelieving and idolatrous society. We do not know exactly how or when God first made Himself known to Abraham, but he was raised in a home that was pagan (Josh. 24:2).
Isaiah refers to Abraham as “the rock from which you were hewn” and “the quarry from which your were dug” (Isa. 51:1–2), reminding his fellow Jews that God sovereignly condescended to call Abraham out of paganism and idolatry in order to bless him and the world through him. He may have had higher moral standards than his friends and neighbors, but this was not the reason God chose him. God chose him because He wanted to choose him. And when God spoke to him, he listened; when God promised, he trusted; when God commanded, he obeyed.
When any person comes to Jesus Christ, God demands of him a pilgrimage from his old pattern of living into a new kind of life, just as Abraham’s faith separated him from paganism and unbelief and started him toward a new land and a new kind of life. “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Salvation brings separation from the world. The Lord works in the heart the total willingness to leave behind everything that is not pleasing to Him. He cannot lead us into new ways of living until He leads us out of the old. We should respond, “I don’t know what You are going to do with me, Lord, but I’m going to drop all those old things. I don’t know what You’re going to substitute for them, but I’m going to let them go.”
That is the attitude of the faith pilgrim. The life of faith begins with the willingness to leave one’s Ur, one’s own place of sin and unbelief—to leave the system of the world.
Giving up the old life is one of the greatest obstacles to coming to Christ, and is also one of the greatest obstacles to faithful living once we are in Christ. From the perspective of the old life and the old nature the new life in Christ can appear dull and unexciting. When we think this way we fail to understand that, once we become a Christian, we are given a new set of values, interests, and desires—which we cannot experience in advance. We cannot “see” the blessings and satisfaction of life in Christ before we trust Him as Lord and Savior. We believe and then we experience. We must first be willing to “go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come” (Heb. 13:13). Often the reproach is all we are able to see at first. We look forward to the “city which is to come” by faith.
The force that makes us want to hold on to the old life is sometimes called worldliness. Worldliness may be an act, but primarily it is an attitude. It is wanting to do things that are sinful or selfish or worthless, whether we actually do them or not. It is wanting men’s praise whether we ever receive it or not. It is outwardly holding to high standards of conduct, but inwardly longing to live like the rest of the world. The worst sort of worldliness is religious worldliness, because it pretends to be godly. It holds to God’s standards outwardly (usually adding a few of its own), but it is motivated by selfish, worldly desires. It is pretentious and hypocritical. This was the Pharisees’ great sin, as Jesus so often pointed out.
Worldliness is not so much what we do as what we want to do. It is not determined so much by what our actions are as by where our heart is. Some people do not commit certain sins only because they are afraid of the consequences, others because of what people will think, others from a sense of self-righteous satisfaction in resisting—all the while having a strong desire for these sins. It is the desire for sin that is the root of worldliness, and from which the believer is to be separated. “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15; cf. James 4:4). The root meaning of holiness is separation, being set apart for God.
One of the surest marks of the demise of worldliness is a change in desires, in loves. As we grow in Christ and in love for Him, our love for the things of the world diminishes. They will simply lose their attraction. We will not want to do them like we used to. The pilgrimage of faith begins by separating ourselves from the world, and as we concentrate on Jesus and fellowship with Him, soon we do not care about the things we once loved so much. When we slip and engage in them, we hate what we do in the weakness of the flesh (cf. Rom. 7:14–25).
Paradoxical as it may seem at first, the highest mark of spiritual maturity is being able to do what we want to do. “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (Heb. 11:24–26). Moses did not forsake Egypt because he had to or because he felt obligated to, but because he wanted to. Egypt had lost its attraction. It could not compare with what Christ offered. In this regard the spiritually mature Christian is like the worldly person—he does what he wants to do. The great difference is that the mature Christian wants what God wants.
Question: What should we learn from the life of Isaac?
The name Isaac, which means “he laughs,” was derived from his parents’ reaction when God told Abraham that he, at 100 years old, and his wife Sarah, at the age of 90, would have a son (Genesis 17:17; 18:12).
Isaac was Abraham’s second son; his first, Ishmael, was by Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar, as a result of Sarah’s impatience to give Abraham a family (Genesis 16:1-2).
As a teenager, Isaac was taken by his father up a mountain where Abraham, in obedience to God, prepared to sacrifice him (Genesis 22:1-14). There is an interesting analogy in this account that mirrors God giving up His only son, Jesus, to be sacrificed. When Isaac was forty years old, his father sent one of his servants to find a wife for him from their clan, as Abraham was determined his son should not have a Canaanite for a wife (Genesis 24:1-51). And so, Isaac married his cousin Rebekah.
Rebekah bore twin sons, Esau and Jacob. While Isaac favored his elder son, Esau, Rebekah’s favorite was Jacob.
We might think there is little for us to learn from such a character as Isaac, and yet this isn’t the case. When Isaac discovered, for instance, that he had been deceived by his son Jacob, he accepted and submitted to what he recognized as God’s will, in spite of it being completely against the accepted tradition at the time. Just as Isaac discovered, we, too, must always remember that God’s ways are not our ways or His thoughts the same as ours (Isaiah 55:8).
Question: What should we learn from the life of Jacob?
Jacob’s life began with a struggle. As a twin in the womb with Esau, he jostled for position and was born grasping his brother’s heel. Jacob’s name is translated as “he deceives” (Genesis 25:26). When his mother, Rebekah, asked God during her pregnancy what was happening to her, God told her that there were two nations within her womb who would become divided. One would be stronger than the other, and the older would serve the younger (Genesis 25:23).
Esau was his father’s favorite while Jacob was favored by his mother (Genesis 25:28). This destructive favoritism would follow the family into the next generation, most notably with Jacob’s son Joseph. Such was Jacob’s favoritism for Joseph that it caused great resentment among his brothers and nearly cost Joseph his life.
Jacob is sent off to his uncle Laban who lived in their ancestral home of Haran (vs. 43). During Jacob’s journey, he has a dream of a ladder to heaven with God at the top and angels ascending and descending. This imagery is mirrored in Jesus’ words to His disciple Nathanael (John 1:51). God gives Jacob His assurance of His presence and the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham (Genesis 28:13-15). As a result of this experience, Jacob renames the place “Bethel,” meaning “house of God,” and he makes a vow to serve God.
After Jacob settles in Haran, Laban offers him payment for the work he had been doing as a shepherd looking after his flocks. And Jacob agrees with Laban to work for seven years in return for Laban’s daughter Rachel, whom he loved deeply. However, Jacob was to discover that his uncle Laban could be just as much a deceiver as he had been. On Jacob’s wedding night, Laban substitutes his older daughter, Leah, for Rachel (Genesis 29:23-25). However, Jacob agrees to work a further seven years for Laban to marry Rachel, which he does a week after marrying Leah. And Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (vs. 30).
While Rachel remained barren, Leah gave birth to Jacob’s firstborn son, Reuben. Then followed the birth of 11 more sons from Rachel, Leah, and their two handmaidens. These sons would be the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel. Eventually, Jacob receives God’s command to return to the land of his father’s accompanied by His promise “And I will be with you” (Genesis 31:3).
Jacob’s next highlight comes when he has to face his brother Esau. Though twenty years had passed since they had last seen each other, the memory of Esau’s threat to kill Jacob had never left him (Genesis 32:11). To Jacob’s relief, the reunion with Esau is a warm one.
When Jacob is fearful for his life and his family, he prays a humble prayer to God, reminding Him of the promise He had made to him for his safety (Genesis 32:9-12). The Bible is full of promises that God has made to those He has called. So, when we are in times of trouble and fearful of the outcome, like Jacob we should humbly call on God and remind Him of His promises to us, and as with Jacob, God will fulfill them.
Chapter 2: What Sin Changes, Faith Overcomes
What to do? In Chapter 1 of The Story, everything had started so well…so much promise.
God had given Adam and Eve every chance to succeed, but instead they chose for themselves. Their sin nature was passed down to such a horrific degree that God shook it until the earth literally had a clean slate. But as we saw last week, He saved a remnant—Noah’s family—to give us a do over. The only problem was that sin remained—not even the flood could wipe out the evil inclination of man’s heart. What now?
The Upper Story of God’s pursuit and redemption of the world is on grand display in Chapter 2 because God takes things into His own hands.
The two key words that form the basis of the entire chapter are: “I Will ”
And so God says:
I will - Make your descendants into a great nation
I will - Give you a land in which to dwell
I will - Bless all other nations through the nation of Israel
The first thing to note about this chapter (on outline) is this:
1. God’s covenant is a Personal one.
God could have rearrange the stars where they spelled the words, “GOD IS” or “I EXIST.” There would be no need for a personal revelation, really no need for the Holy Spirit to take up residence within us—just a permanent celestial billboard. In effect, God would outsource the proof of His existence to the universe. Some would think it was a hoax, but I suspect most people would walk outside and fall to their knees. Some would run back into their houses in sheer terror, but eventually everyone would see the words “GOD IS” blazing in the heavens. Wars would stop, crime would stop, and churches would fill to overflowing.
For a while, that would be enough. Decades, centuries later, every night, God’s proof of Himself would be blazing away in the heavens. But there would still be something missing: while God was demonstrating Himself to be Lord of the Heavens, what I need to know is, does His Spirit move within ME, over the turbulent waters of my life. God may prove His existence with a message in the stars, but unless He speaks to me and my circumstance, unless His existence changes MY world, does it really matter that He set the whole thing spinning millions of years ago?
The first lesson of how God builds a nation: Individually —one Person at a time.
He appeared and spoke to Abraham and Jacob several times.
Instead of writing an impersonal message in the stars, God comes to us, one-by-one, in the circumstances of our lives.
Where has He appeared to you?
Perhaps through the tough but honest counsel of a friend? Through your wife? I can’t tell you how many men I’ve met who have humbly labeled their wives the Holy Spirit. They see and hear God speaking to them daily through a woman who knows them completely, and who has permission to speak the truth openly. Does your wife have that permission? Perhaps God has personally appeared to you through an obstacle, a defeat—some sort of setback that stops you dead in your tracks and requires you to work out some character issues.
Where has He met you, challenged you, broken you, for His sake?
The first lesson of Chapter 2 of The Story is that God is so gracious, so loving, that He meets each of us not through a celestial text message, but in the daily events of our lives.
Takeaway #2 in this story of Abraham and his family is this:
2. God purposely works through broken vessels.
You know, after reading Chapter 2, it would seem God’s choice of a nation and a people, with all due respect, wasn’t all that solid. These guys were a mess!
Look what happened:
- Abraham lied twice about Sarah not being his wife to save his own neck.
- Because God didn’t produce an heir as quickly as they thought He should, they opted for a workaround and Abraham slept with Sarah’s maid Hagar, which led to all sorts of hurt feelings and domestic complications.
- Isaac marries Rebekah and raises one of the most dysfunctional families recorded in the Bible. Isaac favors Esau, but Rebekah favors Jacob, and the kids become pawns in this passive-aggressive relationship of their parents.
- Jacob, who has now learned that deception and trickery is obviously the way to get ahead in life, so he plays his brother for a fool and then has to leave.
- Jacob’s uncle Laban, also a graduate of the Machiavellian School of Deceit, slips the wrong daughter at the wedding and cons Jacob into another seven years of work.
- Jacob gets back at his uncle, however, by concocting an elaborate breeding caper with the goat herds that guarantee Jacob has the last laugh.
Now remember, this is the family through whom all nations of the world would be blessed!
God uses broken people to fulfill His unbreakable promises.
God’s people continue to make bad choices that expose their sin nature. And from Chapter 2 through the rest of the Bible, God uses deeply flawed people to illustrate the Upper Story of His pursuit and redemption of the world.
If you leave with nothing else this morning, leave with this: if God could use the liars, cheats, cowards, swindlers, and fools from this chapter to build a nation, He can use you.
This is why Paul says: But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. -2 Corinthians 4:7
It’s not about you, or your competence, or your personal toolkit. To be a man of God requires you to do the hardest thing possible: give up your self-sufficiency and admit you’re a mess. Then, you’ll start to resemble these guys. God’s selection of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not based on their IQ but on one thing and one thing only: their faith.
Which leads us to point #3:
3. God’s promise is not dependent on our performance, but our faith.
"Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." Gen. 15:6
After such a devastating start in Chapter 1, what could Adam and Eve do? What could the people do to restore what was lost?
The answer: believe. Look at the title of the lesson today: What sin changed in the Garden, faith overcomes for the rest of The Story. In spite of their failures, God’s people respond in faith. It turns out the people of the Old Testament were saved the same way you and I are: by faith.
He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. -Romans 4:20-21
The key verse of the chapter is: "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." -Genesis:15:6
Therein lies the Gospel itself. Abraham had faith in God, and God deposited righteousness into Abraham’s account. It was unearned—it was a gift. God took something that belonged only to Jesus—righteousness—and gave it to Abraham as his own.
The signs and the clues of God’s grand plan of forgiveness and redemption are woven throughout chapter two…which brings us to our weekly Equipping Point.
Today’s Equipping Point - No Outsourcing
And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. -Ephesians 1:13-14
No outsourcing.
God could have easily written a message in the stars and outsourced His revelation to the Milky Way galaxy. But He said, “I will…” He inspired and laughed with Abraham. He personally wrestled with Jacob. And now He personally resides in every believer by depositing His essence into each of us:
Final Thoughts and Implications
A. As fallen people, we do not seek God until He seeks us first. When He does seek me, I should respond by faith.
B. Faith is always based on the Word (promise) of God or a revelation about His character. The believer is to trust God to be who He says He is and to do what He says He will do.
C. Faith is believing and obeying God as He reveals Himself and His plan. Obedience is an outward expression of an inward faith.
D. Following God takes my life in a different direction.
E. Nothing we do merits God’s favor. His grace seems perplexing because we do nothing to earn it.
F. Faith in God is the only requirement for righteousness and salvation. Faith is a sinner’s only hope for salvation.
G. Our relationship with God does not necessarily get easier over time. It will continue to be tested.
H. God can be trusted with our most precious “possessions.”
PRAYER OF COMMITMENT
God, thank You for the older people You have placed in our lives who have been a model of faith for us. You call each of us, at various times, to follow You in ways that are risky and demand faith. We confess that we have missed opportunities in the past to step out in faith. When You call, help us to sense where You might be leading and to take a bold step of faith and follow You with confidence. We pray for Your strength. Amen
See you on Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
