rulfindresearch1015: 2020

CHAPTER TWO:

ABRAHAM,

ISAAC, JACOB,

AND JOSEPH

2-2

Covenant:

God’s Initiative

God’s Promises

Our Response

COVENANT

“On that day, Yahweh cut covenant

with Abram . . .” Genesis 15:18

Ground Rules

Before we can go any further with the stor

y of Abram, we have to consider a major

Biblical theme: the concept of Covenant. Already in the story of Noah, we saw God

entering into a covenant with His creation.

How does that work? How does the Almighty

God obligate Himself to sinful people? What role do the people have to play?

First of all, whenever we see the concept of

covenant in Scriptur

e, it is clear that

God is

taking the initiative.

You never get a prophet going to God and saying, “Let’s make a

deal!” There’s never a king of Israel that says, “Hey! I’ve got a good idea! Let’s cut a

covenant with the Almighty!” God comes to His creatures in grace.

The second thing we consistently s

ee with covenants is that they include

the

promises of God.

When God comes to cut covenant

, He always has promises on His

lips. God took the initiative; He chose No

ah. And God made promises: “I will save

you and your family.”

And Noah was

given a response

. We already looked at how Noah couldn’t take

credit for the Ark, and yet, without his ob

edient response, Noah

would have been all

wet. The response can’t elicit God’s init

iative or God’s promises, but a lack of

response can refuse the covenant promises and put you outside of the blessings of

God.

* * *

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Here are three common misconceptions about the concept of Covenant. How would you

respond to these? What Bi

ble passages might you use?

Find some ideas on the next page

You get into a covenant with God by your own good works.

You get in by grace, but you

have to stay in by works.

You get in by grace, you stay in by grace, and there is no response required

The Story So Far

In the beginning, God created.

He is the source of light and lif

e. And He created everything to

be Very Good.

Adam and Eve had the opportunity to worship God with obedience, but turned against God’s

command. The resulting punishment

included exile from Paradise and the introduction of suffering

and death into God’s perfect world. But following quickly on the heels of Sin and Judgment, there

was Grace: a Savior was promised, Who would be the Offspring of Woman and would crush the

head of the Serpent.

That Tri-cycle continued with Cain murdering

Abel, being exiled but prot

ected; the earth turning

evil, the Flood, and Noah; the building of Babel, confusion of languages and choosing of one nation

to bless the scattered nations of the world.

Throughout this early history of humanity we see a God who is compassionate, just, and above all,

involved with His creation. He commands in or

der to bless and tempers judgment with mercy.

Already we see this creating God as a God of promise and salvation, with the hope of more to come.

2-3

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

There have been some common misunderstandings about how covenant works in the

Bible. Here are the top three and some

ideas on how you might respond to them.

1) You get into a covenant with God by your own good works

Somewhere in your growth as a Christian, yo

u probably picked up on these verses from

Ephesians: “For

by grace

you have been saved

through faith

. And this is

not your own doing

; it is

the

gift of God

not a result of works

, so that no one may boast.” This

Faith Alone

principle

shines through the story of Abram, where we

are told: “And [Abram] believed the LORD,

and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

2) You get in by grace,

you stay in by works.

Of course we get in by grace, but if we don’

t live up to God’s standards, if we don’t hold

up our end of the bargain, He can revoke His

covenant, so it is in some sense up to us,

right? Not according to the Bible. Hebrews calls Jesus both the author and the perfector of

our faith. Because we cannot by our own reason

or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come

to Him, the Holy Spirit both

calls

us to faith and keeps us in

faith. Salvation is by

Grace

Alone

from first to last:

“So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has

mercy.”

3) Get in by grace, stay in by grac

e, and there is no response required.

So I’m in by grace and the Holy Spirit gets cr

edit for keeping me in

faith—so I’ll just do

whatever I want, right? Not according to the Bible.

“Are we to continue in sin that grace may

abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”

We are given a response. And not responding can eventually put you outside of the

means of grace. And where there is no grace,

you are left with si

n and judgment. Noah

don’t build the Ark, Noah don’t float.

“For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”

* * *

Eph 2:8-9

Hebrews 12:2

Genesis 15:6

Romans 9:16

ames 2:26

Romans 6:1-2

Background Check

If you were a royal in the An

cient Near East and you wanted to

cut a covenant with someone else,

you would meet at a designated time and place.

Then you would take an animal or animals and cut

them in two, separating the halves to make a kind of aisle. Then you would read the terms of the

covenant and walk down that grisly path

way. Basically, you would be saying, “

If I break this covenant,

may I be like those animals!

”

When Yahweh comes to make prom

ises and cut covenant with Abram, it’s not a two-way street. In

Genesis 15, Yahweh passes through

the halved animals to Abram, Yahweh puts Himself on the line,

Yahweh says, “Rather than break this covenant, I would become like these animals.”

And when the descendents of Abraham persist in their unbelief, when the promise of blessing to all

nations is in jeopardy, when the covenant seems do

omed to fail, what does

Yahweh do? What does

He do but wrap Himself in human flesh, take up

the sins of the whole world, stretch out His arms

on an instrument of execution, and

become like those animals

The cross is the price of the covenant with Abraham, through whom all the nations of the earth

because of the cross

become blessed. It’s a price Yahweh was willing to pay ... for you.

OT Interview

For more on how covenants were made and kept (or broken) in the Ancient Near East, see

the interview with Dr. Reed Lessing on page ???

2-4

Family

Tree

“Isaac”

means,

“laughter.”

ABRAHAM

Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah and Isaac

Yahweh’s covenant promises to Abra

m were three-fold. They included

Land,

Offspring, and the Blessing of the Nations.

Abraham received these promises by faith,

yet all of these promises were jeopardized by

the fact that Abram and Sarai in their old age

had no children. Abram asks God how His prom

ises could be fulfilled if a distant relative

was Abram’s heir apparent. Go

d clarifies his promise: a child from your own body will be

your heir.

So it happens that, ten years after Abram abandoned his homeland of Ur at God’s

command, Sarai,

who has been barren her entire life, come

s up with a good idea to help God

out. She suggests that Abram take her handmaiden, Hagar, and have a child with her

Now, at a time when the child of a slave girl

could be taken and placed on the lap of her

mistress and adopted as hers, this was not

that unusual of a suggestion. But it

was

an attempt

to take their future into their own hands. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael

, Abram’s first-born.

But Yahweh makes His promise even more ex

plicit: Sarai will have a son that you will

name Isaac. Because Ishmael is your son, he

, too, will have many children and become the

father of a great nation

, but the covenant will be established through Isaac.

Abraham is

too old, Sarah has always been barren, and when they are no longer able to do anything

for themselves, God steps in and fulfills His

promises. The message is clear: God is the

initiator, God is the actor, God does things that can’t be done, and his people can only sit

by and laugh for joy.

* * *

The Seal of the Covenant: Circumcision

When Ishmael was seven and not long before Isaac was born, God commanded

Abraham to circumcise every male in his household

, and Abraham obeyed.

This response to

God’s promises was to be a seal and physical

sign of the covenant.

For Abraham, it was a

step of faith.

Later in Genesis, we read of two of Abraha

m’s grandsons who avenge

d the rape of their

sister by tricking an entire city. They said

that their women could inter-marry with these

foreign men, but only if the men were circumcised.

The wealth of the tribes of Israel was so

appealing, that the entire city went along with

the idea. Three days later, while they were still

in pain, all of the men of the city were killed by just two Israelites.

For Abraham as a wealthy nomad in foreign territory to circumcise all of his watchmen,

shepherds, security guards and football players

at the same time was a concrete sign of his

trust in God’s promises, power, and protection.

* * *

Hagar

Abraham Sarah

Ishmael Isaac

Genesis 34

2-5

ISAAC

The Sacrifice of Isaac

It just doesn’t make sense. After all Go

d had done for Abraha

m, after all God had

promised

Abraham, God tells him to take Isaac, this miracle child of promise, and sacrifice

him on a mountain designated by God

. How could this be? What’s going on?

Abraham had faith in God’s explicit promise that Isaac would be his heir. Faith in the

promise of God allowed him to go forward, ev

en when the command seemed to contradict

the promise. The book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham figured God could raise the dead

in order to fulfill his promise. So Abraham

took what he knew about God and His promises

and clung to that when God’s

command didn’t make sense.

“Now I

know

that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son,

from me,” Yahweh says to

Abraham. The Hebrew verb

yadah

, to know, here and elsewhere

carries the weight not only of head knowledge, but of experience. Now I have seen it in

action, I have the evidence, I have lived through the ordeal, now I

know

. Yahweh—and

Abraham—now have evidence of faith that trusts in God above all things. And God

provides the sacrifice, offers the way out,

substitutes a lamb for the life of a son.

* * *

A Wife for Isaac

When Sarah dies, Abraham purchases a tomb

—the only piece of the Promised Land he

will ever own in his lifetime

—and then he sets about getting

a wife for his son. He doesn’t

want Isaac to marry into the Canaanite cult

ure and be assimilated, so Abraham sends a

servant back to where his extended family is

living. Laban is the grandson of Abraham’s

brother, and Laban has a sister, Rebekah.

She agrees to go back

with Abraham’s servant to

become Isaac’s wife

, and the mother of Essau and Jacob.

Later, when her favorite son Jacob gets in trouble at home, Rebekah sends him back to

her family in NW Mesopotamia at Haran in Padan Arram (which is why Jacob can be called

wandering Aramean

), where he will end up marrying

two

daughters

of his Uncle Laban.

Type Alert

Typology

is an inner continuity of Scripture, where th

emes, events, and people are read in light of

each other. Like any good book or movie, the Bi

ble picks up on images and themes and intertwines

them, relating one set of events to another.

In Colossians 2, we read that

the Old Testament institutions are like a shadow, hinting at the real

body, Who is Christ. Jesus is

the fulfillment of the Scriptures, therefore we see Christ

in, with, and

under

Old Testament people and events.

The Sacrifice of Isaac is a good example. Here, a son of promise carries the wood of his sacrifice

on his back up the mountain of God and God Himself provides the offering. That mountain,

Moriah, is the place where the temple would later be built, in the shadow of which the Son of

Promise would carry a wooden cross on His back, and Himself be the Lamb provided for sacrifice.

Isaac is a

type

of Christ. The sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22

prefigures

the events of the cross.

It’s not that Isaac stands for Jesus, but th

at Jesus is like Isaac, only better. After a three-day

journey, Isaac is

figuratively

brought back from the dead. After three days, Jesus is

literally

raised to

life. The basic themes of God’s salvation are present throughout the history of His people. They are

brought to their

fulfillment

in the person of Jesus and

consummated

finally when He comes again.

***

Gen 22:1-19

Gen 24

2-6

Family

Tree

Isaac Rebekah

Essau and Jacob

JACOB

Great Expectations

“You’re pulling my leg!” In Hebrew, the idiom is

much the same, only its my heel, not my leg. So when

the younger twin comes out pulling his brother’s leg,

clasping his heel, he is appropriately called, “Jacob—

Heel-puller—Deceiver.” And Jacob lives up to his

name.

First, he obtains the birthright blessing from his

older brother, Essau, at the rock bottom price of a

bowl of soup.

Then, with help from his plotting

mother

, he tricks his old father into giving him the blessing of the first-born.

In order to escape the murderous rage of his hunter brother, Jacob gets out of Dodge.

He is homeless, penny-less, on the lamb, and headed for a country without an extradition

treaty with Canaan, off to some long-lost relations he’s never met.

At this low-point in Jacob’s life, Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Isaac, makes

Himself also the God of Jacob. The covenant promises made to Abraham are repeated to

Jacob as he sleeps under the stars with a fiel

d stone for a pillow. We don’t climb Jacob’s

ladder; rather, the ladder comes

from heaven down to earth

and God Himself steps into

human history once again. Jacob, the Deceiver, is an unworthy sinner—an unworthy sinner

touched by the promise and grace of God. When

he awakes, he turns his pillow into an altar

and names the place “Beth-El,” the House of God.

* * *

Turn About is Fair Play?

It’s like someone hit the Undo button—the seco

nd part of Jacob’s life seems to turn the

first part upside-down. First, the Deceiver is

deceived in a feat of literary irony: Laban, his

uncle, pulls the old switch-the-ugly-sister-for-the-young-one-at-the-altar trick and gets Jacob

to work an extra seven years so

he can marry the woman of his dreams. After arriving in

Haran without a cent to his name, God blesses Jacob during his years with Laban with

What’s in a Name?

After God promised an Offspring from her body who would crush the Serpents head, Adam named

his wife

Eve

(

Mother of All the Living

Abram (

Exalted Father

) gets his name changed to

Abraham

(

Father of Many

) because God said he

would be the father of many nations.

Isaac

(

Laughter

) is a double-entendre: at first, his parents laughed at the outrageous promise of God,

but they laughed for joy when the promise was fulfilled.

Essau

(

Hairy

) and

Edom

(

Red

) are names for the same guy, father of the Edomites, while his

brother

Jacob

(

Heel-puller,

Deceiver

) lives up to his name. Jacob’s name is changed to

Israel

(

Contends

With God

) after he refuses to release the Angel of Yahweh without being blessed.

Throw in

Stands With A Fist

and

Dances With Wolves

and you could make a movie!

Gen 28:10-19

2-7

Family

Tree

enormous wealth in livestock.

When he finally does return home, the brother who had

sworn to kill him greets him with a kiss

In the mean time, this only child has been at th

e center of a family arms race. The wife

he didn’t want to marry is the one having babies, to the great dismay of wife #2. She takes a

page out of Sarah’s playbook and gives her handmaiden to Jacob as a wife. When

handmaiden #2 starts having babies, and wi

fe #1 stops, wife #1 panics and sends

her

handmaiden in as a sub. Handmaiden #1

has some kids, wife #1 has some more, and

eventually, wife #2 (Jacob’s favorite) finally has two sons of her own. All told, of Jacob’s

twelve sons, six were from Leah (the elder), two were from Rachel (his favorite), and four

were from their two household servants.

Who said being a patriarch was going to be easy?

* * *

JOSEPH

Teacher’s Pet

So Joseph was the first son of Jacob’s favori

te wife. No wonder he was shamelessly

favored by his father and so disliked by his brothers

. Remember the coat of many colors?

Of course, Joseph didn’t help any by flaunting these dreams of his—dreams in which all of

his brothers, and even his parents, bowed down to him. There was trouble brewing ...

Down to Egypt

It wasn’t really a very merciful thing to

sell Joseph into slavery instead of killing him

outright. Father Jacob, the Deceiver, is deceive

d once more when the brothers bring back a

bloody coat and claim Joseph was killed by wild beasts.

But even in all the evil things that happened to Joseph, God’s hand was mysteriously at

work. In Egypt, Joseph even

tually became Pharaoh’s right hand man because of his God-

given ability to interpret dreams

. God used Joseph to prepare

huge stockpiles of grain in the

land of Egypt

for seven years of famine,

a famine so severe that

even Joseph’s family in

Canaan had to send the brothers down to try and buy grain.

Joseph recognized

God’s hand in is life and tells hi

s brothers: “As for you, you meant

evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be

kept alive, as they are today.” So Jose

ph moves the whole fa

mily down to Egypt

. When

Jacob dies, Joseph takes him home and buries him in Abraham’s tomb

. And so Genesis

ends with God’s people living down in Egypt, st

ill owning only a burial plot in the Promised

Land. The stage is set for Exodus.

Leah

Jacob

Rachel

Zebulun

Issachar

Judah

Levi

Simeon

Reuben

Joseph

Benjamin

Zilpah

Gad

Asher

Bilhah

Dan

Naphtali

***

Gen 50:20

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rulfindresearch1015

Friday, January 10, 2020

Odin's genealogy.

scientists say Joshuah Ordering the Sun to Stand Still (1743-1744),

3,224 years ago today, scientists say

Researchers claim epic Biblical story is earliest account of annular eclipse that occurred on October 30, 1207 BCE; also helps pinpoint reigns of Pharaohs Ramesses and Merneptah

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB, AND JOSEPH