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
.
1)
You get into a covenant with God by your own good works.
2)
You get in by grace, but you
have to stay in by works.
3)
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
J
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
a
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,
or
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
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
https://swd.lcms.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/OTChapter-2-Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-and-Joseph.pdf
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
No comments:
Post a Comment