40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 30

Episode Date: November 11, 2015

The birth of Isaac, the resurrection of Lazarus and the life of Abraham as the history of Israel. 

Thank you. somebody to help us manage it, to get it out on time, and to keep the quality high. If these resources have been helpful to you, please consider going to Christ Hold Fast and clicking on the support page. There you can make a one-time donation or a reoccurring donation of any size. This will help us meet our goals of being able to bring someone on staff. Everyone at Christ Hold Fast would greatly appreciate your support. Enjoy the show. welcome back to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament uh man i i've completely cashed in on uh i'm trying to remember what number episode these things are but it's the

it's the latest one and uh brandon is out of town as we're recording this and not able to uh to record so uh he's with us he's with us in spirit i'm pretty sure he is he is with us in spirit but i yeah so obviously i am joined though by chad bird as usual here i am ready to go i've been waiting for the day when uh when chad's out of town and me and brandon decide to just go with it would be a totally different feel yeah we should do that we should do that so chad we're starting a new chapter this uh this time we are turning over a new leaf yeah we're unrolling the scroll just a little bit more uh we we've actually completed chapter 20 so chapter 21 of genesis awaits it's calling our name well answer that door all right well let's do it you know we've

actually been waiting a long time for this chapter uh longer than anybody listening to this program realizes we've been waiting 25 years a quarter of a century for this chapter because that's how long abraham and sarah have been waiting uh we are uh we're at the point finally after 25 years of waiting for this son to be born to abraham and to sarah so we finally have a birthday to celebrate i guess we've celebrated ishmael's birthday but that one doesn't count as much as the birthday of Mr. Laughter himself, Isaac. So that's where we are. Got a lot to talk about here. There's really kind of three different things that go on in this chapter. You got the birth of Isaac, then you have this clash of wills between Sarah and Hagar,

and Hagar and Ishmael end up getting sent off into the wilderness. That's the second story in this chapter. And then we have one third story in the closing verses where Abimelech, if you remember him, he comes back into the story, and we have a little conflict between him and our friend Abraham. But first of all, let's get to this first story. It's the first seven verses of chapter 21. I'm going to read a couple of verses, and I want you just to kind of listen to something that seems to come up several times here genesis 21 then the lord took note of sarah as he had said and the lord did for sarah as he had promised so sarah conceived and bore a son to abraham in his old age at the appointed time of which god had spoken to him so three times in those two

verses, we hear more or less an affirmation that finally God has made good on the promise of his word. It said that the Lord took note of Sarah as he had said, and he did for Sarah as he had promised. And it happened at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. So it's like Moses can't say enough about the fulfillment. I mean, this is, and the reason he does it is because this is against all human expectations. It's against the laws of nature. It's against doubt and unbelief. Against all of that, the promises of God finally come to pass. And as we talk very often on this program, really what God has been doing for the last quarter of a century is undoing Abraham and Sarah. He is reducing them down to nothing. I mean,

he is waiting so long that it is laughable, incredibly laughable that a child would be born to this couple. Because remember, Abraham is 100. He's a century old, and Sarah is right behind him at 90. There's no way, absolutely no way that this couple is going to have a child. It goes against everything we know, everything we believe, everything we know about the body and medicine everything there's no way this can happen so it really god has brought us to the point to where the only way this is going to transpire is by a miracle is by god himself bringing this to pass so it really is uh it's almost like this is a sort of good friday a death has taken place and so he's god has reduced them down to nothing to death in order

that now finally they can have an easter in which life springs up out of death god works through his creative word to bring to pass that uh that which didn't exist before you know that's really uh That's really, Dan, if you think about what Paul's talking about in Romans chapter 4 when he discusses Abraham, that's kind of the point that he's making there. So Romans chapter 4, verses 16 through 17, he gets to talking about how the promise is by faith and by grace, and he's talking about Abraham in this section.

He says, in hope, against hope, he believed, you know, that he might be the father of many, many nations. And then listen to this verse. And without becoming weak in faith, Abraham contemplated his own body, now as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. So out of death, God brings forth life. out of the deadness of sarah's womb out of the deadness of abraham's body comes forth this finally this uh this promise seed in fact luther luther has this great uh great line in his commentary on genesis he says what thus far has been an object of hope and what he has believed this is now a reality and if i may express it in this way the promise has now been

made flesh yeah yeah the good good and dead is the way that uh is the kind of thing that god likes to work with no that that's that's his uh that's the perfect material for god he's killing to make a life he's reducing to nothing in order that from that nothing he might bring forth everything uh it's that's so what he does in the opening chapter of genesis is the things same thing that he continues to do this is this is simply the way that god works you trace it all the way from the opening chapter of the bible all the way through the lives of the patriarchs the life of israel the birth of the messiah all the way to to revelation this is the way god works he creates ex nihilo he creates out of out of nothing and the reason he does that is because

that's the only way that he can work with us you know if if we had something to cling on to something to hold on to, if we had something instead of no thing, then we're always going to be clinging to that one thing that we have. Because we would think that because of that, we have what we have. Because of this thing that we've done, because of this integrity or righteousness that we ourselves possess, because this life that we ourselves have somehow earned, because of that, we receive the promises of God. Because of that, God works through us to do what to do what he does. But that's not the way that God works. Just like he didn't make the heavens and the earth out of some kind of pre-existent material, so he doesn't bring our created life,

our created faith into existence out of some kind of pre-existing material. He always works out of nothing. So he takes, before we come to faith, we're dead. We're nothing. I mean, there is no kind of spark of faith or spark of the possibility of faith within us which the spirit sort of fans into flame and creates a real faith out of that no god looks within us and he sees within us the same thing that he saw before creation there's nothing there so god speaks and he makes he makes uh faith in us yeah this is uh this is why jesus when he You hear all the time, you hear people talk about, you know, mustard seed of faith and all this kind of stuff. And which is interesting because it is, Jesus says, if you have the faith of a mustard seed,

you can say to this mountain, be uprooted and cast into the sea. Which is not Jesus trying to promote mountain moving. uh what he's saying is quite literally you don't even have that much faith in and of yourself you don't have the smallest seeds worth of faith it doesn't exist because i don't know about you i haven't seen a lot of people throwing mountains into the sea uh and so this the whole thing is apart from me you've got nothing i mean i mean even if you had the smallest amount you would be doing miraculous things but you don't yeah it's it's and it's got to be that way because otherwise we live with a lie we live with this idea that we do have

something right we think that apart from christ we have something we've got to have something but we don't you've got sin that's what you've got you've got sin yeah like luther says what do we contribute to our our our salvation sin and resistance sin and resistance that's what contribute to our to our salvation yeah i mean if you put together all of the images of people apart from christ apart from faith it's it's this weird metaphor you know we are uh by nature children of wrath we are dead in our trespasses and sins by nature enemies of enemies of god so it's kind of this weird dead person who's also actively resisting life if you can imagine that that's that's who that's who we are apart from christ and so god must by his by his word create

faith in us and transform us from enemies into friends it's all he's doing we're all like lazarus in the tomb dead and unable to get out of it until jesus says lazarus come forth chad come forth dan come forth whatever your name is come forth in that very word is the the life-giving power of god that creates what it says because that's what it's what god does god is god is the creator and he creates by speaking yeah he created faith in abraham and sarah the same way yeah i was i just preached on uh lazarus recently and uh it's interesting when they when they get to the the tomb he's in a he's in a cave with a rock over the front now there's not like a back way out of this cave yeah and they got like a rock over the front so this you are this is a dead guy

in a place that there's no escape from he's been in there for four days and when jesus gets there and tells him to roll away the stone and they say oh there'll be there'll be an odor there's gonna it's gonna stink it's gonna reek in there and jesus is like perfect it's just what i want i want him dead and stinking yeah perfect and like rolls that thing away and walks in there and like just walks right into that stench into like all the filth that is us the decaying corpse that we are he just breathes it all in it says come forth and like that's that's what he does and if i remember correctly from uh from the story jesus delayed coming yeah intentionally yeah so yeah so it would be still yeah yeah god god has this this frustrating habit of delaying

i mean we're 25 years with abraham and sarah however long it took for for lazarus to die so he uh he delays the fulfillment of his promise in order that he might reduce us to this lazarus like state because that's that's the kind of material that he works with yeah he delays and coming so that lazarus will die but when he when he when he shows up he weeps and he says that this the reason he tarried was that the glory of god would be shown and this is an interesting thing that that first of all that that god does wait uh he weeps and waits so it's not it's he hates death he he hates it and it's a painful thing he is he is moved by the the situation that we find ourselves in where we're where we're suffering then we die and this kind of stuff this

is not this is not something that god thinks is good and it's something that this is this breaks the heart of god yet he does this this crazy thing that we're in the midst of death and decay and stench is where he says the glory of god is most manifest it's it's in the midst of all those things that the glory of god is most clearly seen and we see that most clearly than at the cross in the midst of you know the cross is a horrifying event i mean these crosses they don't give you like some shiny new cross they just cut down from some nice timber they've reused these things you You carry this splintered cross up a hill with the blood and urine of a hundred guys before you on it, and they nail you to it naked, and all the sins of the world place on it.

It's this horrifying, crude event, but yet at the same time is the place where the glory of God is most clearly seen. And this is the same with Lazarus in a tomb full of the stench of rotting flesh. he says this is where the glory of god will be be manifest and that's that's the backwards thinking of god that he creates uh life out of death is where is where we see his glory most clearly this is this is where he's most glorified and in the in the word of resurrection yeah that runs so contrary to uh to what we expect to what we often hear in fact i i have conversations on a pretty regular basis with with people about uh for instance why we were created and a lot of times people will say well we were created for the glory of god uh and i will and i will agree with that

but the problem is how do we understand the glory of god because it's not as if god created us in order that he might just kind of boast in himself hey look what i did the glory of god is manifested in his acts of mercy toward us which were hidden under suffering and shame god god god did not we were not created uh because god was somehow his glory did not it was deficient somehow yeah he needed a few more trophies on his wall that's not it that's not it he did that and he's not and he's not a glory hound either he's not he didn't say like how can i how can i get the most glory for myself this is what i'll do uh that's not the goal there because that's my goal that's why that's why that's the motivation i have for everything uh that and i don't think

god is very much like me and so i don't i don't think he's like how can i best get all the accolades i can because that's that's very much like we are instead like it gets flipped and god creates children to receive gifts from his fatherly hand they fall they rebel they hate him and then he goes and he suffers on their behalf to bring them back to him be out of out of mercy and love for this creation and in that this right here will that that will that will cause you to say well that's a glorious god right there if the motivation behind all that god does is love for his for his creation well that's very different than me and that and that then ultimately glorifies god for god like this is this is this is me then i can say truly

well that's a glorious god like that's that's so it's other than me that's so not that's so not like me. Yeah, what we think of as glory and the way that God is glorious could not be more opposed. When we seek glory, we always are moving upward. We're climbing upward in a way that benefits ourselves. But God is always going down. Luther says in his commentary on the Magnificat that God cannot look above because there's no one above him. Neither can he look to either side because there's no one who's equal with him. So God always looks down. And the farther one is from him, the more clearly does he see him. So the way that God manifests his glory is by coming down, by coming down to us in our rottenness, in our death, in our stinking nature, and there he

manifests his glory precisely in showing love. That's how God shows his glory. He is glorified, he shows glory by giving, by bestowing love upon the undeserving, by saving us in a glorious way, which is to say in a loving and a merciful way he is glorified in his humility which is contrary everything we think about yeah yeah thou art to god who hidest thyself as luther often refers to that verse from isaiah god always hides himself he's always doing things and what seems to us is an ungodlike or even anti-godlike way why in order that we might learn to live by faith because we have to trust that what God speaks, what God says he's doing in a glorious way is in fact him doing it in a glorious way, even though it appears to us to be full of death and ugliness and

simplicity and suffering. But that's the way God works. Just like the birth of Isaac is a glorious birth, because it's God alone who does it, and he does it through this elderly couple, 190 years old but the birth of isaac is a glorious birth because it reveals god's mercy and his love in this most unexpected way toward toward this couple yeah and they laugh and i love that you know we've seen them laugh abraham laughed when god told him that sarah was going to give birth to a child sarah laughed when god visited them and told told abraham that sarah was going to have a child that next year. And those are both almost laughs of incredulity. They couldn't believe it. They were laughs of joy, but incredulity as well. But here we have Sarah saying, God has made

laughter for me, and everyone who hears will laugh with me. And that's why he's named Isaac, Yitzhak, because Yitzhak is to laugh. He really is the child of laughter. This is a huge occasion for simply expressing joy by laughing at the the sheer surprising nature of god's way of bringing life out of a out of a dead womb so isaac is sort of a he is an embodiment of the grace of god hilarity yeah he's hilarious you know everything that isaac is should not have been there's no way that isaac should have been born but he's born because of the promise of a of a gracious god who brings life out of death and so he embodies the the grace of our father and that reminds me uh in the in the last episode i i kind of wrapped things up by talking about how i wanted to uh

to discuss how abraham was was himself sort of a prophetic embodiment of of the life of israel i I think this is a great story to illustrate that. Years ago, I studied at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. And when I was there, I studied with rabbis. We studied a lot of the early Jewish writings and learned a lot of really interesting things. One of those was a saying by the rabbis that the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the sons. And by that, they meant that what happened to the patriarchs was a sign or kind of a prophecy of what was going to happen later on to the sons. And by that, they meant Israel.

So the life of Abraham parallels the life of Israel. So that as we've been going through these chapters, beginning with Genesis 12 and on through the rest of the story, there's amazing parallels between what happens to Abraham and what's going to happen later on to the nation of Israel. Just think about it. Abraham is promised a son, a seed, and Israel is promised a son, a seed, the Messiah. But both Abraham and Israel, they have this long period of wait. Abraham has to wait 25 years of his life before finally this promised seed is born. And Israel has to wait for centuries before the promised messianic seed is born.

We talked back in Genesis 12 about how Abraham had his exodus down into Egypt, got in trouble with Pharaoh. pharaoh got plagued and then abraham comes out of egypt with all these egyptian goods that's the same thing that happens later to israel they go into exodus in egypt get in trouble with pharaoh god plagues pharaoh they come out of there enriched by all of the uh the the riches of riches of of egypt and then you got parallels between abraham and and israel as well because their sins that we've talked about. The sins of Abraham with Pharaoh, the sins of him with Abimelech,

and then you look at the history of Israel and it's the same kind of thing. They're always acting contrary to God's words and promises and getting themselves into trouble. So if you look at the life of Abraham, it is sort of everything that happens to him is itself, his life is like a prophecy of what is later to happen to Israel.

and as we'll talk about when we get to the next chapter chapter 22 it finally comes to its uh its pinnacle in the sacrifice of the promised seed so abraham and israel wait all these years for the promised seed to be born and then when he's born he's taken to the mountain to be sacrificed and yet he lives isaac is spared and christ is sacrificed but uh but resurrected so there's a there's kind of a a rich prophecy that's been interwoven in the in the life of abraham so that what we see him doing is a prophecy of what is uh what is to come yeah yeah that's awesome let's go on and talk about uh talk about the kind of the next thing that happens here i think we yeah we've got plenty of time all right so uh we have isaac being born

sarah's laughing abraham's laughing everybody's laughing except uh there comes a time when some some laughter takes place that sarah is not too pleased about and this is beginning here in verse 8 of uh genesis 21 so it says that isaac grew and was weaned and abraham makes this great feast, have a party on the day that Isaac is weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, mocking. Now, the Hebrew word for mocking is actually a form of the root for laughter. So we might, I guess in English, you might say he was making fun of him, or he was laughing at him. It's the same root that we've seen all along in connection with Isaac. So he's, I guess he's in some way playing upon his name, but in a negative way.

You remember that Ishmael was, of course, the first son of Abraham born to Hagar. When they kind of made this deal, they got tired of waiting for God to fulfill his promise. And so they said, hey, why don't we just let Abraham go into Hagar's bedroom and together they'll make a baby. and they did. And Ishmael is born. So Ishmael is about, well, I don't know how much older he is than Isaac, quite a few years. And here he is mocking Isaac. And earlier we saw how when Hagar conceived Ishmael, that she began to look down on Sarah. So you got mother and son kind of both having this haughtiness about them ishmael because he's the firstborn son hagar because she was able as a slave to get pregnant with her master and to bear a child

even though her mistress sarah was was unable to so whatever's going on anyway it's creating conflict because sarah is uh is not happy with uh with hagar or with ishmael so she says to abraham drive out this maid and her son for the son of this maid shall not be in error with my son isaac now you remember that this is the first time that uh that sarah got rid of hagar and the first time that it happened abraham really didn't seem to be that upset about it but this time it says the matter distressed abraham greatly because of his son so you got you got this conflict brewing you got sarah who's against hagar and ishmael and now you got sarah kind of going after abraham and abraham's caught in the middle because well ishmael is his son you

He loves his son, and so he doesn't want to get rid of his son, but also at the same time, he's got Sarah after him. So I have no envy whatsoever for Abraham at this point. He's the last person that I would want to be in this situation. This is like a massive conflict in your very, very old age. And it's like, man, I'm too tired. I'm too tired to deal with this drama. Dude, I got women fighting.

i got okay i got illegitimate kids i'm 100 and something years old yeah it's just it's just too much man yeah most men i i think it's pretty probably safe to assume that most men when they're 100 years old do not have two women fighting over them just doesn't happen but you know i i was thinking this morning that uh abraham the more the story goes on almost the more pitiful abraham becomes and i mean that in the sense of that i'm full of pity for him because he he gets himself or he's put into these situations that nobody would want to be in you know nobody wants the kind of drama that he's facing right now and yet here he is and certainly no one is going to want what he has to face in the next chapter when uh god tells him to go

sacrifice his only son his promised son isaac but that's where he is and thankfully thankfully uh god intervenes and uh in the midst of abraham's distress god says don't be distressed because of the boy and your maid whatever whatever sarah tells you listen to her because through isaac your descendants shall be named and then he goes on and he says the son of the maid talking about ishmael the son of the maid i will make a nation also because he is your descendant so more or less god is telling hey whatever sarah said to do do it because i'm going to take care of

this first of all it's it's not through ishmael it's through isaac that your descendants are going to be named it's through isaac that the promised seed is going to come and by the way i'm also going to bless ishmael in a different way but i'm going to bless him because he is in fact your son so what does abraham do now this is this is fascinating to me this is verse 14 of chapter 21 it says abraham rose early in the morning and he took bread and a skin of water and he gave them to Hagar. Now listen to this.

I'm reading now from Genesis chapter 22. After God tells Abraham to take his son, his only son whom he loves, and to sacrifice him, it says, verse 3 of chapter 22, So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey. So in both cases,

you have a divine word coming to Abraham to tell him more or less he's about to lose his son in this case it's Ishmael in chapter 22 it's going to be Isaac but in both cases this is a this is a terrible trial for Abraham that's why I said earlier that he's a he becomes really this pitiful character one for whom we're full of pity because in both cases he is faced with the dilemma of losing his his son his sons in his old age but in both cases he rises early in the morning he gets up and he actually does what uh does what god tells him to do so he takes uh food he takes water he gives him to hagar and gives her the boy and he sent her away so she uh she leaves and she wanders in the wilderness

of Beersheba. Now, what's going to happen to Hagar and to her son? Now, in the account that follows here, it's pretty interesting. If any of you have Luther's commentary on Genesis, you ought to read this, because he takes this occasion to go on a pretty extensive commentary, as Luther is wont to do, about how this story illustrates for us the way in which God uses the law and the gospel now you wouldn't expect that i mean what does the story of hagar and ishmael wandering in the desert have to do with law and gospel but i'll give you a thumbnail sketch of really what luther's talking about and i think he's i think he's spot on here i mentioned earlier that you've got uh you've got hagar and you've got ishmael her son and they're both they both

have this sense of entitlement i mean hagar goes from being just kind of a no-name slave to being the mistress the co-wife or concubine or whatever she is to to abraham and whereas abraham's wife sarah is unable to conceive she conceives so she sees herself she begins to look down upon sarah so she sees that because of the child that she has because of her connection with abraham all of a sudden she is beginning to be full of full of pride because of what she has and then you have ishmael he begins to mock isaac even though isaac is the promised son because ishmael sees himself he's the firstborn he should be like uh cain back in in genesis chapter four who got angry at abel so he's full of this kind of firstborn pride in himself so they both

Both are identifying who they are on the basis of what they have, of their station, of their entitlement. So what does God do? He sends them out into the wilderness so that in the wilderness, he might preach the law to them, if you will. He brings them to the point to where they give up. They think that they're about to die. What happens as the story goes on is that the water in the skin, their canteen dries out, and Hagar is so distraught that she doesn't even stay with her son. She puts him down under one of the bushes, and she goes a little ways off, and she says, don't let me see the boy die. She set off the cinnamon.

She lifted up her voice, and she wept. So it's a terrible scene. They're out in the wilderness. They're out of water. she puts her son under a bush basically to die and she walks away and sits there weeping and crying so they're really both at the point of of hopelessness and despair and death and as luther points out that and as we talked about earlier earlier in the uh uh in the hour that's that's exactly where god wants him to be because it's exactly at that point

that god appears god hears ishmael crying and the angel of god calls to hagar from heaven and says basically that that god has god has heard the voice of the boy where he is he tells her to lift him up to hold him by the hand he's going to make a great nation out of him and he opens hagar's eyes and she sees this well of water and she goes and fills up the canteen with water and she gives him and she gives him a drink now this is this is a fantastic illustration the way that god god works you know he's he's he's taking these these people who have this sense of entitlement who are filled full of pride and he puts them in a situation in which they realize that they have no life within themselves they see themselves on the point

of death and it's precisely at that point when god graciously appears to them opens their eyes speaks words of life to them and actually gives them water that brings them back to hope and to and to life once more yeah god god is uh god will bust your kneecaps to show you mercy this is the way he is i mean as soon as you think you've got a leg to stand on he he he does uh he may he bust that sucker out uh and i've had a few i've had a few kneecaps busted yeah yeah i've been like this leg feels pretty good this is it's pretty good i think i can stand on this and uh sure enough i end up flat on my back bleeding out uh but this is this is what god god does in order that he might show you mercy that he might show you just uh just how dependent

you are self-dependence is the well self-dependence is the is the enemy of grace and so uh he gets rid of all that to give you what you really need and uh that's what he does here he he gives you the law and and he he crushes you with it and and then he comes in and opens your eyes to to the life to the life-giving gift that he has provided for you and i love the fact that uh in a lot of these old testament stories this gift comes via water you know you you have it here there's this well that he opens her eyes to see this well and she has water and they're in that water she has life you think of the israelites you know they're out in the wilderness they're uh they're they're dying of thirst and so god tells moses hey strike this rock and out of this rock flows this ocean of

water for the israelites they're uh they're in the wilderness and uh i mean these are these are fantastic stories that really flesh out for us the way that god still works because that is the way that god still works you know he he finds us in the midst of midst of death and he says hey i i've got some water and through this water i'm going to give you life because he it's what he does in baptism he finds us dead and he enlivens us to the water of baptism yeah he's all about that ordinary boring stuff that you need that i mean he is a god that that provides you with what you need and it's usually not flashy even though it's miraculous i mean even even mana is uh well it's like an incredibly miraculous thing i mean it's literally raining bread

yeah pretty miraculous it's also very boring because they get sick of it pretty quick and they're like i don't know yeah it's just bread it's not like t-bones were flying out of the sky i don't know god i mean it's all right i guess yeah like yeah it's but this is what he's using to save you and and we do the same thing i mean we want we want something something super flashy but he gives us something boring and miraculous at the same time he's like well uh here's water and here's bread and wine it's not it's not anything special but it is miraculous yeah and it's that's fits uh that's what the way with the way that god always works he he we talked about earlier he hides his glory he hides his his his miraculous glory beneath

these common simplistic ordinary things just like he hid himself beneath the the common flesh and blood of of christ he's he's manifesting his glory in hidden ways in simple ways just like he does here with the water to hagar and ishmael and we are out of time that's it that is it so we will uh we will be continuing uh what do we have next what do we have next chad yeah we got well we've got this uh this story between where abimelech if you remember him he's the one who who took abraham's wife sarah the second time we have a little confrontation between them which we'll probably go through pretty quickly but then we are really coming to the chapter of chapters to genesis chapter 22 when abraham is told to sacrifice isaac a lot of good stuff there

So, back to our boy Abimelech, and we get Isaac. That's going to sound good. All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us, and we will catch you guys next time. Thank you for watching.