40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 37

Episode Date: January 13, 2016

Chad and Daniel discuss Issac acting just like his Father in the worst ways, the significance of altars and Esau marrying girls from the wrong side of the tracks. Check it out!

Welcome to episode 37 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Emery Price, and I am joined solo by Mr. Chad Bird. Chad, how's it going? Hey, it's going great. Glad to be back. Glad to have everybody back listening to us, too. Yeah, man. So, real quick, if you have not registered for a conference that's coming up in, oh man, six weeks,

you can do so over at ChristHoldFast.org slash conference. There's the list of speakers there. Chad's going to be there. I'm going to be there. There's going to be a ton of other people there. And you would not want to miss that in February the 18th through 20th in Orlando. That's a good time to be in Orlando. And you can go get all that information over at ChristFullFast.org.

And also, all of this stuff is listener supported. So if you enjoy this, if you would consider making a one-time donation or a reoccurring donation of any amount, you can choose. we'd appreciate it and thank you so much to those who have done that chad where are we at in genesis well we left everybody with a cliffhanger last time i don't know if they were able to stand it or not they probably had to read the story of their own just to see what happened we are uh in genesis of course we are kind of in the middle of chapter 26 and uh when we left off last time um isaac was uh living a lie he had uh you don't say yeah i know everyone is shocked that one of the patriarchs would actually resort to deception but it did happen we have it right

here in black and white so like father like son uh isaac is imitating his his dad abraham abraham at least on two occasions that we know of told the people among whom he was living that sarah was his sister at least she was his half-sister and uh in order to save his own skin and now here we have uh isaac doing the same thing with rebecca except she's not his half-sister so it's an outright uh full-fledged lie on the part of uh on the part of isaac so what's happened is they're they're living uh kind of the same area that that abraham had been living in in fact uh There's a king by the same name, Abimelech, probably the son or grandson of the king that Abraham had to deal with. And so Isaac says to himself that he's afraid the men of the place are going to kill him, take his wife because she's beautiful.

And so he says, she's my sister. And that's kind of where we left off there at verse 7 in chapter 26. So that's where we'll pick up today with what happens afterward. so this uh this deception goes on for a while uh it says after a long time finally the cat was out of the bag it says that abimelech king of the philistines looked out through a window and saw and behold isaac was caressing his wife rebecca so uh i think that pretty much took care of the deception we uh we don't know exactly how much pda was being displayed here by the patriarch

there's uh various ways you can translate this hebrew verb that in my translation is is caressing some of the translations have fondling some have playing with uh use your imagination whatever was happening it was pretty obvious to abimelech that this was not a brother who was uh having contact with a sister this was definitely husband and wife uh material that was happening in fact the hebrew verb interestingly is the same verbal root for isaac so you might say that isaac was isaacking his wife rebecca you remember that the root for isaac is laughter so some kind of playing was going on so uh this is not good the patriarch has lied he's lied a long time he's lied to save his own skin and he is found out by the local king

now what now interestingly what what makes abimelech angry is not so much that he has been lied to but rather he's concerned i find this very interesting it's very insightful into his character he's not so much upset because he's been lied to but because of what might have happened as a result of isaac's lie because here's what he says he uh so he summons isaac and he says look certainly she is your wife how then did you say she's my sister and isaac says because i said lest i die on account of her isaac mr self-preservation but here's abimelech's response which i think is insightful what is this you have done to us one of the people might easily have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us and so abimelech issues

this decree he charges all the people that whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death now don't you think that's interesting uh insight into uh into this non-israelite king and his character well that's that's exactly what i expect whenever i'm i'm caught doing something to make sure that there's gonna be laws passed to protect you afterwards yeah yeah totally that's totally what I would think would happen yeah it is interesting that yeah like

the patriarchs keep going into these people and lying to them and deceiving them yeah you would think I mean and I'm sure and apparently they think because that's why they do it that these people man

they'll straight kill me and take you I mean like they're they're bad yeah yeah they're ruthless and they don't do anything bad it's it's i mean even the fact that he like think about this i mean he says hey you know somebody might have easily hooked up with your wife but still the fact remains that like actually no one did yeah they could have but nobody did yeah yeah so i mean it's like the king seems all right and uh there's nothing in it to suggest that the population is you know you know sodom and gomorrah and this thing up you know it doesn't look that way yeah exactly uh it's almost as if

isaac is uh slanderous in his fears yeah he thinks these people are much worse than they actually are So he's got this internal fear that he projects upon the people that he's living with, and he ends up basically slandering them because he's accusing them of something, which turns out not only didn't happen, but their actions prove that they're actually praiseworthy people. Well, at least the king is. And it seems by implication, the rest of his people are as well, because they didn't hook up with with Isaac's wife. Yeah. So one more glowing example of patriarchal piety. We we see this over and over. It's one of the reasons I love the scriptures is because I can see myself in these stories. And it's a testimony to the grace of God, because he's always responding not to his people's obedience, but instead he's responding to his own gracious calling of them and granting a faith to them in view of the coming seed. So he does not treat them as their sins deserve, quite the opposite.

He responds in grace and mercy to them, despite everything they seem to do to undermine that. Yeah, I mean, their actions always say, well, you're going to die for this. But God, being the promise keeper that he is, says, I'm going to have to protect you through something that would normally get you killed. I think these stories are insightful as well because they show that the mark of the believer is not some sort of superior lifestyle of ethics and morality and all of that. Because very often, the people that come out looking like they're really good folks are not part of the covenant people. They're the outsiders. You know, we have that certainly in this story here. And we had in the earlier story when Abraham lied to the earlier Abimelech.

Abimelech, again, is the one who comes out looking like a really good, upright person. And, you know, you think about it, you even get to the story of Jonah, and it's the same there. You know, if anybody comes out looking really bad in that story, it's Jonah. He's a jerk. He's interested in himself. And it's the people of Nineveh that actually do the right thing. And all Jonah's concerned about is his fear that God is going to be God, that God is going to act graciously and mercifully toward the people of Nineveh. you know it's it's uh it's no different today you know we uh some of the best people i know

are not christians that is to say if you look at horizontal righteousness that is to say just the the way that they live i could have a you know a mormon neighbor on one side and an atheist neighbor on the other side and uh a muslim neighbor across the street and they might all at least outwardly lead a much more law abiding and and ethical and upright life than than i do um you know and certainly there uh there are there are exceptions to that as well but the point is that by looking at a person's life looking at how good they are is not determinative for where they stand with god because if any if the message of the scriptures as anything it's that he does not choose the worthy but rather he is the one who calls the

broken and the sinful and the unrighteous to himself in order that he might grant them the righteousness that comes solely by faith and in christ i mean because that's sort of what what these guys got going on because each time what what they're concerned about is like man like you know what you could have done like god could have been angry with us yeah that's a great point that's right that's the deal here right so yeah it's the same kind of thing where it's like man i'm not gonna cheat you god gotta pay maybe pay for that yeah rain down fire brimstone on there there's no way i'm gonna do that yeah it's like i'm trustworthy i i'm scared i'm i'm trying to work my way to heaven here and i believe that god's

just looking for a reason to squash me i'm not gonna give him one i mean it's a denial of your own sinfulness but uh but it'll it'll make you i guess it'll make you try real hard yeah i guess it will oh yeah there are some benefits to society from that uh that kind of view of god as a as a tit-for-tat kind of deity so what so what happens after that well it's uh it's it's really uh it's hilarious because it it it goes with what we've just been discussing here you have uh isaac lying for a long time finally you know he's he's caught he basically not only just makes an excuse but he blames he blames the very people that he lied to you know he more or less says well i you know i know you guys are so awful that you probably would have just taken my wife and and slept with

her whenever you wanted to so i lied so here we have isaac acting like that and then we have Abimelech responding the way that he does. And what's the very next thing that happens? Isaac gets rich. That's not the way this is supposed to work, right? But that's what happens. It says, Isaac, he sowed in the land, so he plants crops. And in that year, he reaped a hundredfold and the Lord blessed him. And then we have this heaping up of these these rich words. It says, the man became rich and he continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy. So in response to Isaac's disobedience and deception, he ends up becoming extremely wealthy and reaping a hundredfold in the same year. And remember,

this was during a time of a famine, which we heard about back in verse one. So he has great possessions of flocks and herds and a great household. So that's what happens afterward. Not what you'd expect. Well, that's exactly how God works. He gives

you the unexpected, for sure. Yeah, he's always showing mercy to the undeserving as he does here to Isaac. But things didn't go so well as far as Isaac and the Philistines because they see all this happening to him

and they get envious. We see that at the end of verse 14. After this description of Isaac's successful farming enterprise and all of these flocks and herds that he has and this great household, probably lots of servants and whatnot. Well, the Philistines, they're angry. They're envying Isaac of all of this.

and as envy often does you know envy is is rarely content just to be envious that is to say envy does not like to just kind of stay inside and think to itself oh i'm envious envy usually comes out in actions or at least in words so that's what happened here the the fruit of envy in this case was that the philistines took their shovels and they go out and they stop up all the wells that isaac was using so all the wells that have been in his his father's abraham they uh they fill in with dirt and you know that's this is not like you know keying somebody's car because you're mad at them because these wells this this would be like you know burning down somebody's house or or uh ruining their their finances i mean because wells of course were central were essential to the

lifestyle of isaac if you have no water you have no life you can't water your livestock you can't take care of your household so this is the way that uh their envy showed itself they stopped up these uh these wells and then uh finally it gets so bad to where abimelech who had shown mercy to isaac comes to him and says uh look you're too powerful for us you're have to go away so this is quite amazing actually because here they are living in in the land as sojourners they own no property except for that little plot of ground that abraham had bought to bury his wife so they're basically without property they're just wandering around have no legal rights except what was just granted to them by the king and yet they are more powerful than the local

inhabitants. So they have to leave. He says, go away. So Isaac goes away. And in the next few verses that follow this, 18 through 22, it's basically an extension of how bad things got between the Philistines and between Isaac's people. More or less, Isaac would dig a well and there'd be a dispute over it with the Philistines. And so Isaac would move on and they would dig another well and be another dispute so this goes on for this goes on for a while until finally isaac ends up in uh beersheba that's we're in verse 23 23 now so he leaves where he had been and he goes to uh beersheba or in the hebrew it's baer shava which uh it looks like beer in English. It's Ba'ir. In Hebrew, it just basically means a well. So Ba'er Sheva, the well of seven

or the well of an oath. And there, the Lord appears to Isaac, just like he'd appear to Abraham on numerous occasions. So the Lord appears here to Isaac. And I guess it fits perfectly here with the narrative, because as often happens after a period of trial and tribulation, the Lord will appear to the patriarchs to assure them of the ongoing blessing and his presence with them, despite everything they're going through. And so it happens here. The Lord appears to Isaac and says, I am the God of your father, Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and And in response to this, Isaac builds an altar and calls upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there, and then his servants dug a well there as well.

So you have trial, you have tribulation, you have a manifestation by the Lord, and you have Isaac responding by making an altar and calling upon the name of the Lord. And I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating that the reason we have altars, the reason that Abraham builds an altar, that Isaac builds an altar, that Jacob later rebuilds an altar, the reason that you have, of course, the Israelites building an altar and an altar at the tabernacle and later the temple. The reason you have all of these altars is because that is the place of mediation between God and man. So you can have an altar without a temple, but you cannot have a temple without an altar. Because the altar is the axis, the meeting point between God and man.

Why? Because there can be no communion between God and humanity without sacrifice. We see that already back in Genesis 4, of course, with immediately after the fall, what happens? Well, we have a story of worship in which there's sacrifices being offered. The the Hebrew word for altar is very description. It it means a place for sacrifice. That's what an altar is for. And the altar then becomes the place where through the sacrifice, through the death, through the shedding of blood of an animal, God comes to to bless his people. And so they have communion with God through the sacrifice.

And that's the reason why the altar or the altars throughout the Old Testament are all foreshadowings of the cross. Every altar is a foreshadowing of the cross, because that is the place where in sacrifice we have not only mediation between God and man, but we have actually God and man and one person becoming our mediation and our mediator. on the altar of the cross you finally have not just god coming to man but god becoming man and becoming the sacrifice whereby there is reconciliation between god and man so that altar of the cross finally brings to fulfillment what was unfulfilled in all these other altars and so anytime you read a story about an altar being built in the old testament know that you see here a shadow of the of the cross all of these sacrifices looked forward to the ultimate

sacrifice that was to come yeah this is one of the reasons i'm i'm more of a fan of having the lord's supper on an altar where you come up to it to get it not not because you you need an altar uh now uh i mean you have we have we have the cross so it's not as though you need to be mediated uh further by approaching some altar but because because of what it says i prefer the the coming up to the altar as opposed to the you know whatever whatever other way you might want to do it you know passing the trays around or whatever not saying anything not not saying not saying anything horrible about you if that's the way you roll but uh but i like i do like the imagery of coming up to the altar where the body and blood are

and what that says about mediation between God and man because we know ultimately that this is a picture of the cross, the body and blood of Christ being broken and shed, which is where our mediation is sort of ratified with God. And that communion with God is forever secured, in that sacrifice so yeah so i'm always thinking of i'm always thinking about that with with communion and having to go up go up to the altar to get it yeah i think the uh the action is uh is indicative of the reality in that case we are we are coming up to the place where that

which was sacrificed on the cross is now available to us that and it really i mean it jives with everything that you see throughout the narrative of the scriptures concerning worship with the centrality of the altar. The altar was positioned in the temple so that it stood between where God was and where the people were. You know, it wasn't off to the side. It wasn't within the temple. It was perfectly positioned between where the Holy of Holies was and where the people were, because that was the place where ultimately they met god and it's the same with us yeah so the our altar is not where a sacrifice is made but it's where the sacrifice that christ offered on the cross is made tangible eatable and drinkable in the here and now and so as we approach the altar

we are approaching the place where the fruits of the cross are placed into us and we receive what was offered we receive now what was offered uh once and for all on the altar of the cross yeah that's why that's why you in most churches they have it right there center yeah it's the thing that you're sort of looking at the whole time right yeah that i like that that architectural feature it really it uh it speaks theologically big position where it is yeah yeah yeah so uh here we have isaac he uh he's making this altar he's calling upon the name of the lord and uh he he settles there pitches his tent and they dig a well and then the rest of the chapter is is kind of interesting because abimelech comes back into the story

he enters the enters this chapter being lied to and then we have this dispute over what what uh what Isaac did. And then we have Abimelech more or less saying, hey, get out of here. You know, you're too powerful for us. There's going to be problems. In fact, there's already problems. There's already envy and whatnot. So he sends him away. But here, beginning with verse 26, he comes back. It's as if Abimelech, you know, his political mind goes to work and he realizes, hey, rather than sending Isaac away and saying, get away from us, it would be much better if we made some sort of treaty with him, some sort of covenant between us and him so that being connected with him, we too might be beneficiaries of all these blessings that seem to just fall into his

lap. So that's what happens. Abimelech comes with his entourage. He's got his advisors and he's got the commander of his army and it's it's kind of interesting to see isaac's reaction because when these guys show up isaac doesn't say you know hey it's great to see you how you been whatever he says why have you come to me since you hate me and have sent me away from you isaac is all upset and i'm thinking to myself hey man you were the you were the guy that lied to them first they had every right to be upset with you but isaac is uh isaac is not pleased he thinks they hate him isaac puts the best construction on everyone obviously yeah yeah he's an eighth commandment keeper no doubt no false attribution of motives to anybody on isaac's court oh so uh

they respond a lot more graciously than he does they say look we see plainly that the lord has been with you so we said let there be an oath between us even between you and us and let us make a covenant with you that you will do us no harm just as we have not touched you or have done nothing, nothing to you. We have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. That's pretty fascinating, actually. First of all, it's a gentle reminder to Isaac that, hey, remember we were the ones who issued that decree that nobody should touch you or your wife. So we not only didn't harm you, we actually passed a law to protect you. And we see that God has blessed you. And so we want to be connected with you.

This is really kind of a, to put it in later terms, this is kind of a coming together of Jew and Gentile. This is the Israelite making a covenant with a non-Israelite. They want to be part of this family that has been blessed, blessed by God. And at least to Isaac's credit in this instance, he does it. They make a feast, they eat, they drink, they get up early in the morning, they exchange oaths, and Isaac sends them away and they depart from him in peace. And on the same day, they dig a well and they find an abundance of water. And so he names it, Isaac names it Sheba, which means oath. And therefore, to this day, the name of the city is called Be'er Sheba or Be'er Sheba, as we say, the well of the oath.

So it all works out in the end, I guess you could say. despite the way this relationship between Isaac and Abimelech starts and how it falls to pieces. And there's this breaking up of the two parties. They finally come back together, make a covenant, and decide that they're going to live in peace with each other. So there are happy endings, right? Sometimes it works out well.

So that pretty much wraps up that part of the story of Isaac. Now, we do have, as often happens in the scriptures, you'll have a story told, and then you'll have just a parenthetical comment made, which is going to become significant later on. We actually saw this already with the relationship between Jacob and Esau. And now we're going to see once more that after we've heard this whole story about Isaac, the focus is going to shift again back to these two brothers. And as it begins this transition to a new story, you have a fact thrown in about Esau that is going to become significant. In some ways, this introduces the next story, and this is going to be about Jacob and Esau

and the whole acquisition of the blessing by Jacob with the help of his mom. So here's how it starts. And if I were the one that divided the Bible into chapters and verses, I would have ended chapter 26 where we just ended with the whole Beersheba And we're going to start at chapter 27 with what we're going to be looking at now. But these are actually the last two verses of 26. It says, And when Esau was 40 years old, he married Judith, the daughter of Be'ari the Hittite,

and Basmat, the daughter of Elon the Hittite. And they brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah. so things uh at least at the beginning of this story uh are not uh are not very are not very positive esau is 40 years old and he decides that he's going to marry two women and not only two women but they are from the tribe of the hittites they're not from the family they're not from uh where isaac and rebecca would want them to be and here we have uh daughters-in-law who are bringing grief to the parents of uh the parents of the husband so isaac and rebecca are literally it's they were these these wives of esau were a were a bitterness of spirit to isaac and rebecca

and you got to wonder how much that plays a part in what's about to transpire as we go into the next chapter rebecca's nursing a grudge against her son for marrying two women who have brought negativity into their household yeah yeah esau doesn't go the family route and go find the family well and you know right you know the whole hottie by the well move is not is not when he uh yeah he's breaking tradition here it doesn't even say he went to a well to find these wives obviously his first mistake clearly so uh yeah he doubles up it's not good man it's not good when the when the parents don't like the don't like the the uh the wife no and of course you know rebecca already her favorite is already jacob uh so you can imagine

how this would have made her love Jacob even more and distance herself even more from her firstborn son, Esau. There's always these family dynamics that take place in these patriarchal stories. I mean, it's so part of the internal workings of each of these narratives that I think that's one of the things that is so appealing about these stories is it's so contemporary. You You know, you talk to anybody, you talk about your own family, you talk about anybody else's family, and it's like nothing has changed. You know, whether it's the marriage causing problems or, you know, who your children married or love triangles or whatever it is there. There's all these family dynamics that are in play that can bring either great blessing or great grief into families. I wonder if Jacob was like, Esau, don't you know that you got to go down to Laban's well if you want to find a wife?

And Esau was just like, yeah, you have fun with that. Probably so, yeah. You know, we need to write a book together, you know, title it something like At the Well, Biblical Dating or something like that. We'll see how great this works out for Jacob. Jacob's, I'm going to go, you got to marry someone inside the family. Yeah, yeah, you go ahead and do that. Yeah, let's see.

See you in 14 years. See how well it works when you end up waking up the morning after your wedding with the older sister. uncumly one as the old king james described the old king james so charitable yeah all right yeah uh you know these these daughters-in-law might have brought a lot of grief to isaac and rebecca but when when jacob marries these two sisters and then has the two concubines on the side too i can't imagine that that would have made isaac and rebecca very happy either poor choices all the way around

so we're about out of time so it seems like we should probably stop because we're right on the edge of something else that's going to take we're going to have to spend a decent amount of time on yeah

that's a good idea I will make a promise though to everybody listening that they are going to be surprised when we discuss this next chapter about this the next chapter is about jacob and esau and the whole uh disguise that jacob puts on in order to make his father think that he's esau because uh as it turns out we're going to

see some christology some some teaching about christ here that is uh probably not what people learned in sunday school there's a lot of good stuff that's coming up in this next chapter a lot of surprising stuff so hang tight and join us next time dude we've been towing the sunday school line for 37 episodes yeah well i thought maybe it was it was time to break away from that and do something new yeah don't break don't break form here man so like so thinking about this though uh because we do have just a minute or so left um so with with the hit tights um and maybe you know this because i'm not exactly sure is is there a foundation like for for the beef that that they have with this just based on where they're from and who they are is there you mean

that uh that isaac and rebecca have yeah is it is it actually the the wives or is it where they come from oh i see yeah i mean there's nothing at least personally related to isaac and rebecca that they would have against against the hittites but i mean they they are from uh from the other the other side if you will they're they're not from the family that inherited the blessing the promise of the seed and so from the perspective of isaac and rebecca they are esau has chosen chosen wives who are outside of the covenantal promise and so because of that it wasn't so much perhaps these daughters-in-law you know in their own person that were the problem as the people that they came from yeah yeah more of a um yeah like a romeo and juliet thing here

like you don't you don't marry on that side like yeah that's exactly what happened they married women from the wrong side and i don't think it would have mattered how good these women were They were Hittites. And so in the in the eyes of Isaac and Rebecca, they were predisposed to be against them. Yeah. All right. Well, join us next week when we when we see Jacob get his deceiving on and mom helping out. And it's it's going to be as Chad made a little promise there. It's going to be interesting and maybe some things that you don't expect. So we will see you then. © transcript Emily Beynon