Tag: Isaac

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Genesis Devotions

In this world, not of it  

Pitching our tent

…stay in this land as an alien, and I will be with you and bless you…

From there (Isaac) went up to Beersheba.

And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father.

Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD and pitched his tent there. (3, 23-25)

Father, I am living in this world, but I do not belong to it. I’m just residing here for a short time.

So don’t let me get too attached to the temporary things in this world.

Instead, let me desire you above all else, always pitching my tent wherever you are.

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Genesis Devotions

I will be with you. I will bless you.

Genesis

…stay in this land as an alien, and I will be with you and bless you… I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you. (26:3, 24)

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn’t belong to this world. They belonged to God and his kingdom. But for a while, they were called to live on this earth as aliens, as temporary residents. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

They weren’t to live like the people around them, taking on their values or way of life. They were to be different from the people of this world.  

And God promised them that though they would be living like aliens in a foreign land, he would be with them and bless them.

As long as they remembered that, they did well. When they forgot, they got into trouble.

When Abraham and Isaac forgot, out of fear of their neighbors, they claimed their wives were their sisters.

In Jacob’s case, perhaps he wasn’t sure those promises were really for him, so he resorted to deceit in order to gain God’s blessing.

Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we are like foreigners in a strange land. (1 Peter 2:11, John 17:14-16)

The question is, do we truly believe that God is with us and will bless us? And does that truth shape the way we live?

Take some time to mediate on these words of Paul. Think about what they really mean.

On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory…as it is written,

What no eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no human heart has conceived—
God has prepared these things for those who love him. (I Corinthians 2:7, 9)

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Genesis Devotions

The God who sees and comforts

Genesis

It’s always amazing to me how I can read something in the Bible over and over and never really notice its significance.

I’ve read this passage hundreds of times before, but today, this verse stuck out at me:

Now Isaac was returning from Beer-lahai-roi, for he was living in the Negev region. (62)

A pretty inconspicuous verse, right?

But that name “Beer-lahoi-roi” rang a bell with me. And I suddenly realized that it was the same place where God had met Hagar years earlier when she had been running away from Sarah. (Genesis 16)

And after her encounter with God, she called him, “El-roi”, “The God who sees me.” The name “Beer-lahoi-roi” means “the well of the Living One who sees me.”

Perhaps as Isaac was wandering out there, he was praying, “God, you were with Hagar when she was pregnant with my brother Ishmael. You saw her when she was hurting. Will you now be with me in my hurt? My mother has died. And right now, I am feeling incredibly lonely.”

And God was. In his gracious provision and impeccable timing, God brought Rebekah to Isaac. It says at the end of this chapter,

And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah and took Rebekah to be his wife. Isaac loved her, and he was comforted after his mother’s death. (67)

Christmas season is usually a happy time. But it can also be a hard time for many people, especially if you have lost someone you loved this year.

But remember that God is “El-roi”, the God who sees you.

And remember that Jesus is “Immanuel,” God with us.

So if you’re struggling right now, turn to him.

God is the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

And through whatever pain you may be feeling, his Son is right there by your side.

For a child will be born for us,
a son will be given to us,
and the government will be on his shoulders.

He will be named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

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Genesis Devotions

The Scriptures testify about me

Genesis

When Jesus said the Scriptures talked about him (John 5:38-39), I can’t help but think Genesis 22 was one of those Scriptures he was talking about.

God told Abraham,

Take your son…your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. (Genesis 22:2)

While God ultimately kept Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, God did not hold back his own Son from the cross.

And so the apostle John wrote these words,

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10)

And again,

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

As Abraham and Isaac went up the mountain, Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

To which Abraham replied,

God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. (Genesis 22:8)

Many years later, John the Baptist would say of Jesus,

Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

As Isaac carried the wood of the sacrifice, Jesus carried the wood of the cross.

As Isaac “rose from the dead,” so too did Jesus. (Hebrews 11:19)

And now through Jesus, Abraham’s offspring, all the nations of the world have been blessed. (Genesis 22:18, Matthew 1:1-16)

Sometimes people wonder why we should read the Old Testament. The main reason is we see Jesus there.

So as we read the Old Testament, let’s look for Jesus together.  

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Genesis Devotions

At the appointed time

Genesis

I don’t know why, but maybe because Christmas is right around the corner, I’m seeing a lot of things through that lens.

The Lord asked Abraham,

Why did Sarah laugh, saying, “Can I really have a baby when I’m old?”

Is anything impossible for the Lord?

At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son. (13-14)

Those words rang a bell with me, and I thought of Gabriel’s words to Mary.

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

And consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless.

For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:35-37)

And then I thought of Paul’s words to the Galatians.

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. (Galatians 4:4-5, NIV)

The birth of Isaac was the first step to God fulfilling his promise that Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. It seemed impossible, with Sarah already being 90 years old.

But she did give birth to a son, turning her laughter of doubt into laughter of joy.

Then at the right time, God sent Jesus in an equally impossible situation, with Mary, a virgin, giving birth to a son.

But now, through him, we rejoice as children of God.

For as Paul wrote,

And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”

So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir. (Galatians 4:6-7)

So let us rejoice with Paul, saying,

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! (2 Corinthians 9:15)

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Galatians

Children of promise

Galatians

In this passage, Paul makes a very interesting allegory to drive home a simple point: We are children of God based on His promise, not children of God based on our keeping his law.

He talks about the story of Hagar and Sarah found in Genesis 16-21.

God had promised to give Abraham a son, but after years of waiting, Abraham and Sarah had started to lose hope that God would keep his promise.

So Sarah suggested that Abraham have a child through her slave Hagar (something atrocious to us, but perfectly normal back in those days).

Through Hagar, Abraham got his first son, Ishmael. But this was a son that came not based on the promise of God and his provision. Rather, it was based solely on human efforts.

Later though, Sarah did give birth to a son named Isaac. His birth was a total miracle, a total act of God, as Sarah was 90 years old when she gave birth.

And it was through Isaac, God told Abraham, that He would keep his promise to make Abraham into a great nation.

Paul then says those who try to be justified by the law are symbolized by Hagar and her son Ishmael. They are not trying to receive the blessing of God based on God’s promise and God’s work. Rather, they are trying to achieve it through their own human effort.

But there’s a problem with this. Children born of a slave are slaves themselves. So people who try to be “children of Hagar,” justified by their own human efforts, will in reality only find themselves enslaved by the law of sin and death.

In other words, the law can’t save them at all. All it does is point out their sin and condemn them to death. (Galatians 4:24-25)

On the other hand those who are trying to be justified before God by his grace are like Isaac, children and heirs of God based on God’s promise and God’s work.

Because of that, we are no longer enslaved by the law of sin and death. We have been set free and are now true children of the most high God. (Galatians 4:26-28)

But just as Ishmael, the child born of human efforts, persecuted Isaac, the child born of God’s promise, so the Judaizers persecuted the Christians.

In particular, the Judaizers tried to shut out the Galatian Christians until they agreed to put themselves under slavery to the law like the Judaizers were. (Galatians 4:29)

So Paul speaks very strongly here:

What does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” (Galatians 4:30)

In short, “Get rid of these false teachers. They are children of the slave. And they will never share in your inheritance. They have no part with you. They are trying to exclude you when the reality is that it is they who are excluded.”

And then he reemphasizes,

“Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.” (Galatians 4:31)

He then charges them,

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again under a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

Let us never forget that. Christ set us free from the law, not so that we would go under it all over again, but that we would truly be free from it forever.

He set us free so that we could live as children of God, knowing that we are already accepted by Him, and not worrying about whether we are good enough.

How about you? Are you living with the peace and joy of a child of God? Or are you still living like a slave burdened by all the rules of religion?

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Genesis

Do the ends really justify the means?

Genesis

There are a lot of questions I’d love to ask God about this passage.

First, how much did Isaac really know?

When God told Rebekah that Esau was to serve Jacob, did she pass that on to Isaac? And if she did, how did Isaac respond?

Further, when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, did Isaac hear about it, and what was his response?

Either Isaac knew nothing and was just doing what he thought was right, or he knew everything and there was something wrong about his attitude. But as it is, we don’t know how much Isaac really knew.

Which brings us to Rebekah’s and Jacob’s actions.

I’m sure Rebekah told Jacob what God had said. The Bible doesn’t say this, but from Jacob’s actions earlier, taking Esau’s birthright, it seems that he had this idea planted from somewhere.

It could’ve come from himself, I suppose. But it seems more likely that it came from his mother. So in all probability, they both knew God’s promises.

But when Isaac was about to bless Esau instead, they both panicked. And so they deceived Isaac into blessing Jacob instead.

Rebekah and Jacob succeeded. They got the blessing from Isaac. And it was God’s will to bless Jacob, not Esau. But did the ends justify the means?

Well, look at the result. Esau was so upset, he planned to murder Jacob. Because of that Jacob had to flee for his life, and he never did see his mother again.

For a long time he had to live in fear of his life, and it was only many years later that he reconciled his relationship with Esau.

Lots of fear, lots of worry, lots of wasted years because of this one decision.

Which brings me to my last question. Had Jacob and Rebekah done nothing, what would have happened? Would God have intervened at the last minute and said to Isaac, “Jacob is the one you should bless”?

We don’t know. And we’ll never know because Jacob and Rebekah took things into their own hands.

One thing I do know is that God always keeps his promises. And he didn’t need Jacob and Rebekah’s help.

There may be times in our lives when it seems we need to do something a little shady to get things done.

There may be times in our lives when we say, “But there was no other choice. I had to do things this way.”

But when we try to force things apart from God’s will, we get into trouble.

Abraham and Sarah learned this with the birth of Ishmael.

And Jacob and Rebekah learned this with the incident of Isaac’s blessing.

How much regret have we had in our lives because we tried to force things to happen instead of waiting for God to act?

As Proverbs 14:12 says,

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.

And again, in Proverbs 3:5–6,

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

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Genesis

But it’s not fair!

Genesis

I had a dormmate once when I was living in Osaka. To say that we didn’t get along that well would be an understatement.

One thing that particularly bothered me was that he wasn’t very good at keeping his word.

Namely, we were supposed to take turns cleaning the bathrooms, buying necessities such as tissue paper, toilet paper, etc. We agreed to do this when we started living together.

However, while I would do my part, it seemed like he would never do his. I would ask politely, and if I got really annoyed, not so politely. And still nothing changed.

Sometimes, when we ran out of toilet paper, I just kept some tissue paper in my bedroom for my personal use and waited to see how long it would take for him to get around to buying the toilet paper. It would usually take him several days to get around to doing so.

In the meantime, he would sometimes put in a packet of pocket tissue in the bathroom instead, which I would very quickly snatch up.

Very mature, right? No excuses, but I was very annoyed.

The thought that kept going through my head was, “This isn’t fair! Why should I always clean the bathroom? Why should I always buy the tissue paper and toilet paper?”

I was right… and I was wrong. Obviously it wasn’t fair, but I also didn’t handle things as I should have.

Isaac apparently had a lot more patience than I did.

He was living among the Philistines, and when they got jealous of his wealth, they started plugging up the wells his father had dug.

When he dug up a new well, the Philistines came and said, “That’s our water. Get out of here.”

He moved on and dug another well, and the Philistines came and did the same thing.

If it had been me, I would’ve been really upset. “This isn’t fair! I dug these wells. Why should these guys get full use of it? Why should I have to dig another one? Let them dig their own wells.”

But Isaac wasn’t me. Instead of complaining, he just kept digging wells until the Philistines finally left him alone. And eventually, he even made peace with them.

I’m usually a patient guy, but when things don’t seem fair, I lose my patience very quickly. But God says,

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18)

To do that, we need to learn to accept people for who and what they are.

My dormmate was very unreliable when it came to housework or shopping, among other things. I needed to learn to accept that, because there was no way to make him change. I tried to make him change and I failed miserably.

Change can only come when a person wants to change. We can’t force them to change. And because of that, sometimes we have to put up with a little, or a lot, of unfairness in our lives.

But if we are unwilling to do that, we’ll not only lose peace with others, we’ll lose peace within ourselves.

Am I saying that if someone upsets us, we should never say anything? No. Say something once. Say it twice. But after that, let it go.

Learn to accept them, warts and all. After all, Christ does the same with us. As the apostle Paul wrote,

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. (Romans 15:7)

Paul was speaking specifically about relationships within the church.

But how much better would our relationships in our marriages, our workplaces, our schools, and in our neighborhoods be if we would learn to accept all people as they are?

How much praise would we bring to God if we could just learn to do that?

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Genesis

Afraid

Genesis

It’s amazing how Isaac could do the exact thing to Rebekah that Abraham did to Sarah: deny that she was his wife, and say that she was his sister instead.

Amazing because Isaac wasn’t even born when Abraham had his two incidents with the Pharaoh and Abimelech.

Did Abraham give him this advice when going into foreign territories? And if Abraham did, why didn’t he warn Isaac of what had happened to him?

But ultimately, fear can cause us to do stupid things. That’s what happened to Abraham. And that’s what happened to Isaac.

The problem with fear is that it often blinds us to the possible consequences of our actions.

We fear our future, so we turn to astrology or fortune telling.

We fear being alone, and so we marry someone we know we shouldn’t.

We fear losing our boyfriend or girlfriend, so we sleep with them.

We fear rejection from our family and friends, so we deny our Lord in words and actions.

But that’s not how God wants us to live. He doesn’t want us to live in fear, wondering what will happen to us in the future.

He wants us to live trusting him.

He wants us to live knowing that he loves us and that he’ll take care of us.

He wants us to live knowing that he desires our best.

If only we would believe that.

As the writer of Psalm 91 penned,

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” (1–2)

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Genesis

No turning back

Genesis

When I came to Japan, I had no idea how long I would stay here. My initial plan was to stick it out for two years, and see how I felt after that.

During that time, I started visiting a church in Kobe, and in my second year, there was a seminar on small groups. In one of the seminars, however, the pastor gave a talk on being a missionary in Japan.

During the talk, he said something that’s always stayed with me. He said, “If you’re going to be a missionary in Japan, don’t come with a plan B, only a plan A.”

What he meant by that was to come to Japan with the intention of staying permanently. Don’t come to Japan with the back door of returning available in your mind.

The reason was that in Japan, it takes time to build relationships, and those relationships are vital if people are to become Christians.

Many times, people would say to the pastor, “I’m interested in what you’re saying, but how long are you going to be here? I don’t want to become a Christian only to have you abandon me later.”

I’ve never forgotten those words, and it was shortly thereafter that I made the decision to stay in Japan permanently.

I thought about that as I read the passage in Genesis today. Abraham wanted to find a wife for Isaac, but didn’t want him to marry one of the Canaanites. So Abraham sent a servant back to where his relatives were to find a wife from among them.

But when the servant asked what to do if no one was willing to come back with him, Abraham was adamant that Isaac not go back to live there. Abraham’s last recorded words were, “Don’t take my son back there.”

Why was Abraham so adamant about this? Because God had commanded him to leave his old life behind, and to start a new life with God, and Abraham didn’t want his children to abandon the promises that God had made to him.

Also, Abraham was confident that God would take care of Isaac’s need for a wife, if he would just follow God’s commands. He saw no need to go back.

This was much different from his earlier attitudes when dealing with Pharaoh, Abimelech, and in waiting for Isaac to be born.

Abraham had finally matured in his faith, and his face was set forward to what God had planned for him and his descendants. He refused to look back.

In Hebrews 11, it says,

If they (Abraham and his descendants) had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. (15–16)

God wants us to be the same way.

Sometimes when the Christian life gets hard, or things don’t go as we hope, it’s easy to look back to our old life and say, “I might as well go back to my old way of life. It’s so much easier to do things my way than to do things God’s way.”

And as long as we’re looking back, it’s easy to slip back into our old way of life.

Personally, if I were always focused on my old life in Hawaii, it would be easy to get homesick, and just give up on my life in Japan.

But God doesn’t want us to look back. He wants us to look forward. And he wants us to press on along the path he has for us.

It’s not necessarily the easiest path. But in the end, we’ll find that it is the path of the greatest blessing.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the path I want to take. As the apostle Paul said,

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12–14)