Clough Manhood Series Lesson 10

Abraham: The Latter Years – Genesis 21

Tonight we come to the tenth in the series on manhood in the Scriptures, and we finish with Abraham. We haven’t, by any means, finished with all the details of Abraham’s life but at least we’ve covered some of the major ones. We’ve been able to say certain things as we’ve gone through these Scriptures about the role of the man, the fact that he, the male is clearly vested with superior spiritual authority in the world, not because he is better or worth more or has more of God’s image in him than the females but simply this is the way God structured the universe. God does not treat men and women as identical. He treats them as equal but not identical. And that’s the fallacy behind much of the modern discussion of women’s rights. Women are not identical, though they are equal. And a lot of the movement doesn’t understand the difference between those two words.

And so it came down that when we studied Abraham’s life we watched how Abraham failed to use the faith technique, how he did use the faith technique; how when he failed to use the faith technique he endangered his wife; how when he used the faith technique he was successful in protecting his family, in running his business and so on. Abraham is a father of all them that believe.

Now we come to the last years of his life tonight and we watch him as a mature man. Indeed we might say that in the last years of Abraham’s life he provides us with a model of what it means to be a believing man. We’re going to look at three points in his last years of his life, look at it from three different angles. We’re going to look at first his relationship with his wife in his last years. Secondly, we’re going to look at his relationship to his business during the last years of his life. And finally his relationship to God’s blessings in the last years of his life. We’ll look at different Scripture passages having to do with each of those three topics.

In Genesis 21:1-14 we have his relationship with his wife. Again, this particular picture we’ve got of Abraham is one born of many, many years. Abraham did not become the man you see operating in Genesis 21 overnight. In fact, from the time that he struggled with the promises alone, which seemed late in his life, until the time he got to this place it was 25 years, at least. So we’re talking of long-term development. And so don’t get discouraged and frustrated if, particularly if you’re a Christian man, a young person, and you become a Christian and this just seems in practice totally beyond you. Abraham didn’t do it all overnight, so don’t let your American culture get in the way of patience. God, the Holy Spirit, took time to develop these qualities in Abraham. Let’s look at some of the qualities and at least, though many of these we’ll find frustrating in practice to mimic, at least we’ve got a goal and a picture in mind where we’re going.

Genesis 21:1 “And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. [2] For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. [3] And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. [4] And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him.
[5] And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.”

Now in this section we have a portrait here of his relationship with his wife. That’s interesting. In verse 1 it says the Lord is the prime actor. Notice Abraham is not the subject of the action; the Lord is the subject of the action. He acts upon Abraham’s wife and this shows something very interesting, that Abraham’s long use of the faith technique was rewarded. God worked in his wife’s life in a way that Abraham never could. In fact, when we get down to verses 6-7 Sarah is extremely happy; she is a fully contented woman, she is responsive to Abraham in a way that Abraham had never seen. Now why is this? The answer is given in verse 1 loudly and clearly: Abraham had to back off and allow the Lord to work in his wife’s life. Only the Lord could change her nature; only the Lord could make her a satisfied woman.

Now let’s think about what’s happening in verses 1 and 2, just on the sheer physical plain. Obviously, as we have said before, the promise that she is going to conceive implies the fact that Abraham and Sarah had normal sexual relations, even though both of them were sexually impotent in the sense of they were infertile. So they maintained their sexual life, but as a result of this there could not be any production. That was an established fact. So therefore, when you have the conception occur at this point it is an obvious picture of grace mingled with human responsibility. Human responsibility—they maintain their relationship; God’s sovereignty in that He worked in their obedience to bring forth what He wanted to bring forth according to His promise. So therefore neither Sarah nor Abraham can say our problem was solved by our actions. And yet God did work it out so that it was through the things they did.

So although this is a physical conception we’re talking about, when we go through this if we’re going to at least have some application, we’ve got to generalize it as a picture of how God works in a marriage. And here God is working to have production for his wife so that she now is fulfilled in her creaturehood. Remember the woman, back in Genesis 1, was to bring forth the seed; in Genesis 3 the particular redemption seed, in Genesis 1 the seed for all humanity. And so here she literally brings it forth and therefore God, in His grace, restores her as a creature. This is vital. There’s a heresy that creeps into our evangelical fundamental circles; it goes like this: I am saved in order that I might witness to other people so that they be saved, so that they can go witness to other people, so they can be saved so they can go witness to other people. Now that’s one side benefit of salvation but that’s not the whole content of why we are saved. We are not saved to be witnessing machines; if God wanted witnessing machines in history He’d send the angels out to do that. God is interested in more than witnessing machines. He is interested in creatures who are functioning to the full limits of their creaturehood.

And so the key in this section here, and the reason why their marriage is so tremendous here is that both of them are now functioning fully as creatures, namely they’re bringing forth a godly seed and they’re starting their micro civilization in their family unit to protect it on down in the stream of time. And so they have been restored by grace; grace, yes, but they’ve been restored to their original creaturehood function. And this is why there’s this happiness; there’s a happiness and a contentment over at last being fruitful and being productive. Something, in other words, to show for their life.

Now how did this all come about? Sarah gave Abraham a hard time, many times during those 25 years. Abraham himself fell back, time and time and time again. What verses 1-2 are saying loudly to us that what restored the situation as far as Abraham was concerned is the Lord; the Lord changed his wife and we’re going to see other times where, in this same passage, how Abraham took advantage of this principle just a few verses later. Again, the man indirectly relying upon a change in his life; he does so by the faith technique. This is the faith-rest of the man. At this point Abraham can only do so much for Sarah and God clearly puts a barrier up where as husband he can not do any more, period. When that point is reached, faith-rest, God has to do the rest and God does the rest and God does the rest in a particular way because at the end of verse 2 the text emphasizes God did it at exactly the time that He said He would. In other words, what verse 2 is telling us is that God’s Word works.

Now time and time and time again in counseling, in talking with Christians, if a person’s an elder, deacon or pastor, he’ll sooner or later run into the refrain, “I tried it and it doesn’t work.” Now if the Word of God is the Word of God that has to be a lie; either you didn’t try it or you didn’t understand what you were doing but you certainly did not fully try the Word of God and find out it didn’t work. Now that is blowing smoke and a subtle form of pious blame-shifting. It sounds so good to be able to say and justify our failures by saying well, I tried the Word and it didn’t work. Nonsense! You’re a liar, or a very deceived individual. There is no person who has ever tried the Word of God and found it did not work. What happens in these cases is that the Word of God was apparently misunderstood and misapplied, yes, then failure resulted. Or the person may have done part of what the Word of God said. Here is a person who had a problem and they prayed about it. Well, God does tell us to pray about it, but God tells us also to do something. There’s a faith-rest and a faith-doing. And so the person may never have done something. Maybe it was a job they were looking for and they couldn’t find a job and they prayed about it and still not job, and so they come to the counselor and they say well, I tried the Word of God, it doesn’t work. But just a minute; you also prayed for your daily bread, but don’t you work for the daily bread? Does God parachute it down your chimney recently? It’d be very interesting, we could add that to our area one praise items as a particular point of his divine manifestation but He obviously doesn’t do that; we don’t expect Him to do that and that would be foolish to say I prayed about it and nothing happened so therefore the Word of God is wrong. Nonsense!

Well, here in verse 2 we have the responsibility and the credit given the person who should receive the credit. Verse 3, another thing Abraham does. In verses 1-2 he faith-rested the situation and the Lord has brought along his wife. In verse 3, “Abraham called the name of his son,” Yitzhak. Now the interesting thing about calling something by a name is that it’s a biblical picture of knowing something and knowing it well enough to start categorizing it. Well, what does verse 3 then say in principle. It says that Abraham knew, was able to recognize, saw the purpose in and knew the details of that which was productive in his marriage, in this case his son. But we can generalize the principle of verse 3. Abraham has doctrinal discernment so he looks at his son; he knows his son is the fulfillment of the covenant, he knows his son is a rebuke to both him and his wife, because neither one of them fully believed God for it, he knows that God has already told him in advance Isaac’s name, but when he names him he’s not just tacking a tale on the donkey; that’s the wrong interpretation. What he’s doing is recognizing what God has done in their marriage. He’s not blind to what is being produced out of their relationship. He’s alert to this.

So verse 3, if anything, shows Abraham’s spiritual alertness; he sees something being produced, he labels it, he understands it, he sees how it fits in the overall plan of God; not perfectly, no, but at least partially. And that’s all the finite rebellious creature can ever hope, is at least partial understanding of where he’s going. And Abraham knew where he was going. So that’s another thing in this relationship with his wife; he saw where that relationship was going. He knew where it had come from and he knew its goal.

In verse 4, he cared, he circumcised his son, “as God had commanded him.” There is an obedient male; he knows what the Word of God says ought to be done with that which is produced, and he does according to the Scriptures with that which they have produced. And to emphasize this the text then goes on to stage his age.

Now verses 6-8 is a short picture of Sarah’s response. This is a happy woman. “And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.” Notice not “at” me, “with” me. [7] “And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age. [8] And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.” Weaning took about the third or fourth year; this is one way they avoided having a child every nine months. So when they worked this out in this passage Sarah is now happy. This is the first time this woman appears happy in Scripture. In all the other cases she quietly obeys, she’s submissive, she follows, but she’s never really pictured as a happy woman. She only is happy toward the end of her life. Now that’s very interesting. As a young person she’s not really that happy. As an older person who has matured through many adversities she now realizes what happiness is; that’s this lightness. In verse 6 it should be translated as happiness, “God has made me to laugh,” she just can’t believe it. She’s overcome with joy because there’s something, at last, after 25 years of being married, there’s something that turned out right, that’s what she’s saying. For 25 years we haven’t had anything that I can look forward to, and now I’ve had it, and look at the immediate change in her. She’s now responsive.

All right, Abraham is responsive too, notice in verse 8, he cares for the child, he throws a party, a great feast. So their happiness is centered, not on themselves, this man and this woman are happy in their marriage because of what God has done, not because of some feeling, not because of an individual blessing to one or to the other, but they are happy because of God’s visitation on them both. By the time you get to 8 you have a joint product and you have joint happiness. There’s no fragmentation; the husband’s over here and the wife’s over here. They are together in their enjoyment. What drew them together? The production of God out of their marriage, that’s what drew them together. That’s what draws any person together. This is why its simply false that Christians have to have fragmented marriages because if you have two people here and you have one standard to which they both adhere, then if they both adhere to this standard in progressive skill levels, then they’ve got to come closer to each other.

Now I defy anyone to show why that kind of geometrical reasoning or picture is wrong; it isn’t wrong, it’s a basic principle of Scripture and it always has to work. And there can’t be anybody that says I tried it and it didn’t work. What happens is we have young people that get married and they’ve never faced any kind of a real trial in their life, and they can waltz on and bluff their way through and their parents got them off the hook when a trial came up, Daddy got rid of the parking ticket and something else happened along the line and they were always let off the hook; that is, until they finally went down and they made their vows and were married. Now all of a sudden they’re living alone, away from momma and daddy, and now problems come up that they should have learned to solve years before they were married, simple problems very frequently. And they should have learned to cope with these, but they didn’t. And now not only does each one have their own bucket of problems but now they’re living with another bucket of problems. And so they see this stuff and the shrapnel begins to fly back and forth and instead of solving the problem it gets worse because they have never had the experience of solving a problem Scripturally. And so when we do this we fracture a marriage; there’s no communication, there’s no submission of both of them underneath the standards of the Word of God. Now that’s going on all over our society and it’s simply a normal result of a theological hatred for the authority of God’s Word.

The other day I had someone frantically call me from out of town, didn’t go to this church, never showed up around this church, was somehow referred to… I don’t know how I catch all this stuff, but this guy calls up and says my wife’s out leaving me. And so that may be good, it may be bad, I don’t know. Well, it turns out that neither party to this particular situation, at least the woman I talked with in this situation had no inkling whatsoever of submitting to the Scriptures, period. And it was just simple defiance of the Scriptures. I don’t love him any more! So what! What’s that got to do with it? Well, it’s got everything to do with it. No it doesn’t, the Scriptures say you have no biblical basis for divorce so you can learn to love. I can’t do that; can’t learn to love! God says you can! I can’t! Well then either you or God is lying and I’ll give you a choice which one I believe. But this is the kind of stuff and basically that’s all it amounts to is that we have raised a hedonist generation that does what they damn well please when they damn well please, how they damn well please, and they get into a mess and they can’t do it the way they damn well please. Now does that communicate what the problem is. We’ll skip Freud and Carl Rogers and all the rest of the excuses, the sad sacks of the 20^th century who have invented insulation devices against man’s personal sin.

The issue is God says something and that’s it, period, whether we like it or not. Now that’s the kind of dogmatic nature that is at the root of a good marriage. The love is a result of that and can’t exist without that. There have been young people who have been married in Lubbock Bible Church that have gone through hell for the first year or two of their marriage and they’ve made it and if they can make it anybody can make it. And they have had tears and they have had problems, and they’ve had upsets but it was their constant submission to Scripture—God said, there are norms and standards to our relationship period, and we are going to carry these out. And sometimes it’s been half-hearted, sometimes with tears, sometimes with rebellion, but generally the principle has held, God said, period! And then things begin to ease off and at least the first three or four years of the marriage we’ve learned one principle, and that is if God’s Word says something, we don’t like it necessarily, but at least we’ve learned to swallow our lumps and move on; valuable lesson in life. It should have been learned years before you got married is the problem.

So here’s Abraham and Sarah. Now they are enjoying themselves, and they’re enjoying themselves because God has blessed them.

Genesis 21:9-11 shows Abraham particularly in a mature situation with his wife, a very difficult situation with his wife. Let’s look at it. “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. [10] Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. [11] And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.” Now the son of verse 11 is not Isaac, it’s Ishmael. And Ishmael is the son of Abraham; it’s by Hagar but it’s still the son of Abraham. And so Abraham… this “grievous” is extremely disturbed by this thing. Now just look, back off and don’t get too absorbed in all the historical details and just look at the simple outline here, what we’ve got.

Sarah has a problem, verse 9. She goes to her husband, verse 10, and she asks him something. This is not a nag, she says this is wrong, and she communicates with him. So verse 10 at least shows you how this couple solved their problems. She didn’t mope around, and Abraham says Sarah, what’s wrong with you? Oh, I’m all right, I’m all right. She didn’t go like that. And so here Abraham is, he’s got a twenty foot hook and he’s trying to pull it out of her to find out woman, what is your problem. But oftentimes women do that. You have to reach around, everything else, squeeze, push, press it, to find out what is your problem. Now on the woman’s side of the fence they think that men are just as sensitive as women are and men aren’t. They can drive right over you and say oh, did I hurt you? And that’s just the way we are. So therefore here’s the woman and she sits and she feels hurt because she thinks this guy is just as sensitive as she is, but he isn’t. That’s not the way he’s made. So she imputes her nature on him, thinking he’s some little delicate thing and he’s supposed to be sensitive to these things and as he matures he will be, but he’s not going to get there unless somebody tells him. You know, we’re stupid, we have to be told.

So here’s Abraham. Sarah has a problem, and so he has to be told and she does. That’s the point of verse 10. That shows you maturity in that male/woman relationship, husband and wife. If they have a problem they don’t let it fester; she communicates to him. So now she’s acting as an ‘ezer, but notice something else about it. Not only does she communicate to him, but she reasons out her request and the reasoning of her request to her husband is scriptural. Notice what she’s done here. She says, “Because,” that’s a causal clause, “For the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son.” Now if you read it the wrong way it sounds like she’s just a jealous woman, but that’s not the point of verse 10. What she is concerned with is the heritage of the covenant; that’s what the use of the word “heir,” that’s talking about the whole structure of God’s covenant. What does the heirship include but the title to the land of Palestine. And what Sarah’s concerned with is that God’s covenant be channeled in the proper direction.

So what we’ve got here in verse 10 is an identical situation to what we had over in Samuel where we saw Abigail come to David. David’s just kind of flopping around like guys do, and it takes a woman who sees what’s going on to say hey, get your stuff together guy and do you notice this. Huh! Gee…yeah, I notice that, and so he responds to her. And so Abraham’s doing the same thing, he doesn’t really see what the point is. He’s so happy about just having a son that he forgets a little detail. If he allows his other boy to stay in the household he will inherit; he has legal status. So he’s got to severe the legal status. And the woman is alert enough to see it.

So that request of the woman to her husband in verse 10 is a biblically based request. It shows maturity on Sarah’s part. She doesn’t just make a request; that’s fine, it’s commendable, that she at least communicates to her husband, but over and above that she not only communicates but she has a good biblical reason for it. And so when she comes back up to Abraham she doesn’t lose her submission to him at all; Abraham isn’t like a lot of guys, all of a sudden he gets bent out of shape and threatened because his wife suggested something to him. I’m going to lose my manhood if I ever accept a suggestion from my wife…well boy, your manhood is in the wrong place if it’s going to fall off because your wife made a suggestion that you’re going to respond to.

Look at verse 10 at the end; Isaac alone, that is the established seed. Now what’s Abraham’s reaction? [11] “Very grievous.” Now that’s not grievous against his wife; verse 11 shows you several things; it shows you how deep his wife’s request hit him. Abraham is deeply disturbed by this; it shows you he took his wife’s request seriously. You see, if Abraham hadn’t really listened to his wife, it wouldn’t result in great grief. He’s just pass it off as oh, Sarah’s just spouting off that today, tomorrow it will be something else; we’ll buy a new chariot tomorrow, this kind of thing. It’s not that at all. She has penetrated to her husband’s conscience and he is very disturbed by what she says; not mad at it but disturbed. Maybe at the time he kind of brushed her off; we don’t have that in the text, but we know one thing he did and it shows you his maturity in the relationship. First of all, he didn’t put her down. He didn’t say oh, stop the nonsense woman, you’re just a stupid female, shut up. None of that response.

He allowed himself to listen and then apparently, because it says “God said” in verse 12, apparently he took the problem to the Lord; he checked it out with God. See, that illustrates the same principle, that the woman is functioning as an ‘ezer, when she presents a legitimate request to her husband and her husband checks it by the standards of the Word of God. He goes to prayer where he can think it through. He just doesn’t say yes or no, he thinks about it and prays about it. He isn’t able to give her an immediate reaction. And Sarah is wise enough to realize that her husband can’t give her an immediate answer. So she very carefully drops her card on the table, makes sure her husband reads what’s on the card, and she leaves, and she faith-rests. She faith-rests that Abraham is going to handle the problem, without any nagging. And she knows, because she honored God, she designed it well and she trusted Him with it, and all of a sudden Abraham gets very agitated over it.

So in Genesis 21:12-13 there’s evidence to suggest that he did go to God in prayer. We don’t know what the time lapse is between verse 11 and 12. We also know that there’s a very low time lapse between verse 13 and 14, which shows you that once he got an answer he acted. “And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto you, hearken unto her voice;” now look at that. There God authorizes a woman to give advice and he says your wife gave you the right advice and if you’re going to do the right thing Mr., you’re going to listen to what your wife told you. “… for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. [13] And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, [because he is thy seed].”

Now verse 14, immediately Abraham acts. Now let’s not get too mechanical about this thing. Let’s just try to project what we would feel if Ishmael were our son. This guy he raised, he trained. By this time Ishmael is a young adolescent, Abraham had taught how to hunt, maybe how to farm, how to care for the flock, how to train the animals. There were a lot of moments between father and son. This is grievous to Abraham, very grievous! And Abraham just doesn’t mechanically, like a zombie, because God punched the “go” button he went. There’s none of that machine-like obedience; there’s obedience but it’s not the obedience of a machine; it’s a flesh and blood father who doesn’t like losing his son. That’s what he’s asked for. You know, Abraham had two sons and twice he almost lost them; Ishmael he lost here at this point, and Isaac, very shortly, God asks him to give up Isaac too. So the test of the metal of this man is that he can forego his, what normal men would consider to be the sine qua non, their son. And Abraham said all right, if you say so okay. But it gook God and his wife both together to get him to that stage.

Now in verse 14, “Abraham rose up early in the morning,” and there’s a lesson, particularly for undisciplined young people, or undisciplined any people. And that is the best way to do an unpleasant task it get it over with, and just do it. I don’t particularly care for jogging, but I know I have to do it in my job so I’ll do it in the morning and get it over with and I can enjoy the rest of the day. Or you may have your own thing that you don’t like to do; well just do it and get it over with and then you can enjoy yourself; so it’s a good principle of life and Abraham followed it. It was not an easy thing for him to do, just because it says he “rose up early” he wasn’t going around with the joy, joy, joy in his heart that morning.

So he “took bread, and a bottle of water,” this is a whole big skin bottle, “and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder,” now he must have felt like the biggest heel alive at this point, to think that he had taken a helpless woman and casting her out into the sands of the Negev, an awful thing; it must have bugged him. There goes my son, there goes my son and all that stands between him and dying out there in the sands of the Negev is this woman and she’s got a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. You know, the pressure on him must have been fantastic. So just think a little bit and don’t read these Scriptures too automatically. This shows you the depth of Abraham’s relationship with the Lord, and with his wife.

All through these 14 verses you’ve got several things occurring in their relationship. Let’s summarize it. The first thing, you see Abraham letting God work in his wife’s life, turning her to a happy contented woman. A second thing, you see that they share their joy, not as two individuals, but they’re sharing their joy as a joint product. That’s the “one flesh-ness” by the way, that’s showing up. Notice to the principle of their two-way conversation; it’s not just one way. Sarah do this, Sarah do that, Sarah do this, Sarah do that. Sarah says to Abraham, Abraham, you’d better do this, and Abraham listened; a two-way conversation and verse 12 is God’s commendation of a husband who listens to his wife’s common sense.

Let’s look now at another relationship of Abraham. We’ve looked at Abraham and his relationship to his wife in the closing years. Let’s look at Abraham’s relationship to his business in the closing years; Genesis 21:22-34; Abraham in his business relationship. “And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spoke unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest: [23] Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned. [24] And Abraham said, I will swear. [25] And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. [26] And Abimelech said, I did not know who has done this thing: neither did you tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but to day. [27] And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant. [28] And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. [29] And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What do you mean by these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves? [30] And he said, For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have dug this well. [31] Wherefore he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they swore both of them.” The word “Beer-sheba” the word “be-er” is a Hebrew word for well; sheva is the Hebrew numeral seven, the well of the seven. [32] “Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. [33] And Abraham planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God. [34] And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.”

Now let’s look at what this relationship is all about. In verse 22 his business associates come to him with a statement and the statement is that we see that “God is with you in all that you do.” Now if you’ll turn back to Genesis 20 you see that wasn’t always the relationship that he had with his business associates. Genesis 20:1, “Abraham journeyed from there toward the south country [Negev], and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur…” and so on, and it describes the incident that’s similar to the incident down in Egypt. Here is the incident he tries to live in back of his wife again, using Sarah as his shield, and we get the roles reversed and everything gets fouled up again because Abraham’s not using the faith technique. Well, all this time it’s going on, obviously that wasn’t such a hot testimony to Abimelech.

Now by Genesis 21, obviously Abraham has a good testimony. Let’s see if we can put this together and get the picture what’s going on here. In Genesis 20 Abraham fails; he fell flat on his face in front of his business associates. Now women, I don’t think most of the time, at least from my experience in counseling and so on, I don’t think women most of the time ever appreciate the depth to which their husbands can be discouraged by things that happen on the job; just like many men cannot understand, for the life of them, why, when they come home at night the woman is tired, she had nothing to do all day, you know, just changing diapers, getting the food, and doing all this, but you know, that’s nothing. And so they can’t understand that because they’re not in that role. Try staying home a couple of days, it’ll be a great educational experience.

All right, then the woman, in her role can’t understand a man. Abraham was a beaten and very discouraged man in Genesis 20. Now Sarah had not understood, and we don’t know, we’re just kind of filling in with imagination here, but we really don’t know Sarah’s response. But a man can become very humiliated by failure at business… VERY humiliated. And frequently, all too frequently the response of a Christian woman is to sense that something’s wrong and then she starts picking. But before she picks what she ought to say to herself is: has my husband’s been wounded out there on the job and am I sensitive to that, or am I just going to start picking, wondering what’s going on and all the rest, and just aggravate the situation worse? Because what can happen in this situation is where you have a man who gets hurt at business, either somebody ripping him off, some bad deal, or he just thought he could do this, swing this deal, it didn’t work out and he failed.

Okay, there’s nothing in Scripture that says anything wrong with failing. It’s just that when you refuse to take measures to not fail again, that’s the problem. There’s nothing, nobody ought to be ever condemned because they failed. Children ought not to be condemned because they fail and grown-ups ought not to be condemned because they fail. But a man can be very hurt in the business world, and then Satan can come to that Christian man and he can begin to use pride on him and then he can send the man into compound carnality, where the man gets resentful at his own failure, and he begins to get paranoid because people are picking on him, even his own family. And there you begin to sever the communication that was so valuable in the first place because the guy has been hit, he’s been clobbered on the business, and it’s just that most men don’t show this. And it takes a super sensitive wife; at this point we’re talking about the wife’s sensitivity now, not the man’s, the wife’s sensitivity to how deeply her husband can be hurt in these kinds of things. And so Abraham could have been extremely hurt over his failure, his embarrassment, he just completely blew it in front of his business colleagues, and he says boy, a fine pioneer I am, I go into this guy and I’m supposed to be a witness to this guy and I just dropped all the eggs right there in front of him. Now what do I do.

All right, in Genesis 21:22 there’s encouragement because by this time Abraham had been successful, and so therefore Abraham, apparently, did not go into the compound carnal spiral of self-pity, paranoia, going to wall it off and so on, but he took steps to improve his business. And when they say that “God is with thee in all that thou doest,” that just an idiom for meaning his business was prospering, like crazy and it was prospering so much that you can tell in verse 23, they’re worried about what’s going to happen in the next two generations. If this guy is so prosperous in his generation, good night, these guys are reasoning, what’s going to happen in the next generation. There’s Abraham, if he’s so successful he’s going to train his sons to be successful; his sons are going to have capital that he didn’t because he came into this land with just the investment capital he carried with him, these guys are going to have so much capital they’re going to take this place over.

And what you find in verse 23 is that his former business associates, in whose presence he was intimidated and humiliated by his own failure, now turn around, that they’re being intimidated; they’re sensing the possibility of hey, we’d better watch out for this guy Abraham, he’s going to run us over with his business. What they’re talking about in verse 23, in plain English, is land for ranching purposes. That’s why they’re worried about the well; this is all ranching business and they’re worried that his ranch is going to take over their ranch. That’s the point; this is real estate dealing. So they’re worried. And in verse 23 the sign of Abraham’s testimony is that they come to him, and they begin to inquire his shop; now look, you are being prospered so much, here’s what we want to do; we want to make a deal with you. But now look, oftentimes Christian men get, what I call ethically emasculated in their jobs. That is, they get some little sad sack person who wrote a few Christian devotionals and they read these devotionals that say the Christian man always ought to be just kind of yea-yea-yea, and if somebody rips him off, give thanks and move on, that kind of thing. I want you to watch what Abraham does here; very interesting.

This is a man at the height of his maturity in his business. His business colleague comes in with a business proposal. But there has been unfairness in their business relationship. Now look what Abraham does. [24] “Abraham said I will swear,” this is all part of the covenant; the covenant doesn’t stop with verse 24, it goes on, that’s all part of the discussion. [25] “And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away.” We don’t know when that happened, but somewhere his business colleagues tried to rip him off. But when Abimelech says, in verse 26, “I did not know who has done this thing, you didn’t tell me,” it shows you that Abraham didn’t immediately assert his rights. What Abraham very cleverly did was wait until he got in a position where this guy had to come to him. See, there’s no international law at this time, so that’s one reason for it; it’s just everybody on his own. So there’s got to be some sort of lever that he can use against this guy. And you will notice, this whole argument that leads to the naming of Beer-sheba, the well of the seven, is actually an argument over unfair business practices. And Abraham stands up for law and order in his business relationship. And if a colleague tries to rip him off, he straightens him out. It’s done graciously and it’s done nicely but Abraham is not a doormat in the business world.

Abraham goes on to say, verse 27-28, he “took sheep and oxen,” that’s the sign of witnessing, all that “sheep and oxen” is is that in the ancient world that’s how you signed covenants. If you want an example of how it was done, Genesis 15 or 17 where they cut the animals in half, put half their carcass on this side, the other half on that side and they walked between them. That was just the way you made a covenant. That’s why in the Hebrew language the word “make a covenant” is [says Hebrew word] which means to cut a covenant and it comes from the fact they literally cut animals open and left them there, and walked between them. Well, that’s what the oxen are; apparently the oxen were cut in half during the making of this covenant, and then the seven ewe lambs of the flock were given over as an enduring witness that the covenant, in fact, had been signed. That’s what verse 30 is all about. And notice he says “that they may be a witness that I dug this well,” and it’s mine! That’s what he’s saying. So you don’t find any wishy-washiness in his business arrangement. He insists upon law and order in his business arrangements and he’s got this. That’s the only way you can have a business environment. So Abraham is aggressive in his business.

So let’s summarize this chapter in his life. We summarized his relationship with his wife, now let’s summarize his relationship in his business. One thing we notice, that Abraham failed but he did not let business failure get him down. And men can often do this and I can well understand how it happens. But Abraham offers us encouragement, that you can have reversal after reversal after reversal after reversal and still come up smelling like a rose. So here’s encouragement. Abraham determined eventually by following the Lord that he would be successful.

The second principle that we noticed in his business agreement, that he insisted on give and take within law and order. He did not tolerate being ripped off; he went out and took care of the terrorists that tried to rip his nephew off and he took good care of the situation here. He wasn’t vengeful but he was firm. So Abraham presents us with a model; here’s the toughness of Abraham coming out with his tenderness. He’s gracious but he is tough. Notice too that in verse 24 he says “I will swear,” there’s no objection by Abimelech to this. In fact, you read later, after verse 24, this whole idea of actually signing a covenant seems new. In other words, we’re to infer that the men would have been perfectly satisfied if the text stopped at verse 24; it was just an oral oath with no actual covenant made. Now what kind of testimony does that show you about Abraham and the business world? His word was his bond. And that was a tremendous testimony that Abraham had to his fellow colleagues.

If there’s anything that is screwed up in the business world today it’s that point. People will promise you the moon, that’s what we’ve gone around this tape thing with the church; oh yeah, we’ll have it for you tomorrow. Well if you can’t have a product for you tomorrow then don’t promise it. It’s all right, if we know it’s not going to come tomorrow we can plan on it but don’t tell me you’re going to deliver me something tomorrow and you have no intention whatsoever of delivering it. Be honest, and I can plan for that. So this is the way the Christian ought to be; his word ought to be his bond. And if his circumstances are beyond his control, okay, say so at the very beginning: I may not be able to do it because of this, this and this. But I’m not going to come to you and promise you something I can’t deliver. And Abraham had that kind of thing so his word was his bond.

All right, that’s Abraham’s relationship to his business. Now Genesis 22, this is the famous chapter, many of you have been through this before, the famous, famous chapter of the sacrifice of Yitzhak, his only begotten son. By the way, this is the word, “only begotten,” where it’s first used in the Scriptures. The “only begotten son” and he had waited, he and Sarah, for 25 years, we’ve already seen what a transformation it worked in their marriage, they’re happy about it, and now God says you got rid of Ishmael, and you sent him out into the sands of the Negev; now Abraham, not south this time but north. Go north, and sacrifice Yitzhak to me. Well you can imagine how this must have felt. Now here’s a guy that just twisted, bent out of shape by pressure but he comes back.

So although this refers literally to Isaac, the promised seed, to generalize and make the principle so we can apply it in our lives, as we don’t have Isaacs running around quite like this, we have to generalize the principle. So if you want to replace Isaac in your mentality, replace it with just the idea of that which God has blessed you with, anything that has caused happiness in your life; some thing, some person, that God has brought into your life that’s caused happiness. Now conceive of that thing that causes happiness, that God indeed has given you. All right now, the issue is, is there loyalty to the thing that God gave you to make you happy or is there loyalty to God who gave you the thing to make you happy. Does your vision terminate on the thing or person or does it terminate on the God who gave it? Now that’s the contest, and this shows the maturity of this man. His vision terminated on the Lord’s character itself, not on the things that God gave to him. In other words, said another way, Abraham is attracted to God, now to what God does for him. Now that does not come except after years and years and years and years of experience in the Christian life. Let’s look at it.

Genesis 22:1-3, the familiar part where God did test Abraham, and He asks Abraham, then, to give up Yitzhak, to give up that which He had given to him to make him happy. [1 “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
[2] And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”]

And so what do we read in verse 3 but the same refrain I pointed out to you before, the refrain of getting up in the morning early to do that which is unpleasant. See, it’s a characteristic of Abraham; he does the unpleasant stuff first so that at least he can take care of the rest of the things in his life; get that out of the way. So he “rose up early,” and for three days they trudge northward to what is now Jerusalem. [3, “And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.”]

Now verse 3, verse 2, in this area the philosophers over the years have tried to nitpick the Scriptures. And they’ve tried to make a big thing, Søren Kierkegaard being one of these men, that what we have here is an existential decision; here says Kierkegaard, is the proof that existentialism must be correct and the Scriptures must be wrong. Kierkegaard says that what you have got here in Genesis 22 is one absolute that says “thou shalt not murder,” but you have another absolute that says you shall obey God’s Word and the two absolutes are in contradiction. So, says Kierkegaard and his fellow existentialist theologians, this proves that absolutes can’t be our guide because they can conflict and what do you then do as far as guidance when two absolutes contradict, you simply choose. No guidance whatever, you just leap in the dark, and it leads 360 different degrees because after all, it doesn’t make any difference, you’re in a case where absolutes are in collision.

Now this is a problem if we have been sloppy in our thinking, and what do we do, we Christians, fundamentalists, who say we believe in the Word of God; we believe in absolutes, absolutes that are eternally secure. Well, we’ve got to modify what we mean by an absolute. God’s character alone is absolute. Now Dr. Meredith Kline, who studied under Cornelius Van Til at Westminster Seminary came up with this analysis of Genesis 22. I mentioned this, it’s in the third Framework pamphlet, but Dr. Kline’s solution appears to be the only solution we as Christians can hold to and make sense of this thing.

“It is the Creator’s prerogative to assign such significance to His creatures as He wills. It’s man’s duty to accept the divine interpretation. The more unaccountable to man the divine interpretation might be, the better calculated it is to bring to the fore in man’s consciousness the necessity of thinking and living covenantally, that is, in obedience of personal devotion to God Himself. As God has given us special meaning to one of the trees of the Garden making it exceptionally a tree of forbidden fruit, as God gave peculiar significance to certain meats in the ceremonial of the Old Testament making them unclean, so now, God redefines the life of Isaac and says that is the life to be sacrificed. Faced with this new word of God, Abraham must not make an abstract idol out of customary prohibitions against human sacrifice but he must listen to his Father’s voice. If, in deference to idols, Abraham rejects God’s interpretation of Isaac’s life at this juncture, he will find consistency demanding of him that when he hears the word of the gospel that he reject also the interpretation God gives there of the life of His Son on the cross. The word of the cross, then becomes a stumbling block.”

In a nutshell here’s what Kline is talking about. There is no such thing as a classic absolute of Platonism; what there is is God’s character and God gives the statement but God can countermand His own statement. Now this shouldn’t be… this is not situation ethics. Situation ethics is we as people, we change because of the situation. This is situation ethics in reverse, where God changes the commands for this situation. In this situation it is right to murder. In this situation it’s not murder because God defines it as a sacrifice to Him; it is all right. So there is no conflict of absolutes if you concede of absolutes always being open to God’s adjustment of them. You might say this is a moral miracle, just like God can intervene in “natural law” (quote, end quote), God can intervene in His own ethical principles.

If you want another illustration of this, on why Kierkegaard is wrong, think of a military situation, when a superior office sends an order down. On that order there will always be the person who is to read the order, on the order somewhere along there will be the authority for the order; it will be signed by the commanding officer who issued the order. That order has two points of authority on it. It has the issuing authority, which will be Air Force manual such and such, or Army manual such and such, and there’ll be a whole bunch of numbers there, and then it’ll be signed by the man that makes the order. All right, that order comes down and we go, we act on the order. But then suppose we’re in the middle of acting on that order and the situation shifts; the commander doesn’t sit there and say oh, I’m so sorry, can’t change an order, law of the Medes and the Persians. No, what does the commander do? He says I’m going to send them another order, this amends my first order. Now the private who looks up at the general orders, he can’t change the order. But the general who looks down on the order can. And that’s what you’ve got going on in Genesis 22. So if some of you do get fogged some time, particularly if you get reading the existentialists, don’t get snowed, just relax; the existentialists here are presupposing that we’re Platonists, but we’re not.

All right, Abraham goes on and at this point Isaac asks, where is the sacrifice? And so verse 8, that famous reply of Abraham, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.” This is amplified later on in Hebrews 11:17-19 where it commends Abraham for this very unusual insight. Here is the mark of a mature believer because he realizes that God’s plan is not unreasonable. What Abraham is doing here is he’s putting pieces together and coming up with conclusions. You can reason through God’s plan; that doesn’t mean your reason dictates the shape of the plan. It just means that God does, after all, address our brains once in a while. And so therefore we would expect that God is kind of intelligent, His plan would be sort of intelligent. And so when you see something that looks and appears like it’s conflicting there’s got to be a solution to the problem.

Now obviously what the collision here is, he’s going to lose his son. So you’ve got the loss of Isaac physically, but then you’ve got the promise that out of Isaac physically is going to come the seed. Well they both can’t be true. Something’s got to happen. And so Hebrews 11 goes on to comment; we don’t have time to turn there but the comment goes on to say that Abraham then puts two and two together and says ah, it must be, the only way I can solve this piece and this piece and get them both together rationally is that God must be going to resuscitate Isaac. If I do kill him, He’s going to bring him back from the dead. So Abraham, then, is the man who reasons through God’s plan. He just doesn’t put his mind in neutral when he believes.

And then the last of it goes on to the actual raising up of the knife in verse 13, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked,” and there was “a ram caught in a thicket … and Abraham went and took the ram,” and he offered the sacrifice.

Let’s turn to James 2:18 for the conclusion to this matter. It is this passage, Genesis 22, that is referred to by James. People always want to find a conflict between Paul and James; there is no conflict. All one has to do, it’s my common theme, is know the Old Testament. This is the famous passage on justification by works. It sounds, for all the world, like we’ve got a problem with Paul. “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will you thee my faith with my works. [19] You believe that there is one God; you do well. So do the demons believe. [20] But do you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” Unproductive, no evidence in history. Can you see faith? Is there an X-ray machine, sonar, is there some device that we can use to measure faith, and so and so has recently been born again, and they have sixteen milligrams of faith located in their right kidney.

Is this what faith is? No. Faith is shown by behavior and so in verse 21, that’s where this comes up. “Was not Abraham, our father,” notice his manhood, looked up to as a model, was “justified by works,” not at the beginning of his life when he became a Christian, but at the end of his life “when he offered Isaac, his son, upon the altar.” He was justified in the eyes of history. [22]”Seest thou haw faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith matured? [23] And the scripture was fulfilled which said, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness;” now that quotation, of verse 53, is taken from Genesis 15, not Genesis 22. Verse 21, here, refers to Genesis 22. Verse 23 here refers to Genesis 15. Verse 23 is talking about when Abraham became a believer; instantly he was credited with Christ’s righteousness. His salvation in no way depended upon his works. But if it were true faith, it would prove itself in the stream of history, and that’s the point of James. It’s so simple, I don’t see why people have a problem with it. All it’s saying is that genuine faith has to empirically show itself; you’ve got to be able to see it some place. And so this is why it goes on and points out, in James 2:23, “…he was called the friend of God.” “The friend of God,” there’s Abraham, the perfect model of the Christian man.

Now let’s summarize. We’ve looked at three points in Abraham’s life. We’ve looked at his relationship with his wife; his relationship with his business and his relationship with what we’ll say is the blessing in his life. With his wife he had open communication, underneath the authority of the Word of God. With his business he had open communication with his partners and it was done in the framework of law and order. With his blessing it was again done in a framework underneath God’s character. Abraham did not worship God because God was a big sugar daddy and gave him handouts. Abraham worshipped God because God was God, that’s why. And there’s the highest point of loyalty.

All right, in our ensuing lessons we’ll go on and point to some other things and I would also say if some of you men have questions, more questions, I know some of you handed in feedback with questions you’d like discussed, hand them in now on particulars because shortly we’re going to be in the Mosaic Law and here’s where we’re going to get into detail. So if you’d like some details I’ll try to find them for you in the Mosaic Law; I can’t guarantee I’ll find them but if you give me the questions and you’re troubled by this I’ll do my best to see if I can find you some answers.