Genesis 22:20-24 and Genesis 23

Now we come to the summing up of the story of Abraham and Sarah and the continuation of the story of Isaac.

Sarah lived to be 127 years old.

After she died Abraham mourned for her. Then he asked the Hittites living there to sell him some property so that he could bury Sarah. 

The Hittites considered Abraham a mighty prince and offered him the use of one of their choicest tombs to bury Sarah.

But Abraham refused. He asked them to encourage Ephron to sell him the cave of Machpelah at the full price as a burial site. But Ephron wanted to give Abraham the field with the cave in it. But Abraham did not want the land to be gifted to him. He wanted to buy it so that Sarah, and later Abraham, was not buried in a foreign land, but in land Abraham owned.

So he bought the land and Sarah was buried there.

It was important for Abraham to own the land he and Sarah were buried in. He had lived as a foreigner for most of his life. He wandered the land, never owning anywhere. Yet God had promised him and his descendants this land. As a mark of God’s covenant with him, he wanted to bury Sarah and later also him, in land that they owned. They were the parents of the mighty nation of Israel and they needed to be buried in land they owned that their descendants would later own.

It was several hundred years before God would fulfil His promise to Abraham. But that field near Mamre remained as a possession of Abraham’s.

God makes promises. We don’t always see those promises fulfilled in our lifetimes. But that doesn’t mean they won’t ever be fulfilled. It does mean we may not see them fulfilled. We have to have faith in God that His promises are sound and will be fulfilled in His time.

As we approach our reminder of God’s greatest promise, the birth of Jesus as a human baby to save us as God promised, it is helpful for us to remember that God’s timing is not always ours. But we shouldn’t lose hope, or believe He won’t fulfil his promises. 

This story of Abraham is one of the proofs we find in the Bible of God’s promises being fulfilled.

Genesis 22:1-19

This section of Genesis is well known. But it is still worth discussing.

This is where Abraham, having experienced difficulty in the past trusting and obeying God, is tested by God.

He is told to take his son, the only son of Sarah, the son promised as his descendant, and sacrifice him.
What a challenge! 

Here is the boy Abraham and Sarah waited decades for. Here is the boy given to them when Sarah was 90 and Abraham 100. This is the boy who is Abraham’s heir. God promised this boy. God also promised Abraham numerous descendants through this boy. Now God is asking Abraham to kill him!
Abraham must have been devastated to be told to do this. The Bible does not record his reaction and whether he told Sarah what he was doing. All we know is that Abraham did as God requested.

He got up early in the morning and rode out with his son and two young servants. 

Before he left he prepared wood to take with them for the fire. 

He went to where God had told him to go.

They travelled 3 days. On the third day he saw the place where God intended he sacrifice Isaac.

Abraham took the wood, a knife and the fire and left with Isaac to climb the mountain.

Isaac was curious. He knew there was to be a burnt offering, but he couldn’t see the sheep they were supposed to sacrifice. He asked his father about this. Abraham replied that God would provide the burnt offering.

When they arrived at the place for the sacrifice, Abraham built an altar and laid the wood on it. He took Isaac, tied him up, and placed him on the wood. As he reached out with the knife to kill his son, something that must have been a great torment to him, God stopped him.

God instructed him not to touch Isaac. Having seen Abraham’s obedience He could see that Abraham now trusted and feared God. 

God did as Abraham had told Isaac, He provided a sacrifice. 

Abraham saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket nearby. He took the ram and sacrificed it on the altar.

After this demonstration of Abraham’s faithfulness to God, the covenant with God was renewed. God promised that his children would flourish and he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the beach. They would be successful in defeating their enemies. Even more, all nations on earth would be blessed through his descendants because he obeyed God.

After this Abraham returned to Beersheba and remained there.

God doesn’t necessarily ask that much of us to prove our trust in Him, but he does test us on occasion. 

Abraham’s greatness lay in his faith in God. In the way he trusted and obeyed God despite the years that passed when it seemed he was never to have descendants. He spent a long time proving his obedience to God.

We might not be called on to work so hard and for so long. We may not be given such a mighty promise and task. But we are asked to do things by God. And we often have to wait for years to see any promises come to be. 

During that time of waiting, we will often question whether we heard God correctly. Maybe you think you misheard God. Or you put the words in your head yourself. You got it wrong. God didn’t make that promise, or give that instruction.

But He may well have. Sometimes we have to wait and wait. We wait past the point where we feel God is going to fulfil His promise.

We might not be as famous or the leader of a mighty bunch of descendants, but we are still important in God’s eyes. And the tasks He has for us are just as vital as those He gave to Abraham.

Trust is hard to sustain over a long period of time. We have seen evidence of this in the story of Abraham. 

God understands our humanness. He understands that it is difficult to maintain faith for a long time. 

Losing faith in God’s promises does not mean they will not come about. There will be a time when you will see His promises and it will feel so much better.

In the meantime, reflect on how long Abraham waited for God’s promises. Draw comfort from God’s mighty work in your life. It is happening, maybe imperceptibly, but happening all the same. And some day you will see the evidence of His mighty hand in your life.

Genesis 21:22-34

This last part of chapter 21 records events that happened about the same time as Isaac was born.

It is likely a 90 year old woman having a child was remarkable enough for all in the area to know about it, not just those who lived in the vicinity of Abraham’s camp.

Abimelech has already been mentioned in Genesis 20:1-16. He was the King who took Sarah as his wife because he was told she was Abraham’s sister. He became aware of her being Abraham’s wife when all the women in his household became infertile after that event.

Now he has heard of Isaac being born to 90 year old Sarah and 100 year old Abraham.

Abimelech was already aware of Abraham’s standing with God after the incident with Sarah. Now he has even greater proof. How many 90 year old women have a baby?

So Abimelech and his Military Commander visited Abraham. They recognised that God was on Abraham’s side. Abimelech was frightened that Abraham, with God’s support, may decide to destroy Abimelech. He asked Abraham to swear to him that he would never do that to his family. He asked Abraham to treat Abimelech and his land as well as Abimelech had treated him.

Abraham was prepared to swear this and make a covenant.

But there was a problem. Some of Abimelech’s servants had taken a well that Abraham had dug. Abraham gave Abimelech sheep and cattle to seal the covenant he had agreed to make with Abimelech. But Abraham set aside 7 sheep. This puzzled Abimelech and he asked what it meant. Abraham replied that accepting these sheep would be proof that Abraham dug the well and that it was his well. So Abimelech accepted this.

The next thing Abraham did was to plant a tamarisk tree at that place where he worshipped and prayed to God. 

For Abraham, as an itinerant man who owned no land and belonged to now kingdom, there was great danger. He was wealthy and he had many employees, but his lack of land made him vulnerable.

It was in Abraham’s interest to make covenants where he could. The power he held to make these covenants was the evidence that was plain to see of his standing with God. It was God who made these covenants possible and also ensured Abraham continued to be safe in Philistine country. God promised Canaan to Abraham’s descendants and that time was a long way off. Until then Abraham depended on the good will of those around him to be able to safely live and manage his flocks.

This is a great reminder of how long God plans things for. When we become impatient waiting for God to resolve a situation we see things in a very temporal way as they relate to human life and the time it takes for human situations to resolve. But God thinks in far longer time than that. Often in several human lives time. Think of how many generations passed before Jesus walked on this earth?