Gathering Growing Going
with Lizzy Smallwood
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What do you do with God’s will, his revealed will? This passage gives us a glimpse at the two most popular and prevalent answers. On the one hand, in Isaac, we have the ‘I know God’s will BUT…’ response – this is the response that acknowledges that God’s will has been made clear but we humans want to do something else. Put simply, this is the response of disobedience. On the other hand, in Rebekah, we have the ‘I know God’s will SO…’ response – this is the response that acknowledges God’s will has been made clear but that we don’t trust God to do as he says, so… . Put simply, this is the response of the ends justify the means, and God cannot be trusted. Both are wrong. Both lead to a mess and both are responses that Jesus avoids, thankfully. Just listen to his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane – ‘Father, take this cup from me, but not my will but yours be done’.
Like father, like son’ – you cannot avoid the phrase when you read the one chapter in the Bible devoted to Isaac and his life! The account is not chronological, but it is structured theologically – and the resemblance to the life of Abraham is obvious. The most obvious similarity is this: same LORD who chooses, sustains, commits, delivers, remains faithful, is consistent in grace and mercy – TICK! That truth inevitably leads to another ‘like father, like son’ resemblance, one in which the son is unlike his human father/ancestor and everything like his Father, and for our benefit and blessing!
When I search the word ‘grace’ in my Bible software, it says the word doesn’t occur until into 1 Samuel. In fact, passages like the one we are looking at today are drenched in ‘grace’. Grace is the beating heart of God’s promise to Abraham, which leads to the salvation of the world in Abraham’s descendant, Jesus Christ. Grace is what displays, for our benefit, the supreme significance of God and his nature and goodness.
We need to notice symmetry in the way Bible passages are put together—today’s passage is a case in point. If we take a bird’s eye view, we can see that it falls neatly into three parts: there are two bookends (vs.1-6, and vs.12-18), and then a middle section (vs.7-11). But it also raises the question of contentment as one of God’s people—am I content in life, will I be content in death, because I rest in the fulfilled promises of God?
It is wonderful to see the fruit of God’s faithfulness in Abraham’s life. Instead of working to create God’s promises by his own hands, Abraham is now making decisions within the context of God’s proven faithfulness—and it is so encouraging for us as people growing in the image of God to see!