The Story, Week 2

I said last week that Genesis 3 marks one of the 2 most important transitions in the Bible. From this point forward the entire Bible is about God’s pursuit of man and His plan to get us back. In this week’s chapter we find out that the first phase in God’s plan is to build a nation. The temptation for some is to skim over these parts of the Bible or to see them as less impactful because “I’m not Jewish.” This is indeed the story of the forming of the Jewish nation. But the significance here goes way beyond those who are ethnically or religiously Jewish. This part of the story is significant for every God follower.

What I want to do this week is go over what I think is the main point of this part of the story and then go back and discuss some other interesting parts.

I think the main part of the story here is God’s sovereignty and the oddity of how He goes about building this nation. He chooses certain people to make covenants with and He makes some decisions about who will start this nation that are…crazy. Some of the decisions God makes seem backwards, illogical and wrong. Let’s go through God’s choice for the patriarchs.

Abraham and Isaac
First he chooses Abraham and Sarah. They are old. Really old, way beyond child bearing age. How are they going to start a nation? They live really far away from the land God wants to use and they are part of a people group that worships pagan gods and idols. Nonetheless, Abraham responds in faith and leaves his home. Before God fulfills his promise Abraham lies, twice, about Sarah being his wife to save his hide. He didn’t think God was working quickly enough or in the right way so he took matters into his own hands and slept with his wife’s maid to try to have a kid.
Isaac follows in his father’s footsteps and lies about his wife because he’s scared he’ll get beat up.

Jacob
The oddity of God’s choices gets even more severe with Jacob. Jacob and Esau are twins. Esau is technically older but Jacob swindles him out of his birthright and then partakes in a very elaborate lie to Isaac to steal Esau’s blessing. This situation blows up so badly he has to flee to his uncle’s estate. His uncle, by the way, is just as jacked up and tricks Jacob into marrying the wrong daughter.

What is the point of all this? God uses screw-ups, nobodies, bad decision makers, and low qualifying people. These aren’t the only people, but they are the some of the most common. What does that mean about our place in God’s plan? Do you ever feel like God’s plan involves really spiritual, near perfect, saints with super-faith? What’s amazing is that as we read through The Story we see that God intentionally chooses the imperfect. This is great news for people like me who are not extraordinary. This is great news for the people who can associate more with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob than with Mother Theresa. I’m not saying people in this group aren’t extraordinarily talented. You are. But I am saying everyone in this group falls short somewhere and that does not disqualify you from God’s plan to build something great.

Here’s another part of this week’s chapter that stood out to me: God himself will provide the lamb. God tells Abraham to take his promised son, Isaac, up on a hill, kill him and offer him as a sacrifice. Isaac, unaware of the full plan asks Abraham where the lamb is for the offering and Abraham answers with this amazing line. God Himself will provide the lamb. We get glimpses of the second covenant before God has even instituted the first covenant. God is already hinting at the cross before He has given the Law. This is proof that Jesus was not plan B. This is a beautiful illustration of Abraham’s obedience as well as God’s love for humanity. God stopped Abraham from going through with it, but God did not withhold his son.

Jacob wrestles with God. First, whom is Jacob wrestling? Here it says a man, a few sentences later it says he wrestled God. Hosea 12:3-4 says he wrestled an angel. Who is this? This a Christophany, an example of the pre-incarnate Jesus making an appearance in human history. The Old Testament sometimes calls the Son of God “The Angel of the Lord”. He shows up here, with Joshua before Jericho and with the 3 Hebrew kids in the oven.
Now, the interesting part to me is that it actually says a man wrestled with Jacob. That means God initiated this. Jacob has been in conflict his entire life and is about to have what he thinks is another big conflict with Esau. In this moment, all alone in the desert, Jesus walks up unprovoked and puts Jacob in a guillotine choke. God basically starts bullying Jacob with the goal being to make him yield. God was wanting to see at what point Jacob gave up and said “Mercy!” Clearly God could have overpowered Jacob. This sentence means God could not make Jacob give up.
So, what does this mean to you? It means God really likes persistence. Tired, beat up, wore out, confused...keep going. See you next week.