10th November 2024

Old Testament Heroes 4 – Isaac, Jacob & Joseph – Martin Mowat

Readings: Genesis 18:1-15 & Genesis 28:10-22

If I were to follow the chronological order of our Old Testament heroes, we’d be looking at Abraham and Sarah today, but I’m going to leap-frog them and come back to them, sometime in the new year, because there is far too much to be said about them to cover in one message, or even in several messages.

So today, we’re going to gallop forward and look at no less than 3 other heroes. As you’ll have gathered from our readings, the first one is Abraham’s younger son, Isaac, who lived from 1896 BC to 1716 B.C., His name means something like "he will laugh", presumably reflecting Sarah’s laughter of disbelief when Abraham was told by those three complete strangers, that they would have a child, despite their considerable age. 

Liz just read us the story.  Abraham and his wife Sarah wanted to have children.  Children were important in those days, sons particularly, because there were no national and private pension plans available.  But more than that, Sarah was keen to help fulfil God's promise that Abraham would be the “father of many nations”.  However, try as she might, Sarah was unable to do that, so in desperation she had given her servant Hagar to Abraham so that she could have a son on her behalf.  Things like that happened in those days, it wasn’t considered strange.

But while that might have been a workable solution for Sarah, it wasn’t for God, who visited them, as we just heard, and promised them the baby they sought.

So Isaac was what we would call today “a miracle baby”, in every sense. 

But when he was mere teenager, something happened that for me is one of the strangest episodes in the whole of the Old Testament.  God decided to test Abraham and told him to sacrifice this precious child.  Why? Well, we’ll come back to that when we talk about Abraham in more detail, but I want us to imagine the traumatic effect it would have had on Isaac. 

He had an older half-brother, but he was the baby of the family, he was the apple of his parent’s eyes, he was the answer to their prayers, he was the gift from God, he was the promise of the family’s cultural future.

But then, that day, all that seemed to change; the love he knew so well, that made him feel so secure, suddenly evaporated when his father grabbed him, tied him up, put him on a rough stone alter piled up with sticks, and pulled out both a vicious looking dagger, and a box of matches. 

His terror must have been extreme but it was short-lived, because at that very instant his guardian angel appeared.  Phew!  What a relief for both father and son.  

And what a life-changing experience for Isaac, to be saved from death by an angel (I wasn’t being serious when I said “guardian angel”), that was something he would certainly have never forgotten. 

When he got married, to Rebekah, she too was unable to give birth to a child and was believed to be barren. However, Isaac prayed for her and amazingly she had twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Isaac favoured Esau, and Rebekah favoured Jacob.

Eventually Isaac grew old and became blind. When it was time to pass on the family blessing to his eldest son, he called Esau and told him to kill and cook some venison for him to eat, his favourite meal, promising him that when he had eaten, he would give him the blessing. While Esau was out hunting, Jacob, on his mother's advice, deceived his blind father by pretending to be Esau, and thereby obtained the blessing instead.  

Although Esau had in fact previously already sold his birthright to Jacob for "bread and stew of lentils", nevertheless he was spitting. So Isaac sent Jacob away, to live with his uncle Labanin Mesopotamia.

Later, 20 years later, Jacob did reconcile with his brother and was able to return home to Canaan, where they buried their father Isaac in Hebron at the age of 180

The next hero we’re going to look at, rather unsurprisingly then, is Jacob, who was described by author Luis Palau as “the schemer and the dreamer”.

A schemer because he was described as being born grasping the heel of his twin brother Esau, whom, as we just heard, he later cheated out of his birthright.  A dreamer because of Jacob’s ladder that Jess just read to us about a few moments ago. 

At that moment Jacob had been in danger of his life and on the run from Esau. We can easily imagine his feelings of fear and uncertainty about his future, but God lovingly reassured him. “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Wow!  That was exactly what he needed to hear at that moment in time. Those words lived with him for the rest of his life, though all his difficulties. 

Like his grandfather, Abraham, but unlike his father Isaac, Jacob’s name was changed.  God named him Israel and he fathered twelve sons who in turn fathered the twelve tribes.

“By faith, Hebrews 11 tells us, when he was dying, Jacob blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.  Isn’t that a beatiful picture of an old man who has really been through it, but for whom God had always proved faithful.  He thought that he’d been robbed of his two favourite sons, but God had returned them to him.  He died in peace and his sons took his bones back to Canaan. 

And finally for today, Joseph. We had a whole series of messages about him in the first half of this year, 11 of them to be precise, so I’m not going to say much because I don’t want to be accused of repeating myself.

He too had been the apple of his father’s eye, but because of the jealousy oof his 11 brothers - such a horrid, dangerous emotion, jealousy - he found himself in a water cistern that thankfully was empty. From there he went to a life of slavery in a foreign land, from slavery to prison, and from prison to amazing power and influence. 

Power is a dangerous thing too, terribly so, and we can see all too many examples of that in our world today.  But Joseph used his power for good.  He used it to save Egypt, then he used it to save his family, and in doing so he saved the Israelite nation. 

By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones. That’s what Hebrews 11 says about him. 

So what’s the punchline? Besides all being members of the same family line, and besides the fact that Isaac was the father of Jacob and Esau, and the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel, these three heroes of faith all had something else in common. 

In the age that they lived, and the area where they lived, the vast majority of people didn’t worship God, they worshiped idols.  But these three heroes did worship God, uncompramisingly. Not only that, they communicated with him, they heard his voice, they had a relationship with him, and they did what he asked of them.  That was exceptional.

And because they did that, they took it in turns to assure the future of a nation, a very important nation.

What do people worship today?  We find the answer to that by looking at how they spend their time, their energy, and their money. 

Worshiping God today is the exception rather than the rule, it’s exceptional, hearing his voice is exceptional, conversing with him, having a relationship with him, and doing what he asks of us is exceptional.  So if that’s what you do, then in my book you’re a hero too.