Tuesday, January 8

Tuesday, January 8

Genesis 20, 21, 22 and Matthew 6:19-34

20  Abraham again fails to trust God.  He tries to cook up strategies of deceit instead.  Not a good plan.  But God is faithful and does not allow any harm to come to Sarah.  This story also shows that God is against half-truths.  Sarah must have been with Abimelech for a couple months, at least long enough to determine that all the women in Abimelech’s family were unable to conceive because of Sarah’s presence.

21:1-7  Praise God, Isaac is born.  Indeed nothing is too hard for God (18:14.) 

21:8-21  Ishmael mocked Isaac.  Sarah is offended.  Abraham is distressed by sending Hagar and Ishmael away.  Ismael nearly died.  Hagar was grieved.  All this resulted from one sin.  Abraham should have never had a child by Hagar.  It did not matter what the culture around them may have allowed.  God’s intention was one man and one woman in marriage.  Any other arrangement is sin.  Any other arrangement will cause pain and sorrow.

22:1-19  Abraham had obeyed God many times and God had blessed him.  Abraham had believed God when He said that a nation would be founded through Isaac.  How could it be that God would ask him to sacrifice the child of promise?  That means that he would be dead.  So how would God establish a nation through a dead youth?  No matter how contradictory all this may sound, Abraham believed God.  Abraham told the servants (verse 5) that “we” will return to you.

22:8  Isaac was old enough to know what was going on.  He probably looked around many times before asking about the lamb for the sacrifice.  Finally he had to know.  Was Abraham avoiding the problem or did he really believe that God would provide a lamb?  Turned out the he was right, God did indeed provide a lamb.  Isaac was spared.  Many years later God provided another lamb for all the world.  The sparing of Isaac and the sacrifice of Jesus probably happened on the same mountain, at least is was the same mountain range.  A little word study will show that both these events happened on Mount Mariah.

Matthew 6:19-24 You cannot serve both God and Money.  You cannot serve both God and Money.  You cannot serve both God and Money.  In our American society this cannot be stressed strongly enough.  Serving Money leads to many sins: greed, gambling, theft, jealousy, covetousness, divorce, child neglect, and many more.  If we store up our treasures on earth we will lose them all.  If we store them in heaven we will lose none of them.

6:25-34  Do not worry.  Jesus really understands the human heart.  He just finished telling us not to love money and then he says not to worry.  If we don’t love money, if we don’t have enough money, then we had better worry because how will we ever be able to get by!  At least that is the usual line of thinking.  Actually, if we trust God then we neither need to serve Money nor worry.  Do we think God can take care of us?  Do we believe that  nothing is impossible for God?  Do we believe that God created the heavens and the earth?  If he can do that he can certainly take care of us.

(We are moving right along.  Tomorrow we will be half done with Genesis.  Are you keeping up with your reading?  Please leave your comments at the bottom of the blog.)

Larry