Gluten Free & God Seeking: How Did God Fulfill the Birth of Isaac in Genesis 12:7?

Monday, December 7, 2015

How Did God Fulfill the Birth of Isaac in Genesis 12:7?

When God called Abraham, He made a promise with him. Not just once either, but three times
in Genesis 12:7, 13:15-16, and 15:7, 18. When God says something that many times, we better pay attention. Let’s take a look at what this promise is all about:

And Jehovah appeared to Abram and said, To your seed I will give this land. Genesis 12:7

This story came alive for me when I read chapter 46 of the Life-Study of Genesis. In this chapter Witness Lee shares that it seems Abraham was confused about who this promised seed should be. First, Abraham wondered if it was his nephew Lot, but then Lot moved away. After that Abraham asked God if it was Eliezer his trusted servant. Later when Abraham felt that God was really taking too long to fulfill this promise, he took matters into his own hands. But later God made it clear Ishmael wasn’t it either.

After that episode God didn’t speak to Abraham for 13 years, and Abraham and Sarah probably were asking each other what’s up with that? In chapter 17:19 God comes to tell them what was up with that—"Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son indeed; and you shall call his name Isaac." If you’ve been tracking Abraham’s age, he is now 99 and Sarah is 90! By all standards they’re now way past the years of child bearing.

God really shows us here that He likes to work out His promise in seemingly impossible situations. And just like God said, that very next year Isaac was born. In this chapter I learned that what God was getting at here was that Sarah was going to conceive a child not by man’s strength but by God’s grace.

But this account isn’t just about God making headlines—Couple in Canaan have a child at 100! It’s about something far deeper. Many times in these chapters Witness Lee says that the story of Abraham is our own Christian biography. On page 622-624 he shows using Abraham’s story that the seed is actually Christ being worked into us. It was incredible to me how each one of these people symbolize something in our own Christian experience:

Without exception, every Christian is like Abraham....So firstly we rely upon our Lot, that which we brought with us from our natural background, trying to use him to fulfill God’s purpose in living a heavenly life for the glory of God.….When God does not allow us to rely on Lot, then we turn to Eliezer, expecting that he will enable us to live a heavenly life for God’s glory. Eventually God tells us, ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want anything objective, but something subjective from within your own being.’ Once we realize that God wants this, then we begin to exercise our own energy, our natural strength, to fulfill God’s purpose.…Although we may gain an Ishmael who is good in our eyes, we have the deep sensation that we are missing something. We have lost God’s presence. Moreover, this Ishmael will always mock the spiritual things (21:9)....It is not easy to stop your self-effort in the Christian life and your natural zeal in Christian work....But blessed is the one who will stop, for when you stop, God comes in. The end of humanity is the beginning of divinity....While you are praying that God will do something, God is praying that you will stop (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Genesis. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1974, Print).