The one thing that struck me in this chapter was verse 19:
Bring the best of the first fruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God. Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.
This is firstly about giving our best to God, not the leftovers, or what we can do without, but the very best. It all goes back to the age old argument about whether we should tithe and if so, is it out of our net or gross income. I don't intend to get into an argument about that, as I know some people hold very strong views saying we should, others hold equally strong views that we shouldn't. But what I do think is that we should give our very best to God, whether that be in the form of tithes, money in the offering plate, giving to charity, helping the poor, giving our time, our effort, our skills. God deserves the best we have, not the scraps, the leftovers, the time we have left when we have wined and dined, been out on the town, enjoyed ourselves and spent up. He deserves the first fruits, the best of the harvest.
But then you read on in this chapter and it talks about not cooking a young goat in its mothers milk. At first glance, this seems completely out of context, a random comment thrown in just to confuse. But in actual fact, according to what I have read on the internet ( a great source of information!), the Lord is warning the people here against the practices of the Canaanites, who would, apparently, sacrifice young goats in the milk of their mother to appease their goddess of fertility. However, it has led to the tradition of keeping meat and milk separate that strict Jews adhere to even today, with separate fridges, cooking dishes, etc for meat and milk dishes ( a very simplistic view, I know and there is lot more behind this).
In everything God commands, He is looking out for the people, trying to warn us about things to come, to educate us, to teach us His rules. God is so just, so pure, so holy, that He would never ask someone to do something that was wrong. Here, the whole thing about the young goat is that if the Israelites were in the habit of never doing this, if it became second nature, then when they saw the Canaanites and others performing this type of sacrifice, they would never even consider doing it themselves. But God knew back in the wilderness what the people would face when they reached Canaan, so He was forearming them against this.
It is all part and parcel of being taught right from wrong. If you are taught from an early age what you can and cannot do, then this principles become part of you, they become second nature. Whereas if you are not taught that it is wrong to steal, wrong to murder, to lie, to cheat and so on, then they too become ingrained. It is hard to break the habits of a lifetime either way, which is why it is so sad to see the way things are today, with children not being taught right from wrong.
Thursday 27 November 2008
Sunday 9 November 2008
Genesis chapter 22
12 Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.
To me, this is all about faith and about having idols in our heart that take the place of God.
I don't know what was going through Abraham's mind as he made this three day journey in obedience to God. Imagine, taking your son to be sacrificed, knowing you were going to be the one to kill him, and yet trusting God the while time to fulfil his promise that you would be a great nation through Isaac, the son of the promise. The test here for Abraham was whether or not he trusted God, believed in His word no matter what or whether or not his love for Isaac outweighed his love and duty and response to God.
We may never be called upon to sacrifice our children, thankfully, but we may well be called upon to give something up that is really important to us, something that is maybe so deeply ingrained in our hearts that it has become an idol, something that takes the place of God in our lives. What about that tv programme we love, that film, that person? Does our work take priority in our life or our hobbies? Would we rather go read a book than spend time with God? What is there in your life, in my life, that we put before God, the thing we have to do, see, watch, read before we have our quiet time? What about our family, do we put them before God? Or our possessions, our car, our home, our job, our clothes, our finances? Do these take priority over God?
There are things we have hidden deep in our hearts, things that maybe God does not like, does not approve of and that draw us further away from God instead of closer to Him. Like Abraham, we need to give whatever it is to God, to offer it to Him and let Him deal with it. Pretty soon, you will find the Holy Spirit is at work, changing you from within and removing that idol, those computer games, those magazine, whatever it may be, and replacing it with a love for God, a hunger that maybe wasn't there before because our hearts were full of other things.
To me, this is all about faith and about having idols in our heart that take the place of God.
I don't know what was going through Abraham's mind as he made this three day journey in obedience to God. Imagine, taking your son to be sacrificed, knowing you were going to be the one to kill him, and yet trusting God the while time to fulfil his promise that you would be a great nation through Isaac, the son of the promise. The test here for Abraham was whether or not he trusted God, believed in His word no matter what or whether or not his love for Isaac outweighed his love and duty and response to God.
We may never be called upon to sacrifice our children, thankfully, but we may well be called upon to give something up that is really important to us, something that is maybe so deeply ingrained in our hearts that it has become an idol, something that takes the place of God in our lives. What about that tv programme we love, that film, that person? Does our work take priority in our life or our hobbies? Would we rather go read a book than spend time with God? What is there in your life, in my life, that we put before God, the thing we have to do, see, watch, read before we have our quiet time? What about our family, do we put them before God? Or our possessions, our car, our home, our job, our clothes, our finances? Do these take priority over God?
There are things we have hidden deep in our hearts, things that maybe God does not like, does not approve of and that draw us further away from God instead of closer to Him. Like Abraham, we need to give whatever it is to God, to offer it to Him and let Him deal with it. Pretty soon, you will find the Holy Spirit is at work, changing you from within and removing that idol, those computer games, those magazine, whatever it may be, and replacing it with a love for God, a hunger that maybe wasn't there before because our hearts were full of other things.
Genesis chapter 21
1 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised.
Instead of laughing because she doesn't believe God, this time Sarah is laughing because she is so happy. The one thing she thought would never happen, was absolutely impossible, had come to pass and she was the mother of a baby boy, Isaac. Sarah had waited, and waited, and waited, trusting in God, probably doubting often as she was getting older each day, and yet God was faithful, despite her doubts, to fulfil what he had promised.
Sometimes, when we get overwhelmed by life, by the things happening around us, the problems, the troubles we have, it seems like there is no one there, that no one cares and we are having to do everything ourselves. Yet God is there in the midst of all of this turmoil, and he is faithful, no matter what we may think, what we may be going through and he is are work in our lives, just as he was at work in the lives of Sarah and Abraham. God is great, God is good, he is I Am, the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah Jirah, and the Lord will provide, despite our circumstances and because of our circumstances. He is El-Shaddai, the God who is sufficient for the needs of his people.
As is says in my study bible, the way to bring peace to a troubled heart is to focus on God's promises and to trust him to do what he says.
If God could give Sarah a baby when she was over 100, then why do we ever doubt he can give us what we need?
Instead of laughing because she doesn't believe God, this time Sarah is laughing because she is so happy. The one thing she thought would never happen, was absolutely impossible, had come to pass and she was the mother of a baby boy, Isaac. Sarah had waited, and waited, and waited, trusting in God, probably doubting often as she was getting older each day, and yet God was faithful, despite her doubts, to fulfil what he had promised.
Sometimes, when we get overwhelmed by life, by the things happening around us, the problems, the troubles we have, it seems like there is no one there, that no one cares and we are having to do everything ourselves. Yet God is there in the midst of all of this turmoil, and he is faithful, no matter what we may think, what we may be going through and he is are work in our lives, just as he was at work in the lives of Sarah and Abraham. God is great, God is good, he is I Am, the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah Jirah, and the Lord will provide, despite our circumstances and because of our circumstances. He is El-Shaddai, the God who is sufficient for the needs of his people.
As is says in my study bible, the way to bring peace to a troubled heart is to focus on God's promises and to trust him to do what he says.
If God could give Sarah a baby when she was over 100, then why do we ever doubt he can give us what we need?
Genesis chapter 20
11 Abraham replied, I said to myself, 'There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.'
Here we have Abraham lying again to save his skin, fearing for his life and getting Sarah to tell everyone she is his sister, not his wife. Yes, technically she was his sister, since they had the same father, but different mothers, but just imagine what nearly happened to Sarah - taken as a wife by Abimelech and put into his harem along with all his other wives. All because Abraham thought that he would be killed if people found out he was Sarah's husband as she was a beautiful and desirable woman and they would want her for themselves.
It shows a lack of trust in God, a reliance on Abraham's own scheming to get him out of a tricky situation. How many of us today can say we wouldn't have done the same thing, or even that we don't do something similar by lying by omission, pretending to be someone we're not, or by trying to get out of trouble, harm, debt, marital difficulties and so on by working everything out ourselves and ignoring God? It’s a case of faith, or the lack of it here and I love the way the bible is so honest about this, because here you have one of the heroes of the Old Testament, someone who is used as an example of a man of faith in the book of Hebrews yet here he is, lying by omission and giving his own wife away to another man in an attempt to save his life. It is not the first time he has done this either, as he pulled the same trick with Pharaoh a couple of chapters ago.
A similar example is David committing adultery with Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband, Uriah, killed to avoid being found out. He is described as a man after God's own heart, despite doing these dreadful things.
I reckon this all shows how great God is and just how much he loves each one of us, and yet how little faith we can all demonstrate at times. God abhors sin in any shape or form, and will punish us accordingly for it, yet he will forgive us when we truly repent and turn to Him. He will cast the remembrance of the sin away from him as far as the east is from the west and remember it no more, which is why men like Abraham and David are remembered as great men of faith and not men who really messed up big time. It is also why each one of us can be remembered as men and women of faith, even when we mess up as we surely have done and will do again, because life isn’t about keeping a set of rules and regulations for fear of punishment, but it is about getting your heart right with God, of truly accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, the only Son of God, and about being filled with the Holy Spirit who will then help us, teach us, guide us, and change us from within to become the men and women of faith that God designed us to be.
Here we have Abraham lying again to save his skin, fearing for his life and getting Sarah to tell everyone she is his sister, not his wife. Yes, technically she was his sister, since they had the same father, but different mothers, but just imagine what nearly happened to Sarah - taken as a wife by Abimelech and put into his harem along with all his other wives. All because Abraham thought that he would be killed if people found out he was Sarah's husband as she was a beautiful and desirable woman and they would want her for themselves.
It shows a lack of trust in God, a reliance on Abraham's own scheming to get him out of a tricky situation. How many of us today can say we wouldn't have done the same thing, or even that we don't do something similar by lying by omission, pretending to be someone we're not, or by trying to get out of trouble, harm, debt, marital difficulties and so on by working everything out ourselves and ignoring God? It’s a case of faith, or the lack of it here and I love the way the bible is so honest about this, because here you have one of the heroes of the Old Testament, someone who is used as an example of a man of faith in the book of Hebrews yet here he is, lying by omission and giving his own wife away to another man in an attempt to save his life. It is not the first time he has done this either, as he pulled the same trick with Pharaoh a couple of chapters ago.
A similar example is David committing adultery with Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband, Uriah, killed to avoid being found out. He is described as a man after God's own heart, despite doing these dreadful things.
I reckon this all shows how great God is and just how much he loves each one of us, and yet how little faith we can all demonstrate at times. God abhors sin in any shape or form, and will punish us accordingly for it, yet he will forgive us when we truly repent and turn to Him. He will cast the remembrance of the sin away from him as far as the east is from the west and remember it no more, which is why men like Abraham and David are remembered as great men of faith and not men who really messed up big time. It is also why each one of us can be remembered as men and women of faith, even when we mess up as we surely have done and will do again, because life isn’t about keeping a set of rules and regulations for fear of punishment, but it is about getting your heart right with God, of truly accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, the only Son of God, and about being filled with the Holy Spirit who will then help us, teach us, guide us, and change us from within to become the men and women of faith that God designed us to be.
Genesis chapter 19
16 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.
It is so easy to become comfortable with our lives, with the people around us, their language and their behaviour. Life is often one big compromise as we adapt to those around us, the people we work with, our friends and our family.
Here, Lot and his family had been living in Sodom for so long that they had become used to the morals and lifestyle of the inhabitants of the city. It was no surprise to Lot when the men of the city surrounded his house demanding the two men so he offered up his two daughters if the men would leave the visitors alone.
I cannot understand that at all. I mean, how could any man do that to his own daughters ? I know there is the tradition of hospitality in the East, where it is seen as a reflection of a person's reputation but surely there are limits to how far you have to go to show hospitality?
It may well be that Lot had some grand scheme in mind whereby he could save both the men and his daughters, maybe his daughters' fiancés were with the men outside the house and he thought they would save the girls. Maybe he thought the offer of girls would put the men off (since they were interested in the men only) and they would go away. Whatever his reasoning, he had become comfortable living in Sodom, and was used to the way of life of the people there. He had compromised his principles for the sake of comfortable living.
And it is just as easy for us to do this today. Take a look around at the world we live in, with the abortions, the crime, the drugs, the rising divorce rate and children born out of wedlock. Sex is a way of life for many whether they married or unmarried, same sex partners is becoming more common, and there is just so much sin and evil in the world. We need to make a stand, to let the light of Christ shine through all that we do so that when trouble arises, people will know exactly what we believe in because we have not compromised our principles in order to lead a quiet life.
When Lot took a stand, told his daughters' fiancés what was going to happen, they did not believe him. Will people believe us when we make a stand or will they scoff too, seeing us as behaving no differently from them all this time?
It is so easy to become comfortable with our lives, with the people around us, their language and their behaviour. Life is often one big compromise as we adapt to those around us, the people we work with, our friends and our family.
Here, Lot and his family had been living in Sodom for so long that they had become used to the morals and lifestyle of the inhabitants of the city. It was no surprise to Lot when the men of the city surrounded his house demanding the two men so he offered up his two daughters if the men would leave the visitors alone.
I cannot understand that at all. I mean, how could any man do that to his own daughters ? I know there is the tradition of hospitality in the East, where it is seen as a reflection of a person's reputation but surely there are limits to how far you have to go to show hospitality?
It may well be that Lot had some grand scheme in mind whereby he could save both the men and his daughters, maybe his daughters' fiancés were with the men outside the house and he thought they would save the girls. Maybe he thought the offer of girls would put the men off (since they were interested in the men only) and they would go away. Whatever his reasoning, he had become comfortable living in Sodom, and was used to the way of life of the people there. He had compromised his principles for the sake of comfortable living.
And it is just as easy for us to do this today. Take a look around at the world we live in, with the abortions, the crime, the drugs, the rising divorce rate and children born out of wedlock. Sex is a way of life for many whether they married or unmarried, same sex partners is becoming more common, and there is just so much sin and evil in the world. We need to make a stand, to let the light of Christ shine through all that we do so that when trouble arises, people will know exactly what we believe in because we have not compromised our principles in order to lead a quiet life.
When Lot took a stand, told his daughters' fiancés what was going to happen, they did not believe him. Will people believe us when we make a stand or will they scoff too, seeing us as behaving no differently from them all this time?
Genesis chapter 18
13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?'
14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, I did not laugh. But he said, Yes, you did laugh.
When we are caught out in something, the natural reaction is to lie, to cover up, to pretend that we didn't do it, say it. Here, Sarah displays all of these as she is caught out laughing to herself when she hears that this time next year she will have a baby. After all, she was 90 years old at this point and Abraham was 100, so it is understandable that she maybe thought it was all one big joke.
Yet the Lord hears this, just as he hears everything, and he asks Abraham "is anything too hard for the Lord?"
There are times when it is difficult to believe, to have faith, to really trust God that things will work out. It is easy to sink into a depression, to become some downcast, worried and anxious that it seems like you are in one big black pit that just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Yet God never changes, He is the God of yesterday, today and tomorrow. He created the universe, the sun, moon and stars out of nothing. Jesus spoke the world into existence and the Holy Spirit moved across the waters (Genesis 1). If we truly believe in the existence of God, of His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, then we have to realise that a God who can create all that we see around us from nothing is more powerful than we can ever imagine. There is nothing that he cannot do, and nothing can stop him from doing whatever he wants.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is too hard for the Lord.
14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, I did not laugh. But he said, Yes, you did laugh.
When we are caught out in something, the natural reaction is to lie, to cover up, to pretend that we didn't do it, say it. Here, Sarah displays all of these as she is caught out laughing to herself when she hears that this time next year she will have a baby. After all, she was 90 years old at this point and Abraham was 100, so it is understandable that she maybe thought it was all one big joke.
Yet the Lord hears this, just as he hears everything, and he asks Abraham "is anything too hard for the Lord?"
There are times when it is difficult to believe, to have faith, to really trust God that things will work out. It is easy to sink into a depression, to become some downcast, worried and anxious that it seems like you are in one big black pit that just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Yet God never changes, He is the God of yesterday, today and tomorrow. He created the universe, the sun, moon and stars out of nothing. Jesus spoke the world into existence and the Holy Spirit moved across the waters (Genesis 1). If we truly believe in the existence of God, of His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, then we have to realise that a God who can create all that we see around us from nothing is more powerful than we can ever imagine. There is nothing that he cannot do, and nothing can stop him from doing whatever he wants.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is too hard for the Lord.
Genesis chapter 17
1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.
2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.
Here, God confirms the covenant between him and Abraham, telling him that he and Sarah will have a son, Isaac, who is the child of the promise, the covenant. Whilst Ishmael, the child of the flesh, will be blessed also, it is through Isaac that Abraham will be the father of many nations.
This is not the first time that God has talked about the covenant with Abraham. It is mentioned in chapter 12 and chapter 15, but here, it is all about to take place, with Isaac's birth foretold sometime in the next year. This is something that Abraham at the age of 100, with Sarah now 90, thought impossible. Yet nothing is impossible for God and I am reminded of God telling Moses "The Lord answered Moses, "Is the Lord's arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you." (Numbers 11:23).
All these chapters here are reminding me about having faith, about trusting in God, no matter what. Trust and believe, for the arm of the Lord is not too short and for Him, nothing is impossible.
2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.
Here, God confirms the covenant between him and Abraham, telling him that he and Sarah will have a son, Isaac, who is the child of the promise, the covenant. Whilst Ishmael, the child of the flesh, will be blessed also, it is through Isaac that Abraham will be the father of many nations.
This is not the first time that God has talked about the covenant with Abraham. It is mentioned in chapter 12 and chapter 15, but here, it is all about to take place, with Isaac's birth foretold sometime in the next year. This is something that Abraham at the age of 100, with Sarah now 90, thought impossible. Yet nothing is impossible for God and I am reminded of God telling Moses "The Lord answered Moses, "Is the Lord's arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you." (Numbers 11:23).
All these chapters here are reminding me about having faith, about trusting in God, no matter what. Trust and believe, for the arm of the Lord is not too short and for Him, nothing is impossible.
Oops!
I hadn't realised it was so long since I had posted, and I know I am currently reading Exodus, so I am really far behind in keeping this up to date. I'll be back in a few minutes with more chapters of Genesis.
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