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19 “The elder will serve the younger.”

 Genesis 25:23

 We are reminded in this verse that the ways of God are not the ways of humankind. God delights to raise up the lowly and do the unexpected thing. Jesus was born, not in the mighty Jerusalem, but in the humility of a stable in Bethlehem.

“The Lord upholds the humble. He brings the wicked down to the ground.”

 Psalm 147:6

 The Lord delights to raise up those who are bowed down and make them great in the reality of His kingdom. We are not great in terms of this world and we should not seek greatness, for all glory belongs to the Lord and He will raise up the humble to serve Him and be mighty people of God. Therefore, we should rejoice that we are of low estate and with little to offer, for the Lord will fill us with good things.

 Esau was destined to serve Jacob, even though he was the elder of the two twins, but God desired that Jacob would lead the family line to the Lord Jesus Christ. God overrules in all situations and destines His holy will in every life. He loves those who think little of themselves and much of Christ. He will work out His purposes in our life and bring us to great joy and fulfillment. Let us bow our knees to our God and worship all He is and all he does.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says the Lord.”

 Isaiah 55:8

18 “O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham.”

 Genesis 24:12

 This should be the prayer on our lips every day we set out to serve the Lord in whatever we are doing. Our day rises up before us and we dare not face it without the blessing of our Lord and God and the strength which He gives us to face every dilemma. Abrahm’s servant knew where the blessedness lies and knew that the overarching providence of God was to be sought and prayed for.

 We bow our will to the will of God and accept all that He has giving to us with grateful hearts. He does allow sorrow at times to hone our faith and make us look to Him when there is no other comfort in view. We succumb all our desires and wishes to His desire for He knows what is best for us and sees the situation differently to us. We do not know what we pray for and therefore concede all we say in prayer to the will of a loving Heavenly Father.

“Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.”

 Romans 12:2

 As we bow to God’s holy will we are taught the ways of the Lord and to obediently trust Him for all we cannot understand. He is training us in holiness and so we walk as obedient children.

 

17 “The Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.”

 Genesis 24:1

 O that this might be said of us as we review our lives and our standing before God. To know His keeping power in all areas of our life is blessing indeed. Our physical bodies, our mental capacities and our spiritual standing. To know we are fully kept by God is a blessed estate and a place where we can reach out to others and support them with the comfort that we are comforted by.

“… who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

 2 Corinthians 1:4

 How rich a state we are in when we can rejoice in the Lord with great joy and blessing. How useful we can be for His glory and the blessing of others around us, saint and sinner alike.

 What a bolster to faith are the blessing of God as we consider all His purposes and designs in our life and see His faithful hand on our days. Abraham was the friend of God and so also can we be, as we succumb to all His decrees and obey His word. This is the key to godly living and to know that blessing of God on all our ways.

 Let us humble ourselves before Him and in deep contrition confess our sin and set out on a life of daily sacrifice and follow Him.

 

16 “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering,”

 Genesis 22:8

 In this scripture we have the prophecy and promise that God would provide a just recompense for sin. Abraham was instructed to offer his son as a sacrifice, but he already knew that God would do a wonderful work of redemption for Isaac. God had always kept His promises to Abraham and Abraham trusted God completely. It made him the friend of God and because he believed, it was counted as righteous before God.

 God has also provided for us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. The second person of the godhead entered this world and lived and died that we might be reconciled to God. God provided this through the covenant He made with Himself before the world was. God knew all that would happen and how we would utterly fail Him, so He purposed a way with Himself that would allow us to be forgiven and made new.

 Jesus became the sin offering for us when He died on the cross and His perfect sacrifice is enough for us. We can know God and be counted as righteous because of what Jesus has done for us. There is nothing more that needs to be done, only that we repent and believe, as Abraham believed, and we will enter into the joy of knowing God and being free from all sin and death. Hell has no more jurisdiction over us for we belong to the Father and none can take us out of His loving hands.

“I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”  

John 10:28

15 “He (Abraham) lived as a foreigner in Gerar.”

 Genesis 20:1

Gerar was a godless Philistine city which skirted the desert and provided refreshment for travellers. Abraham found himself there but he did not settle nor give his allegiance to it. It was not part of the earthly inheritance promised to Abraham.

We also have an inheritance from God as His elect people. We have all our citizenship in the heavenly country which is the New Jerusalem. We must not settle or put down roots in this world, for we are not of it. Abraham kept his life separate from the world and lived in faith towards God. He did not depend on the world to sustain him but rested his hope in the Lord. So also, we must not let this world infiltrate our thinking and doing but remain faithful to our Lord and God.

 Let us keep this world out of our life and separate ourselves from ungodly living and finding our satisfaction in the things of this life. Let us devote our days to the Lord and His Word and follow in the footsteps of our Saviour Jesus who left all for our sake. May the enticements of this present life sit lightly on us as we think of our heavenly inheritance. Our reality is more than the inheritance of the worlding which is only sin and death. We have been freed from all that.

“Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

 Galatians 5:1

 

 

14 “and the Lord did to Sarah as he had spoken.”

 Genesis 21:1

 The Word of the Lord is binding and will surely come to pass. God keeps all His promises to the godly and the unjust also. God had promised Sarah a miracle baby in the form of Isaac and God kept His promise for nothing is too hard for the Lord. Sarah had her baby boy at ninety years of age, and he gave her great delight. He was the son of promise and through his generations God would bless the whole world. The line of the Messiah would come through that family, and the very Word of God would be born into the world as its Saviour.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

 John 1:1

 The Word of God stands forever sure, and He will keep all His promises to you and bring you safely to the heavenly home, if you are trusting in Him. None of His words can fail and we have them written for us in the Bible. Jesus is the very Word of God incarnate, and we can trust Him for all the prophecies about Him have proved true. His Word never fails but will accomplish all that it says.

 

13 “Is anything too hard for the Lord?

 Genesis 18:14

 This is a certain rhetorical question for the answer is so obvious. We need to know who we are dealing with here. It is the Lord who made every living and non-living thing and has created the world we do not even know about yet. He is the mighty creator God and has all things under His control and jurisdiction.

 This is the God and Lord who made blind eyes see and deaf ears to hear. He raised the dead and calmed the storm on the lake. All things obey Him both animate and non-animate. He is the one who contracted himself to a small baby and entered our world to save us and make us His children. We are certainly lost without Him, and we need to bow our knees to Him the omnipotent God. He is the controller of all events and nothing surprises Him or catches Him off guard. He has complete control over all circumstances and plans the lives of His people with great care.

 We may think that our case is too difficult for Him and that there is no way out for us. We can lament our state and try to alleviate our own needs, but it is the Lord we must come to at all times and seek His guidance and will for our lives.

“For the kingdom is the Lord’s. He is the ruler over the nations.”

 Psalm 22:28

 The Scripture is full of this kind of statement, and we must take it to heart and put all our trust in this God, for He alone is supreme. 

 

12 “Sarah your wife will have a son.”

 Genesis 18:10

 God promised Abraham that he and Sarah would be the founders of a great nation and kings would be born from them in the future. Abrahm and Sarah found this very hard to believe because they were naturally past child-bearing years by a long way. They tried their own way to solve the problem and Ishmael was born but God said that he was not the son of promise. The line of the Messiah would be from Isaac.

 Abrahma and Sarah both laughed at the prospect of having a child in their old age but God was faithful. (Genesis 17:17. Genesis 18:12) God works according to His covenant and not according to the ways of the world. He delights to work contrary to human expectations and carries out His will according to His own purposes.

 God also promised another Son of promise, even our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

 Isaiah 7:14

 As Isaac was predicted so was our Lord Jesus 500 years before He was born, indeed the promises go back to the beginning of Genesis. Let us rejoice at the provision of the Lord and wonder at His ways.

 

11 “He believed in the Lord, who credited it to him for righteousness.”

 Genesis 15:6

 There are no works of merit or righteousness that we can give to the Lord as a sufficient offering. We are thoroughly contaminated by sin and must be cleansed by something on the outside of us. Good works can never save us for we are full of sin and are so used to it we don’t even realise. Only when God starts to impress upon us our sin do we see our need and therefore our need of a Saviour. It is very difficult to preach the gospel in these days for we do not want to hear anything that undermines our personal confidence, but we cannot be saved until we see our need.

 It is painful for us to come to God because we must understand our position before Him and it is not good. We are unacceptable to God and need daily forgiveness and cleansing. Mostly we do not want to hear this for it is offensive to us as people, however we cannot bow our knees to the Saviour of the world unless we first grasp our need.

 Abraham saw His need and responded in faith to God. This is what pleases the Lord, obedience, repentance and faith. These are not on our agenda, and we need a mighty work of God in our life to allow us to see this need. Abraham did many good things but the crown of it all was his faith and this is what he is commended for. So likewise with us, we must put all our faith and hope in the sacrifice on the cross if we are to be cleansed from our sin.

 

10 “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

 Genesis 15:1

 God reveals Himself to Abraham and confirms the covenant of peace between them. Abraham was a wanderer with many riches and flocks to his entourage. He supported many peoples in his riches and protected his family from all attacks. Abraham could afford to be bold, for the power of God was with Him and God promises him great blessings as Abraham lives for Him.

 God is the shield of Abraham and all who follow in his footsteps as the people of God, trusting in the power of God to meet all needs and protect from all enemies. God is the hight tower to which we can flee in times of trouble and pain. There is no other God like the God revealed in the Bible and we give all our trust to Him who never fails His people. Abrahma was instructed by God to not be afraid and to walk confidently in the commandments of the Lord. So we too can gain full assurance of faith as we walk obediently and closely with our Lord.

 What do we seek in life? Are we looking to this world for strength and protection? Let us look a way to our God and find Him to be our all in all. There is no other Saviour and as we look to Him, we are rescued for the errors of the age and the disappointments of this life.