Tag: devotional

Abraham: Promises of God

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Probably all of us are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Abraham, and remember his frequent title as the “father of faith” and remember his acts of faith being credited to him as righteousness, such as tithing to Melchizedek and taking his son up on the mountain as an offering to God.

Do you remember what God promised Abraham in Genesis 15:4? God said “this man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth out of your own body shall be your heir”. God promised him offspring, and not only that but that his descendents would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen 15:5).

But somewhere in that I see a lacking in faith. He could have had faith that God would bless his wife Sarah with child, but when they just weren’t…ahem…making any babies, successfully…Sarah doesn’t have the faith (at that point) that God is going to give them a child within God’s design for a man and a woman, and tells her husband to sleep with her servant and get her pregnant. And the result of that whole fiasco was Islam (Ishmael), and a blessing by God to multiply his descendants to be “too many to count”. And when God says no, he’s going to establish his covenant with a son of Sarah, not Ishmael, (Gen 17:19) they have some disbelief in their heart. “Abraham fell on his face and laughed.” In his heart he said, ‘Will a child be born to a man 100 years old. And will Sarah who is 90 bear a child?” (Gen 17:17)

Sometimes God’s promises seem crazy, they seem impossible. Everyone knows nobody who’s 90 years old can get pregnant. That’s just crazy. But sometimes God promises us things that seem crazy too.

But I challenge you: What has God promised you that you aren’t taking him seriously about?

Its so easy to have that doubt, even the “father of faith” doubted God’s promises. Has God spoken something into your life, but you just laugh and say “that’s never going to happen” and start plotting in your own fleshly way how to “make God’s promise” a reality…but not quite in the way God intended? When really, God was just saying, hold on just a little longer in faith that I do come through on my promises?….God wants to bless you with things he’s already promised you.

Are you waiting in eager expectation for the blessing God has individually promised you? I challenge you to take God at his word that he is faithful, no matter what circumstances may lead you to believe. God is greater than our circumstances. And he has some huge blessings he wants to do in your life.

(Its interesting to note also that despite Abraham’s doubts that God could give him a child, he still was obedient to what God told him to do, and had his entire family circumcised, even at his old age. There are further implications you can draw from this…)

Genesis 5: Beauty and the Shadow

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I was reading Genesis chapter five today, and I know some of you groan “not another genealogy” but I kind of get all excited, because there’s a lot of interesting under the surface meanings that you discover if you actually study them rather than just read them; like for one thing, in Hebrew culture, names are more than “just a name”, its supposed to represent the essence of the being, which as you may remember is why it was such a big deal that Abram, Sarai, even Saul were given new names in the bible. There’s some interesting names in those lists of who begot who.

Many of you have probably heard Genesis is the “book of beginnings”. But do you know who the first person named in the bible for having two wives was?

His name was Lamech, which means “powerful” in Hebrew (says Strongs). He was a descendant of Cain (yeah, that same guy who killed Abel, you remember your bible history right), one of the seventh generation of mankind. He was also the first person in the bible to kill under the guise of self-defense (but that verse could be a whole other sermon in itself).

His two wives names? Adah and Zillah. Adah means Ornament or Beauty. Zillah means Shade or Shadow.

Beauty and the Shadow. Lovely. Gives quite a mental image of what the dynamic is when you step outside “God’s design” of a man and his wife. Someone gets left in the shadow. Isn’t that always the way its been since the beginning of time? Having two women never quite worked out for everyone involved, did it? Wouldn’t you just really love to be Zillah, living in the shadow of the more beautiful wife of your husband? What does this tell you about God’s design for marriage? Its an interesting thought to ponder.

If you want some bonus nuggets, or bible study idea: cities in the bible, who built them, why, what kind of character did the people starting cities have, were those people godly, what was God’s reaction to the city, were they in obedience to God…there are a lot of questions you can ask yourself. For some starter nuggets: Cain built the very first city. Nimrod built the first kingdom including the city of Babel–and we all have a pretty good idea how God felt about them building the city of Babel, rather than dispersing to fill the earth like God had commanded. It kind of seems like a little bit of a trend. What a contrast to the cities in Revelation, the cities of God versus the cities of Man in Genesis.