Advent Isaac

Genesis 27:1-40 - Advent 2 Midweek - December 9, 2015
Isaac – Instrument of God

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Abraham had taken two wives altogether: Sarah and then also Keturah after Sarah died.  That’s fine, of course.  One is free to remarry after a spouse dies.  But then he also took Hagar, Sarah’s servant, who gave birth to Ishmael while Sarah still lived; and then also several concubines besides.  That’s not fine.  His grandson Jacob did the same.  He took two wives as well; except for him it was at the same time.  Plus he pretty much took his wives’ servants as wives too.  So he kind of had four wives altogether.  It was all pretty messed up.  It was the culture in which they lived, and they were products of it.  But that doesn’t make it right. 

They had learned these practices from the heathen nations out of which God had once called Abraham and which surrounded them where they lived in the land of Canaan.  God told Abraham to forsake all idols, and he did.  But apparently God was patient when it came to some of their unsavory customs.  God never openly rebuked them for their multiple marriages.  But he never approved of it either.  We see no blessing come from it  – only strife every time.  The blessing with which God blessed Abraham and his seed was always despite these foolish traditions they inherited.  God graciously overlooked them for the sake of the promise to send his Son. 

People will often mock the Bible because of this blatant polygamy among the patriarchs.  But remember God neither commanded it nor approved of it.  As Jesus himself said,

“From the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:6-9) 

Jesus points us to the beginning of creation. 

That is, he points us to Paradise before the fall into sin.  Marriage is a good gift that God mercifully grants to us even today.  It is a vestige of the life he once gave Adam and Eve in their innocence.  A good Christian marriage is as close as we can get to Eden while we live in this cursed world.  What God intends by marriage is for one man and one woman to be joined as one flesh and be faithful unto death.  Through this union he grants children as the chief blessing so that husband and wife might raise them together in the fear and admonition of the Lord, that is, teaching them to know and love God’s word.  Nothing will give you greater comfort than to see your children clearly confess the gospel in your old age.  This is marriage as God intended.  

Marriage cannot be redefined.  It can be abused, perverted, and adulterated.  All sorts of things that don’t belong can be added into it.  Things that do belong can be subtracted from it.  But it is what it is.  It is what God made it.  It is for what God made it for.  In other words, it’s one thing to abuse marriage by a man marrying two women, whether by unlawful divorce or polygamy.  That’s wrong – even if it is “your culture.”  But even then marriage remains what it is, just polluted, so to speak.  But to redefine marriage as between any two warm-blooded humans who want to intimately live together – well, this is to fundamentally change what marriage is.  There is no such thing as so-called “gay” “marriage.”  God invented marriage when he made them male and female; and that’s that.  God invented marriage in order to create life.  Homosexual activity, however – whether there is exclusive commitment or not – can only produce death. 

The blessings that come from the estate of holy matrimony are most clearly seen when we take God’s word for it and structure our marriages as he created marriage to be.  All Scripture is written for our learning, as we heard in Romans 15 on Sunday.  So we should learn from the bad example that Abraham and Jacob set.  But as we consider the patriarch Isaac this evening, we see that God also gives positive examples for us to learn from. 

Unlike his father and unlike his sons, Isaac only married one woman.  Her name was Rebekah.  She was beautiful and pious.  God blessed them very much.  He gave them wealth beyond what his father had known.  He gave them peace beyond what his father had known.  But like his father, they also lacked the most basic and blessed fruit of marital life.  They had no children.  After years of marriage, Rebekah, like Sarah, did not conceive.  God didn’t grant it. 

Today, as in all prosperous countries, children are routinely regarded as inconveniences to be avoided or else well planned-out.  “And don’t start too young!” they’ll say. “You want to have some time alone together first.”  Or else, “Get it done with and have freedom when you’re older.”  The reason people think this way is because they don’t believe children are gifts from God.  They might say it.  They might know it.  But they don’t really believe it.  They look at children as just any other commodity to plan for and then expect to receive when they choose it’s time.  “Should we get a swimming pool?”  “Let’s wait till we pay off the car.”  “Should we have a baby?”  “Let’s wait till we know we can afford one.”  

Such an attitude towards the fruit of the womb is sinful and should be repented of by pious Christians.  It denies God as the giver of all good things and as the one who provides what we need.  And more fundamentally, it denies God as the author of life.  Surely if God provides for your life, he will through you provide for whatever life he commits to your care!  To avoid having children is both to distrust God and to play God.  But talk about being influenced by your culture.  As Abraham inherited a sinful attitude towards marriage, so our generations have too.  But is the ancient sin of polygamy more damaging than the modern sin of family-planning?  I don’t know.  Is it any worse for marriage?  I don’t think so.  The one adds what does not belong.  The other subtracts what does.  The one denies to woman the exclusive right to her husband.  The other denies to woman what makes her great: the honor of motherhood.  

God gives us children because God loves life.  He wants us not to live for ourselves but to live for others as God himself does in the eternal fellowship of the holy Trinity.  The Father lives for the Son, and the Son lives for the Father and from their love the Holy Spirit proceeds.  Marriage and raising children are designed by God to teach you this self-giving love, which has existed in God from eternity.  Husbands and wives are to love and embrace each other, and then leave all else in God’s hands, trusting him when he opens them wide and gives, or when he keeps them closed and withholds. 

There is no greater earthly gift than children.  Isaac knew this.  That’s why he pleaded with the Lord to bless his wife’s womb – not to give him more stuff, but to give him a child.  And God finally did.  He gave her twins.  But lo and behold, gifts of God though they were, they were also sinners from conception!   Rebekah could even feel them fight within her.  She inquired about it from the Lord.  This is what the Lord told her:

“Two nations are in your womb,
Two peoples shall be separated from your body;
One people shall be stronger than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”  (Genesis 25:23)

This was a foreboding promise.  But it was a promise nonetheless – “the older shall serve the younger.”  She held onto this.  When her two sons were born, the one was hairy and so he was named Esau.  But when the second was born, he was holding onto the heal of his older brother.  So they called him Jacob, which means supplanter, that is, one who takes what is another’s and makes it his own. 

In that portion of Scripture that I just read, we see Jacob fulfill his name.  The boys had grown.  They were rivals.  Isaac had grown old, blind, and weak.  He was dying.  He had always favored Esau, because he was strong and manly and he loved to eat the wild game he hunted.  Rebekah favored Jacob, because he was a mild man who preferred the domestic life.  And here we see who the real antagonist of the story was.  It was the mother, wasn’t it?  It was Rebekah.  And yet the reason she helped Jacob supplant the blessing from Esau was not because of some petty preference she had.  Oh, no.  Although it was custom for a man to reserve his blessing for the eldest son, God doesn’t care about man’s customs.  He makes his own.  It was his blessing.  He gave it to Abraham.  Abraham gave it to Isaac, and what had God said? “The older shall serve the younger.”  Isaac seemed to have forgotten this.  But Rebekah did not.  She didn’t care about man’s customs either.  She cared about the word of God. 

I know I’m supposed to be focusing on Isaac tonight.  But it has hardly been more the true than here that behind every good man is a good woman.  Rebekah was a wonderful wife.  She might have appeared conniving and manipulative.  But that is because she would not presume to boss her husband around.  That would have been much more shameful!  St. Peter commends her mother-in-law Sarah for submitting to Abraham and for calling him lord.  She was meek and modest and an example to all women professing godliness (1 Peter 3:6).  That’s what the Bible says. 

But though a woman is to submit to her husband, she may not do so if it means not submitting to the word of God.  Rebekah acted on God’s word.  If Isaac would not heed what God had said, she would see to it.  She tricked Isaac in order to be faithful to God.  The older would serve the younger. 

Whose job is it in a marriage to teach their children the word of God?  It often falls to the wife, simply because she cares more.  While this is to the credit of such a woman, it is to the utter shame of her husband.  A man who leaves it to his wife to raise his children in the instruction of God’s word sins against God, his wife, and his children.  He adulterates marriage.  He shames his head, because the head of every woman is her man, and the head of every man is Christ. 

Thus says the Lord.  But what does a mother do?  What does a wife do when her children have God’s promise in Baptism, but when her husband won’t bless them by teaching what this promise entails?  What does she do?  She does what faithful Rebekah did, our mother in the faith.  She makes sure by any means necessary that her child or children receive the blessing that God promised them. 

She teaches them to pray.  She teaches them Bible stories at home.  She makes sure they learn their Catechism.  She leads by example as a pious wife and mother.  That is, she submits to her husband and her children’s father where she can, as Rebekah did; and she submits to God and his word where she must.  Blessed are those children who have Rebekah for a mother.  For then they receive the blessing that our father Isaac gave — ah, but even greater, not the blessing that the Seed would come through their flesh, but the blessing that the Seed has come in their flesh and joins them still in all sorrow. 

They have the blessing of Christ whose promise it is to be the Savior of all nations. 

Wives, do not be discouraged.  Honor your husbands as your head.  Encourage them.  Submit to them even as you urge them to do their duty.  If they will not, by any means you can see to it that your children are not denied the blessing of knowing Jesus.  Embrace the fruit of the womb as Sarah and Rebekah longed for it.  Embrace the fruit of the womb as our Lord’s mother Mary did who received into her care the very Seed so long promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  He is your reward and your children’s salvation. 

Husbands, do not be discouraged.  Honor your wives as the weaker vessel.  Encourage them.  Love them as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her.  And as you fall short, as you place your desires before hers, as you look back and see how and whether you have failed her or your children, find your blessing where Isaac found his: in him who took your place on the altar of sacrifice in order that he might spare you from death.  That is Christ.  He gave himself for you.  He covers your sins.  He honors you.  Do not be shy to speak openly of this with your wife and children, even if they are grown.  It is your blessing.  It is theirs. 

Here in the faithfulness of God to fulfill what he promised in Christ, find also your faithfulness to one another as man and wife who continue to pray for your children.  

Dear brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, dear children of God, do not be afraid.  Isaac once served as a type of Christ when God commanded Abraham to offer him as a sacrifice, thus pointing to the Lamb of God who bears your every sin away.  Isaac also serves as a type of Christ in another way – as the great patriarch who remained faithful to only one woman.  This is what Christ does.  He remains faithful to his holy bride, his Zion, the holy Christian Church.  He is her beauty.  He is her honor.  He is her Savior.  He cannot forsake her.  He cannot fail to bless the children they have together who are born from above by water and the word.  And so the Church, like Rebekah, holds God to his promise.  And Christ like Isaac, once he has blessed us, will not go back on his word.  We claim the blessing our Lord gives by any means we can, and we hold him to it.  We come to where he teaches us where all blessing is found.  We claim what belongs to God’s Son.  We live under grace.  Our future is safe.  Our God is faithful. 

Amen.