David Guzik’s weekly devotional, based on a verse or two from the Bible.
Finding God’s Will
Blessed be the LORD God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His mercy and His truth toward my master. As for me, being on the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren. (Genesis 24:27)
Genesis 24 tells the story of a special servant of Abraham who had the job to travel far, find a bride for his master’s son, and return with the chosen bride. The servant isn’t named in Genesis 24 but was likely Eliezer of Damascus mentioned in Genesis 15:2. We don’t know of any other person who held this position in Abraham’s household.
The servant had a big responsibility. The wife of Isaac, Abraham’s son, would have an important place in the unfolding plan of God’s covenant promises to Abraham and his descendants. It would be natural for Eliezer to think, “I must be led by God to find and choose the right woman, and then God must move on her heart to agree. It must be the woman God chooses.”
Genesis 24 explains that Eliezer did something that everyone must do when they want to discover and live out God’s will: he prayed (Genesis 24:12-14). He surrendered the matter to the LORD, and in faith asked God to guide him and all the circumstances around the finding and choosing of this special woman. God answered his prayers, and he found Rebekah, at a well in the distant land he had traveled to. Rebekah showed a true servant’s heart when she volunteered to do the difficult work of watering the camels of Eliezer, who was a stranger to her. Eliezer also discovered that Rebekah was perfect because she was related to Abraham’s relatives, from the land Abraham came from.
When Eliezer explained this to Rebeka’s family, he used these words: being on the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren. There is something important in those words. Eliezer made it clear that God led him while being on the way. In other words, Eliezer didn’t just sit back and wait for God to reveal every detail before he moved forward. Instead, the servant of Abraham got busy with what he could do – he went on his way – and that was when the LORD led him.
Dear brother or sister, if you want to see God’s guidance in your life, get on your way. Be active. Take steps forward in some direction, and you will see God lead you being on the way. There may be times when God wants us to stop and wait for Him before we do anything, but that isn’t God’s normal way of leading. Normally, God wants us to get on our way and expect His guidance as we go.
Generally speaking, it’s our duty to get on our way according to what God has revealed and trust He will guide us.
It’s hard to steer a parked car. Get on your way, and let God lead you.
Three Marks of Faith
Then Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give me property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.” (Genesis 23:3)
There are two great people of faith referred to in Genesis 23:3. The first is Abraham, who had just carried out one of the most notable acts of faith in the Bible: the willingness of offer his son Isaac (Genesis 22). The other person of faith is referred to with the words his dead, speaking of Sarah, the deceased wife of Abraham. Sarah was a great woman of faith, who by faith received God’s promise to bear a son long past the normal age to become a mother.
This single verse tells us much about great men and women of faith.
Great men and women of faith endure many hardships. Sarah endured the hardship of death and Abraham the hardship of being left behind. Sometimes we think that people of great faith live in a different world, untouched by the pains and concerns of normal life. That isn’t true. Even Jesus learned obedience by the things that He suffered (Hebrews 5:8).
Great men and women of faith are pilgrims, visitors. When Abraham began to negotiate with the sons of Heth for a place to bury Sarah, he began by saying I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Though Abraham lived in Canaan for more than 30 years, he still thought of himself as a foreigner and a visitor in that land.
Abraham did not feel this way just because he came another place (Ur of the Chaldeans). It was because he recognized his real home was heaven (Hebrews 11:9-10). Moses knew the same, and he taught Israel this principle (Leviticus 25:23). David also knew this truth (1 Chronicles 29:14-15, Psalm 39:12).
As a man of faith, Abraham lived and built in Canaan and left something for his descendants, but he knew his ultimate home was heaven, and he was only visiting this life. His real home was eternal.
Great men and women of faith can receive the part as the whole. Genesis 23 explains that Abraham bought this property for burial. In his travels around Canaan, Abraham had earlier lived in this area and there built an altar to God (Genesis 13:18). He knew this cave and was willing to pay the full price for it.
God had promised Abraham and his covenant descendants all of Canaan as their inheritance (Genesis 15:18-21). Yet, this was the only piece of land that Abraham ever formally owned and possessed. He received the part, but still believed in God’s promise of the whole.
Dear believing friend, we now only know and experience in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). Yet we can trust God’s promise and receive the part as evidence as the whole. One day, all will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Words of Faith
And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.” (Genesis 22:5)
God told Abraham to do something strange: offer his son Isaac, the son of promise, as a sacrifice. Abraham lived as a sojourner, a pilgrim, in the land of Canaan. The priests of many of the Canaanite deities said their gods demanded human sacrifice. The people of Canaan found nothing especially strange about human sacrifice, but Abraham had believed Yahweh was different.
In obedience, Abraham prepared for the journey started out with Isaac and some servants to the appointed place, Mount Moriah. They arrived on the third day, and every day Abraham thought about what God commanded him to do. When they came to the region of Moriah, Abraham told his servants to wait while he and Isaac went further on to worship God.
That’s when Abraham spoke words of triumphant faith: we will come back to you. Abraham believed that both he and Issac would return; that they both would come back, and he said so.
Abraham, the friend of God, fully intended on obeying God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. At the same time, he was confident that they would both return. How could this be?
It wasn’t because Abraham somehow knew this was only a test and God would not really require that he sacrifice Issac. Instead, Abraham’s faith was in understanding that should he kill Isaac, God would raise him from the dead, because God had promised Isaac would carry on the line of blessing and the covenant.
He knew God’s promise: in Isaac your seed shall be called (Genesis 21:12), and Isaac didn’t have any children yet. Abraham understood that God had to let Isaac live at least long enough to have children. If Isaac dies before having children, then Abraham’s covenant lineage is dead, his name is forgotten to history, and God’s promise is proved false.
Hebrews 11:17-19 clearly explains this principle: By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
Abraham knew anything was possible, but it was impossible that God would break His promise. He knew God was not a liar. To this point in Biblical history, we have no record of anyone being raised from the dead, so Abraham had no precedent for this faith, apart from God’s promise. Yet Abraham knew God was able. God could do it.
Ultimately, Genesis 22 shows that God did not want human sacrifice and will never call for it. Yet God does want His people to trust Him and to understand that He can never fail in keeping His promises. You can trust His promises today.
Isaac and Ishmael
And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing. Therefore she said to Abraham, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac.” (Genesis 21:9-10)
God miraculously fulfilled His promise to Abraham and Sarah, and they had a son in their very old age, naming him Isaac. That name means “laughter,” and originally was a rebuke of the laughter of Abraham and Sarah at God’s promise (Genesis 17:17-19 and 18:12-15). God turned that gentle rebuke into an occasion for joy.
As Isaac grew, he experienced rough treatment from his older half-brother Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael had the same father (Abraham), but Isaac’s mother was Sarah and Ishmael’s mother was Hagar, a servant from Egypt. Ishmael was much older than Isaac – probably about 13 years older – and he mocked his younger half-brother.
Sarah, the mother of Isaac, didn’t like that at all. Defending her son the way one would expect a mother to, Sarah demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her son Ishmael out of their home. What might seem cruel or excessive to someone else made sense from the perspective of a mother protecting her son.
Even more, God had a plan in all this. At the prompting of God (and Sarah), Abraham did send away Hagar and Ishmael. The two sons of Abraham, half-brothers, would not grow up together. Still, God preserved, protected, and even prospered Ishmael and his descendants. God has a purpose for the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael.
This is more than a story of persecution, obedience, and God’s faithfulness. In Galatians 4:22-29, the Apostle Paul used this conflict as an illustration of the conflict between those who are born of the promise and those who are born of the flesh.
In Galatians 4, the Jewish legalists who troubled the Galatian Christians protested they were children of Abraham and therefore blessed. Paul admitted they were children of Abraham, but they were more like Ishmael, not Isaac. The legalists claimed Abraham as their father, but Paul asked who was their mother – Hagar, or Sarah?
Ishmael was born of a slave and was born according by the efforts of the flesh, by man working in his own strength and apart from God’s promise. Isaac was born of a freewoman and was born according to the gracious promise of God.
That was why Paul used the analogy, because the legalists among the Christians in Galatia promoted a relationship with God based in bondage and according to the effort of man and not according to God’s promise. The true gospel of grace offers liberty in Jesus Christ and is a promise that is received by faith.
The lesson of this is not that God hated Ishmael. God blessed him, and Ishmael had an important purpose in God’s unfolding plan. The lesson is that God’s promise is always greater than man’s effort. Live today according to the power of His promise.
Kept from Sinning
And God said to him in a dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.” (Genesis 20:6)
God spoke to the pagan ruler Abimelech in a dream, telling him to stay away from the prominent, prestigious woman that came to his city of Gerar. The woman was named Sarah, the wife of Abraham the man of God and the man of God’s covenant.
The whole situation came about because Abraham didn’t act like a man of God and a man of God’s covenant. Coming to Gerar, Abraham failed to trust God as he should have and instead trusted in his lies and deceptions. Abraham was afraid that the king of Gerar would kill him and take Sarah because she was an obviously wealthy and prestigious woman. So, Abraham told Sarah to lie, saying she was his sister instead of his wife. Sarah lied and Abimelech spared Abraham’s life but planned on taking Sarah into his harem.
God then interrupted this mess with a frightful dream as Abimelech slept. God warned Abimelech and told him that Sarah was actually the wife of Abraham and not merely a sister. God said He would kill Abimelech if he did not return Sarah to Abraham. In his dream, Abimelech protested to God, pointing out that he only did this because he thought Sarah was unmarried.
God agreed and said that Abimelech had done this in the integrity of his heart. What is more, God said that He withheld Abimelech from sinning against the Lord.
Aren’t you grateful for the times God has withheld you from sinning against Him?
This doesn’t mean that God withholds His people from temptation. God may not lead us into temptation, but He allows temptation to come our way.
This doesn’t mean that God will never allow situations where it may be easy to sin. Abimelech found it easy to bring Sarah into his palace, but God confronted him before he could treat Sarah as his wife.
It does mean exactly what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says to God’s people: No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
It also means that there may be sometimes when God simply blocks the way of the person who intends to sin. That person doesn’t deserve such a gracious gift from God, but God is free to show that grace when it pleases Him.
Maybe you can remember some occasion when you intended to sin, even hoped to sin, and God blocked your way. Never presume that God will do this, but thank Him for when He does, and look to Him for the grace to hate sin more and more.
A Pattern for Evangelism
When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, “Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.” (Genesis 19:15)
God sent two angels to Sodom to inspect the city and to remove Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family before the Lord’s judgment came.
One significant reason the judgment of God was coming against Sodom and Gomorrah was because of their depraved sexual immorality, which included homosexuality (Genesis 19:4-5). In Ezekiel 16, God later condemned and rebuked the great sin of Judah in the latter days of the divided monarchy. God compared Jerusalem to the ancient city of Sodom, saying they were like sisters.
Ezekiel 16:48-50 describes some of those shared sins: pride, idleness, and injustice to the poor. Yet, those were not the only sins of Sodom that made them targets of judgment. Instead, those were the sins of Sodom also shared by her later “sister” Jerusalem. The Genesis text makes it plain that God was also grieved by their sexual violence and immorality, which is included Ezekiel’s list of sins under the words committed abomination(Ezekiel 16:50). In addition, Jude 1:7 clearly states that sexual immorality was one of the sins God noted at Sodom and Gomorrah, connected to going “after strange flesh.” The open and approved practice of homosexuality was one of the many sins of Sodom, Gomorrah, and their neighbor cities.
The morning dawned on the day judgment would come, and the angels had to beg Lot and his family to leave the soon to be destroyed city. The only ones to escape would be Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. Lot’s sons-in-law would be left behind as the angels urged Lot to escape the coming destruction and judgment
In how they urged Lot, these angels may serve as a pattern of evangelism.
The angels went after Lot, going to him and his house. Believers might wish that sinners would come to them, and some will. But Jesus didn’t say, “Sit back in church and let sinners come to you.” Jesus told His disciples to go out to all nations, preaching the gospel and making disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).
The angels warned Lot of what was going to happen, and in plain words. Today, it’s common to mock the “hellfire and damnation preacher,” but there is an appropriate place to warn others of God’s coming wrath (Colossians 3:6). Evangelism can and should include warning.
The angels urged Lot, urging him to flee destruction. The angels didn’t make a lifeless appeal, saying “Come or don’t come, we really don’t care.” With great passion and urgency, they did all they could to persuade Lot and his family. Our evangelism should have a note of urgency and passion, working hard to persuade others for Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:11).
Dear believer, let these three things mark your sharing of the gospel. When you find evangelists who do these things, support and encourage them.
Laughing At God’s Promise
And the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.” (Genesis 18:13-14)
In a dramatic way, God appeared to Abraham at the oak trees of Mamre (Genesis 18:1). As the story develops, we see that of the three persons who visited Abraham, two were angelic beings in human appearance who went on to the city of Sodom. The third was the LORD Himself.
One reason God made a special appearance was to tell Abraham that the promise he had long waited for would soon be fulfilled. A son would be born to Abrahm and Sarah in about a year (Genesis 18:10). Sarah was listening to the conversation between the LORD and Abraham, and when she heard this good news, she laughed (Genesis 18:12). Sarah knew that she was long past the time of bearing children, and it seemed too good to be true that God would work such a miracle to make her able to conceive.
Sarah’s laugh was silent. Genesis 18:12 says that she “laughed within herself.” Yet, God heard it and He asked Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh? God knows our thoughts and inward actions, even if hidden from others. Sarah fearfully denied that she laughed (Genesis 18:15), but God knew the truth. We might live very differently if we remembered that God hears and knows everything we think and speak.
I wonder what Abraham’s immediate reaction was when he heard God ask, why did Sarah laugh? I wonder if Abraham thought, “Oh no – now God will take away His promise to give us a son. We didn’t respond to His promise with strong faith, so He will take away the promise.”
Yet, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, God confirmed the promise by saying, at the appointed time I will return to you. When Sarah laughed at God’s twice-given promise, God didn’t take the promise away. Instead, God responded by dealing with her sin of unbelief, not by taking away the promise. Sarah’s less-than-perfect faith did not disqualify her from God’s good promise. We are grateful for what 2 Timothy 2:13 says: If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.
As God confirmed His promise, He gave believers an enduring principle: Is there anything too hard for the LORD? God would demonstrate through Abraham and Sarah that there was nothing too hard for the LORD, and that God can triumph even over the weak faith of His people.
Someone can laugh at God’s promise because they think it is ridiculous, or they can laugh at it because it seems too good to be true. Sarah’s laugh seems to be of the second kind, but God assures us all: nothing is too hard for the LORD. Rest in God’s promises, even the best of those promises.
God Works In Our Waiting
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.” (Genesis 17:1-2)
Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran (Genesis 12:4), and 86 when the son Ishmael was born of Hagar, the servant (Genesis 16:15-16). He had waited some 25 years for the fulfilment of God’s promise to give a son through Sarai.
Now, when he was 99 years old, the LORD appeared to Abram. This was another appearance of God in the person of Jesus, who took on a temporary human appearance before His incarnation on earth.
God’s first words to Abram made an introduction and declared His being: I am Almighty God. By this name El Shaddai (God Almighty), God revealed His Person and character to Abram.
There is some debate as to what exactly the name El Shaddai means. Derek Kidner claimed it means, “the God who is sufficient.” Adam Clarke said it means, “the God who pours out blessings.” H.C. Leupold thought the sense was, “to display power.” Donald Barnhouse took the approach that the Hebrew word shad means “chest” or “breast.” It may have in mind the strength of a man’s chest (God Almighty) or the comfort and nourishment of a woman’s breast (God of Tender Care). The Septuagint – a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek before the time of Jesus – translates Almighty with the ancient Greek word pantokrator, meaning the “One who has His hand on everything.”
Whatever the exact meaning of El Shaddai, after the proclamation of that name, God then told Abram what was expected of him: Walk before Me and be blameless. The word blameless literally means “whole.” God wanted all of Abram, a total commitment. The order was first revelation and then expectation. This communicates the principle that the believer can only do what God expects when they first know who He is, and know Him in a full, personal, and real way.
The last time we are told the LORD communicated with Abram directly was some 13 years before (Genesis 16:15-16). Seemingly, Abram had 13 years of “normal” fellowship with God, waiting for the promise all the time. It would be understandable if, at times during those 13 years, Abram felt that God forgot His promise.
But God had not forgotten the covenant. Though it had been some 25 years since the promise was first made, and though it maybe seemed to Abram that God forgot, God remembered His promise.
The years of waiting were not an accident. They served a purpose in Abram’s life with God. Abram was becoming a great man of faith, but great faith isn’t created overnight. It takes years of God’s work, years of ordinary trusting in the LORD, perhaps interrupted with a few special encounters with God.
God worked in Abram’s waiting, and He will work in your waiting.
The Foolishness of Helping God
Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. (Genesis 16:3-4)
God promised Abram and Sarai what they desperately wanted and long waited for: a son. After waiting ten years, they decided to “help” God fulfill His promise by using an Egyptian slave woman as an ancient version of a surrogate mother. In this, Abram and Sarai both acted in unbelief. Abram did not actually marry Hagar, but he acted towards her as a man should only act towards his wife. This wasn’t the right path for Abram, the friend of God and the man of faith. God had a different way for him, but Abram and Sarai didn’t want to take that way.
Abram and Sarai were discouraged enough that they approached the problem of no children by leaving God out of the matter. It was as if they said, “If we remove God from this situation, how do we solve this?” This was wrong for many reasons.
– God is never removed from any circumstance.
– Men and women of faith must walk in faith, not in unbelief.
– Men and women of faith must live being mindful of the realm of the spirit, not only mindful of the material world.
When a believer impatiently tries to fulfill God’s promises in their own effort, it accomplishes nothing and may even prolong the time until the promise is fulfilled. Jacob had to live as an exile for 25 years, because he thought he had to arrange the fulfillment of God’s promise to get his father’s blessing (Genesis 28:1-5; 33:17-20). Moses had to tend sheep for 40 years in the desert after he tried to arrange the fulfillment of God’s promise by murdering an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-15; 3:1).
It is better to receive God’s help than to try and help Him in our own wisdom and unbelief. When the servant woman conceived, things only became worse, especially for Sarai, the wife of Abram. Hagar’s pregnancy seemed to confirm that the inability to bear children was Sarai’s problem, not Abram’s. In a culture that so highly valued childbearing, mothering the child of a wealthy and influential man like Abram gave Hagar greater status, and made her appeared more blessed than Sarai.
This is a good reminder that results are not enough to justify what we do before God. It’s not right to say, “They got a baby out of it. It must have been God’s will.” The flesh profits nothing (John 6:63), but it can producesomething. Doing things in the flesh may get results, but they may be results that are soon regretted.
Whatever a man or woman attempts to do without God will be a miserable failure – or an even more miserable success.