HEROES OF THE FAITH – ISAAC
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 26:12-33
OCTOBER 30, 1983
His name was Isaac. He was the chosen son of Abraham and Sarah. He was the seed through which the Messiah would come, the Savior of the World. He was the seed through which the nations of earth would be blessed. And every Jew living in the world today traces his ancestry to Isaac. The name Isaac means “laughter” for his mother and father in their old age laughed at the angelic announcement of his birth. From the life of Isaac this morning, I have two teachings and the first teaching concerns courtship and marriage. What are the qualities that God would have us, as Christians, look for in a mate.
In the course of time Abraham instructed his servant, Eleazer to choose a wife for his son Isaac. Eleazer was a great man of God, and he loved God, and he served God. He was a trustworthy man, the head of Abraham’s household, and as he went forth searching for a wife for Isaac, he looked for two qualities and they are the same two qualities that we should look for in a Christian mate today. The same two qualities that we as moms and dads, should instruct our children to look for when they seek a husband or wife. First of all, Eleazer looked for a woman of the household of faith. He resolved that he would not choose a bride for Isaac from among the pagan daughters of the Canaanites, but he would be led by the angels of God to find a wife of the household of faith from among the kindred of Abraham. And so, he went forth and he found a woman named Rebekah and she believed in God.
Forty years ago, a little more than that, my aunt Elsie left the farm in Missouri, and she went to the big city in Los Angeles, and she went to find a job there. She also went to look for a man and she met a sailor there and his name was Fred. My Aunt Elsie grew to love him, and they were married. Elsie is a Christian and Fred is not, but she thought she would be able to change him. She thought she would be able to make him into a Christian but that has not proved true through the years. Whenever Elsie prays, she prays alone. Whenever she reads the scriptures, she reads them alone. She goes to church alone; she goes to Bible studies alone. It’s been that way for 40 years. She still prays for Fred and there’s still hope. We pray for him too. He’s a good man, works hard. He’s a moral man but he doesn’t believe in Christ and Elsie’s faith is something that she has alone. We have no way of knowing (missing text here)…all of His power, will not force a person to be a Christian. He will not violate the will of a human being and so God instructs us as Christians to choose a mate who is already a believer, already of the household of faith because you do not know, you do not know that you will be able to change them.
The Apostle Paul says, “Do not be unequally yoked. Do not be mis mated with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with inequity? What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Baal? What does a Christian have in common with a non-Christian? What agreement does the Temple of God have with idols? And we are the temple of the Living God for God has said ‘I will live in them, and I will move among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people so come out from among them and be separate from them’ says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean and I will welcome you and I will be to you a father and you will be my sons and daughters says the Lord God Almighty.” That passage of scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter six does not have specifically to do with marriage, but it does apply and pertain to marriage. Certainly, we are not to be mis mated with unbelievers. We are not to be unequally yoked.
Barbara, when she was eleven years old, began to pray for a Christian husband. That was twelve years before she met me. She didn’t pray for a handsome husband or an intelligent husband but by the grace of God…Seriously, the world does look for beauty and for intelligence, for money—wealth. The Bible says that for us as Christians, there’s nothing more important for us to look for in a mate than that that person be a Christian, a member of the household of faith. The Bible says that when two people who are Christians are married, they become co-heirs of the grace of life. Peter says “Husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor upon the woman as the feminine vessel since you are co-heirs of the grace of life.” The Greek word there is the word “soon claranimous” and it means equal or co-inheritors. Barbara and I share a common inheritance in Christ. We both look forward to the New Jerusalem. We both look forward to the city which is to come whose builder and maker is God. We both look forward to the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. We both look forward to resurrection bodies that are imperishable, indestructible, and not subject to decay. We both look forward to that day when we will see Jesus Christ face to face. We share a common destiny. We are not simply husband and wife, but we are eternally brother and sister and that is how it is meant to be in a Christian marriage. And so, if you are already married and your wife or husband is not a Christian, certainly God wants you to be faithful to that person. God wants you to honor him, honor her, to serve that person. He wants you to love that person for Christ’s sake. But if you’re not yet married, we have this message from the Word of God and that is, if we are to choose a person from the household of faith, choose a Christian.
There was a second quality that Eleazer looked for in selecting a wife for Isaac and the second quality was a servant’s heart. Isaac looked for a woman with a servant’s heart and there’s nothing more important than that. That as we search for husbands or wives that we search for a person with a servant’s heart. Eleazer went to the distant land of Mesopotamia and there among Abraham’s kindred, in the evening time, he came to a spring or a well and he waited as the women came out to draw water from the well and by the Holy Spirit, Eleazer was led to test those women to see which one had a servant’s heart. And so, he asked them for water and apparently many of them refused, but when Rebecca came, Eleazer said “I pray thee, give me a little water to drink from your jar.” We’re told that Rebekah took the jar from the top of her head, and she gave Eleazer drink, and he drank until he was satisfied. And then Rebekah said, “Wait and I will draw water for your camels” and she drew water for all ten camels from that jar. She would have had to have drawn many jars of water, but she had you see, a servant’s heart and that’s what God wants us to have as Christian husbands and wives. A servant’s heart and that’s the type of person that we’re instructed to look for.
I love that little story of the woman who went into her minister, and she said “Pastor, I’m concerned about my husband. He seems to think that he’s a refrigerator.” Well, the minister was a little taken back and he said, “Well you know, your husband is suffering from a delusion.” That was tremendous insight we pastors have. “Your husband is suffering from a delusion and he’s probably under a lot of stress and in time that stress will subside. I’m sure the delusion is merely temporary.” And the woman said, “Pastor, you don’t understand. I don’t care about the delusion. The problem is he sleeps with his mouth open and that light shines right in my face!” That will tell you a little bit of something about me that I love—a dumb story like that!
But certainly, there are times when as husbands and wives, we can tend to drive each other crazy. For most of us, it’s a short drive. There are qualities in us, little qualities in us that can be irritating. Maybe we have attitudes that our partner doesn’t share. Maybe we have activities we like that our partner doesn’t share, and unless we have a servant’s heart, we will not forebear one another in love.
This past Friday night, Barbara and I went with some friends of ours and we went to a movie called “Educating Rita.” It is a much-acclaimed British movie and the acting in the movie was excellent and there was considerable humor, and I would say the movie is very good. But there was something in that movie that frustrated me. In the movie, Rita was married to a blue-collar worker and this guy’s idea of a great time was to go down to the pub and chug a few while he sang songs with his cronies. Rita felt like somehow there had to be more to life and there was something in her that just wasn’t being given opportunity to be expressed. There was more to life, more to her, so she began to go to university, and she took courses in literature and in poetry and somehow that was threatening to her husband. And so, they had a big fight and they separated, and Rita continued her courses at the university. And somehow through that education, it was as though she went through a kind of enlightenment or liberation, and it was like a beautiful butterfly with all of her potential was just kind of released as she began to explore and make the choices that she wanted to in life. I don’t think the movie was trying to put down blue collar workers. I don’t think it was trying to exalt education either. It certainly showed that many of those people who are in educational circles live lives that were empty and hollow. I do think the movie was trying to say that it’s important that we as people, have the freedom to make choices for our life. I think, too, that it was saying it’s very important that we as people, take the time to cultivate our full potential in life, that we give that opportunity, that potential that’s in us, opportunity to be expressed and I think as Christians we can agree with that but there was something that bothered me in that movie. It seemed to me that there was some sense in which that movie was communicating this message. Do it your way. Do your own thing and isn’t that really what the world says today. Doesn’t the world today say, “Do your own thing!”?
I know a music minister at another church, and he was actually asked to sing at a funeral and the person who died had requested that the song that Frank Sinatra sang, “I Did It My Way,” be sung at the funeral. There is no worse song you could have sung at your funeral. There’s no worse epitaph that you could have on your gravestone than that, “I Did It My Way”. That is not the mind of Christ. That is the mind of Satan. He did it his way. As Christians, we are those who have made a commitment in life that we will do it His way and we have become servants of the Living God and for His sake, we are now servants of each other and God wants us to know that in a marriage, it’s never going to work if you both do it YOUR way. It will never work. We must be servants of one another, and we must learn sometimes to do it their way. A husband must sometimes do it his wife’s way. A wife must do what her husband wants to do sometimes and that is what’s necessary. That we have a servant’s heart and that we learn to serve one another. The Bible tells us that a Christian marriage is meant to express through symbolism something of the mystery and the beauty of the relationship between Christ and the church. And the Bible tells us that even as the church looks to Jesus. Christ and seeks to honor Him in her life, so it is that a Christian wife is to look to her husband, and she is to seek to honor him in her life. And the Bible says that even as Jesus Christ loves the church and gave his life for her, so it is that the Christian husband is to love his wife and to give his life for her each day. That is a great mystery. That’s one that can never be received by this world, but only by those who know and love Jesus Christ. There is a mutual servanthood, a mutual submissiveness that exists between a Christian husband and wife. When Jesus Christ came into this world, He said he came not to be served, but He came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. And as Christian husbands and wives, as we enter the marriage relationship, we must be more willing to serve than we are to be served. As we serve each other, we will want to cultivate each other’s full potential, but you see, there will be times when, for each other’s sake and for Christ’s sake, we will deny ourselves because we are to have servant’s hearts, and this is what God wants us to look for in a mate—a person with a servant’s heart.
I heard some time ago of a husband and wife who got up one Saturday morning. The husband wasn’t in a very good mood and his wife was getting dressed and she needed the husband to zip up the back of the blouse and so she asked her husband to do that, and he was kind of in a grumpy mood and he didn’t come over, so she asked him again. In a real grumpy mood, he came over and he grabbed the zipper, and he went up and down with it like that about five times and then just kind of left it there and walked out of the room and his wife was really mad and she went out of the house, got into a car and she just drove off. She started driving around for a couple of hours and she finally began to kind of mellow out and she thought “Well, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll go back and I’ll forgive him, and we’ll patch it up.” She went back to the house, and she saw her husband working under the car and his feet were sticking out and she thought—kind of a smirk came to her face—and she thought “Well I’ll do something kind of a little playful here and he’ll see that I’m ready to just forgive and forget.” So, she reached under the car, grabbed the zipper of his pants and went up and down about four or five times and then she waited for him to laugh, and he didn’t make a noise or anything! And so, she thought “Well, what a poor sport!” Then she went in the house, and as she went in the house, she saw her husband coming around the corner in the kitchen with two beers in his hand and she said, “What are those beers ‘ for?” and he said, “Well I’m taking one to my friend who’s working on the car outside.” So, in a panic she ran outside of the house, and they found that this guy was unconscious under the car, and they had to call the paramedics because when he felt his zipper going up and down, he was so startled that he sat up and he knocked himself out on the bottom of the car! When you look at a kind of catastrophe like that you can see that it all began first thing that Saturday morning when the husband was not willing to serve his wife. He was not willing to be a servant and you know if you look at most marriages, most of our fights, most of our little squabbles, most of the big things that can even lead to separation really come because one or both people are not willing to be a servant. They are not willing to serve each other.
Our Lord Jesus, one week before He went to the cross, He was with his disciples in the Upper Room and you will recall how He “girded Himself with a towel” and He actually began to wash all of His disciple’s feet and when our Lord had washed all of their feet, He said, “Do you realize, do you understand what I have done for you? You call me Master and Lord and you are right for, so I am, and if I, then, your Master and Lord, have washed your feet, how much more ought you to wash one another’s feet? I have given you an example that you should follow in my step.”
What this world desperately needs today are Christian husbands and wives that are willing to wash each other’s feet. And we have this first message from Isaac and from his life. In selecting a bride or a groom, look for someone of the household of faith and look for someone with a servant’s heart. It’s a message, too, for all of us who are already married that we truly be people of the household of faith and that we truly have a servant’s heart.
There’s a second message here and I’ll make this very brief, and this message has not to do with the qualities that we are to look for in one another in marriage, but this has rather to do with the quality that God looks for in us. As we see in the life of Isaac, God looks for a person who has a quality of heart whereby they are a loving peacemaker. That is very precious to God—that you and I would not only be lovers of peace in this world, that we would be makers of peace. Isaac was a peacemaker. We’re told in the 26th Chapter of Genesis that Isaac was living in the region of the Philistines and God blessed him there. God made him very rich, so much so that he had great flocks and great herds, and he had a great household with many, many people, but the Philistines, the Bible says, became jealous. They grew to hate him. They were envious of him and Abimelech, King of the Philistines, came to Isaac and he said, “Go away from us for you are wealthier than we.” Isaac could have been enraged. He could have taken his great household and he could have waged war, but he did not. He left and he went to a land in which his father, Abraham, have lived and there he found wells that had been dug by his father’s servants in the days of his father and he found that Abimelech and the Philistines had filled those wells with dirt and earth. Now again, he could have been enraged. He could have been indignant, but he simply instructed his people to re-dig the wells and then Isaac went into the Valley of Gerar and there he dug a new well and he found fresh spring water. But the people of Abimelech, the Philistines came, and they quarreled with Isaac, and they said, “The water is ours!” Again, Isaac could have quarreled, and he could have fought, and he could have remained, but he left, and he just dug a new well. He dug a new well and the people of the Philistines, the people of Abimelech came again, and they quarreled again, and Isaac moved again. And finally, he dug and well and no one came and bothered him, and Isaac gave praise to God, and he says, “Now God has given us room and we will be fruitful in the land.” And then Isaac went up to Beersheba and the Lord appeared to him there and He said, “I am the God of your father, Abraham. Fear not I am with you I will bless you and I will multiply you.” And God did. God blessed him, God multiplied him, and he became wealthy beyond what he ever had in the beginning. And then in the course of time, Abimelech, King of the Philistines, came to Isaac and Isaac said, “Why have you come to me, seeing as you hate me and have sent me away from you?” King Abimelech said something that totally full of baloney. King Abimelech said, “It is clear that God is with you, so we say, ‘Let there be an oath between you and us. Let us make a covenant with you that you should do us no harm even as we have not touched you and have done you nothing but good, having sent you on your way in peace for you are now the blessed of the Lord’. Isaac could have taken issue with that point, but he didn’t. He threw a great feast, and they ate and drank, and he invited the Philistines to spend the night and that next morning they rose, and they made a covenant of peace together. He was a man of peace, and with that God was pleased. God looks for people who are peacemakers.
Paul says in Romans, Chapter 12, he says “Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no man evil for evil but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, insofar as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all and Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay’ says the Lord. No, if your enemy is hungry, feed him and if he is thirsty, give him to drink.’ That is the principal of a higher kingdom. Those principals, those instructions, those guidelines, are for the people of the kingdom of Christ. God realizes that the kingdom of this world cannot live like that. He has ordained that there be human governments and that they bear the sword and that they bear it not in vain. God does not expect an earthly government to lay down its sword. God knows that there needs to be a deterrent to crime in this world, but you see, when you become a Christian, you move in a sense into a higher kingdom, and we have higher principals in our relationships. And whenever you, for Christ’s sake, bless someone who would curse you whenever you do good to someone who hates you, whenever you pray for someone who would abuse you a little bit of heaven comes to earth, and God rejoices because you are showing the love of Christ to the world. Our great weapon in this world is love and it is the power of the spirit of Christ.
You know, having gone to Israel was a very special experience and I suppose I would say that I think it’s worth everyone’s time to go to Israel. I think it’s worth the money to go and see that land in which our Lord Jesus lived and walked and see the land in which some of the Apostles lived. It’s a very special thing but I think most people who do to Israel are disappointed to some extent. They’re disappointed by the commercialism because they can see, as they walk around, people tugging on their arms wanting to sell them some sort of a trinket. They’re disappointed by the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches built on the sacred sites so that they lose some of their natural beauty. They’re disappointed by the fact that many of the places Jesus walked are now twenty feet underground, but you know, I think what’s hardest for me when I go to Israel is to see the legalism that is still there and the misunderstanding of what really pleases God. In Israel, the Jews have actually taken a passage of scripture from Exodus, where it says that “an animal is not to be cooked in the milk of its mother” and they’ve taken that to mean that meat and dairy products cannot be eaten together and they have amplified this into a whole style of life where, throughout Israel now, they have meat restaurants and dairy restaurants.
We stayed in the Sheraton Hotel and the Hilton Hotel, and they have dairy sections and meat sections, and you can go in the meat section, and you can have meat and salads, but you can’t have any dairy products. You can’t have milk or butter if you’re having meat. And you can have dairy in restaurants, and you can have dairy products and salads, but you can’t have any meat. And they have separate plates. They have meat plates, and they have dairy plates and you’re not to put a dairy product on a meat plate. My wife found that out and when Barbara picked up a meat plate and put a dairy product on it, you would have thought the world was coming to an end. And they take the Sabbath extremely seriously, even though many of the people in Israel are not even religious and when Friday night comes, everything closes down. Even the major television programs go off the air. They have Sabbath elevators so Orthodox Jews—these Sabbath elevators stop at every single floor so—so that Orthodox Jews do not have to push a button on the Sabbath, and they think that that pleases the Living God.
But you see, God wants one thing from us and that is that we accept His Son by grace through faith. That we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as Messiah and as King. Then, having accepted Christ and having come into the Kingdom of His Son, He wants, by His Spirit, to change our hearts because God looks on the heart. He doesn’t look on outward ritual. He looks on the heart and what he longs to see is the heart of a peacemaker. He longs to see people who lovingly forgive.
In closing, there’s a passage of scripture that is special to me and it’s in the fifth chapter of Matthew where it’s recorded that our Lord Jesus went on the Mount of Beatitudes above the Sea of Galilee. “And Jesus stood before the multitudes and He said ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are you when men abuse you and persecute you and revile you and accuse you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your rewards shall be great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And I say to all who hear, love your enemy. Do good to those that hate you. Bless those that curse you and pray for those that abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other as well. If anyone takes away your cloak, do not withhold from him even your coat. Give to everyone who begs from you and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again, but as you would have men do to you, do so to them. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you what credit is that to you for even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you for even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again, but I say to you love your enemy. Do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your rewards shall be great, and you shall be called Sons of the Most High for He is kind, even to the ungrateful and the selfish. So be merciful, even as your Father in Heaven is merciful.” You see, when you come into the kingdom of Jesus Christ, there’s a whole new attitude of life. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As Christians we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and thereby we are brought into the eternal kingdom of Sod’s Son and the Son places his Holy Spirit within us that our hearts might be changed, that we might actually be able to love those who hate us and that we might actually be able to pray for those that abuse us, looking forward to the day when Jesus Christ will come again and He will “beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, and nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ and of His kingdom and of its peace, there will be no end.” Shall we pray.