The Patriarchs - Considerately Transparent

This is the seventh post in a series that I am doing based on the lives of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the accounts of which are found in the book of Genesis.  In spite of the title of this series, the record of the experiences of the men listed above are only incidental to me.  What I find far more interesting, relevant, and important is the revelation of the character and nature of God that we can see by observing these men's lives.  Each post will coincide with a lesson being taught in a classroom.  As such, they will not be in a traditional essay format.  Rather, it will be a slightly expanded version of the notes that I hand out in class. 

The Genesis Account

Gen. 15:6-8 – Scripture says Abram believed God.  But then immediately he asks for proof of God’s promise.  Does this indicate a lack of faith on Abram’s part or was he somehow justified in his questions?

Gen. 17:4, 7, 9-14, 23-26 – A covenant is an agreement.  It often has legal connotations.  If this is the case, and if God is sovereign (meaning having supreme authority over all of creation), then why does He need to make covenants?  Furthermore, why did God choose such an intimate, painful, and sensitive ratification of His covenant with Abraham?

Gen. 18:16-33 – God permits Abraham an astonishing level of familiarity in asking for respite on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But doesn’t Scripture teach that God does not change His mind?  Is He demonstrating a possibility of changing His mind here? 

Gen. 20:1-7 – God obviously already knew the truth of the situation.  Yet He confronted Abimelech over the possibility of sin with Sarah and against Abraham.  Only after Abimelech confessed his innocence did God relent.  Why the apparent charade?

Gen. 22:2 – God specifically used words designed to increase the emotional anguish Abraham must have been experiencing when He commanded the sacrifice of Isaac.  It actually seems a little cruel.  Why would He do this to His servant?

Gen. 28:18-22 – Jacob (at least in his own mind) made a bargain with God; essentially a conditional covenant.  Was this wrong to do or did God establish precedent for this with the way He chose to interact with the Patriarchs?  If God did not set up this pattern of behavior do His later dealings with Israel indicate the acceptableness of conditions?

Supporting Scriptures

Num. 23:19 – This passage is quite direct and clear in its description of God as One who does not lie or change His mind.  Note that some translations render this passage as “repent” and some as “change His mind”.  But both are synonymous because a changing of the mind is exactly what true repentance is.  Yet if this is true about God it tends to cause tension elsewhere in scripture, as mentioned above.

Mal. 3:1-6 – This is an amazing window into the character of God.  He first declares the truth of future prophetic events relating to the day of the Lord and the winnowing of the nations by Christ.  And then He specifies a partial list of the crimes of Israel and assures them that the only reason they are even still alive is due to the fact that He is a God who does not change.  The implication is that He keeps His promises to Abraham; otherwise the sons of Jacob would be consumed in the heat of God’s fiery wrath.

Questions For Meditation

As given in the scripture notes above, how do we answer all of these tensions in Scripture?  Does God change His mind?  Does He allow humans to negotiate with Him?  Are some facts hidden from Him until humans reveal the truth?  If none of those are true then why, in situation after situation, does God act like He doesn’t know what’s going on or that He is willing to alter course?

In answering this question, first of all we must establish our foundation.  God does not change.  Scripture is quite clear on this point, as established by Numbers 23:19 and Malachi 3:6 above.  With that as a given, then we must ask ourselves, in the situations recorded in Genesis, if God changing is not what is in view, then what is?

God does not desire mindless robots to worship Him and give Him glory.  Why?  Because He would receive less glory if it was forced or automatic.  Rather, He desires for thinking, rationale, competent, and serious minded people to make a decision that God is the greatest thing in existence and therefore is deserving of every shred of worship they can muster.

(1)   God wanted Abraham to feel the weight of His divine promises through visible and tangible evidence of what God was doing.  And so he permitted Abraham to ask for proof without invalidating the faith that had already been expressed.

(2)   The purpose of making a covenant with Abraham was so that Abraham would understand the significance and importance of the agreement.  And God chose circumcision as the sign of the covenant precisely because it was something Abraham and every other male in his household would not easily forget. 

(3)   God already knew what He was going to do with Sodom and Gomorrah.  Verse 17 of chapter 18 records God’s internal monologue in which He rhetorically asks Himself whether to keep the impending doom of the cities from Abraham.  This implies that in spite of the whole rest of the conversation, the coming destruction was a foregone conclusion.  But so that Abraham would more fully appreciate the character of the God he served, The Lord permitted him to bargain for the lives of the people in the city.  And this was not a charade. If in fact 10 righteous people would have been found in the city then God would most certainly have spared Sodom and Gomorrah. 

(4)   Likewise with Abimilech, God obviously already knew that it was Abraham’s fault rather than Abimilech’s that Sarah was in his harem.  But He wanted the king to feel the magnitude of the crime that would have been committed had God not stopped him.

(5)   God wasn’t twisting a proverbial knife in Abraham’s guts with His pointed statement about Isaac being his only son whom he loved.  He was ensuring that Abraham felt the full force of his devotion to God and what that devotion would cost him should God choose to request it.  Furthermore, Abraham appreciated God’s mercy and providence all the more through the reminder of how valuable his son was to him.

(6)   God wanted Jacob to take ownership of and be invested in the relationship with the God of his fathers.  And so the bargaining was permitted, and even held to, so that Jacob would become much more convinced of the seriousness and the benefit of following and worshiping God.

It is truly amazing just how applicable the Bible is.  The manner in which God chose to interact with the Patriarchs is identical to the way He interacts with us today.  He wants us to appreciate the complexities of His character so He forces us to search and struggle and strain to come to terms with them.  He wants us to be earnestly thankful for His providence in our lives so He permits difficulties to appear, resolving some and allowing others to propagate, for the purpose of proving to us that He is a faithful God who will care for us.  He wants us to overflow with gratitude when prayers are answered so He ordains that in some cases we will wait for prolonged periods, demonstrating our faithfulness in trusting Him and proving our reliance in praying to Him.  Then, when the long sought for answer to prayer finally comes our appreciation of the result is increased many times over.

We can see a perfect example of this by considering the early post-Apostolic history of the Christian church.  The first three and a half centuries of the church were dominated by theologian’s attempts to understand the nature of God as seen broadly in the Trinity and more specifically in the person of Christ, otherwise known as Christology.  The church fathers wrestled with these complicated realities.  They disagreed with each other.  They went off on tangents.  They veered away from Scripture and into human philosophy.  They went from one extreme to another.

As an example, a conservative estimate would place at least 20 theologians, both heretical and orthodox, as significantly involved in the debate over the Trinity and Christology.  This spans all the way from the writings of Ignatius confirming the truth of the Trinity without really explaining it in the early second century to the official end of the debate at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.  Best estimates put the average life span of these 20 men at approximately 67 years apiece.  Let’s use a cautious estimate of perhaps 20 years of their life spent thinking about, debating, discussing, researching, and praying about these issues.  And let’s further scale back the calculations by saying that during those 20 years of soul searching they only spent one hour per week on it and only half of the weeks in a single year, or 26.  With those numbers in place we arrive at a total of man hours spent that exceeds 10,000.  And that is only 20 men in the span of 350 years who have become relatively famous in church history for their literary works.  When you consider that these 20 men represent only a fraction of the total effort spent on interpreting Scripture the number obviously becomes practically incalculable.

What’s the point?  This history of the church that scoffers would point to as proof of the chaos and division within Christendom was instead specifically orchestrated by God in this manner so that in the due course of time the breadth of future believers would more fully appreciate the vast scope and incredible complexity of what it is to study the character and nature of God.  And that is exactly the pattern of divine behavior that we see in the lives of the Patriarchs.

Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop in the late 4^th century, put it beautifully when he wrote the following: “This is truly the vision of God: never to be satisfied in our desire to see Him.  But by looking at what we do see, we must always rekindle our desire to see more.  So there can be no limit interrupting our growth in ascending to God, because there is no limit to the Good [God], and our desire for the Good is not ended by being satisfied.”

What are you spending your life seeking after?  Are you like an ignorant child playing in the mud of the things of this world?  Or are you partaking of the glorious feast that is at the king’s table just a few feet away?  Christian, are you wasting your life on passing pleasures that will rot and fade away?  Or are you finding the greatest satisfaction in the universe by passionately seeking to always know better the God you claim to serve?