Sermons

Genesis 26 - Hope For The Ordinary

August 5, 2012 Speaker: Series: Genesis

Topic: Sunday Worship Passage: Genesis 26:1–26:35

[Text: Gen. 26) “Hope for the Ordinary”

Scripture Intro: Andy Warhol in 1968 said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." In the Story of Redemption, that’s about all Isaac really gets. What will he do in his time?

[Read and pray]

As I watched the Olympics the other night, I had a realization. I used to think of myself as a pretty good athlete. I was quick, had some strength and agility. But watching those athletic giants with their fine-tuned skill and strict training that got them to London I realized the perfect word to describe myself - ordinary.

Ordinary is not a bad thing. It actually is quite common (by definition). It seems almost easier to define it by what “ordinary” isn’t rather than what it is because ordinary is all around us. Ordinary is what doesn’t cause you to do a double-take. Ordinary is unimpressive, unremarkable, not exciting, not breath-taking. It is the absence of glamour and flash. It isn’t ugly or overwhelmingly unattractive either. It’s just, well, ordinary.

In one sense, Isaac was ordinary. In the whole book of Genesis, this is his chapter. Yes, he shows up in the chapters before and after this, but almost always as a minor character. And for his time “on the stage,” so to speak, his performance is unimpressive compared to others. Abraham, his father, had to leave his family and his homeland in order to follow the LORD. Isaac just had to stay put. Abraham fought and defeated four powerful kings and armies to rescue his nephew. And Isaac? Well, he lived through a famine. That’s exciting in a terrible sort of way, I guess. Isaac’s son, Jacob, would later wrestle with God and have an entire nation perpetually named after him. Isaac had…a disagreement with some nomadic herdsmen. In the grand scheme of the monumental Story of Redemption, Isaac is just an ordinary man with a rather ordinary life.

FCF: Sometimes we see people, especially other believers, around us and wonder that their life and faith seems truly extraordinary: the Apostle Paul in Rome facing death, Justin Martyr dying for his faith, Augustine standing firmly against heresy. Martin Luther said to the men demanding him to recount his views on justification by grace, “…Here I stand, I can do no other” even though he knew it may cost him his life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung in a Nazi concentration camp, ultimately because he would not compromise the Gospel of Christ. Their trust in the Lord seems unfazed by the extraordinary situations of God’s providence! These are a few of the people that, at times, we might be tempted to hold ourselves up to in comparison like me to an Olympian.

But then we also see believers that seem just as solid in ordinary life – preachers who have the attention of all whenever they speak or write another book, Christians who actually read their Bible every single day, the person who seems to be able to “do it all” at church. It’s tempting to compare ourselves to each other. But what happens when we come up short? That can really shake ordinary people, who struggle with ordinary life, whose faith is less than extraordinary – faith that actually seems small in comparison. If you are like me, being ordinary and weak and prone to fail in the most ordinary of spiritual trials makes me fearful that God really only loves and blesses the extraordinary people - the spiritual giants of this world - in other words, not me.

But then I hear the words of this story and I realize that there’s hope for even ordinary folks, even ordinary sinners like me, because God is the Savior of ordinary people.

Let’s look at Isaac. Look at his story and see that he was an ordinary man…and also an ordinary sinner with ordinary struggles. He just happens to have an Extraordinary God.

The story starts with a danger that was common to the patriarchs: famine. Just because it was ordinary doesn’t make it less dangerous, however. So Isaac does what each of us would do and he heads toward a place where he and his family can survive. V. 1 says he went to the land of Abimelech, king of the Philistines.

It was there that God met this ordinary man with a simple command and an extraordinary promise.

God says that Isaac should stay there and not go to Egypt. That simple, ordinary act of staying put in the land God had promised to the offspring of Abraham and not leaving the place of blessing (for a place like Egypt) would have a remarkable consequence. God said if he simply stayed put, the full blessings of the covenant that He promised to Abraham will be Isaac’s: all the blessing, all the land, all the fruitfulness and, ultimately, the blessing of being a blessing to all the nations of the earth will rest on Isaac.

Did you notice the reason God gave after He restated the promises to Isaac? God says that they will come to pass not because of Isaac at all, but because Abraham had embraced the LORD and kept his “charge…commandments…statutes, and…laws.” Don’t get too hung up on the difference between those words. Just focus on the idea that Abraham believed the LORD and was considered righteous in the LORD’s eyes. That is the reason why blessing will fall on Isaac.

So, by God’s extraordinary grace, the blessings of Abraham are set on Isaac, the ordinary son of the great father of the faith. But look at what happens next.

You know what is ordinary? Looking and acting like your parents is ordinary. I’m discovering that reality more and more every day. And Isaac begins to look a lot like Abraham as the story goes forward.

You know what else is ordinary, humanly speaking? Going from a mountain top experience with God and jumping off the mountain into sinful unbelief. Isaac was obedient in so far as he didn’t leave the land. But after that his faith in the LORD began to redirect to his ability to protect his life through a lie. He doesn’t believe that God is able to protect him in that place as he fears his wife’s beauty will cost him his life. So he calls her “Sister”and lies to Abimelech. Sound familiar? Abraham did that on at least two occasions. Ordinary Isaac wasn’t even extraordinary with his sin! He wasn’t even extraordinary at hiding it! Abraham’s sinful deception had to be revealed by a vision from the LORD but Isaac’s sinful deception is revealed because he is seen laughing with his wife by Abimelech looking out a window. We understand what was probably happening when Abimelech says, “That isn’t how ordinary folks laugh with their sister! She’s your wife!”

But just as the extraordinary grace of God found ordinary Isaac and he heard the promises made to his father being made to him, the extraordinary grace of God protects Isaac even in his sin. Instead of pouring out hot wrath as a wronged and angry king, Abimelech protects Isaac and issues a warning to his own people saying, “If you touch either Isaac or Rebekah, you are dead.” But we know that it is God at work to bless and protect them because that’s who God is and that’s what God does for his people, even when they blow it again.

So Isaac continues in the land and he plants crops that same year. A normal crop might produce 6 or 10 times as much as was planted. Isaac’s crop produces 100 times as much as was planted and that happened…during a famine! “Okay,” you might be thinking, “so Isaac wasn’t so ordinary after all! He was an agricultural virtuoso!” Well, keep reading. The end of v. 12 tells us the reason why Isaac succeeded. It was because “the LORD blessed him….” It’s just more of the same extraordinary grace and provision from an extraordinary God. But that grace spurred up a lot of jealousy in his neighbors who try to cut him off from water to stem the tide of his prosperity. When that doesn’t work, their king sends Isaac away.

Isaac’s struggles continue when he goes back to some of the wells his own father dug up, re-digs them, only to lose them to some quarrelsome herdsmen. Two times what was his was lost. That kind of struggle and opposition is actually more common and ordinary than it seems on the surface. Sure, you’ve never been forced from your home by a king’s edict and no thieving neighbors have stolen the well you dug with your own hand, but haven’t you faced opposition in this world? Haven’t there been times when you were simply trying to live and people were making life difficult? That sounds pretty ordinary to me.

But see Isaac’s response when he digs that third well and no one shows up to steal it? When he finds water for his family to survive, he credits the extraordinary grace of God for the blessing. He says in v. 22, “the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

This is a shift, a transformation for Isaac. Extraordinary grace is changing him into a person who, more and more, is able to direct his faith and gratitude toward the LORD as his hope and life.

And then God gives more grace. Genesis records eight separate occasions on which God spoke to Abraham. God spoke to Isaac only twice. The first of those we’ve already seen. Here in this second meeting, though, God comes to him after Isaac returns to the place his father spent so much time, Beersheba. The LORD appeared to him that same night and says, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake.” (Genesis 26:24 ESV)

If Isaac was afraid that his sin or his struggles in his ordinary life had separated him from the LORD, the LORD comes to him to remove all doubt and fear from his mind. God says in effect, “I’m the God of your extraordinary father and I’m the God of you, too. You don’t have to be afraid anymore because I’m with you just like I was with him and the extraordinary grace I gave to him will be the extraordinary grace that blesses you and multiplies your family to fulfill my purpose of blessing all the families of the earth.”

When God appears to ordinary men, when God’s word comforts ordinary sinners with the hope of extraordinary grace, what can an ordinary person do but worship in gratitude the God who shows such amazing grace? So Isaac acts like his father once again, this time for the better, as he builds an altar and calls on the name of the LORD in an act of public worship. Then he furthers his earlier obedience and settles down in the land of blessing where he will stay for his whole life.

Isaac isn’t the only one who begins to understand the extraordinary grace of God that is being shown to him. Abimelech and his people recognize it, too, and want to be in a relationship with this one who, as they put it, has become “the blessed of the LORD.” That’s why they come to him (like they did to Abraham his father) to ask for a covenant to be made to ensure that their relationship with each other would continue to be typified by peace.

Compare that to Isaac’s favorite son’s actions. Esau brings bitterness and strife into the heart of his father by marrying a couple of Hittite girls in opposition to God and his father.

Maybe you’re thinking right now, “Okay, in the Story of Redemption, Isaac isn’t a giant. Maybe in the Story of Redemption he’s an ordinary character. But he’s an ordinary man who is still IN THE STORY OF REDEMPTION and, on top of that, he is a man TO WHOM GOD SPOKE! That’s not me. God has never spoken to me before. I’m just an ordinary person.”

But hasn’t he spoken to you? Hebrews says God has spoken to you by a better, more final word than Isaac ever heard as He spoke to you in His Son. And what did the Living Word of God say and do when he came to us?

When he was born, he was born in the most ordinary, unremarkable of places and his birth was first announced to the most ordinary and unremarkable of people – shepherds. The Word of God spent almost no time in the company of the great of this world – most of the time he did spend with them was when they were moving him toward his death.

Jesus ate and drank with ordinary sinners like you and me; tax collectors who took more than they should have and needed forgiveness, prostitutes for whom ordinary life was slavery to sin until they found extraordinary grace from God that led them to tears of freedom and joy in Jesus.

Jesus welcomed men and women and lived in community with them, men and women who were ordinary fishermen, housewives, mothers, sisters. He ate food at their tables. He talked about the Kingdom of God in ordinary terms of fishing and agriculture and lost coins and sons. He spent a great deal of time healing and preaching the good news of extraordinary grace to ordinary people.

He spoke of coming to lay down his life for his sheep (common, ordinary, not so smart sheep that only excelled at getting themselves lost and killed). He died on the cross of an ordinary criminal, but the redemption he accomplished through that death was anything but ordinary.

Through his death, the Son of God opened the way for ordinary sinners to stand before God in the same perfection and holiness as the Son of God himself. That is what is ours when we simply receive and rest in Jesus, what the Bible calls “faith,”… and that is extravagant grace from a God who deeply loves those whom we consider “ordinary.”

And that makes me re-think the use of the word “ordinary” to describe us. In my own eyes and in the eyes of the world, I am truly ordinary. But what we call “ordinary and common,” God’s extraordinary grace transforms into “holy, beautiful and beloved” – so beloved that Christ died to reclaim “ordinary” humans. In God’s eyes you are not ordinary. I am – you are – precious to him because of Jesus.

When the beauty of such extravagant grace impacts us, even those who have been believers for a long time, life can’t be the same because that which was not deserved but has been freely given in Christ – forgiveness, the love of God, adoption into the family of God, new and eternal life - fills our heart with gratitude and love. The reality of those things should continually call us into a life of repentance and faith because like Isaac, we still blow it even after grace has been shown to us. But the never stopping, never giving up, un-breaking, always and forever love of God[1] that Christ has won for us follows after us and keeps us secure in him! And the reality of such extraordinary grace can sustain us as we seek to live in obedience to the One who bought us with his blood.

God’s grace was evident in the life of Isaac and it drew Abimelech and his people out of jealousy and into a relationship with him. On the front of your bulletin is a verse from the book of Acts. “Now when they (the religious leaders in opposition to Christ) saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13) The disciples who were common in the eyes of the world had been transformed by extraordinary grace (specifically by the gift of the Holy Spirit who is given to all the people of God in Christ) into bold witnesses to the hope that is in Jesus. If grace had been shown to them, ordinary fishermen and sinners, then grace was for all those who would turn away from human efforts to make life right again and turn to Jesus in faith and hope.

So we, too, when our hearts are warmed with affection because of extraordinary grace shown to ordinary people and sinners like you and me – we, too are called outside of ourselves and enabled by the power of the Spirit of God within us to be bold in our witness (in word and deed) to that grace. The acceptance of Christ by others is not on your shoulders. You are called simply to tell others in boldness and gentleness and respect and love that there is a God who shows extraordinary grace to ordinary sinners and God has shown that grace in Jesus.

Grace also led Isaac to be reconciled with those who had hurt him in the past. If God was willing to be gracious and forgive him, how could he hold anything against someone else? I don’t mean that forgiving others is easy or cheap. But extraordinary grace from God can lead to extraordinary grace by humans toward humans as God’s Spirit works in us, making us more like our Savior.

So, are you content in ordinary-ness? Or have you directed your faith toward the one who takes ordinary sinners and transforms them by extraordinary grace into a people redeemed from their sins, a people for his own possession, a holy nation, a royal priesthood who proclaim the excellencies of an extraordinary God?

[transition to the Lord’s Supper]

If you have, then this meal is for you. This meal is a remembrance of the body and blood of our Savior, Jesus, and of his extraordinary grace shown to us in his death. But it is more than a mere remembrance as, by his Spirit, the living Christ meets with us here at this table and strengthens us, continuing to show us that same grace today with the promise of that same grace tomorrow, too. This is the way he shows his people and applies to his people the benefits of his grace and grows them in that grace in love for God and for each other, too, so that life is different than it used to be.

Like in His words to Isaac, in this ordinary bread and ordinary fruit of the vine your Jesus says to you, “I am with you. I will be with you. Rest in me!”

[1] Sally Lloyd-Jones’ language in the Jesus Storybook Bible

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