"Isaac" Tagged Sermons

WRESTLING with God

The life of Jacob covers HALF OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS. His birth is recorded in chapter 25 and his death is recorded in chapter 49. What we find between those two chapters are quite amazing stories about this man and the struggles he faced, because they are all pointing towards the struggles our forefathers faced and reveal the struggles or strongholds which we face today. Certainly, studying this man’s life will give us plenty of insight how NOT TO DO CERTAIN THINGS, and HOW TO DO CERTAIN THINGS IN LIFE.
God reveals Himself to Jacob and reaffirms the covenant He made with Abraham, Jacobs grandfather, promising Jacob that his offspring will be many and that the Promised Land will one day belong to his descendants. In this dream, Jacob sees something like a ladder or a stairway leading up to heaven. The Hebrew word translated “ladder” is SULLAM which simply means a connection between God and man.
What an encouragement to all of us who have been justified through faith in the work of God Himself through His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who has become our ladder to heaven. Even after we became children of God, running from trouble, trying to ignore our strongholds, God comes along with a great encouragement, reminding us of the promises made long ago to our forefathers, reminding us that His promises and His covenant with us cannot be negated.
Jacob found out how the universal law of sowing and reaping is working its way through his life. He did not know that he had a stronghold of lying and deceiving, until he had to be on the receiving end of it. You see, our very own strongholds are not admitted as such until we are on the receiving end of it. Until someone else does the same thing to us and all of a sudden we can feel the pain, the hurt, the disappointment.
Jacob was still dealing and wheeling. Anxious for his life, he came up with the idea to bribe his brother with gifts of a caravan of goodies. He hoped he can pacify his brother. Once everything he could do was done, finally Jacob was physically exhausted and alone in the wilderness. He feared for his life. He was convinced that he would face death after the messengers he sent out came back to Jacob saying: We came to your brother Esau, and he also is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him. At this moment Jacob realized that he is powerless to control his fate. With his father-in-law behind him and Esau before him, he was now too spent to struggle any longer. In the process, Jacob the deceiver received a new name, ISRAEL. But that is not all. The most important part of this struggle comes at the end. It was when God wrestled with Jacob that Jacob’s stronghold was taken down and demolished. And it was after his stronghold was demolished that GOD BLESSED HIM.
“… Jacob’s divine encounter at the Jabbok River was a magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.” Frederick Buechner

How Awesome Is This Place

What is striking here is the fact that as Jacob is on the run, he certainly was not seeking God. Jacob is certainly not a candidate for a holy experience of worship! Grace and worship must go together. GOD’S GRACE MUST BE A PART OF TRUE WORSHIP. My friend, true worship must be an experience of God’s Presence. Jacob, overcome with fear, realized that he was at the very house of God, the gate of heaven. What he thought was a dead-end street was actually the gate of heaven, giving him a new purpose to live for God. Jacob the schemer started to acknowledge his need for God. When we worship the Lord, we will experience God’s purpose, which is a transformed life. It may start slowly, but God will do his work until it is done.

He Died In Faith

For Abraham to loose his wife was a very painful experience. Abraham was a man of faith and certainly his tears did not indicate any unbelief.
Abraham knew that Sarah was now in the Lord’s care. He had to say goodbye, but he did not loose Sarah.
“When you know where something is, you haven’t lost it.”
Too many people when they reach old age cannot experience what Abraham did. They live without faith and eventually cannot die IN FAITH.
“When they look back, it is with regret; When they look ahead, it is with fear; When they look around, it is with complaint!”
For us who trusted Christ, old age should be a time of rich experience in the Lord and a wonderful opportunity to share Jesus with the next generation.

The Lord Will Provide

Faith provided by God does not demand explanations; instead, faith provided by God rests on God’s promises. When we do ask God for explanations, we reveal that we really don’t know ourselves as good as we should, and we certainly do not know God as well as we should. Like Abraham, we have to learn to live by promises, not by explanations. Abraham did not know HOW God would do it, or WHY God would do what He did, or WHEN God would do it, BUT HE BELIEVED GOD that whatever needed to be done, GOD WOULD PROVIDE. There are lessons to be learned, and one of them is that WHEN GOD WANTS TO PROVIDE OUR NEEDS, many times we must face the test alone. IT IS ONLY THEN THAT WE CAN SEE WHAT OUR HEAVENLY FATHER REALLY CAN DO FOR US.

God Keeps His Promises

Sarah’s faith was not placed in the promise, but in THE ONE WHO IS FAITHFUL; GOD HIMSELF. Abraham and Sarah made some mistakes, they had some occasional failures in trusting God all the way. However, both of them endured to the end BECAUSE THE BELIEVED GOD. When Isaac finally arrived as promised, ABRAHAM AND SARAH SAW GOD’S POWER AT WORK. Ishmael was an obedient son, UNTIL ISAAC entered the family. It was then when the “flesh” began to oppose “the Spirit”. God gave them the fleshly blessings, the black oil which lubricates the world’s economy.
Isaac, however, received the spiritual blessing, the Holy Spirit, which is symbolized in the Bible with OIL. According to Galatians 4:21-31 Sarah represents grace, (the heavenly Jerusalem) and Hagar represents Law (the earthly Jerusalem under bondage). In other words, law and grace cannot live peacefully together. God’s children, born of the Spirit are to live under the blessings of grace and not the bondage of the law. Hagar gave birth to a slave. Ishmael was a slave. If you decide to live under the law, then you become a child of Hagar, a slave; for the law produces bondage and not freedom.