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Abraham's Reward
Genesis 22:15-19 “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, ‘I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’ Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.”
Whenever I have seen Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and that is not very often, I find myself being ambushed by a score of familiar phrases that leap out at you. They have become a part of the English language. “Oh! So that’s from Hamlet,” you think. Reading the life of Abraham is somewhat like that. There are times when you come across some familiar words and learn that this is the place where they originally appear in the Bible. We are going to meet one of those vivid phrases in our text.
The place where the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham became a site which the patriarch called, “The Lord will provide,” or “The Lord will see to it,” because God saw to everything. God saw to it that Isaac was spared and then God saw to it that a ram had stretched too far for a tasty piece of vegetation and caught its horns in some branches. God saw to it that a sacrifice was made available in Isaac’s place, and what a Lamb that was. God spared not his only Son but delivered him up for us all. Father and Son saw to our salvation on this hill near the spot where Isaac was laid on the altar. God saw to it that we sinners received everything we needed, forgiveness, pardon, sonship and everlasting life. Jehovah Jireh; the Lord provided the sacrifice.
Then the angel of the Lord spoke again to Abraham in the words of our text, and rehearsed and confirmed all the blessings that Abraham was going to receive. I am sure that the most important question we can ask is what this section tells us about the nature of our God.
1. THE LORD DOES NOT GIVE UP ON ANY OF HIS OWN PEOPLE.
“The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time” (v.15). Aren’t you glad that God speaks to us in the gospel of grace a second time? How many times had you heard the gospel before you believed? It was hundreds of times for some of you. Don’t we find that in the Bible? Sometimes they are words of warning, when our Lord speaks to the Pharisees a second and a third time and much more than that. We are told that all day long he stretched forth his hands to a gainsaying and disobedient generation. See him! He warns and entreats the same citizens from sun up to sun down. What a God of grace! Samuel Wesley said in disgust to his wife Susannah one day, “You must have told that girl to do that job twenty times before she did it.” “Yes,” Susannah said, “and if I had stopped at nineteen it would not have been done.” Aren’t you glad that the Lord kept preaching to you hundreds of times before you finally laid down your weapons of rebellion?
Aren’t you thankful that God also instructs and corrects us Christians more than just once? Imagine if he said curtly, “One time I tell you. That’s it!” No. You can read with relief the opening words of Jonah chapter three, “the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you”? Jonah had said no to God when the Lord first told him what to do. God didn’t say, “Well, you’ve blown it now. You’ll never hear from me again.” No. We imperfect fathers will speak to our children a second time and a third time when they are stubborn and ornery, defying us. We ask them again kindly to do something because we pity them and love them. So it was when the command of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. The same word was repeated, but this time Jonah was constrained to do what the word said. God is the God who doesn’t give up on us. Aren’t you glad that the Lord came to Peter again and asked him, “Do you love me?” and told him to feed his sheep. In fact he recommissioned him three times.
Our Lord is also the God who speaks to us more than once in reassurance and confirmation. Especially after a time of testing there will come words of comfort personally applied to us by the Holy Spirit, not just once that we might miss. What I am talking about is this, that we will hear familiar Scriptural promises, but they’ll come with a new sense of assurance that these particular promises are ours. “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” We’ll hear it and we’ll have a conviction that those words were directed from heaven to ourselves at the end of this trial. For example, when the Lord said, “Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be as white as snow,” then he was referring to my own sins and my own shame. I have behaved abominably and have been chastened, but I now know that there is mercy with God. That sin has been washed away! Its guilt is gone for ever. What a great blessing is a renewed assurance that the Saviour is mine! Eternal life is mine! The speaking God is my heavenly Father.
So it was with Abraham. Twenty five years earlier the Lord had spoken to him from heaven and Abraham had believed God. He had packed his belongings and gathered his household together and left Ur of the Chaldees. He had headed for the land the Lord had promised. Abraham had become a believer; Abraham was justified; his faith was accounted to him for righteousness. The apostle Paul insists on this; before Abraham had done one single good work he was declared righteous. Then through the next twenty-five years Abraham might show heroic faith for many long years, but there were also acts of degrading defiance, when he behaved as badly as you can conceive a believer behaving, and yet God didn’t give up on him. The Lord continued to deal with him and bring his word to bear on his life. That is the Christian life. God calls to us from heaven a second and third time. He does not give up on us. He often comes with his promises to us. Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings. You are here today reading these words. Take courage! God has not given up on you.
2. GOD CONFIRMS HIS LOVE TO HIS PEOPLE IN THIS EXTRAORDINARY WAY - BY SWEARING BY HIMSELF.
“I swear by myself, declares the Lord” (v.16), and all that follows is not just God’s promises but covenant promises sworn to be fulfilled most solemnly by himself. This is the first time such a phrase occurs in the Bible. God is going to confirm some of the most breath-taking and mind-blowing promises that any human being had heard, and he is going to give this word to this obedient man Abraham. God himself with his audible voice, will speak them to him, and while that might be enough for you and me, it is not enough for God. He also solemnly swears an oath that what he has promised will definitely and certainly and assuredly come to pass. But what can God swear on? Men will put their hand on the Bible in a court of law and say, “I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . . .” We’ve all heard children protesting that what they say is ‘really true’ and they will swear on their mothers’ graves, or that they should die that night if it be not true. The Jews were a people of great oath-taking, lacing their ordinary daily conversations with huge oaths, swearing by heaven, or by the earth, or by Jerusalem, or by their own heads. It was all too easy, and too familiar, and inevitably blasphemous. It cheapened truth and ordinary discourse. Jesus was shocked by it all, and so he said to his disciples that this should never characterize their conversation; “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ ‘no.’
Yet there are times of great solemnity when, for example, a man’s life is at stake, or when you are entering marriage, or when you are preaching and pronouncing on the eternity of men and women in the name of God, speaking as to who may go to heaven and who may go to hell. Then, as you lay down the divine requirements for glory and warn of the perils of neglecting so great salvation, you may choose not only to speak solemnly on these themes but to underline their importance by a solemn oath. “I swear in the presence of God. I tell you the truth in Jesus . . . I lie not.”
Now you and I would think it would be enough for Abraham to hear the voice of God, to listen to the words of God, to wonder at these extraordinary promises. Wouldn’t that he enough for you? Think of it – actually hearing God’s voice! What more would you desire from God? You would say, “Cease speaking lest you overwhelm me with your glory.” You can understand the children of Israel hearing the voice of Jehovah sounding from Sinai and they almost died at the sound of the glory. They asked Moses to go up the Mount and hear alone what God had to say to spare them from that awesome voice. So we might think we would be satisfied hearing the divine voice, but we don’t know what is best for ourselves. Only God knows that, and he determined it was essential for Abraham and for all who would be his believing descendants that Abraham (and all of us right down until the 21st century) should know that God not only made these great promises but that he swore that these things would most certainly happen. Then our response must be to be still. If we ever think about anything that we must think about this, “How important these promises must be,” and we shall see that they are.
However, now we come to a metaphysical problem which is very simple one. If God is actually to swear that these things will certainly happen, then by whom or what will God take this oath? What will he appeal to? On what will God put his hand, as it were, and adjure most solemnly that these things will certainly happen? Would he swear by the earth? It’s nothing! It is the place on which he rests his feet. Would he swear by all of mankind? They are specks of dust that he created. He could wipe them out and make another race of human beings in the twinkling of an eye. The angels? He has swept a third of them in their rebellion into outer darkness. Would you swear on a nest of mice or a cluster of cockroaches? By what can God swear? On what great authority? What is greater than God? Nothing and none! He is the ultimate, the infinite, the highest you can go, the immense Lord of glory. There is none more glorious by whom he can offer additional confirmation to Abraham than his word.
So God swears by . . . himself! I said to you that reading the life of Abraham is like hearing Shakespeare’s Hamlet. You come across incidents and aphorisms that have become part of the English language without ever realising that they come from these chapters in the book of Genesis. These words concerning God swearing by himself are one such example. You find a reference to them in passing on the lips of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, in Luke chapter 1 and verse 73 where he speaks of the Lord Christ coming because of the oath that God had sworn to our father Abraham. However, we know of this incident more explicitly from the sixth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, verses thirteen through eighteen, where the author of the epistle cites them, and he comments on the amazing fact that God chose to swear a oath to Abraham, and that the patriarch had received it. This is what those verses say:
“When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no-one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.”
Abraham was a believer; Abraham was justified, a pardoned forgiven child of God. He believed God would fulfil the promises he had made to him 25 years earlier even if he had to offer Isaac. He had had the knife in his hand above the bound boy when the angel of the Lord said to him, “Don’t hurt the boy.” The very next words he was to hear from the Lord were, “I swear this to you by myself.” It is as if God was so moved by the sacrifice that he had demanded from Abraham, and by the obedience that Abraham had displayed that God wants his words now to make us pause, and grip us so that we be filled with a commensurate awe and solemnity. God is saying, “I am moved. I am touched by what you have done. You were prepared to do this for me, Abraham, not spare Isaac. So now I will not simply make a promise to you, but a solemn oath, and as there is none higher to whom to make appeal, I will swear by my own self, by my own name in confirming what I have promised. So know that this shall most certainly happen.”
The mentioning of human oaths in the letter to the Hebrews reminds us of the difference between this divine oath and a human oath. A human oath is taken because of our character flaws. Men make oaths because of their propensity to tell us what they think is best for them, or what they think we want to hear. That is why we sinners want to make oaths, but God swears an oath not because of any weakness on his part which needs to be strengthened by the bluster of an oath, but because of our weakness, and so God making an oath is an actual act of grace. Men call on something more holy and precious than themselves; they call on the lives of their mothers and fathers, or on the name of God himself. However, nothing transcends God and so he speaks and pledges himself
So God will make us promises. That is surely enough. No. God will go further and make an oath. Those are the two unchangeable divine gifts which are given to us who are the children of Abraham and the inheritors of the promise God made to Abraham. The promise plus the oath is given to us because our faith is weak, and God knows it is weak and thus God pities us and he swears, “I won’t break my word.” That gave Abraham a solid ground for his hope for the rest of his life. William Guthrie speaks of that divine promise and oath and he says, “This is the sheet anchor of the Christian’s conviction. He knows this, that his assurance does not depend on the stability or strength of his faith but on the absolute trustworthiness of God’s word.”
There was a great Welsh preacher born in Montgomeryshire who became one of John Wesley’s preachers, the group of so-called Wesley’s Veterans. His name was Thomas Olivers and his conversion is as powerful as Abraham’s. He was tramping around the country baiting the Methodists with total contempt and he arrived at Bristol and met a crowd of people walking with determination. “I asked one of them where they had been. She answered, ‘To hear Mr. George Whitefield. ‘She also told me he was to preach the next night, I thought, ‘I have often heard of Mr. Whitefield, and have sung songs about him: I will go and hear what he has to say.’ Accordingly I went the next evening, but was too late. The following evening I was determined to be on time: accordingly I went near three hours before the time. When the service began I did little but look about me; but on seeing the tears trickle down the cheeks of some who stood near me, I became more attentive.
“The text was, ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ When this sermon began I was certainly a dreadful enemy to God and to all that is good, and one of the most profligate and abandoned young men living ; but by the time it was ended I was become a new creature. For, in the first place, I was deeply convinced of the great goodness of God towards me all my life, particularly in that he had given his Son to die for me. I had also a far clearer view of all my sins, particularly my base ingratitude towards him. These discoveries quite broke my heart, and caused showers of tears to trickle down my cheeks. I was likewise filled with an utter abhorrence of my evil ways, and was much ashamed that ever I had walked in them. And as my heart was thus turned from all evil, so it was powerfully inclined to all that is good. It is not easy to express what strong desires I had for God and his service, and what resolutions I had to seek and serve him in future; in consequence of which I broke off all my evil practices, and forsook all my wicked and foolish companions without delay, and gave myself up to God and his service with my whole heart. O what reason have I to say, ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’”
Thomas Olivers is most remembered today for writing one of the greatest of all hymns, ‘The God of Abraham praise’ which he based on a Hebrew melody sung by Leoni who was a cantor in a London synagogue. Thomas Olivers had heard him sing this melody and he told him he was going to adapt it and would name the tune after him and write appropriate words for so strong a melody. The tune and the words are joined together and have been sung by millions ever since to the praise of God. What you need to know is that all great hymn writers are immersed in Scripture and biblical knowledge and they refer to verses from the Bible in line after line of their hymns. So it is in Olivers’ ‘The God of Abraham praise’ and one stanza in particular refers to our text. It says . . .
“He by Himself hath sworn - I on his oath depend -
I shall on eagles’ wings upborne to heaven ascend.
I shall behold His face; I shall His power adore
And sing the wonders of His grace for evermore.”
You hear the great notes of assurance, “I shall . . . I shall . . . I shall . . .” Where does this come from? It is the only acceptable and fitting response to what God has done. God has sworn to all of his elect people by himself - for there is none greater - that we shall on eagles’ wings be upborne to heaven when we die, we shall behold his face, we shall his power adore and sing the wonders of his grace for evermore. Divine promise results in believing doxology.
3. GOD BLESSES US WITH THE GREATEST OF BLESSINGS.
I think there are four remarkable blessings in our text. You can apply them first to the old covenant situation to [i] the personal blessing that came on Abraham rewarding him for his submission to the perfect will of God, to [ii] the extraordinary growth of his line so that 600 years later a million of them left Egypt and entered the promised land, to [iii] the conquest of that land while they remained obedient to the Lord and cities like Jericho fell without their losing a drop of blood and to [iv] the blessing that came to the surrounding nations while they served the Lord – as Jonah went to Nineveh and preached the word of the Lord to them. There are, I say, the localized geographical dispensational blessings on the descendants of this old man and his wife and their land that lasted until the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70. But I want you to see the far greater blessings that have come on the world through all who by faith in the Lord are the sons of Abraham.
i] There is the blessing of reward. “Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you” (vv.16&17). And then again see how the angel of the Lord ends his promise to Abraham, “because you have obeyed me” (v.18). Immediately the astute ones among us will say, “Hold on a minute. How can something be a free gift of a gracious loving God and at the same time an earned reward for obedience?” Think of my analogy of being a wages clerk for the National Coal Board and giving out a weekly pay packet to the miners. That was not a gift; they had earned it, but if I took a collier into the canteen and bought him a cup of tea then that would be a gift; that would be my small way of blessing him.
Abraham did God’s will, but God didn’t simply tick it off saying, “Ok. You obeyed me.” God was delighted with his obedience. The angels in heaven sang the Hallelujah chorus as they saw Abraham taking Isaac to the top of the mountain and laying him on the altar. Isn’t God one who would note and bless sacrificial obedience in this world and in the world to come? Abraham had listened to the voice of his wife as she told him to get into bed with her maidservant and make the seed that God promised, and the result was Ishmael. That was the work of Abraham’s flesh. There was no blessing on that activity, no reward from God because it proceeded from unbelief and a distrust of God’s promises.
But when Abraham took his son and was prepared to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God then Abraham’s rapid response showed he knew where all blessings came from, and he knew where abundant life was to be found, in doing God’s will however great the sacrifice. Imagine Abraham telling the Lord that he believed God would fulfil his promises, yes, but only so far. He wouldn’t trust him to fulfil his promises if Abraham had to offer up his son Isaac. That so-called faith of Abraham would really be no faith at all; it would be faith with reservations, qualified faith, conditional faith; “I believe in you just as long as you don’t touch my family.” The sort of ‘faith’ we have in political parties and the promises that are made before an election. We sort-of believe them, but with a knowing look at one another. That was not Abraham’s faith. It was real supernatural faith, the gift of God, because it kept nothing back from God. It trusted God 100 per cent. It said, “If God wants Isaac . . . right . . . there is nothing I shall keep back from him even my only son.” What sort of faith would you be showing if you said, “I believe that Jesus Christ has saved me and I am going to heaven, but you won’t find me taking up my cross, denying myself and following Jesus”? Saving faith shows itself in doing whatever God tells us, making a great sacrifice if God should demand it. I am saying that such faith that moves us to obedience is a gift from God and that faith is owned by God with a divine blessing on our lives. The blessing of the Lord makes men rich and that blessing homes in on joyful obedience.
Let your claim to be trusting in the Lord show itself in many works of faith. Faith without works is dead. What blessing attends such a life that does God’s will! Blessings in this life and “Well done good and faithful servant” in the life to come. “Great will be your reward in heaven,” Jesus told his disciples, and you will take that reward and you will cast it at Jesus’ feet saying, “My life is unworthy of any reward from you. My joy was simply to do your will.” The reward is simply the confirmation of divine grace given to us, grace changing our hearts and grace triumphing in our lives. There will not be a single Christian who will fail to obtain a reward from God when he finally meets with Jesus.
ii] There is the blessing of growth. The two are linked of course. When there is the obedience of faith that holds nothing back from God, when he is Lord over every area of our life, over each room of our hearts, and everything we do in the church then what growth there is - growth in grace, growth in Christ-likeness, growth in usefulness, growth in holiness, growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, growth in influence, growth in impact upon the world. So in our text we are told, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (v.17).
You know the phrase is literally, “blessing I will bless you.” That is, “I will most surely bless you. I will indeed really bless you . . .” Abraham’s eyes must be taken away from the ordinary use of the word ‘blessing.’ As we bid farewell to one another, ‘Good bye . . . every blessing . . .’ Think big! Multiply by infinity! God intends the maximal blessing on the seed of Abraham. It is not just that good things are going to happen to him. It is not just a son for Sarah and him in old age. It is not just prosperity in the land of Canaan. God will bless him with a vast believing progeny, which will fill the world. They will be a company of people that no man can number out of every kindred and tongue and nation, and the Son of Abraham, the Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ will be living within every one of them. Can you count the grains of sand on Aberystwyth beach? If you could then that would not reach the vastness of the number of the descendants of Abraham. It is a mind-blowing number of men and women, and Jesus Christ will be their Saviour, their Prophet, Priest and King. He will be taking them all to live in a new heavens and a new earth. Let our understanding of the blessings of the future growth of the church be commensurate with the blessing that comes from the omnipotent God. Let’s think magnificently! Let’s think theocentrically, and when we say, “Well, I think of it like this . . .” and we try to put it into words the glories of the heaven described in the Bible then let’s shake our heads and say to one another, “and that is so inadequate . . .” because you know you are dealing with the infinite measureless God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!
iii] There is the blessing of triumph over all God’s enemies. “Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies” (v.17). What cities face us! What giants live in them! What mighty, high, virtually impregnable walls defend them, and ourselves, a rag tag and bobtail group of amateurs, housewives, children, the elderly, the novices, the people with personality problems, and we are going to take possession of the great power structures which have oil wealth, and the media, and the education system, and inter-continental ballistic missiles under their control? The city gates, the strongholds of the cities will be overcome. The city gates, the places of judgment will not be passing their proud judgments on us but we will judge them. You see this in a picture form when Israel goes into Canaan and the strong walls of the city of Jericho come tumbling down without any siege engines or catapults to assist the people of God. The city is taken by the power of God. Then there is the reality – no picture – the kingdom of darkness ruled over by the god of this world and see its gates, the gates of hell, collapse when Christ rises from the dead. The last enemy is powerless before Christ. We see it in a picture today. Here we are in the cultural capital of Wales, congregations which preach Jesus Christ dead, risen, exalted and almighty, and in the midst of contempt for this Christ who walked on water and fed the 5,000, we live for him and know his blessing. We find over 100 people coming to a Tuesday meeting on Man the Creation of God, and we see the gates of hell trembling. God’s enemies will not prevail over the servants of Christ’s gospel. In China and Korea and the USA the gospel is knowing its triumphs.
iv] There is the blessing of serving the nations of the world. “Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (v.18). You see how this is fulfilled in the New Testament; a simple illustration. There is a girl in Philippi in Greece, owned by her pimps, made to tell the fortunes and futures of those who will pay them, making her owners a great deal of money, and Paul and Silas come across her. Immediately she knows them to be servants of the Most High God who are telling men the way to be saved. She keeps up her shout, screaming out these words day by day until Paul cries out and delivers her from the spirit possessing her. Just one poor girl, but amongst the first of millions of poor girls abused in horrible ways who have been delivered and blessed by the gospel. Cannibalism has been outlawed, slavery abolished, poor children working long hours in mines and factories and cleaning chimneys have been blessed with deliverance from that abuse. The lot of women has been raised; the unborn child has its friend and spokesmen in the gospel church. Hospitals have been opened and lepers have been cared for. But what are those material blessings compared to the spiritual blessings of the forgiveness of sins, the gift of eternal life, the hearing of the Sermon on the Mount, the knowledge of Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and king, the possession of the Bible in the language of the nations of the earth, membership in a gospel church, the confidence that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever, the hope of heaven. Today all nations in the world are being blessed through Christ the offspring of Abraham. What blessings have come to the world through the seed of Abraham!
These are the last words that God ever spoke to Abraham. Eight times the Lord spoke audibly to him in his life. The last words of Jehovah, as far as we know, ringing in his ears, began with the words, “Abraham I swear by myself . . .’ and end with a series of glorious blessings which four thousand years of human history have seen being fulfilled, but the best is yet to come.
1st November 2009 GEOFF THOMAS