Stop over-thinking it!
Psalm 128 reminds us again of the Bible’s clear teaching:
obedience leads to blessing.
Stop over-thinking it. Where do you need to be obedient today?
P.S. Isn’t it interesting that the images the psalmist uses to illustrate blessing are all domestic? We get it totally BACKWARDS—we think the primary form of prosperity is OUTSIDE the home, whereas the Bible sees prosperity’s ultimate form to be domestic harmony and abundance.
Remember, the key to understanding Genesis 12-36 is to see it as the education of the patriarchs about the way to make family work.
Here we go again.
The Abraham story began with Abraham passing off his wife as his sister when they sojourned in Egypt. A lot has happened since then, and Abraham and Sarah have grown old and very wealthy. But still, Abraham hasn’t learned his lesson: a “wife” is not the same thing as a “sister” or a “mistress” or a “concubine”; a wife is a partner in the raising and the shaping of the next generation.
And so, here Abraham tries the same trick with Abimelech, and just as before, the Lord intervenes.
What happens next is important. As we’ll see in tomorrow’s reading, Sarah finally becomes pregnant with the child of the covenant—Isaac—but only after Abraham finally learns his lesson.
“Only when Abraham acknowledges that a wife is something absolutely other than a sister does Sarah become pregnant; and only then is she a wife in the full sense”.
—Leon Kass
For the covenant to be passed down, both husbands and wives, fathers and mothers will be necessary. As we’ll continue to see, this lesson is not one the children of Abraham learn easily!
Because it is immediately followed by the dramatic dialogue between the Lord and Abraham about the destruction of Sodom, it’s easy to overlook the Lord’s introductory comments as the episode begins:
“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” [Genesis 18:17-19]
Did you catch that?
“For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.”
The whole story is about family. It’s about the founding of a family and what it will take to pass on the covenant generation to generation.
Or, to put it another way: family is how we fight.
How can you build for the next generation today?
[Every weekday I write a brief commentary on that day’s reading in the Munger Bible Reading Plan. Join us and read along!]
[Scroll down to the end for some bonus content about “That Hideous Strength” from Friday’s post, including a complete answer to my trivia question.]
Were there other men whom the Lord called and commanded to leave their homes and families who refused to go? Were there others with whom the Lord wanted to make a covenant, if only they would obey? Were there other hypothetical Abrahams? If so, then certainly part of Abraham’s greatness—just like the Virgin Mary’s, millennia later—was his unique willingness to say, “Yes.”
You have no idea what hinges on your obedience today. Abraham said “Yes,” and history changed forever.
P.S. As we will see, the stories of the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—are primarily concerned with their education about family; family is what God will use to pass on the covenant, so it’s important that Abraham and the others learn how to make family work. (It doesn’t come naturally!) So, in this strange story about Sarah and Pharaoh, Abraham is learning that a “wife” is not the same thing as a “sister”.
On Friday, I wrote about Babel and entitled my post “That Hideous Strength.” I asked you to identify the source of that title.
No one actually got the answer right (or at least not completely). Yes, it is the title of the 3rd novel in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, but none of you actually explained why Lewis gave his novel that title or why I used it in the title of my post. So, let me tell you:
I re-read the Space Trilogy last year and was struck by the epigraph on the title page of That Hideous Strength. Here’s what it says:
“The shadow of that hyddeous strength
Sax myle and more it is of length”
Sir David Lindsay: from Ane Dialogue [describing the Tower of Babel]
Sir David Lindsay was a poet of the late Renaissance, who wrote Ane Dialogue in 1555 (which explains the strange spelling). Lewis, remember, was an expert on English Renaissance literature; when he wrote his novel about the dangers of technological powers joined with spiritual evil, he used the striking phrase “that hyddeous strength” as his title. I think the description of Babel is terrifying: an evil tower so high that it’s very shadow is six miles long.
So, there ya go.