“You Don’t Have to be Chosen to Be Blessed”

Genesis 25:1-18

 

We’ve made it through the life of Abraham. We have been reading through the book of Genesis and we’ve been using the “Literary Design of Genesis” proposed by Tim Mackie, of the Bible Project to assist us in understanding the patterns in Genesis. I have put the Literary Design in your bulletin to remind you of the sequence of happenings. 

 

As for today’s chapter, you may be thinking, “Okay, what on earth does this chapter have to do with anything proposed in the Literary Design? It’s just a bunch of genealogies" I would have to agree with that statement, often chapters like these are best left to read just before you go to sleep. But if we go back to the chapter before and figure out where we are in the cycle, we realize we just had an Eden moment.  

Rebekah came on the scene as a wife, or ezer. So our next event should be something disappointing, or consist of a failure of some sort that will result in some sort of division or strife. 

 

With that in mind, let’s see how this chapter begins? 

Abraham takes another wife. Step-mom, step siblings, a bunch of them. Some of these names you might recognize from later in the story, like Midian and the Ashurites. All of the descendants of Abraham and his wife Keturah will become hostile to the Israelites and cause a lot of problems. They live in the east which today is known as the northern part of the Saudi Arabian peninsula. So Abraham’s choice to remarry and have children causes big problems for Isaac’s descendants.  It’s not like we have some overt statement telling us that Abraham made a poor choice. 

But like many Biblical characters we read about, they do something that results in bad things happening. So it makes you wonder if perhaps they could have made a better choice. 

 

Then we read in verse 5, that Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. Oh, but while he was living, he did give gifts to his other sons and sent them away from his son Isaac, off to the land of the east. 

 

Here we have the division of the brothers, our Genesis 3 & 4 scenes all over again. Again, the non-chosen get sent to the east. Back in Genesis 3&4 it was God who was doing the sending. In this chapter we have Abraham doing the division and sending. 

 

Somehow there is a sad component to what Abraham has done. Abraham made some choices that have ultimately affected his descendants, for centuries. 

Because of Abraham’s decisions, hostility will be prevalent between all of his descendants. 

 

Next we read that Abraham died at a good old age. He was 175 when he died. The NIV has him as “an old man and full of years.” This is where we get the symbolism of seven being a number of completeness. The word for “seven” and the word for “complete” are spelled with the exact same Hebrew letters. It’s a homonym. We have them in English, two different words spelled with the same letters. 

Like the word “bear” is both a large animal and it also means to carry weight. By living to 175, Abraham went through 25 cycles of 7, which made his life complete or full. Go back to Genesis 1, “And God blessed the seventh day.” It’s a complete blessing.

 

Not only was Abraham’s life complete, we read next that, 

“he was gathered to his people.”

 

This is referring to Abraham’s burial. 

 

It turns out that both Issac and Ishmael buried Abraham  “in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah.”

But then the torch gets passed on, verse 10,

 “After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi.”Remember, Beer Lahai Roi, was the well in the wilderness of the living one who sees me. 

 

We are told that Abraham joins his people. Who are “his people?” 

 

He was buried in the same spot as Sarah, but there is a theme that has been established reminding us that even though people were dead to each other, they weren’t dead to God. So there were others we have read about who would have been with God. Remember Enoch, the guy who walked with God and then was gone? Don’t forget Noah. So this phrase has the idea of when you die you are “gathered to your people,” is quite interesting. 

We have already read the genealogy of Abraham’s third wife, Keturah, next we have the genealogy of Abraham’s wife Hagar, through Ishmael. Notice there are 12 sons, and the last son’s name, Kedemah, means “east.” They may not have been center stage, but they were a part of God’s plan to do some good in the world. Notice that when Ishmael died he too was gathered to his people. Ishmael’s descendants settled in the area near Egypt. Ultimately they too lived in hostility towards all the tribes related to them. How sad.

We have come to the end of Abraham’s life on earth. Abraham gets joined to his people. Isaac receives the blessing. But everyone else associated with Abraham seems divided and fractured. There was a disconnect with Hagar and whatever occurred with Keturah may have been less painful but still seems complicated. What a sad way to end Abraham’s life, with the division of brothers. But step back for a moment, remember what happened after the flood story? They no sooner get off the boat and the brothers scatter and separate. History repeats itself. The real question is how is God going to bring about the blessing of Eden if everyone is at odds with each other? 

We will have to keep reading to find out. 

Check in time. 

 

Up until now we have managed to read about the life stories of quite a few Biblical characters. 

 

From Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, then Noah up to Abraham we have the fracturing of families and relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and between siblings. This is a major theme in the storyline of the Bible. When we get to the Prophets we read about a day when God will gather together the tribes and return them to worship. Then we read in the New Testament of the reunification of Israel at Pentecost and the apostle Paul reaches out to the Gentiles. As we read about the fracturing of Abraham’s family we sense the tension towards the hope of the many becoming one again. The words of Jesus resonate with this hope. Reunification becomes a major theme throughout the New Testament. 

 

The fracturing of relationships is just as relevant to us today. The unity of the human family, the unity of the people of God is something we desperately need today. 

In order for unity to exist we will have to let go of individualism and recognize the need for all of the nations to become one. May we learn from history and not keep making the same mistakes. 

 

One way to learn from history is for us to take a look at the basic message and theme of Abraham’s life. I would like to share what Yair Zakovitch, an Israeli Hebrew scholar observed. You can find his observation on a strip of paper in your bulletin. 

 

At the beginning, Abram starts his life in Mesopotamia. He travels up to the land of Canaan. He doesn’t stay there long before he heads down to Egypt. That doesn’t go very well so in chapter 13 he returns back to the land of Canaan and he hangs out there for the rest of his story. In the meantime, he does send his servant down to Mesopotamia and Rebekah comes back as a wife for Isaac. Isaac will experience a famine and be tempted to go to Egypt but God stops him in a dream and tells him not to go. He actually listens. Then comes Jacob, he was actually born in the land of Canaan, but he and his mom deceived his father with a meal in order to get the blessing. His older brother gets so mad at him for stealing his blessing that he says he’s going to murder his brother. So Jacob leaves for 20 years. Where does he go? Back to the land of his mother, Mesopotamia, to his uncle’s house, Laban, the homeland of his grandfather, Abraham. After 20 years, he returns to Canaan and he’s going to be there until he sees his favorite son Joseph go out and check on his brothers. His brothers hate their younger brother because he is the favored one, the one with the fancy coat and his dreams of being the king of the universe.  So his brothers throw him in a pit and sell him to be a slave. Where does he end up? Egypt!

 

See the pattern? 

 

Mesopotamia, Babylon, down south, to Egypt, these are exiles that are places of descent, of slavery, of subjugation and death. To return out of Egypt is to return to “Eden.” To come out of Babylon is to return to Eden as well. It’s as if Abraham’s story has been designed to anticipate the story of his future descendants. 

 

Let’s go another step and look at the descendants of Joseph when they come out of Egypt. We know this to be the Exodus. And where do they go? Yup, the promised land, they end up staying there for a while, even though they don’t deserve to. Until Assyria comes and takes away the northern tribes and then Babylon arrives and ruins everything by taking them back to…. You know where…. Mesopotamia. 

 

All of these stories are repeats of the other. The Hebrew Bible is a unified story pointing to some greater exodus out of Babylon. 

 

By the time we get to the New Testament the Gospel of Mark begins with saying, 

 

“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way”—

“a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.’”

which happens to be a long poem calling the generation of God’s people to come out of Babylon. 

Had some of them already returned from Babylon? Yes. But was the new temple glowing with the presence of God like it did in Eden? Were all of the tribes reconciled? Are all the families of the earth reconciled? No. 

The whole world is in Babylon. Still today. 

Can’t you feel it? 

Abraham’s story is the whole nation’s story. It’s humanity’s story told in the micro form of one person’s life. Then Jacob’s story is Abraham’s story, and we can keep on going. They are stories that have been told to God’s people as they sit in Babylon, wherever that is and whenever that is. Babylon becomes an image for the time before the coming of the Kingdom of God as we wait for the new ascent to Eden. 

Hopefully this allows you to look at these Old Testament stories with a new lens. 

Today, as God's people, we look around us and realize that we are sitting in Babylon, possibly at no fault of our own, but here we sit. As we await the coming of the Kingdom of God and the new ascent to Eden, we have hope, because of Christ. We will ascend to Canaan, just like our ancestors before us. The pattern has been set. There are times when life is very confusing and our world may feel hopelessly fractured, even our own hearts and minds may seem fractured. But when we read through the Scriptures we realize God’s overwhelming covenant loyalty to His people. For both the chosen and the non-chosen, God’s goodness, generosity, tenacity and relentless love is the same yesterday, today and forever. For that we give thanks. 

Amen.