FATHER ABRAHAM

"Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre; as hewas sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground, and said, 'My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, do not pass on by your servant. Please let a little water be brought, and wash hour feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And Iwill bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by, inasmuch as you have come to your servant.' They said, 'Do as you have said.' So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, 'Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal, knead it and make cakes.' And Abraham ran to the herd, took a tenderand good calf, gave it to a young man, and he hastened to prepare it. So he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and setit before them; and he stood by them under the tree as they ate. Then they said to him, 'Where is Sarah your wife?' So he said, 'Here, inthe tent.' And he said, 'I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.' (Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, 'After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?' And theLord said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh, saying, "Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?" Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.' But Sarah denied it, saying, 'I did not laugh,' for she was afraid. And he said, 'No, but you did laugh!'" --Genesis 18:1-15

Today is Father's Day, and I thought it would be good this week to take another look at Abraham, who is known as the Father of the Jews. Last week we were discussing Abraham and his importance as the father of our faith. This week we follow that New Testament reference back to its Old Testament roots in Genesis, as we take a look at one of the passages in which this promise was given. The promise isactually given three times: we find it first in chapter 15, then again in chapter 17, and in our passage today in chapter 18. This promise was included as part of a promise that had first been given to Abraham in chapter 12, as God told him to pack up and leave his native land. He was told at that time, "i will make you a great nation." I really don't think Abraham really fully understood at that time the implications of

the promise, that if he was to become a great nation, he would first have to become a father. In fact, the promise as it was first given to him was more specific in its promise of land than of children. Now as the time draws nearer for the birth of Isaac, the promise is being clarified, declaring here that Sarah would have "a son," whereas earlierthe promise was more generalized and spoke of "descendants."

Now here is where the story gets interesting. In fact, it's almost like soap opera material. Ever notice in the soaps, there's always somebody waiting around in the wings, eavesdropping on conversations they weren't supposed to hear? Well, that's not QUITE what's going on here; after all, they had just asked where Sarah was, and Abraham told them she was in the tent. But as far as she seems to know, her presence is undetected and she hears in secret. And she has the same reaction to what she hears that just about any 90-year-old woman would have: she laughs! Then the Lord questions Abrahamabout why Sarah was laughing, and it tells us Sarah denied laughing because she was afraid. That one took me a minute, because I was having a hard time understanding what Sarah would have felt that she had to fear. But after re-reading it a couple of times, I think I understand her fearfulness. Because what the text actually says here that when Sarah heard, she "laughed WITHIN herself." In other words, it doesn't seem to have been a spontaneous chuckle, just more of an inner thought like "Hah!" And her fear in that case would not be due tothe fact she was caught laughing at the promise of God, but the realization that she was in the presence of one who could read her verythoughts.

Now, I don't want to make too much of the fact that Sarah laughed here at the promise of God. It seems to have had enough significance that it was singled out and made mention of specifically here, but I see no real strong negative connotations attached to it at all. I can recall either hearing or reading a sermon years ago in which the preacher was going to great lengths to lay out details of a contrast here between "believing Abraham" and "unbelieving Sarah." He pointed back to chapter 16 where Sarah has Abraham to father a child by her servant girl Hagar, and was pointing this out as an example of Sarah "taking matters into her own hands." He stated further that the fact that Hagar was an Egyptian, and that because Egypt is often a type of sin in the Old Testament, that this was pointing out the wrongness of Sarah's action. The suggestion was made that she had simply not believed the promise of God, thought it was impossible that she would ever have children, and tried by this action to force the issueherself.

Well, that may or may not be true, but it seems much more likelythat they were simply following the customs of the land in which they now found themselves. Laws of the time, and in that particular land, tended to follow the lead of the Hurrian people, who had a fairly well-

developed code of laws. Hurrian law provided that if a man's wife was childless, a male heir to his property could be provided by fathering a child through her personal servant. This servant would then no longer be under the authority of the barren wife, and any children born through her would legally belong to the barren woman and her husband. Their actions here seem to have been following these Hurrian customs, rather than any intent on either Abraham or Sarah's part to try to substitute their own plan for God's. Besides, if we really want to pursue that line of thinking, we could paint just as dark a picture of the actions of Abraham. In chapter 15, where the promise is first mentioned, we have Abraham questioning God, and he mentions that "Eliezer of Damascus" is the heir of his household. Abraham seems to have been following another Hurrian custom of adopting a servant who would inherit his estate and give him a proper burial. Andwhen we look at the account of this promise as it is repeated in chapter17, we find that Abraham "fell on his face and laughed," and tried to reason with God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!" In other words, Abraham was laughing about this promise even before Sarah was! But God made it clear that His covenant promise was to be fulfilled through the line of Isaac, and not Ishmael, although the promise was given also that from Ishmael would come a great nation also, because he was the offspring of Abraham.

Therein lies a secondary promise that makes me begin to wonderwhether to some degree at least, that preacher so long ago may have had a point. See, the promise that had been given to Abraham was three-fold, a promise of (1) land, (2) blessing, and (3) descendants. As we look at Israel as it unfolds in the centuries after Abraham, we can trace very easily the fulfillment of the promises of blessing and descendants. But with Israel it seems that the land has always been inquestion. Israel has never in her history possessed in its entirety the land which God had promised. The promise was that all the land wouldbelong to them "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates." Much of that land, in fact, would have been very difficult to occupy, particularly the desert territories of the Sinai Peninsula and much of the land east of the Jordan. But they have possessed much of what is more specifically known as Canaan, the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

During their occupation of this little patch of land, they have been literally troubled on every side. To some extent, the problems they had were their own doing. For example, they were told to drive alltheir enemies out of the land they had been promised, but often they preferred peaceful coexistence as long as the inhabitants acted more like neighbors than enemies. And they were disobedient sometimes, allowing some to live whom they had been commanded to put to the sword. Add to this another problem that arose from Abraham and Sarah's actions surrounding this promise of a child. When Hagar found

out she had conceived, we are told that she despised Sarah, and Sarahapproached Abraham about the situation. What is probably meant is that she began to have a haughty attitude toward Sarah, thinking she was above her. The protection Sarah seeks from Abraham is a legal one, because even though Hagar would now be considered as a secondwife, she was still a servant. Abraham basically gives her a free hand to deal with Hagar as she sees fit, and Sarah begins to treat her pretty harshly. So Hagar flees into the wilderness, where an angel comes andcomforts her with the promise of descendants, telling her to name the child Ishmael, which means "God hears" or "God has heard." Then the angel persuades her to return and be in submission to Sarah, which she does. After Isaac was born and weaned, Abraham threw a feast. At the feast, Sarah saw Ishmael scoffing, and convinced Abraham to put Hagar and Ishmael out. Abraham was not happy with it, since Ishmael was also his son, but God instructed him to follow Sarah's wishes, because the inheritance, the blessing and promise of the covenant, were to come not through Ishmael but through Isaac.

Now I had some big questions after reading through the accountsof these events once again. For one thing, even though I realize that when the wives tell us to jump, we are supposed to ask, "How high?"--even if you grant that, you still have to wonder what kind of woman Sarah must have been that when she starts giving Abraham his marching orders, even GOD takes a back seat! Ever see the movie "Blazing Saddles," when the preacher tries to stop a lynching by holding up a Bible in front of the crowd, and someone blasts a hole in it? Then the preacher turns to the lynch victim and says, "Son....you'reon your own." "Sorry, Abraham, can't help you with this one, you better do what she says." And the fact of the matter is that Sarah was so wrong to cast the woman out. Hurrian law provided for no such thing, in fact PROHIBITED the barren wife from disinheriting the son of the bondwoman if she later bore a child. By the same laws, Isaac would have had the same rights as if he had been the firstborn, but Ishmael would still have had legitimate claim to his portion of the inheritance, even though it would not be the double portion that went to the firstborn. But casting them both out was a violation of their rights, and I'm sure that was a part of what had Abraham upset with her decision.

But I guess it surprises me even more that when God speaks to Abraham and tells him to follow Sarah's wishes, Abraham goes along with it without question. Can this be the same man who, later in this same chapter of Genesis, when told that God planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, stood up for the innocent in the cities with the demand, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25). Why did he not stand up and cry out for the rights of this woman, and this child who was his own flesh and blood? Something about it just seems inconsistent in character for Abraham to stand up and challenge

God for innocent people that he may not even know, and yet accept without question God's decision in this situation. I could only think of one thing that really explains why he would do that: knowing Sarah's feelings and wanting to keep the peace at home, he just reluctantly went along. It kind of reminded me of a little wall plaque I saw one daywhen I was visiting a gift shop: "When mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy!"

I think maybe the prediction the angel made to Hagar, about what sort of man Ishmael would become, was predictable. "He shall bea wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him" (Gen. 16:12). Studies have been done in our time that show a definite correlation between the likelihood of a young man to commit a crime, and the absence of a father figure in the home. Of course, Abraham didn't have the advantage of our modern dependence on statistics, but I can't help but wonder how different things might have been if this one decision had been reversed. Because it is not very many generations down the road that we find Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery--to a group of Ishmaelites.

But the consequences were much deeper than that. Hagar was an Egyptian, and when she was cast out she headed in that general direction, but she never got there. In fact, she thought they would both die in the desert, but we have a beautiful picture in chapter 21 of God's care for the two of them in the wilderness. We are told that the boy grew up in the wilderness, became an archer, and stayed in the Wilderness of Paran (21:20-21). In Ishmael's genealogy, we find that he had twelve sons, who also dwelt in the same general region, "from Havilah as far as Shur" (25:18). Havilah is located near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, the Wilderness of Shur to the north/northwest, so basically they occupied most of the Sinai Peninsula, a strategic area between Israel and Egypt. It was from this mainly desert region that many times the enemies of Israel would attack. And often the problems Israel had were with these same descendants of Abraham. "Casting out the bondwoman" came back to haunt the Israelites many times over.

Consider now another tragic event, this one after Abraham's time. Isaac and Rebekah had twin sons, Jacob and Esau, who really never got along. They were two very different boys, and it was easy tosee there would be trouble brewing one day. Most of us are familiar with the story of how Esau came in hungry one day and found Jacob cooking up a vegetable stew, and sold him his birthright as the oldest son for the pot of vegetables. Of course, obtaining the blessing later involved trickery on the part of both Rebekah and Isaac, and Jacob had to flee from a very upset Esau. And even though they were later reconciled, Esau became the father of the nation of Edom, who gave Israel as much trouble as they could handle for centuries to come.

Now consider how far-reaching the implications have been, even

down to our present time and the troubles that still plague Israel. In the region where Ishmael grew up, his Bedouin Arab descendants now live, an area that in the last half-century has been the launching point of a number of terrorist attacks on Israel, mainly launched by some of these Bedouin tribes. In the area that was once Edom, we now have the country known as Saudi Arabia. Granted, not all of Israel's enemiesgo back genealogically to Ishmael or Esau, and Israel has enemies thathave been around as long as they have been in the land. And most of their current problems go back to the 1948 reestablishment of Israel asa nation, and to the 1967 Six Day War. When Israel again became a nation, there was a huge repatriation of dispersed Jews who returned to the homeland. At the same time, there was a huge exodus of Arabs who had been living in the land, particularly in the region now known as the West Bank. Many of the Arabs, however, did not want to leave, and so there developed an area in which they both occupied the land. Tensions were bound to develop, and in 1967, after enduring terrorist attacks for a number of years (on a much smaller scale than we now see it), and facing an increasingly aggressive Nasser in Egypt, attacks from Syria in the Golan Heights, and uncertainty over the next move ofJordan's King Hussein, Israel went on the offensive. In only six days, they broke the enemy lines on every front, and were poised to move onCairo, Damascus, and Amman, when the Arabs called for a cease-fire. During the course of events, many Palestinians, fearing being caught inthe cross-fire, left the West Bank for Jordan. At the end of the war, Israel had captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. Rather than simply annex the West Bank, theyleft it with a military presence. Thousands of the Arabs who had fled the West Bank were eventually allowed to return, and they naturally resented an Israeli military presence. Now, the characters have changed, the times have changed, but essentially they stand in the same position, with several atrocities and animosities that have occurred on both sides since. The real tragedy is that the conflict so often has been between those on both sides who call Abraham their father.

One of the astounding things to see through all these events has been the faithfulness of God to the covenant with Abraham. Arab lands make up 99.9% of all land in the Middle East. The land of Israel, a tiny territory roughly the size of Delaware, makes up only 1/10 of 1% of all Middle Eastern lands. And yet this one little parcel of land remains the most hotly contested in the region, and Israel has often been surrounded by armies on every side who wanted their destruction. It has been a guiding principle in the surrounding Muslim countries, and is still in the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, that one of their goals is the eventual destruction of Israel from the face of the map. Yet here they remain, by the grace of God. And the challenge they face now is much more complicated and

entangled than any of us can even imagine.

On this Father's Day, I can't help but be severely reminded by this passage of Scripture of the need in all our relationships, especially the closest relationships we have, of all the far-reaching consequences that result when we neglect our covenant faithfulness to one another. Isn't it a frightening prospect to realize that the closest relationship we have on this earth--the family--is often the seedbed for the bitterest disputes? I wonder how many of the conflicts we have between nations and territories began way back in the distant past as a family feud? What does that tell us about our relationships right now? I'm beginning to see that whoever said that "charity begins in the home" was absolutely on the money.

We have more potential than we could ever imagine--for good or for bad--presented to us day by day in our relationships in the home. And perhaps it falls on us as fathers, more so than anyone else in the home, to find a way to maximize that potential for good and minimize the harm, and in so doing affect our world in positive ways. There is noplace like the home for our kids to learn acceptance, tolerance, mutual respect, love of humanity, and love of God. How in the world do we teach those things? We don't. We LIVE them. And if we live them longenough, and pass them along faithfully enough, then maybe one day the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Mankind will be a reality we enjoy and not a dream we pursue.

SOURCES CONSULTED:

John Bright, "A History of Israel," Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959.

"Crash Course in Middle East History," Shalom Jerusalem Family, internet, available at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/20001011_xcbtl_myths_brmi.shtml

Alfred Edersheim, "The Bible History: Old Testament," Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1949.

Theodore H. Robinson, "A History of Israel," London: Oxford UP, 1955.

"The 1967 Six Day War," Jewish Virtual Library, internet, available at http://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/1967toc.html