ISAAC: SILENTLY SPIRITUAL

Genesis 17:19-21 (KJV)

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.

But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

I feel compelled to bring messages on Isaac and Jacob, not because they immediately impress me with how spiritual they were but because God identifies Himself as:

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob[1]

Frankly, as I began to meditate on Isaac, I think he might be one of the more important examples of spirituality we are going to find.

I mentioned that to my wife and she said, “He did nothing but be born.”

Isaac was an “average” man.

·   He seems to have been faithful.

·   He stayed, relatively[2] where God had placed him

·   He never messed up in any really terrible way

But neither does he appear to be any sort of great man of God.

Isaac was spiritual because of a promise.

He was

·   who he was,

·   when he was and

·   where he was

because God put him there.

Isaac served as a ridge between the promise of God and the fulfillment, which is Christ.

I want to use a term that needs to be taken with a grain of salt because I don’t believe Christians should be quiet about their faith but…

Isaac was “Silently” spiritual –

He is representative of average believer.

Most of us will never do anything to get our names in the history books.

Most Christians could never do the above average things or else they would not be above average things any more.

But what every Christian can do is to faithfully, consistently, probably not perfectly, live out his or her Christian life.

Every Christian can be the bridge that points others from the promise of God for eternal life to having that eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

I think Isaac is representative of the typical Christian – and there is nothing too typical about being the typical Christian.

Isaac demonstrates average, day to day spirituality in at least three areas of his life.

I. IN HIS SONSHIP

I mean by that his relationship with his father

Genesis 24:1-4 (KJV)

And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.

And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh:

And I will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell:

But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.

I will speak in a few minutes about his marriage but first I want to address his relationship with his father regarding that marriage.

I think there are two ways to apply what I am about to speak to you about:

·   First, as a child relating to a parent

·   Secondly as representing our relationship with God the father

There are two remarkable things in this account:

A. Waiting on his Father

We know from Genesis 25:20 that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah.[3]

It would be very inaccurate to think that every person in those days waited until they were 40 or that every young person allowed their father to find a bride for them.

Esau didn’t do it.

Ishmael didn’t do it.

There is an incredible bond that exists between Abraham and Isaac that he served his father and waited so long to find his completer – Rebekah.

May I just say, a spiritual person is a patient person.

Especially in the sense of waiting on God, patience to wait for God to:

·   Provide

·   Guide

·   Fulfill His promises

These are signs of trust, without which I cannot imagine a person can be considered spiritual.

Boy – we like to rush ahead, don’t we?

·   We like to get thinks done

·   We like to make things happen

Very often when we do that, we are behaving like Abraham and Sarah, who just didn’t think God was ever going to deliver His promise, and the result was Ishmael.

I think we have some churches that are “Ishmael’s” because they are man made, not God made.

He waited on his father – he was patient.

Secondly he demonstrated some spiritual in

B. Obeying his father

When the servant returned with Rebekah, Isaac submitted to his father’s plan for him.

He wouldn’t have had to do this.

He could have

·   rebelled and

·   thrown a fit and

·   pouted about how it wasn’t fair

What he did instead was

·   Immediate

·   Unqualified and

·   Absolute

obedience to the will of his father.

Submission to the Lord is also a sign of spirituality.

A spiritual person does:

·   What God says

·   How God says and

·   When God says it

Isaac demonstrated his spirituality secondly

II. IN HIS MARRIAGE

May I say that there are few areas of a person’s life that is more spiritual than marriage.

·   It is nothing to be taken for granted.

·   It is a vow that God forever holds us to and

·   It is a picture in the world of God’s plan for His people

There are two areas of his marriage I want to bring to your attention today:

A. He loved her

Genesis 24:67 (KJV)

And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

For a man to truly love his wife and Christ loved the church – that is a spiritual act.

But I would like to focus your thoughts on the picture that a husband loving his wife is meant to represent:

It is to picture how Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.

It leads me to say that a mark of spirituality is a love, devotion, a willingness to give to your church.

You’re not Jesus I know

You might argue that, we are the church and Jesus is supposed to give to us.

But there is plenty of Biblical evidence that Christians are called upon to love their church.

Spiritual people have more than a cursory relationship with the church they attend.

·   They are united

·   They are involved and

·   They are committed to that church

How does your own commitment to your church compare to Acts 2:41-47 (KJV)

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common;

And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,

Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

Isaac’s second action in relationship with his marriage is when,

B. He prayed for a child

Genesis 25:20-21 (KJV)

And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.

And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

Anita and I make no secret of that fact that we lost our first two babies.

It turned out to be something that the doctor was able to fix quite easily with surgery but it was and is still a very difficult thing.

I’ll be transparent for a moment.

When Anita got pregnant the first time, I wasn’t that keen on the idea.

·   I was about to leave my job as an ironworker to prepare for the ministry

·   I had not idea what our futures would hold for a long time

·   And besides, I just really liked “Anita and me.”

I was heartbroken when we lost the baby – especially because of how it happened and how the doctor told us what had happened.

But before Anita had gotten pregnant, I would have been fine had she not gotten pregnant.

The second baby was, to be brutally honest, for Anita’s benefit.

I was in Bible College cleaning bathrooms to make a few dollars.

Anita was teaching school. She was supporting us financially and I couldn’t see how we could possibly make it if we had a baby.

But Anita wasn’t getting over the loss of the first baby very well and I sort of “consented” after one of the other students at college told me, “Look, you’ll never think you can afford a baby and, besides, the college insurance we have may be the best insurance you have for a long time to come.”

We lost the second baby Christmas day, 1982.

The doctor who treated Anita was an incredible man. He figured out what the problem was, did a surgery to correct us and then looked us in the eyeballs and said, “Now, go have babies.”

Anita took that as an order.

I wasn’t so sure.

But then in my regular devotions one day I read Genesis 25:21.

I can’t tell you why, but God gave me a desire for us to have a baby.

·   I began to pray

·   And Bohannan was the result.

I believe God gave us a child after I had a heart for a child.

I want to use that to speak again about your relationship with the church.

Some people come to church and are content with that,

A spiritual person develops a heart for the church.

He or she wants to see the church

·   blessed,

·   thriving,

·   full of people

And they begin to pray and serve the Lord to see it happen

III. IN HIS FAITH

Genesis 27:1-4 (KJV)

And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.

And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:

Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison;

And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.

I think probably one of the sorriest days in Isaac’s life was when he tried to give the birthright blessing to Esau instead of Jacob.

I think it is equally sorry how Jacob went about getting that blessing instead of Esau.

But what I want to point out is that Isaac believed he had such a blessing to give to his son.

I wonder if you have a spiritual blessing you can pass down?

·   Is your testimony

·   Is your walk with God

·   Is your faith in God

So real, so alive and so obvious that you are able to pass it on to others?

Conclusion

Isaac is nobody special.

Except:

·   He was born through a promise (ye must be born again)

·   He lived faithfully even though it wasn’t perfectly and

·   He passed on his faith to those who followed him

That’s a kind of spiritual you can be.

---

[1] Exodus 3:6 (KJV)

Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

[2] With some failures very similar to his father’s.

[3] Genesis 25:20 (KJV)

And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.