When God is God

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
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You know what is really hard for humans to do? Let God be God. We have a list of things that we think God isn't allowed to do, or at least a list of things that we would rather Him check with us first before He does them. He doesn't give us the reason for why He does things, and given all that we read in the Bible, you would think He should be trusted at this point. 

We saw last week that God has a plan for the unplanned. Here God was able to use the sin of Abraham to set things up for turnarounds thousands of years in the future. We've seen God work in all kinds of ways to ensure that the blessing is transmitted from one generation to another. He has planned from the very beginning of this book that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the snake. We've seen that there is a line of the woman and a line of the snake down through every list of names. We had Cain and Abel. The line was clear until Cain killed Abel! Doesn't sound like the seed crushing the head of the snake, does it? But then God brings Seth into the world who ultimately produces Noah. Noah has three sons one of whom (Ham) has a cursed family line that will end up serving the line of Shem. Eventually, we see the line of Shem produce Abraham. It is promised that he will have the seed! We see Ishmael born, but it will be Isaac, the technically second son, who will have the blessing of the seed. 

Up to this point, you could be confused as to how these lines are decided. Thus far, it looks like each person has chosen their own adventure. Abel was a right worshiper, and Cain was not. It wasn't until Cain became a murderer that it was crystal clear who was who. Ham didn't stand out until he mocked his father's nakedness. Ishmael stood out from the beginning, but that was because Hagar wasn't the woman of promise. It might look like that God has thus far been reacting to what humanity has been doing. Yes, the blessing has been safe thus far, but is that because God is simply the best at taking life's lemons and making lemonade? Or is God's control more comprehensive than we might imagine? 

The present story will make clear how it is that God runs the show. This is a passage that Paul makes reference to when talking about God's control of matters. As we will see today, and in weeks following that God sovereignly directs His plans beforehand, yet everyone is both dependent on God and responsible to God.

God sovereignly directs His plans beforehand

We begin with a mini genealogy to signal that we are starting a new episode as it were. This is to orient us to where this story is going next. 

Just like with the Abraham story, the one through whom we are to expect children is barren. We will see this theme pop up again and again in Scripture of the barren woman eventually giving birth. God loves to show Himself being God. Biology isn't a challenge for Him. He makes the barren give birth whenever He pleases, a point made clear as her eventual pregnancy is "granted" by God after Isaac prays. Now, we might think because this whole narrative happens in a single verse that maybe she was barren for a year or so until Isaac prays, and then, boom! Problem solved. But that is not how this story went. Verse 20 tells us that Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah. When we get to verse 26, we find out that Isaac was sixty! This means that they have been waiting the better part of twenty years to have a child, just five years less than Abraham himself waited! Thankfully, Isaac didn't make the same mistake that Abraham did, and truly waited on God's time. There is simply no rushing God. 

Notice both of their commitments to prayer. Isaac must have been praying for the better part of twenty years, and one of the first things that Rebekah does when she feels this sensation of twins is to ask God! In a sweet detail, the Hebrew notes that Isaac prayed "in front of" or "toward" Rebekah (Phillips, 133). Nothing shows your belief that God controls and knows all things quite like prayer. When you are confused on something, you go to the smartest person in the room to ask, don't you? Well, what does prayer say? It says that God is the one you trust. And when we don't give God a thought at all and set out just to solve our problems all on our own, it says who we trust the most. 

Now, here in verse 23, we are told a number of remarkable things. One, we are given our first mention of twins in the Bible thus far, and two, we are told that these aren't just two people but two nations. This is a strong continuation of the promise that was given to Abraham, the father of many nations. 

That multitude is on its way, but there is a problem: they will be divided. One is going to be stronger than the other and will be served by the other. In this we hear echos of Noah's sons in which Canaan would serve the line of Shem. This is also an echo of Genesis 3 in which we are told that there will be two lines, the line of the woman and the line of the snake. This snake just keeps slithering through the story, no matter how close the family is. 

With this pregnancy announcement, we are reminded of a concept that has floated all through Genesis: God's choice. Just like with Isaac and Ishmael, while they were still in the womb, God had their lives all mapped out. Ishmael would have a multitude of sons, but Isaac is going to be the son of promise. One could say, though, that God had to do this because of the mother. Hagar wasn't Sarah, so God simply couldn't have Ishmael be the heir. But here, we learn that God has never been bound like that. God makes clear that He won't be bound by anything. 

In this story, we see that God will isolate all other factors other than His choice to make crystal clear what His level of control is and will be. This time, the mother is the right mother. The father is the right father. They have twins in the same womb. And yet, God makes the choice of one over the other. It will be the younger that rules over the older (which, culturally, is not how that was supposed to work). God is making this choice not on the basis of anything that they have done or not. Paul makes this exact argument in Romans 9. There he is trying to prove that just because you have the right genetic lineage, that doesn't mean you are a child of God. You can descend from Abraham, be a very son of Isaac, sharing the womb of Rebekah, and yet God chooses Jacob and not Esau. 

Why does He do it that way? He simply doesn't tell us. Paul, in that passage we just read in Romans, gets all the way to getting close to answering that question yet the answer is "God will have mercy on whom He wills." In other words, God is God and He will act like God. When the question is posed, "then why does God find fault" Paul responds with, "who are you to answer back to God?" In yet other words, "If it is all down to God's choice, then why are people held responsible for not choosing Him?" If there was another answer that was true, this would have been the perfect time to say it (John Piper, *Providence*). If he could have said, "Well, the person was totally free to make another choice, so it was up to them," he would have. But there is no other answer. The answer simply is, this is how God set it up, and we are not even close to being in a moral place to judge the Almighty for it. 

That offends our senses, doesn't it? Of course it does! We're sinners! We are born in rebellion against God, why would this aspect of His character be any different? We can try to ignore it, but this is what I think this passage is clearly trying to tell us. 

"But Pastor," you may say, "this is something that is often divisive, why do we have to emphasize it?" Well, for one, this is what the passage itself is emphasizing. We have to look at what Scripture says when it says it. 

But the second reason, and the main reason, is that believing something that is untrue about God robs you of comfort. If you believe that God is a harsh father, crossed arms, waiting to zap you for a misstep, you are going to be a joyless, judgmental person, who is robbed of the comfort of a God who joyfully welcomes the prodigal home. If you believe that God is a laidback hippy who doesn't care how you live, you will be careening from one disaster after another because of your sin, being robbed of the comfort of knowing what the good life of obedience can bring. If you believe that God has no control over THE most important thing in your life, your eternal destiny, you will be constantly wondering if you are truly saved or if you have somehow messed up your salvation. 

I'm not sure why we would find comfort in God not being in control of our salvation. Either we actually do believe in God's control of salvation but just don't realize it, or it might be because we don't value our salvation like we should. Imagine if we genuinely thought that God didn't control political outcomes. Imagine if the ballot box was ENTIRELY up to your will and control or other's means of seizing control. Would that cause you more stress than you currently have? If it would, then why wouldn't you want God to control salvation? 

Maybe, perhaps, you think that if God is in control that maybe He won't choose certain people in your life. Perhaps you might even worry that He won't choose you. If that is something that you are concerned about, then there is a very good chance that God is already drawing you to Himself. Unregenerate people typically don't worry about their state before God. As to other people, the fact that God chooses and transforms should give you hope for even the furthest people from God in your life. 

Let's take an illustration from Rebekah's own barren womb. For 19 years, her womb was empty. Assuming that she started marriage to Isaac during child-bearing years (which is the case), after 19 years of trying, one might begin to think that with each passing year, this gets less and less likely. I mean, if one cannot get pregnant in this stage of life, what hope is there for pregnancy later? But what does Isaac do? He prays. I imagine that he prayed many times for this to occur. He knew that God was the one who granted children. Isaac himself was evidence of that. He knew where life comes from, so he kept entreating the source. 

The same goes for salvation. If there is someone in your life who has gone deaf to the gospel for decades, don't stop praying for them. Some people come to Christ twenty minutes before death. That actually happened at the hospital my dad works at. Even if you are in a place where they won't talk to you anymore, you can still talk to God about them. That's where hope comes from. No matter how far anyone has wandered, no matter how deep into evil people have fallen, God can still reach them and give them life just like He did in Rebekah's womb. Just like He did with the writer of Romans. Paul went from Osama Bin Laden to R.C. Sproul in one conversation with Jesus. 

The same can be true of the person you are praying for. So don't stop. Does that person need to express faith in Christ? Yes. There aren't going to be people getting dragged into heaven kicking and screaming, and neither are there going to be people who genuinely desire a relationship with Jesus who will be left at the closed gates. Jesus is not going to miss any one of His no matter how remote or hardened. 

Trust Him. He died on the cross to make salvation possible. He isn't begrudging in His salvation. We don't have to understand every move He makes. We just have to trust that He rules this world in wisdom and love.