FBC Morning Light – January 13, 2023

Well, good Friday morning to you, coming to the end of the second week of January, and looking forward to the weekend, to gathering together on the Lord's Day, and I hope you are as well. Looking forward to worshiping together as we meet, having adult Sunday school at 9 .30, continuing our study in the book of Philippians, and then the morning service at 10 .30, and evening service this week at 6 o 'clock.

So, I hope you can come to these services, our time together, to really make the Lord's Day a day wholly dedicated to Him. Well, today, we're reading in Genesis 25 and 26, Matthew 10 and the 10th Psalm, and in Genesis 25, we see an interesting contrast that highlights two really important points, and I want us to catch them today.

Ishmael’s Descendants and Isaac’s Line

The contrast is between Ishmael and Isaac, the family, the descendants of Ishmael, and that of Isaac. And in chapter 25, verses 12 through 18, you're given a little bit of the family genealogy of Ishmael, up until Ishmael's death.

He died at age 137 years old. Ishmael did. But in the meantime, he fathered several different sons, and there's a list of these sons in verses 13 through 15. The firstborn of Ishmael was Nabajoth, then Kedar, Abdiel, Mibsom, Mishma, Duma, Massa, Hedar, Tima, Jeter, Naphish, and Kedar.

How many is that? Let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Twelve sons. Twelve sons. Hang on to that. Remember in the future, how many sons did Jacob have? Okay, anyway. So he had twelve sons, and it says, these were the sons of Ishmael.

These were their names by their towns and their settlements. So these twelve sons, they all had their own towns, they all had their own settlements. They were princes according to their nations, descendants of Ishmael.

In contrast to that, it says in verse 19, this is the genealogy of Isaac, who Abraham begot. Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah.

Okay?

Remember how that came to pass back in chapter 24. So he's 40 years old when he married Rebekah. And Rebekah couldn't have any children. She was barren. We read in verse 21 that Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren.

Eventually the Lord granted that request. She conceived, and the two sons that were born to her were Jacob and Esau. And verse 26 tells us that Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them.

Alright?

So get the picture here. Ishmael seems to be pretty prolific, and has a lot of sons, and they grow and they prosper. They each have their own towns and settlements. They are princes among their nations.

And Isaac, the seed of promise through whom the covenant is supposed to be fulfilled, his wife can't have a child. He marries her, and 20 years later, she still hasn't had a son. The Lord has to, you know, Isaac has to beg the Lord, please let my wife have children.

And the Lord, after 20 years, answers that prayer and gives him these two sons. Isaac and Jacob. And so there are a couple of points that I want us to get from this. One of them is the fact that, the truth that, the chosen seed is God's gracious blessing and provision.

The descendants of Ishmael are not the chosen seed, they're not the ones through whom Messiah is going to come. They're not the ones to whom God is going to give the land of Canaan. The chosen seed are the descendants of Abraham through Isaac.

And it's God's doing that is going to see to it that his promise is fulfilled. That promised inheritance. He's going to do the work. He's going to provide the blessing, graciously provide the blessing, that this promise would be fulfilled.

So that's one point to understand, that, you know, it didn't matter what Isaac did. God needed to provide. God needed to provide. The second point I want us to get from this is how patient God is in bringing fulfillment to his promises.

And that's in contrast to our nature, isn't it? When we make a promise to our children that we're going to do thus and so. They want it to happen like right now. You promise a child that in three months, we're going to go do some special activity.

They're like, oh come on man, no, not three months, we can't wait three months, we've got to do this now, let's go! This is our nature, this is what we want. We want the promise fulfilled now. But look back over the history of God giving his covenant promise, and see the time that it's taken to even get to this point.

We're talking decades ago, God made a promise to Abraham that he himself would have a son. It took decades before he had that son through Sarah. And then God furthered that covenant through Isaac, he reiterated that covenant through Isaac, and here it is 20 years later, two decades later, he still doesn't have a child.

And yet it's his son, his descendants, that are supposed to inherit this land, they're to be the inheritors of the covenant. God takes his time, and God has a timetable for the fulfillment of his promises.

Sometimes we get pretty impatient, don't we? We want things and we want them now. We want God to do what he's promised and we want it fulfilled now. We need to be patient, and learn from the way God has worked in the past, and anticipate that this is the way God works, patiently, calmly, according to his timetable.

Let's submit ourselves to that. So Father, I pray that we shall. It isn't always easy, but it's a step of faith where we become patient, willing to wait, willing to wait for you to fulfill that which you've promised.

Give us that grace to be patient, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well have a wonderful rest of your Friday, hope you have a great weekend, and a weekend that culminates on the Lord's Day, as in gathering together with God's people.

Have a great day.