God Knows Logistics

 Read Genesis 22

Let’s jump back to chapter 11 for a moment and do a little genealogy.

After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

Haran died.  Lot survived him.  Terah took him under his wing.  When Abraham was called by God to leave his father’s household in the area called Harran, Lot went with Abraham.

Up to this point, Nahor has been left out of the story. Now we see that he had kids.

Some time later Abraham was told, “Milkah is also a mother; she has borne sons to your brother Nahor: Uz the firstborn, Buz his brother, Kemuel (the father of Aram),  Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph and Bethuel.”  Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Milkah bore these eight sons to Abraham’s brother Nahor.  His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also had sons: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash and Maakah.

You have to love those names.

The first time I went to Africa, I stayed with our host pastor in his home.  I have shared before that Rick and I each had a separate bed but we shared a towel.  I got one side.  He got the other.  We hung it in the room during the day and hoped it would dry by the next morning.  One day, Rick forgot to hang the towel so it would dry.  The next day was known as wet towel Thursday.

I won’t review the bathroom accommodations, but when we showed pictures, we went from 12 people interested in joining our return to Africa to – 12 people.  I’m not here to talk about that.

The pastor and his wife, who was also a pastor, had three children.  Two were girls—Angel and Blessing.  What would you expect when mom and dad were both pastors.

The couple had just had a baby boy.  They named him Bob. What’s in a name?

It’s a good thing that Abraham didn’t get this news about his brother’s kids before Isaac was born.  He would have really been discouraged.

It was a long time ago.  There was no Netflix or video on demand.  What did you do with time on your hands?  You made kids. If your wife already had a bun in the oven, you had a side chick—a concubine.

I’m interested to see if we had a Plandemic Lockdown Baby Boom in 2020 and 2021.  I think that Netflix and Prime subscriptions probably flattened that curve, but we will see.

Nahor had some sons.  It seemed that this Father of Many Nations business would have been easier with Abraham’s brother.

If you are named in the Bible, you are probably a guy.  That’s just the way the story was told.  Yes, there were women and the propagation of the species continued, but most women didn’t get any listing in the genealogies of the Bible.

There are two exceptions here.  One is Reumah the concubine.  Why is she mentioned?  She gave Nahor 4 sons.

And then there is Rebekah.  Why is she mentioned?

Abraham was 100 years old when he became a father to Isaac.  Abraham seemed to doubt this Father of Many Nations thing several times, but in today’s chapter, the other story is the faith of Abraham that God saw long before we saw it in the story.

Abraham didn’t really see beyond having this promised son.  Where would Isaac find a wife?  Hagar could just hop over to Egypt and get her son, Ishmael, a wife; but where would Isaac’s wife come from?

Later, we will see that Abraham did not want Isaac to take a wife from the people of Canaan. Even though Abraham’s father came out of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans—aka pagan country—there were still people that knew about God.  These people still had idols, but Abraham knew his son stood a better chance with the women of his father’s lineage than from the local population.

But Abraham had nothing to do with the logistics.

God rescued Lot from Sodom and Abraham had nothing to do with it. He probably thought that he was negotiating with God for the life of Lot’s family, but God had already put that rescue in place while Abraham was getting God down to sparing the city for the sake of 10 righteous men.

And God would provide wives for Abraham’s son and grandson.  God knows logistics.

The main message in this chapter is the really big faith that we finally get to see in Abraham in the first part of this chapter, but we should not neglect the fact that when God chooses us for something, he has already put the logistics in place that will equip and provision us.

Let’s trust more, obey more, and live more in accordance with our faith.  Yes, it’s okay to fear God more.

When God says he’s got this, he’s got this.

Trust, obey, believe, and fear nothing and no one but God.

Amen.