Chuck Larsen

Even the most stupid of us (and I count myself amongst them!) have 20/20 hindsight. After it’s said and done we often see the mistakes we’ve made and wish we could do things over. Most often, I’d do things differently. Well, as Alexander Pope said, “To Err is human.” But to “make matters worse” is another human specialty. I can do that well. This is especially true in how I treat people. Sarai and Abram learned all about making mistakes and then making matters worse. There is an ominous beginning to Chapter 16 of Genesis. If you had never read the story before or heard it told you have a pretty good hunch as to what was going to happen next. Verse 1 says, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.” Yep, we all know what’s coming!

Giving Hagar to Abram to take to bed and bring forth a child into the world was one of the biggest mistakes that Sarai made. But Abraham listened to her! He was just as much to blame for that mistake as Sarai. Adam had once listened to his wife also and made a mistake by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that didn’t relieve him of his responsibility at all. The story goes on and Sarah gave her maiden, Hagar, to Abram as a sort of surrogate mother. Big mistake! As a side note here it’s interesting to study the idea of surrogate motherhood as it was practiced in the near east in ancient times. Guzik says, “Some believe that the phrase refers only to a symbolic placement of the child on the knees of one who adopts it. Others believe that it refers to the surrogate sitting on the lap of the adoptive mother during both insemination and birth.”¹ Hagar, as soon as she conceived, couldn’t resist the temptation to look down on Sarah with contempt. Sarah makes matters worse by treating Hagar so harshly that she runs away. Notice that neither Abram nor Sarai made any attempt to go after her. Don’t you think that they were having regrets for making the decision to begin with! Another side note here is that Hagar’s son, Ishmael, becomes the father of all the Arab nations that have been Israel’s enemies to this very day. Oh, that we could do some things over again!

God cares about all His children; slave girls and unborn children alike. He intercedes on her behalf at a place named “Beer Lahai Roi.” That means “God sees.” He speaks to her, comforts her, promises her a son and instructs her to name him “Ishmael” which means, “God hears.” God then sends her back to Abram and her mistress Sarai with a story to tell. All three of the members of this cast got the message. God sees all our mistakes and how we often make matters worse in the way we treat others. God hears the cry of the abused and will always intercede on their behalf. All of us should remember that God sees and hears everything we do and say to others! The worst regrets in my life deal with relationships and how i’ve misused or abused them. There are things that i’ve said and done that cannot take back and the consequences continue with me to this day! I know I’m forgiven, but like the drunk who lost his arm in a knife fight and later becomes a Christian. He is forgiven and so am I. But he still lives without an arm!

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 16:3–4.

Abraham goes to war with five surrounding nations to save his nephew Lot. When he returns from the battle, I wonder if he had fears of retaliation by some of the other tribes around him. I think he might have been afraid of something like that happening because as Chapter 15 opens we read, “After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’”¹ Why would God tell Abraham “not to be afraid” if he wasn’t afraid? But God promises to be a “shield” for Abraham. Boice reviews the battle that Abraham had against the four kings and concludes, “He (Abraham) had attacked with a small force, but he had won and recovered the spoils. They must have been furious, and Abram must have been wondering about the consequences of his heroic rescue of his nephew. While he was wondering, God came to him with a promise of protection, precisely the promise he needed.”¹

The image of God as a shield appears eleven times in the Psalms.

3:3 – But thou, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

5:12 – For thou dost bless the righteous, O Lord; thou dost cover him with favor as with a shield.

7:10 – My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.

18:2 – the Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

28:7 – The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts.

33:20 – Our soul waits for the Lord, for he is our help and shield.

84:11 – For the Lord is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor.

91:4 – He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

115:9 – O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.

119:114 – Thou art my hiding place and my shield; I hope in thy word.

144:2 – My rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under him.

God promises to protect Abraham on his journey through life. One translation says, “I will block anything that might hurt you.” God will be present with Abraham and will never desert him even in times of trouble and distress. This image is repeated for us in the Psalms and elsewhere that God is a shield for his people. He will secure us from all evils, always coming between us and harm. If this is the case, and it is, it should silence all perplexing, tormenting fears that Abraham could have. It should silence our fears also. Janzen wrote, “Life continuously leads us beyond what we know and can deal with familiarly. At each stage, with its accompanying anxieties, the word of God comes: “fear not.” Thus the whole of one’s life, and of a community’s life, is a process of learning to trust in the deep assurances of the God who gives life and who calls and promises in the face of what threatens life.”²

¹ James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 528.

²J. Gerald Janzen, Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12–50, International Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids; Edinburgh: Eerdmans; Handsel Press, 1993), 36.

Genesis chapter 12 begins the greatest adventure ever experienced. Verse 1 introduces it to us, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” It’s God’s call to Abraham to forsake his life in Ur of the Chaldees to follow God’s call to a new place that he cannot see. The rest of the chapter contains the specifics of that call to leave it all and walk forward in a life of faith. He promised to bless Abraham. To make Abraham prosperous. To bless his descendants. To make him famous in the entire world in every generation. To bless everyone who blesses him and to curse all his enemies. All Abraham had to do was trust God! As the story of Abram, who becomes Abraham continues, we learn the most important lesson in life: We can trust God.

This account has long range effects on all the writers of the New Testament. The call of one man who will become the nation of God’s people as well as the father of all who have faith is a story that headlines the three major religions in the world. Judaism, Islam and Christianity all look back to Abraham as their father. Strassner observes, “When we read about God’s calling of Abram, we are not simply given a lesson in history. We are actually tracing a story line that takes us all the way to the Lord Jesus himself. So the calling of Abram—the beginning of the nation of Israel—is a story of tremendous significance.”¹

God’s promises to Abraham are all unconditional. The phrase “I will” that God uses is in direct contrast to the previous story concerning the tower of Babel. There it was all about what man would do! Here it’s all about what God will do. There are at least seven of them.

1. I will give your offspring this land
2. I will show you a land.
3. I will make you into a great nation
4. I will bless you.
5. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.
6. I will bless those who bless you.
7. I will curse those who curse you.

Here is the message of Genesis. God is worthy of our trust. Adam and Eve failed to trust God. Cain failed to trust God. Lamech failed to trust God. The whole world in Noah’s day failed to trust God. Since they did not find God trustworthy, they disobeyed. God would now show the world how trustworthy he is as he calls Abraham, the father of those who trust God. Abraham hears God’s call, trusts God to keep his promises, and obeys by following God’s directions. The rest of the book of Genesis will show us how God keeps his promises to Abraham and his descendants. The message of Genesis is God is trustworthy! He will keep his promises. By the way, God hasn’t changed. You and I can trust him also. He will keep his promises!

¹ Kurt Strassner, Opening up Genesis, Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009), 60–61.

Beginning in verse 10 of Genesis chapter 11 we have another long list of genealogies. Verse 10 begins the refrain by introducing it, “These are the generations of Shem.” You can’t help but remember the long list of names given back in Genesis chapter five. But There are two fascinating distinctions between the genealogy of Genesis chapter 5 and Genesis chapter 11. First is the mission refrain, and the second is the length of life. Back in Genesis chapter five every birth recorded is followed by a recorded death. Remember? “And he died… and he died…and he died,” over and over! It was a dramatic reminder to us all of our mortality. This was even more remarkable in the fact that these men who all died lived to be hundreds of years old. Shem lived nearly 700 years. Eber lived nearly 500 years and of course Methuselah lived nearly 1000 years. But they all ended with the refrain “and he died.” Notice that in the genealogy of chapter 11, no mention of death is made. Why? How strange is that since Shem’s son Arphachsad’s life is only 2/3rds the length of his father’s. Peleg’s 239 years is about half of his father Eber’s life. At the end Hahor’s life span is only 138 years. You would think death would be even more prominent in this genealogy, but it is completely absent. Why?

This genealogy is moving towards great hope for mankind. It’s introducing us to Abraham. The genealogy of chapter five ended with Noah, the man with three sons. All life died. The genealogy of Genesis 11 ends with Terah, the father of three sons. One being Abraham, through whom everyone who trusts God will live. The man who teaches us how to trust God did so by obeying God’s command to sacrifice his son. The Angel stopped this sacrifice and in keeping with Abraham’s prophetic answer to his son’s question, “here is the wood, here is the fire, but where is the sacrifice,” God, himself, “provided the sacrifice.” God took death in the person of his son Jesus Christ and destroyed death itself for everyone who believes. Thus, even though our life spans are so much shorter than even the shortest (138), to us, death has been destroyed. God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so that whoever believes in him, will not perish (read “die”), but will have everlasting life.

I’ve heard many sermons, and I’ve preached a few, suggesting we have the faith of Abraham. Abraham had enough faith to offer his own son on the altar in obedience to God’s call. We too must give up the most precious thing to us if we are to follow God like Abraham did. Most of us aren’t there! I know i’m not there. But I’m convinced that it’s not what I give up that matters but what God gave up for me, His only son. He did not require Abraham’s son. He was pointing to the fact that what he would not require of Abraham he would do himself. That’s encouraging to me. I like how Guzik said it, “If you despair in knowing you do not have Abram’s faith, take comfort in knowing you have Abram’s God.”¹

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 11:26–28.

Genesis 11:1 which introduces us the tower of Babel story begins with God’s assessment of the situation on earth. The text says, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” The one language enabled corporate potential but they used it to unite against Him.  Guzik observes, “If we accept the Biblical teaching that mankind has a common origin in Adam, then this simply makes sense; that there was a time when humanity spoke one language instead of the hundreds on the earth today.”¹ Verse 4 tells us what they say with this one language, “Let us make a name for ourselves and build our own tower to heaven.” Since this is the first recorded event after the flood apart from Noah it has been suggested that the tower was man’s fear of another flood and they wanted to have security from that if it ever happened again. That, of course, is a complete mistrust of God who promised he would never destroy the world again with a flood as he had in Noah’s day. But i believe the key to understanding what was going on is found in verse 4, “Let us make a name for ourselves.”

If Canaan is the illustrative case of sexual perversion, Babel (Babylon) is the Illustrative case for the pride of man in which he attempts to take God’s place. “Let us make a name for ourselves and build our own tower to heaven.” (Genesis 11:4) Nebuchadnezzar, centuries later, looked at the same territory and said, “Look at what I have built.” (Dan 4:30). Then Centuries later Herod, Acts 12, accepted man’s praise as being a god and not a man. This passage is about what God thinks about our “little Babylonian heart.” We are all tempted to exalt ourselves to the very throne of our lives and displace God. “Let us make for ourselves a name.” Strassner is correct when he observes, “Isn’t that the mantra of our age? It’s why we wear what we wear; why we drive what we drive; why pastors long for the bigger and better church. It is why the Pharisees (like some of us) loved to do their religious deeds—to be noticed by men. Self-promotion is simply the air we breathe in the Western world.”² Francis Thompson wrote a poem many years ago about this. He wrote,

And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart

The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.³

But God is always paying attention to us. Notice that Vs 5 says, “The Lord came down to see” what man had done. It wasn’t necessary for God to come down, but it struck me as funny that these men who were intending to build a tower to heaven didn’t make anything more noticeable than a toothpick. God had to “come down” to see it. (I think there’s humor in God’s word) Then, in verses 6 through 8, God’s hammer of judgment drops. Their means of corporate identity, the one pure language, is destroyed and ever since man has been unable to globally unite on anything! And the tower came tumbling down! You might say, “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men couldn’t put humpty together again.” I believe that God sending His Holy Spirit in Acts where everyone heard Peter in his own language was God’s way of entering mans “Babylonian heart” and uniting us all to our corporate potential of worship rather than rebellion.

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 11:1–4.

² Kurt Strassner, Opening up Genesis, Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009), 54.

³ Francis Thompson, “The Heart,” Poems of Francis Thompson (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1941), p. 267.

After a full year at sea, Noah really appreciated the dry ground. I can relate to that somewhat after having served on three different Navy ships and sailing around the world with various port stops. We always loved it when the ship stopped at a port, even if it was just for a quick refueling. The solid ground was a marvelous thing once we got our sea legs back. Noah, however, got a little too intimate with the ground. Genesis 9:20-21 says, “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.” The story goes on to tell us that Ham, one of Noah’s son, found his father drunk and naked in his tent and ran to tell his brothers. It appears there was a deep disrespect for his father and not a real concern for him so much so that Noah ended up cursing Ham as a result. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth took immediate action to cover their father’s shame.

Ham “uncovered” his father’s “nakedness” and Noah responded with the age old parental curse, “I hope you have a son that does to you what you have done to me!” I’m sorry to say that I can remember my mother saying similar things to me. However, God was in the curse that Noah put on Ham’s son Canaan. Surely, Canaan disgraced his father ham through every generation. Canaan was the father of the Canaanites. They became Israel’s greatest enemy. Kent Hughes observes that, “The Canaanites were a sensually depraved people. Everything the pagan Canaanites did was an extrapolation of Ham’s lurid sensuality. From the moment Abram entered the land, the Canaanites were there spreading corruption… Leviticus 18 describes the degenerate practices of the Canaanites with a litany of euphemisms so as not to offend the reader, employing the word ‘nakedness’ twenty-four times.” Uncovering one’s nakedness in Leviticus was to perform some kind of disgraceful sexual practice.

What a way for the man Noah to end his career! What a shame. Alcohol brings some terrible consequences sometimes. Guzik comments on this and says, “This is repulsive, but not terribly surprising. Many people who get drunk become victims of abuse, sexual and otherwise. 75% of the men and 55% of the women involved in date-rape situations were drinking or taking drugs just before the attack. The FBI says 50% of all rapes involve alcohol.”¹ Guzik continues, “There are more costs to drunkenness. In the United States 100,000 people die each year in alcohol-related deaths, while alcohol abuse costs the nation hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Still, the average American television viewer sees 90,000 incidents of drinking on television by age 21 and 100,000 beer commercials by age 18.”¹

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 9:20–23.