확대 l 축소

<2021.05> A Shadow of the Israelites Reflected in the Life of Jacob

2004 European Bible Study Meeting
A Shadow of the Israelites Reflected in the Life of Jacob
April 13th, 2004, Afternoon
And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.” So He called his name Israel. Also God said to him: “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.”  Genesis 35:10-11
Isaac Meets Rebekah
 Genesis chapter 23 tells of the death of Sarah, the mother of Isaac. When Sarah died at the age of 127, Abraham purchased a cave in a field in Machpelah from the sons of Heth in return for four hundred pieces of silver, and there he buried Sarah. 
 This was the same cave in which Abraham was later buried. Isaac and his wife Rebekah were also buried there, as was Leah, the wife of Jacob and mother of Judah. You might think that Rachel, the wife that Jacob loved the most, would also have been buried there, but she died in the region of Bethlehem right after giving birth to Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son, and she was buried on the way to Bethlehem.
 As Hebrews chapter 11 talks about various people from Old Testament times, it says that these people were strangers and pilgrims on earth (see verse 13). Later, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, receiving thirty pieces of silver in return. When he saw that Jesus was condemned to death, however, he repented, threw down in the temple the money he had received, and went and hanged himself. The chief priests took the silver pieces, and with them they bought the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. We find something similar to this here in Genesis chapter 23.
 In Genesis chapter 24, we find that Abraham was now old, and it was time for Isaac to be married. Abraham told his aged servant who had served him from his youth to go and find a wife for Isaac. He told his servant, “Do not look for a wife for Isaac from amongst the daughters of the Canaanites, but return instead to my country and choose a wife from amongst my family.” Abraham made his old servant put his hand under Abraham’s thigh and swear to do this. It seems this was the custom at that time when swearing an oath.
 The servant went to Haran in Padan Aram in the region of Mesopotamia, whence Abraham had come. When he came to the place where Abraham’s younger brother Nahor was living, he prayed that God would bring to him the woman who was to be Isaac’s wife, and there beside a well, he met Rebekah. Rebekah was a very beautiful woman. The servant gave gifts to Rebekah and went to her house, where he met her father Bethuel and her elder brother Laban. This Laban later became Jacob’s father-in-law. 
 Abraham’s servant asked Bethuel to let him leave quickly with the young woman. The family wanted Rebekah to stay with them at least another ten days, but the servant said, “Since the Lord has prospered my way, do not hold me back; let me go quickly to my master.” So they summoned Rebekah and asked her. 
 Who knows what led her to do this, but Rebekah had made up her mind to leave with the servant, and she said right away that she would go. When she was called, she did not hesitate to leave the place where she had been living. When we read the Bible carefully, we can see that Rebekah presents an image very similar to that of the church, and she is indeed a shadow of the church.
 The oldest servant and Rebekah left Padan Aram and went to the land of Canaan. They went through a place called Beer Lahai Roi, a place with which Isaac has a very deep connection. This was the place to which his mother’s bondservant Hagar, having fallen pregnant, fled from Sarah.
 As Isaac was meditating in a field there at Beer Lahai Roi and watching as the sun was setting in the west, he saw his father’s servant in the distance, coming towards him with a woman and their company. Rebekah, too, lifted her eyes and saw a young man coming towards them in the field. 
 Rebekah asked the servant who the young man was, and the servant replied, “It is my master.” What the servant now did is a shadow of what an angel will someday do. Then Rebekah took a veil and covered her face in the manner of a bride going to meet her husband.
 When the Israelites observed the Passover, they slaughtered a lamb at twilight, as the sun was setting. The Bible tells us that it was broad daylight when Jesus was crucified, but when the time came for Him to die, the whole land fell into darkness. This account recorded at the end of Genesis chapter 24 that tells of Isaac meeting Rebekah at twilight appears to be telling us about such matters in advance. 
 Also, First Thessalonians tells us that when the Lord comes again, we who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (see 4:16-17). The day will come when God calls up the church that is the bride of Jesus Christ. In a similar way, Isaac and Rebekah recognized one another. 
I find this story very romantic. I imagine this scene every time I read this passage. Isaac came to love Rebekah very deeply, and through her, he was comforted after his mother’s death.
 The content of chapter 25 is really very strange. Before Abraham had Isaac, he began to worry that he might not be able to have any children since he was approaching the age of one hundred. Yet, when he was well past the age of 130, he married again and had children through his second wife, Keturah. 
God had made a very clear promise to Abraham, saying, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them . . . So shall your descendants be.” The Bible tells us that Abraham believed exactly what God had said, and God accounted it to him for righteousness. (see Genesis 15:5-6) God’s command to man to be fruitful and multiply is still alive today. God accounted Abraham’s faith for righteousness, but it definitely did not end there. God’s promise was accomplished in Abraham’s flesh. We may think it was just accomplished spiritually, but this matter was on a much higher plane than that. This promise clearly also applies to us as Christians who have been saved in our present day. 
Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.  3 John 1:2
 Here it says, “that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” We talk about health in the course of our fellowship, and in this way, we trying to maintain our health well. The ways in which we maintain our health are slightly different from the ways of the world. There is no need to think of this in a superstitious way, but I think we would be going against the Bible if we ignored these things altogether. It will definitely be useful for each of us to think about this as well as we are reading the book of Genesis. 
 God’s promises when He said to be fruitful and multiply and that Abraham would be the father of many nations were fulfilled through the flesh of Abraham. It was not that Abraham had many children, and so he forgot the promise God had made to him. He clearly remembered God’s words of promise when He had said, “My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year” (Genesis 17:21). 
 So Abraham gave to Isaac all the many possessions with which God had blessed him in the course of his life, but he only gave the other sons some of his wealth and then he sent them far away to the east. In order that the promise God had given him might be fulfilled, he clung to every detail of the plan. He did not just live as he pleased, thinking that since God had made the promise the onus lay with Him. 
 Then, when Abraham was 175 years old, he breathed his last and died, and Isaac and Ishmael buried their father in the cave of Machpelah that he had purchased.
Jacob Receives the Birthright
 At first, Isaac’s wife was not able to conceive. God’s promise had definitely been given to this family, but she did not become pregnant. So Isaac pleaded with God to give him a child, and God listened to his prayer and gave him twins. When the twins were born, the second one came out holding onto the heel of the first. This was Esau and Jacob. 
 Esau was very masculine, and he had hair all over his body. He became a man of the field and a skillful hunter. On the other hand, his younger brother Jacob was smooth-skinned and of a quiet temperament. As they were growing up, Esau became the favorite of their father Isaac, and Jacob the favorite of their mother Rebekah.
 One day when Esau came home from hunting, Jacob was cooking a stew. Esau asked for some of the stew. It was a red stew probably made with something like kidney beans or lentils. Jacob said he would give Esau some of the stew in return for his birthright. Esau was very hungry and he said, “I am dying, so what use is my birthright to me?” He swore to give Jacob the birthright, which at that moment was far from view, in exchange for some of the stew.
 As we read the Bible, there are times when we come across passages that strike us as quite peculiar. Jacob was clearly the father of the nation of Israel, and his name was later assumed by that nation. Nevertheless, when we read the Bible carefully, we can see here that Esau—who sold his birthright to Jacob—is a shadow of Israel, and Jacob is a shadow of the Gentiles. In the letter to the Hebrews, it says to take care “lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright” (see 12:16). Also, in Romans says that the Israelites sought to establish their own righteousness and did not submit to the righteousness of God (see 10:2-3). In order to establish their own righteousness, they put to death the righteousness of God, that is, Jesus Christ who came as the word made flesh.
 In the Acts of the Apostles, we find that because the Jews rejected Jesus, the tremendous blessing of salvation was passed on to the Gentiles. As a result, the Jews—God’s chosen people—have become somewhat distant from the gospel as they live in this world today.
 In the Bible, we find many instances in which the younger person has risen up above the older person. This was also the case amongst the sons of Jacob. Jacob’s oldest son was Reuben, but in First Chronicles, we find that the person who was the most highly exalted was Joseph’s younger son Ephraim. It was not even Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons. Joseph had two sons—Manasseh and Ephraim—and it was the younger of these two (Reuben’s nephew) who received the most exalted birthright. We often come across matters similar to this in the Bible. In the end, Esau sold his birthright, and as a result, he missed out on the blessing. We read about all this in Genesis chapter 27. 
 Genesis chapter 26 holds an account of something similar to what happened at the time of Abraham. Because of a famine, Isaac went down to Gerar in the land of the Philistines. There, Isaac was afraid he might be killed because Rebekah was so very beautiful, so he deceived the
정회원으로 가입하시면 전체기사와 사진(동영상)을 보실수 있습니다.

확대 l 축소