|
"The Parent's Last
Task" Text Comment: Ethics taught in the Bible by both precept and example. We have before us instruction by example concerning a part of Christian holiness also very often and solemnly taught by precept! v.2 The privacy of the thigh made the oath all the more solemn. Jacob made Joseph swear in the same way that he would take his bones back to Canaan for burial (47:29). It is a practice akin to placing one's hand on a Bible when one swears an oath. The passivity of Isaac in this account is notable, but we should be careful before building upon it some doctrine of arranged marriages. The Bible shows us people finding mates in different ways and falling in love both before and after marriage. The Bible leaves a large liberty to believers in this matter, so long as they conduct themselves in the pursuit of love and marriage in a manner consistent with Christian love and purity. God joins men and women together in many ways. But Abraham's initiative and decision-making for Isaac does remind us that, in the Bible, how one lives in marriage has much more to do with how happy, romantic, erotic, and fulfilling a marriage will be and remain than the power of mutual attraction that first brings most couples together today. We all know people who were at first head over heels in love but divorced a year or two later. [Liz Taylor on Richard Burton - "We loved each other too much!"] And here are Isaac and Rebekah, whom we later see in a most romantic and affectionate marriage, who were chosen for one another by Abraham and never met until the marriage was a fait accompli. C.S. Lewis, has Wormwood advise his demon nephew Screwtape (in Letter No. 18 of the Screwtape Letters): "Humans who have not the gift of continence can be deterred from seeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves 'in love,' and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical.... They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion." Admittedly, romance normally brings men and women together, even in the Scripture, but it is not an indispensable prerequisite to a romantic marriage. v.9 This "chief servant" is one of the most attractive minor characters in the Bible, for his loyalty, piety, and competence. If this is the Eliezer of chapter 15:2, he is all the more to be admired, for here he is faithfully seeking the welfare of the one who displaced him as Abraham's heir. Like John the Baptist, he is as much as saying, let me decrease and let him increase. Now this text concerns the provisions a faithful father makes for the marriage and so for the future welfare of his son. It is for us instruction in the duties of parents. But it is also, in a larger sense, an account of a godly man taking steps to ensure the continuation of God's covenant even in the generations that will rise after he is no longer living in the world. As we read in v. 7, Abraham was concerned to do his part to ensure the fulfillment of God's promise to him that his descendants would inherit the land. In this sense it is instruction for everyone of us in the obligations we owe to the progress of the kingdom of God in the lives of others and the welfare of the church in days yet to come. There is a wonderful othercenteredness built right into the fabric of the covenant that God has made with his people. When you think about it, when you realize who it is who has made this covenant and fashioned its laws and its conditions, it does not surprise us that living faithfully in that covenant requires us to be concerned not only for ourselves but for others. And, what is more, that concern for others is such a central principle that it makes us concerned even for others we will never meet, never know. It certainly does this in the matter of the extension of the kingdom. Anyone living in true covenant with God must care and does care about the extension of his kingdom and the glory of his name. He desires to see and delights to see others all around the world come to the knowledge of his God and Father and so he invests his prayers and his money in the pursuit of the salvation of folk he will never meet in this world. But, still more, still closer to the other-centeredness of this covenant of grace, is the obligation that parents discharge, not only on behalf of their children, but their grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the succession of grace and salvation that is promised in the covenant to those who are faithful to its requirements. Listen to Psalm 78:
I have no way of knowing how self-conscious he was of this obligation or of his discharging of it, but I am a Christian today, instrumentally speaking -- of course, I am a Christian because of the election of God, the redemption of Christ the Lord, and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit -- but, instrumentally speaking, with regard to the means that God has appointed to use to effect the salvation of a vast multitude of his children, I am a Christian today because my grandfather raised my father as he did so that my father would raise me as he did. My grandfather was a great man, a principled Christian and an influential preacher of the gospel. One of my genuine regrets in life is that I have no personal recollection of him, though I owe him so much. He died in 1952, when I was two years of age. But, the Scripture teaches me that I owe him a great deal, for the process that led to my salvation passed through his hands and through his heart. And, of course, through my grandmother's hands and heart as well. Little did Mr. Brannen know, when he was growing up in Newton, Kansas, a contemporary of my father at Newton High School, that the foundation was then being laid in my father's young life for my life of faith in Christ and for that of my children! My Grandfather was seeing to the salvation of children yet unborn! Now, it is in this context that Abraham is so determined that Isaac will marry "in the Lord." Now, I take that phrase, of course, from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, but that is the idea. You will say, as I did, "how do we know that any of Abraham's relatives, the family he left behind in Aram Naharaim, believed in the God of Abraham?" Certainly it is not clear in the following narrative that Laban was a man of God. And, perhaps we should simply say that, in this case, Abraham was doing the most that he could do. There were definitely no Canaanite women he could choose for Isaac. It was safer to go back home and find there a woman who was, at least not tainted by the vicious corruptions of Canaanite life, and who would be submissive in spiritual things to Isaac as her husband. In any case, by the grace of God, Abraham got what he was looking for on behalf of his son, and it is clear that the errand he sent his servant on had everything to do with finding a wife who would be spiritually compatible with his son. That is the point. Marriage is the context of parenthood and parenthood in the covenant is to be the means of grace by which children born within the boundaries of the covenant are brought to faith in Christ and the love of God and his law. When marriage is corrupted by unbelief, when a believer marries an unbeliever, the context of that parental nurture is destroyed and what is already a difficult and demanding work becomes well-nigh impossible. What is more, the claim on God's blessing is lost when a believer flaunts the obligations of his covenant with God. Now, hear me, brothers and sisters. I am not speaking of people who became Christians after they were married and find themselves in a mixed marriage through no fault of their own. Paul addresses their case and encourages them in 1 Corinthians 7. Nor am I speaking of people whose spouses are judged to be Christians when they marry, not only by themselves but by everyone, but who apostatize later and leave the believing spouse in a mixed marriage or no marriage at all. These are the circumstances that can sometimes occur in the kingdom of God and God has grace for his children in such circumstances. I am speaking of the responsibility of those who are yet to marry and, of Christian parents to ensure that their children marry only in the Lord because the stakes are so high, not only for themselves, but for generations of human beings yet unborn. This is always the point the Bible makes about spiritually mixed marriages. The Scripture does not concern itself with whether a Christian will be as happy as he might otherwise have been if he marries an unbeliever or she does. I don't deny, of course, what happiness there is in a devout Christian marriage. Here is Tertullian, the church father, at the close of the book that he wrote to his wife:
I want that joy for all of you! It is your rightful inheritance! But all of that not withstanding, the Bible is chiefly interested in the spiritual consequences of a marriage, whether spiritually unified or mixed, the powerful pressure marriage exerts on a believer's loyalty to God and his covenant and, especially, the likely impact of the weakening of that loyalty on the children you have and their children, if you marry a non-believer. Listen to what the Word of God says:
In Ezra 9 we read of what sort of response godly Ezra made to this sin of spiritual intermarriage when it happened among the Jews again after the exile. "When I heard this I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles." And why so appalled. Because it was as much as inviting into the people of God the very sins and spiritual treason for which they had just been so terribly punished. Remember, it was mixed marriages that polluted the godly race and led to the destruction of the world by the flood in the days of Noah. It was mixed marriages that brought Israel to spiritual ruin during the days of the Judges. It was mixed marriages that over and over again led Israel's kings into idolatry and wickedness. And lest there be any doubt about the reason for all of this, here is Malachi explaining why marriage must be made and preserved between believers only: "Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring!" In other words, mixed marriages pollute the faith and, at last, will bring the church down. Always have, always will. The believer does not make the unbeliever more holy, the unbeliever makes the believer less holy. It is a fixed law, taught and illustrated countless times in Holy Scripture. It was this sustained, emphatic emphasis on the great sin of mixed marriage -- marriage between believers and unbelievers -- that led Brownlow North, the Scottish lay evangelist of the last century, to say in his famous sermon on this theme, that no sin, excepting the very first sin, has brought a greater curse on mankind or is more positively forbidden in the Bible than this sin of believers marrying outside of the faith. And it was the experience of the ages that led James Fraser of Brea, the covenanter, to say, "Repentance mends all things but an ill-made marriage." And no wonder. Think about what a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever means. One is going to heaven the other is going to hell; one loves God the other hates him; one loves his Word and law and seeks to live by them in all things, the other cares nothing for such things. No wonder this should be such a sinister situation for children growing up in the home, children who already have within them a tendency to unbelief and disobedience that one of their own parents is enforcing in the most powerful way possible -- as a parent in the home. It is one thing to fine oneself in such a marriage, but to ask for it, to seek it, to choose it is an act of high treason to the covenant of God. But, what it is also, is an act of betrayal of your children -- even your children yet to be born, and their children and their children's children. This is no private sin. This is the most public sin imaginable. You are killing your children and your descendants. By marrying a child of the Devil you are choosing the Devil for your father-in-law and for your children's grandfather, when in the covenant God has made you could have had and they could have had the God of Abraham instead. That reality -- taught repeatedly in the Bible and illustrated with a dismal repetitiveness in both Scripture and church history -- is what lies behind Abraham's determination that Isaac will not marry an unbelieving woman. And you parents are to be just like him, just as determined. And you can do what he did even if your children are young. You can talk with them about this matter and impress it upon them from an early age. Speak earnestly and affectionately with them about the danger of it and the evil of it and the terrible damage it does when a believer marries outside the faith. Talk to them of how they must judge any potential mate and how they must plan to choose. And tell them that if we must marry only in the Lord how much a real Christian must then care not to marry someone who only professes faith in Christ, but someone whose life is the demonstration of the depth of his or her commitment. Remember Mercy in the second part of Pilgrim's Progress? She was courted by one Mr. Brisk who was supposed to be a Christian. But others warned her that he was more talk than action. And they gave her some good advice. All she had to do to get rid of Mr. Brisk was to live a serious Christian life before him. He would lose his interest soon enough, and he did. And, then you can talk to them about the great danger of ever getting started in a relationship with someone who is not a committed Christian, flirting with so great a disaster as a mixed marriage. By this kind of earnest conversation, repeated often, you can drive this conviction down into the hearts of your children so that when they are older they cannot escape it. I am enjoying at present the engaging autobiography of Billy Graham, entitled Just as I Am. In the early pages of that book he bears witness to the way in which the training he received from his parents protected him from the mistakes that so many young people are prone to make. They had settled certain convictions so deep in his conscience that he could not escape them even when he might otherwise have wanted to. Here, parents, is one of those convictions to settle deep in the consciences of your children. And all of us to settle deep in the conscience of the members of the church of Jesus Christ. Young people, you may someday be tempted to say, "but he really is a Christian even though he doesn't go to church," or "but we are so much in love." No, you plan now on taking a page from Father Abraham's book. Do you see what he did here and said here? He said that he expected that Eliezer would find a woman for Isaac to marry. He was quite sure that that would be the result of the trip. After all the Lord had told him not to let Isaac marry a Canaanite woman and had promised him that he would give this land of Canaan to Abraham's heirs. Surely there would be a woman. But, Abraham knew that he had on more than one occasion been confused by what the Lord had said and then done, more than once he had thought God would do something that he had not done or at least had not done when Abraham thought he would do it. And so he told his servant, "in any case, no matter what, Isaac will not go back to Aram and he will not marry a Canaanite woman. That is settled. That is the law! These things will not be done, even if we find that God does not answer our prayer in the way we might expect." That is what we want from you young people! If he, if she is not a deeply committed Christian he or she is not match for me. End of discussion! And no wonder Abraham was so inflexible in his loyalty to that command, when succeeding generations of the covenant depended upon Isaac's holy marriage. Paul speaks of a minister building the house of God with wood, hay, and stubble -- instead of stone, silver, and gold -- and his work being burned up at the end. Well, that is what a Christian does who marries outside the faith. He or she builds with wood, hay, and stubble and that work will not survive, it will come to ruin -- and that work is your children and their children. Young people, learn from Isaac too, especially if you have committed Christian parents, to take their advice and counsel to heart. They love you, they can see more easily than you can certain things...including the future! The stakes are simply too high! When Abraham took this care, the result was the Promised Land. When Israel refused to take this care, the result was exile in Babylon. Where would you have your children live and die -- in the Promised Land or in Babylon? Ask yourself that, men, before you propose, and women, before you say, "I do!" No sin has done greater harm to the church of God than this: believers marrying outside the faith and so polluting the wellhead of divine grace in the covenant. What will this church be like two generations from now? What will be preached then from this pulpit? God's truth and gospel, winsomely, powerfully and persuasively? Or the killing error that can today be found in so many churches that two generations ago were just like we are now? The future of this church, even its distant future, is also your sacred responsibility. And Abraham has showed you one very important way to discharge that responsibility! |
|
[Home] |