Genesis 17.19 19 But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife
will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My
covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
NASB
Abraham was 99 years old when God told him that his 90
year old wife was going to have a child. Abraham laughed. Who wouldn’t? The
last guy I knew of who had a child in his seventies was Tony Randall! And 99
wasn’t really all that old by Abraham’s standards. But God kept talking to him
about descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore and Abraham kept on
believing God as the minutes of his life continued to tick by one by one…
Abraham already had a son named Ishmael whom he had
through his “wife” Hagar. It was really his son, but she wasn’t really his
wife. And Ishmael was the first born of Abraham but god was giving the
birthright to the promised child, Isaac by name. And Abraham loved Ishmael and
wanted God to exalt him, but God said, “No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I
will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his
descendants after him.” (Italics mine.) God wasn’t interested in covenanting
with Ishmael – He was going to bless the earth through Isaac.
One of the first principles in Geometry is: the shortest distance between two points is
a straight line. One doesn’t always have to go thru “B” to get from “A” to
“C”. If we look at the genealogy of Christ in either Matthew or Luke we’ll find
a whole bunch of apparent detours… if God was all hung up on genealogy. Matthew
lists Tamar: through whom Judah had an illegitimate son. Salmon was the father
of Boaz by Rahab the Caananite “harlot”. Boaz had a son through Ruth who was from
Moab (not a Jew at all!). David had a son by Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah whom
David killed so he could cover up his adulterous affair with Bathsheba). Adultery, mixed marriage, murder – sounds
more like a soap-opera than actual history. But the gospel story isn’t fiction
– it’s real with real people and real mistakes and real twists and turns.
The straight line gets a little jagged through the years
if we look at it linearly. But if we turn the line (or graph if you will) up on
its side it is a straight line from God’s heart to ours. God intended to bless
us and He did that by having an elderly couple have a happy little child named,
Isaac – he laughs. I’m sure God
laughed at that one: a dude in his nineties with his ninety year-old wife heavy
with child! What a sight they must’ve made down at the mall!
The straight line in all this is not the punch-line
although it’s happy: God loves us and God is happy about it! As faith
descendants of Abraham the man of faith and friend of God, it is only fitting
we have an ancestor in the faith named: He Laughs! We ought to laugh as well –
God loves us! Our God is a joyous Father and He delights in us – with all of
our frailty and faults, fumbles, and foibles. We’re weak and hopeless apart
from this smiling, chuckling God who loves us and laughs with us.
The shortest difference between two hearts is love. Yes,
the Genealogy of Jesus winds through many varied lives and situations but it is
a straight line of love from God’s heart to ours. All lives lead to Christ, but
only One Life – His – leads to God. This Christmas, it’s not for us to seek God
way out there – He’s as near as our hearts and has always intended for that to
be. Celebrate His closeness and His love. Merry Christmas!
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