Think Speak Run

Isaac grows up, marries Rebekah, and is blessed by God after his father’s death. But his wife is barren. How can the covenant promise be fulfilled if there is no seed to be blessed?

When Isaac is forty years old he marries Rebekah. They are married for twenty years before she gets pregnant. The Bible tells us that ‘Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren’. He doesn’t do what his mother Sarah did, and try to bypass the barrenness. He seems to understand that he should be blessed, in accordance with the covenant his father Abraham told him about. He goes straight to God and asks for His blessing. While Rebekah is pregnant with Isaac’s sons, they ‘struggle together’ in her womb, so she also goes straight to God to ‘enquire’ of Him. It is clear that this couple have a close relationship with God, birthed by the covenant promise they have in Him. They know they can seek God and He will answer them, because He has promised to bless them. When Rebekah was taken from her father’s family to be married to Isaac – who is her near relative – her family spoke a blessing over her: ‘“…be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them”’. This blessing echoes God’s words to Abraham after He stops him from sacrificing Isaac: ‘“…and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies”’.

All that is needed is one seed to carry on the blessing God promised, but Rebekah conceives twins. God tells Rebekah while she is pregnant that she is carrying ‘two nations… and two manner of people’. That certainly carries the blessing her family spoke over her, of being the mother of ‘thousands of millions’. God also tells her that the ‘elder shall serve the younger’. This is significant because it is a pattern that is repeated throughout scripture. Isaac is Abraham’s younger son, but he is counted before Ishmael. Jacob is the younger of Isaac’s sons, but he is counted before his twin brother Esau. Later in the Bible, time and again, the older son serves the younger. Joseph, Moses, David… the list goes on. 

Then comes Jesus. Who is Jesus’ older brother? Adam. He is God’s first son. Jesus is God’s ‘only begotten Son’, meaning the only One born of God. Adam is ‘formed… of the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2:7), whereas Jesus is conceived ‘of the Holy Ghost’ (Matthew 1:18). Jesus has a better covenant with God than the one that Adam messed up through sin. The older brother (represented by Adam’s covenant with God) must serve the younger brother (represented by Jesus’ covenant with God). Why does this matter? Because this is God’s nature. He uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He takes that which was meant for evil and works it for good. He takes the last and makes them first. He casts down the proud and exalts the humble. He allows a King to be born in a stable; to live as an outcast ‘illegitimate’ child; to be rejected by the people He came to save; to die a criminal’s death on a cross despite being sinless… all because of love. God is saying there is nothing you have done that disqualifies you from relationship with Him. He made Jesus become poor that you would become rich. He made Jesus become sin so that you would become the righteousness of God. He turned His back on Jesus so that He could open His arms to you. His arms are open today. He longs for you to run into His arms, into relationship with Him. He wants you to walk in the new, younger, better covenant with Him that is yours in Jesus.