Genesis 22:19-24 KJV
19 So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.
20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor;
21 Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram,
22 And Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.
23 And Bethuel begat Rebekah: these eight Milcah did bear to Nahor, Abraham's brother.
24 And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.
Amen. Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark, coming in here with another episode of KJV Cafe. So blessed that you joined us here today. Hey, if you're new to the program, we're simply a 15 minute Bible study every day, seven days a week going from Genesis to Revelation, taking our time to study the scriptures, to rightly divide, to compare the scriptures with other scriptures, to really see what God would have us to know in the Bible, each and every day. And so it's a beautiful day at the cafe here today. I've got some delicious decaf coffee today, dark, dark decaf. I've noticed that when it comes to decaf, dark is a good thing. Maybe because they took the caffeine out. So they got a roasted darker, but Charleston coffee roasters. This is some good stuff and I can't be in Charleston, but I can drink their coffee. So, uh, hey, it's a blessed day. Anyone that knows me knows I love the beach. Maybe you do too. Easily could have called this K J V, you know, surf shack or something, but the cafe stuck a little bit better because what are you doing a cafe? Oftentimes you go there to read or to work or to study. And so that fits pretty well. All right here. So today we're looking at Genesis 22. And what we're going to do is we're going to look at the kind of the last part of Genesis 22 kind of in a group. Like I'm thinking around three episodes to get us through this latter part of Genesis 22 from 19 through 24. And there's not that many themes here. Uh, there's not a ton of themes that I can see other than, uh, we see Abraham return to his young men and the young men were faithful to wait for him. And so there's a theme there. Uh, we see this idea that, um, also he had gone back to where he had dwelt at Berchiba. He returned to where God wanted him. He returned, uh, to service to the Lord, a living for the Lord and so forth, a theme there. And then we have Rebecca's line. And so, uh, we have these things coming to Abraham, that his brother, Nahor, uh, had children with Milka. And this gives a way to the children's children, which would, uh, one of them would be Rebecca who ends up marrying Isaac. And so that's another theme there. So there's kind of about three themes we see in the last, I don't know, five or so verses of Genesis 22. Now, if you recall, Genesis 22 is all about God asking Abraham to sacrifice the chosen child. And we've touched on a lot of the idea of Abraham being obedient of, um, the, the picture of Christ, of course, being the ram stuck in the thicket, right? What did the ram do? Nothing. But they, that ram was going to be sacrificed, right? What did Jesus do? Nothing, but he was going to be sacrificed. I did nothing wrong, I should say. Um, so there's so much there, so much depth to that picture of Christ. And this thing, remember, is the very first book in the Bible. So when you hear the old time preacher get back and say, you know, kind of rare back and say, the whole Bible is about Jesus. Well, this is one example, right? Or, or a preacher may say the whole Bible is a love story. Oh, this is one example. When I was younger and would sit through many, many services, revival services, morning services, evening services, Wednesday night services, tent meeting services, all night prayer meeting services. I mean, there was a service for everything. Uh, and I say there was because really this was before COVID and it seems like for some reason not to get off topic, but things changed a little bit after that. But before then, uh, I guess you call it the good old days, if you will, a lot of services to go to. And, uh, I wasn't always a preacher. I wasn't always a deacon. I wasn't always the video guy. I was also just someone there, uh, just a layman just sitting, you know, uh, attending. And I would hear these things like, God is love and the Bible is a love story and the whole Bible is about Jesus. And I would wonder where is that in the Bible? Not skeptically, but just curiously. And so for those that wonder, you know, where is it in the Bible? We see clearly in the very first book here, we see God's love. And we can see God's love when he, you know, Adam and Eve, they fall into sin and he closed them with animal skins. It's a good picture of God's love at the very beginning, uh, of man falling into sin. And so we see God's love throughout the Bible. Of course, see it with Noah. God's shutting them in the ark and preserving Noah and so forth and all the rest. Okay. So we see God's love throughout, but we see it here, especially in, in the calling of Abraham, not to have him sacrifice Isaac, but to show Abraham's great faith and then to reward Abraham for that great faith and to provide the sacrifice, which we see literally in the ram, but also figuratively in Christ and figuratively meaning at that time. That's a picture or a figure of Christ. Have you want to say it and some theologians get all worked up over when you say it's a picture of Christ, but it's an example of what Jesus was to do, right? Because Jesus really did do it. He really did go to the cross to die for our sins. So we see all of this, this is all happening here in Genesis 22 and then we get to verse 19 and it reads, so Abraham returned unto his young man and they rose up and went together to bear Sheba and Abraham dwelt at bear Sheba. Okay. So what we'll do is we're going to unpack 19 a little bit when we come back from this break and this idea of the young people being faithful to the older Abraham. So stay tuned. Hey, it's break time around here. Thank you for listening to KJV Cafe. If you haven't already, visit kjv cafe.com for more information. All right. So let's take a look at Genesis 22 again, verse 19. So Abraham returned unto his young men and they rose up and went together to bear Sheba and Abraham dwelt at bear Sheba. All right. So what we're going to do is look a little bit at what this means. So Abraham returns to his young men. You remember he brought two young men with him when he went off to to do this sacrifice, right? And so we know that these young men were told to stay where they were. And so we have in verse 20 or Genesis 22 verse two and get the into the land of Mariah. So he was going to land in Mariah to offer Isaac and then verse three of Genesis 22 and Abraham rose up early in the morning. Saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son. Okay. So the two young men were helping here with this sacrifice. And then we see here in Abraham verse five said unto his young men abide here you with the ass and I in the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. We mentioned verse five before that idea that back in the Old Times Old Testament times I should say very old times that sacrificial rituals were part of worship. So sacrifice is part of worship. But we see here he says to the young men stay here, right? So on the third day, they see Mariah far off. They say, okay, you guys stay here. We're going to go up there. The two men stay there. And they go up and perform this to the best of their abilities by faith. As far as Abraham even taking out the knife to sacrifice Isaac. And then what happens? The ram is discovered caught in the thicket, right? And so then they sacrifice the ram. They praise God, right? God affirms his promises to Abraham and and and compliments Abraham on his great faith. And then in verse 19 here, kind of our focus verse for today, Abraham returns unto his young men. And so we see a picture of young men obedient to go with Abraham to the designated place. Young men obedient to wait as Abraham went to do the sacrifice and young men obedient to return to bear sheba when they when when they return. And so we picture see a picture here of faithfulness of obedience. Again, there's not much else said about them. But it's enough for me to think about this idea that the Christian principle here is young men are obedient to the elder. We know Abraham's quite old at this time. We know he didn't even have Isaac till he was 100. And now we have Isaac somewhere between his teens to his maybe even 30s, something. And so that means that Abraham is quite old. And these young men are called young men. So we have to think that they're young. And so where do we get this principle of young being obedient to the elder? One place is first Peter five. Okay. And I'll give you the verse like this is first Peter five verse five. Likewise, you younger submit yourselves unto the elder. And it says, yay, all of you be subject one to another be clothed with humility for God resist at the proud and give it grace to the humble. Okay. So here and I wanted to read the whole five or six verses from first Peter five. But let me start with just first Peter five verse five. So we're not getting confused on anything. Likewise, you younger submit yourselves unto the elder. What do we see in society today? Do we see the younger submitting themselves to the elder? Now, there's a lot of ways that we can look at this. And one way is that ban has always been disobedient. One way is young people are always like testing the boundaries and so forth. All of that. Okay. But that said, as a young person, I didn't know I mean growing up, I just wanted to be a football player I want to be a pro football player that that that dream kind of felt felt out fast. And then I didn't know what to do after that. So I thought, well, I'll be a teacher and I pastor Tim Cheser from I think it was first Baptist of Delaware Ohio. I want to say it was first Baptist of Delaware Ohio. Just a wonderful man of God and loved me so much there. I wasn't even a member. I would just go to that church just a Lord had convicted me to go and he said, Oh, you come more than the members, we want to give you a certificate when I graduated. And he took me out to lunch one time. And he said, What do you want to be? And I said, Well, I don't know. You know, I've got a teacher. This is my senior year of college. And he was teaching sociology or something. And it was like a little class. He just sat around the table and talked about stuff. I said, That seemed pretty good. And I'll never forget brother Cheser said, Yeah, you know what, besides being a pastor, I mean, there's probably not a better better deal than that. And you know, he laughed and I laughed, but God was really laughing because I wasn't gonna be the teacher. Well, I was gonna be a teacher, but I was gonna be a pastor first. And then I was gonna be teacher of his words. So God had the last laugh there. But as a teacher, for some 10, 13, 14 years, I taught on the college level, public speaking English and so forth. And part time, you know, Wow, you see entrenched disobedience, not just disobedience, but like rooted in disobedience. And you also saw a lot of good students, a lot of kind, kindness and all that. But I saw people that were incredibly disobedient. Okay. And that was like dealing with young adults, talk to people in the school system, friends and that are teachers or people that I've gone to church with that are administrators. We'll tell you crazy stories, relatives, the unbelievable stories of knife fights and just horrible disobedience. And again, if the slim chance anyone that's ever taught me is listening, I know I was like the textbook example for being disobedient. So certainly I'm not saying better than anybody. But what we see in society, the natural man, the carnal man, they're they're they're prone to disobedience, right? They're prone to being disobedient. They're prone to be rebellious. And we see first Peter urging young folks to submit to the elder, not any elder, right? But speaking to the church here, the young Christian should submit to the elder Christians. And the bulk of that verse deals with the elder Christian, not abusing the young Christian and not taking the young Christian as some kind of servant, but actually making the elder the servant to bless the young Christian and to be the example, right? And so we see a beautiful passage of scripture, urging the the elders to show by example to the youngers how to live in the faith and the younger Christians to be faithful and obedient, which we see a picture of here perfectly in Genesis 22 of these young men that just did what they were told that like the lack of information is a good thing, right? There's no more to the story. They just did what they were told, right? They were just obedient to what this elder saint of God was telling them to do. And they did it. Now kind of entering the idea that this was a very trying time, a very emotional time, a time where things may have gotten, you know, pretty intense, you know, because Isaac could have lost his life and God is showing up and all of these things are happening. And it was a three day journey. And the young folks, and I'm going to lump Isaac in with the young folks as well. So all three of the young folks were obedient and they went back to Beersheba where they had come from. They returned to serve God, which we're going to get into that idea, that concept of serving God in the next episode. But they were obedient despite the circumstance. And I think it's very important that God's word is applicable in calm, simple, every day times. And it's also applicable in high stress, high pressure, emotional times. And I think it's very important for us to kind of meditate that on that idea today, that God's word is always profitable, that he brings about peace, that his order is perfect. And we should not try to unserp his order, but we should do our best to live by his order. Alright, thank you for listening. Tune in next time as we get deeper into this passage. Take care. God bless. And amen. Thanks for listening to KJV Cafe. And we'll see you at the cafe tomorrow.
