Clik here to view.
image: unsplash
THE APPROACHING AND APPROACHABLE GOD
We have loved journeying with you so far as we study Beth Moore’s The Patriarchs. What joy to be in God’s Word together! This past week, we completed Week Two and focused on God’s names, His character, and His heart to draw people to Him.
Sarai grew impatient waiting for God to fulfill His promises, and jealousy and strife resulted from her attempts to take control. Her maidservant, Hagar, ran away to escape Sarai’s harsh treatment, and she encountered God in the wilderness.
He asked Hagar two questions, “Where have you been?” and “Where are you going?” God’s questions always draw us into deeper relationship with Him, and Hagar shows this by calling God a new name: El Roi, The God Who Sees. Even when we feel alone, invisible, desperate, hurt, or rejected, God sees us, knows us, and loves us.
With the birth of Ishmael, God renewed His covenant promise to Abram with the physical act of circumcision, setting apart Abram and his descendants as God’s own people. God also revealed Himself as El Sadday (El Shaddai) or the “all-sufficient God.” Abram then received a new name, becoming Abraham, the “father of many.”
Sarai likely felt overlooked. Hagar encountered God in the wilderness. Abram received a new name. What about her? Perhaps even others thought God could not use Sarai, the “unfruitful, unable, unusable.”
But God did not pass Sarai by. He gave her a new name, calling her “princess” or “Sarah,” and declared that Sarah would give birth to the promised heir. God so often uses the areas of our lives that seem like “uns”—unworthy, unlikely, uneducated, unprepared….” and He does the work. God can change any of us.
Later, three strangers appeared at Abraham’s camp near Mamre and he offered them hospitality, food, shade and the opportunity to rest. Sarah listened at her tent-flap to see what The Lord had to say and she overheard the impossible promise, that she, barren and long-past childbearing, would have a son within the year.
God is YHWH, the covenant-maker and covenant-keeper, who does what He promises to do. And He is Adonai, Master and Lord, over all. He asked Abraham, “Is anything too hard for The LORD?” We also can anticipate God’s presence and His activity in the middle of our impossibilities.
While Abraham waited for the fulfillment of God’s promises, Lot had “pitched his tents near Sodom” and subjected his family to a culture of evil (Genesis 13:12). Before God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he offered Lot and his family rescue. Lot’s wife, though, looked back at her old home. We’re reminded that “few things are more dangerous than looking back to that from which God has delivered us” (55). Instead the love of Jesus should lead us to obedience and the willingness to follow Him anywhere.
BIBLE STUDY ASSIGNMENT FOR THE WEEK
- Join our private Facebook group and participate in a small group discussion this week
- Complete your workbook study of Week Three
- Optional: Video/audio Session Three
In Christ,
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.