What my dad should not have taught me
Genesis 26:1-12
My father has told me many stories. Most of them took place before he became a Christian, because I can remember his life since then. Some of these stories have elements of sin in them. My father and all fathers must ask this question:
Does the way I describe the sin in my past glorify it or show it in its true dirty, disagreeable light?
Or put another way?
When my children sin, will they expect me to be disappointed or to approve?
As a man, I look for approval from my father. There is no way around it. All children do. Boys and Men look for validation of their strength and masculinity, girls and women look for validation of their beauty and value.
The story begins with a reiteration of the promise that God made to Abraham. It is the covenant of the Hebrew people. Contingent upon obedience, God promised them three things:
• The land of the Canaanites
• Many descendants
• A blessing that would extend through them to the whole world
Abraham’s faith and obedience is legendary. God granted him all of these things. Obedience of his people was hit and miss, so their possession of the land was also sporadic. At this early date, though, things are still working themselves out. God promised that Isaac would be the son of promise, and Isaac is here receiving the promise.
Isaac is obedient too. His first impulse when a famine strikes is to move down to Egypt. This isn’t unusual. Abraham did it. Later Jacob would follow Joseph to Egypt for the same reason. However, God told Isaac not to go, and Isaac didn’t.
Instead he set up housekeeping near the coast in Gerar, not too far from Gaza, the land of the Philistines. Abimelek is the honorary name given to hereditary kings at that place and time. It meant, "My father is the king". Just as Judah’s kings were often referred to as "Son of David," so the kings of Philistia, in these early years, were referred to as "Son of the King." This is important because decades earlier, Abraham had encountered Abimelek too, and it was not likely to have been the same man, but he was the local king.
Oddly enough, when Abraham encountered him, he did the same thing Isaac did. When Isaac moved into the area, he spread the word around that Rebekah was not his wife. This is odd.
Apparently both Rebekah and Sarah were knock-outs. What some people today would call a trophy wife. They were so beautiful that their husbands were not just worried about other men looking at them. They were worried about being killed so their wives would be free for other men.
Imagine. Isaac was not just jealous. He was certain that Rebekah would attract attention. Not just the attention of a few men, but the attention of men aggressive enough to become an irresistible threat. So he told everyone that she was his sister.
Way to step up and protect your wife Isaac.
So, imagine Abimelek’s surprise when he looked out his window one day and saw Isaac and Rebekah with their heads together. I tried hard to figure out more clearly what they were doing, but it is still vague. The clearest thing I could find said they were laughing and having fun.
Now on its own, this isn’t a big deal. But the fun they were having made it clear to Abimelek that there was more than a brother – sister thing going on. There was something about their demeanor that said:
Married!
I think this is recognizable. When married people think they are in private, they laugh and behave differently than they would if they were with a brother or sister, or even with a close friend or lover. The Bible says this happened after they had been there "a long time." Apparently they had let down their guard. I don’t think they were doing anything overtly sexual, certainly they would have avoided that if there was any chance that they would be seen. But whatever they were doing, it was intimate.
The king was justifiably angry. He was an honest man, and he knew that there were consequences for dishonorable behavior. He had no designs on Rebekah himself, but he was aware that some others might have. I still don’t understand what Isaac and Rebekah were thinking. They were mingling in a culture where it was assumed that with a beautiful, unmarried woman, "one of the men might well have slept with" her. It was understood and accepted that this was a possibility. But Abimelek was trying to avoid bringing guilt on his people.
So, Isaac was forced to come clean. He admitted his fear and cowardice. As a result, Abimelek put out a protective order on them. This was necessary, because who knows what was in people’s intentions. One of the men might have been planning something. After everything was straightened out, Isaac settled there with more integrity and God blessed him.
Now, at first glance there are a couple of obvious lessons to be learned here
When you abandon your morality to accommodate the culture, you may be shamed to learn they have more conscience than you
This is often true. The reformation doctrine of total depravity has been pushed to such an extreme that it denies the image of God that lives in all people. The natural human tendency to sin does not eradicate the knowledge of good and evil that was gained in eating of the conscience tree. That knowledge is incomplete and skewed, there is no doubt, but if we think that people don’t know right from wrong, simply because they are not Christians, we are being stupid and Abimelek proves it. Our moral sense, gained by our relationship with God, can and should be exercised even when it is difficult or dangerous.
Tell the truth, even if it costs your life – the moral consequences outweigh the mortal consequences
It was to his great humiliation to learn that the moral implications of the honor and sexual safety of Isaac’s wife meant more to a foreign king than it meant to her husband.
To tell a lie erodes the trust that people have for you. It makes you vulnerable to being disregarded when strength is needed. Isaac should have been more concerned about his integrity than he was about his life.
Protect the women God has placed in your life
This is most obviously true of our daughters and wives, but I believe it extends to mothers, sisters and every other woman who can lay a family claim to you. Men, generally, God made you physically bigger than women and He made you bigger for a reason. It is not an unpeaceful thing to say that we should at all times, like Jesus, place our own bodies as sacrifice to preserve and protect the women God has entrusted to us from violence and from violation. This is both a question of morality and of courage.
We should be ashamed and feel less a man if we can, with a clear conscience allow the women in our families to endure physical hardship when it is in our power to stop it. That may be terribly chauvinistic and old fashioned, but I believe it is true.
Isaac should have been more concerned about his wife than he was about his life.
In the bigger picture
This story is told within a larger context. This is the third time the story is told in Genesis. The first two times it is told of Abraham, once with Abimelek and once with Pharaoh.
The sad truth is that Isaac did not come up with this scheme on his own. He learned it from his father. Admittedly, for Abraham, the evasion was a half-truth, his wife Sarah was his half-sister. But it is the nature of the truth that once it is broken in half, if it is not immediately repaired, like other broken things, it will be thrown out. Isaac did this. He was Rebekah’s second cousin, not even close to siblings. But that did not stop him from using the same lie as his father.
How could this happen?
How could the mistakes of Abraham be passed to his son? It is simple. Men, how do we regard the sins of our past. Are they objects of regret or do we find evidence of our wit and strength in them. In other words
• Do we value the apparent strength they lend us
• Over the moral substance
When Abraham told this story, it must have been with a level of pride instead of shame. He must have felt clever in his ability to pull the wool over these foreign kings eyes and still come out on top when his ruse was exposed. There must have been something in the way he told the story that made Isaac think that he would be emulating his dad in a good way if he did the same thing his dad did.
And therein lies the challenge
Nobody gets perfect parents. It just isn’t possible.
• Since we are all human
• Since we all make mistakes
• Since all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory
it is only logical to realize that this applies to our parents as well as ourselves. As small children we know it is true. Every time our parents do something that displeases us, we vow never to be like our parents. But when we are grown, the truth occurs to us again and again that we are more like them than we would like to be.
It is the responsibility of every generation to be wiser than the generation before, to repair the life flaws of their parents. If we make the same mistakes they made, we have learned nothing from our own history.
Some principles
My parents have sinned
We all know it, but we don’t necessarily acknowledge it. Give them a break. They are only human. Some of the hardships in their lives come from that biblical truth. Our parents have:
• prejudices
• addictions
• vices
• attitudes
• habits
• and beliefs
that do not line up with God’s best. The sooner we accept this fact, the sooner we can avoid the next problem
The fact that our parents, said it, did it, or believed it does not make it right
Sometimes we unconsciously canonize our parents and their ways.
• I do it and my parents did it before me
• If it was good enough for mom and dad, it is good enough for me
• My mother was a saint, she could do no wrong
• Are you calling my dad a liar?
• That’s just the way I was raised
Sometimes the trust we show in every facet of our parents’ customs smacks of playground loyalty.
It takes an effort, but we must be willing and able to evaluate the culture we learned from our parents in the same light as we evaluate everyone else’s. All families are dysfunctional and all families are normal. Everybody’s family is weird, including mine and including yours.
If God is to take me further than he took my parents, I must be willing to leave behind the wrongs they cultivated. In order to do that, I must be objective in my evaluation of their morality. I cannot assume that everything they did was right.
I must ask myself in what way I am like my parents
Like everything else, I have to evaluate that behavior. It does not show real love to our parents to take everything we have received from them without question. Paul said it well.
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. (Romans 12:9 NIV)
I love the tragedy, King Lear. In what I think is Shakespeare’s greatest play, the king divides his kingdom in thirds and decides to give the daughter that loves him most the best portion. When he makes his purpose known, the older two begin flattering him shamelessly. His oldest says,
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty; Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare; No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour
... etc ... you get the picture.
His second daughter says:
Sir, I am made of the self-same metal that my sister is, and prize me at her worth. In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short ...
And so on ... she tries to out do her sister.
When the king asks his youngest daughter what she has to say, she says ... and I quote:
Nothing
The king is aghast and asks her to explain. She says:
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty According to my bond; nor more nor less ... You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
She adds that she hopes not to marry husbands like her sisters’ if they have been unable to deserve any love from their wives, since it is all still vested in their father.
The story begins with Lear giving all his kingdom to his two flattering daughters, and it all comes to ruin. While at the same time, his youngest is truly loyal, but can do nothing to rescue her father’s life’s work or the health and sanity that slips away from him.
Cordelia, Lear’s youngest daughter, loved him more truly for not expanding his virtue beyond truth. She tried to see him as he was and love him as a daughter should in spite of his faults.
We are called upon in God’s word to honor our parents. But we must see their virtue and avoid their vice. Otherwise, like Isaac, we will be subject to repeat their mistakes.
Flattery and blindness is not love, but deception. Love is not love that does not see the truth about a person and embrace them in spite of their flaws.
Never forget, Judas kissed Jesus ... that was not love, but betrayal.
Love your parents
Honor them
But do so for who they are, not who they should be
It is the only way you can avoid being who they are
And be, instead, who you should be
