This week's parsha is:
Gen 18:1-22:24
II Kings 4:1-37
Lk 1:26-38, 24: 36-53
2Peter 2:4-11
"Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."-Gen 22:2
FIRST USE- the first time the word "love" appears in scripture is right here. Look up what "first use" means in the Hebrew culture to see why that is super cool! (You can check it out on followtherabbi.com)
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No mild gig this week folks. Amazing early pictures:
Abraham travels to sacrifice Isaac. "On the third day" he comes to the place where he will sacrifice him. Third Day?
Sodom and Gommorah. When we were in the ruin they believe might be this ancient city on the nothern edge of the Dead Sea we saw a layer in the ruin that clearly is ash.
There has always been an awkwardness, even genuine anger in me about Lot offering his daughters. Things I didn't put together until today include:
-ALL the men gather outside Lots house
-Lot offers his daughters to them after they demand the visitors.
-Once Lot finds out who the visitors are he asks permission to tell his future sons in law.
-He goes out to the crowd of men to do so!
Lot may not be randomly offering up his girls. He knows they have advocates in the crowd. No doubt the whole town new that was not an option. Is Lot's point about hospitality and protection?
II Kings
Elisha seems shaken that the L-rd has kept him from knowing about the death of the child? Why?
Luke
Miraculous birth. Theme: Is there anything G-d can't do/
2 Peter
Short term gain based on the world's expectations cost more than we think.
Authority.
Early Thoughts.
Shema,
S
There is no riddle, rhyme or reason to these initial thoughts. These are simply the first journaling thoughts that came to me while I was reading on Monday.
Gen. 18:1-22:24
"bowed" - Abraham bowed w/ great anticipation as he ran toward the 3 men (hey, there is the number 3, Scott!). Gotta love his eagerness...
Why did the Lord ask Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh?" Could it be that he was supposed to help convince her that she was going to have a son? Maybe Abe didn't do his job and God was calling him out.
IS ANYTHING TOO HARD FOR THE LORD?
- lauren's heart? - med school in SA - church "stuff" down the future road? - kiddos?
"Yes, you did laugh." - ha ha hee hee... funny kung foo movie (Okay, for some reason I am reading this scene w/ Sarah and God as if we need subtitles).
Why do we hide from the Lord like Sarah and Adam and Eve?
Do we engage him w/ bold, honest, and intimate discussions? Do we wear one another out?
Lot bowed down... there it is again...
Ch. 19
Where is the fear of the Lord in Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife, family and even Lot himself?
Ch. 20
Where is the fear of the Lord in Abraham as he gave over his wife to Abimelech? big pimpin'...
Ch. 21
"God has brought me laughter." Where has God brought you laughter lately - making the impossible, possible?
I have a difficult time w/ ch. 21 for some reasons, but I'm very cool w/ our provisional Lord as always.
Ch. 22 v. 12 "Now I know that you fear God!" Why? Sacrifice and trust. What might it look like to sacrifice the most important thing in your life, giving it over to God 100% and fully trusting in His ways?
GOD WILL SEE TO IT... God will provide.
2 Kings 4:1-37
The husband REVERED the Lord. There's that fear again. The woman bowed down... hmmm... more submission. This seems like a unique and cool display of God's awesome mercy and compassion through Elisha.
Lk 1:26-38
Mary was favored... HIGHLY!
"For nothing is impossible for God." I AM THE LORD'S SERVANT! dang, what a weird posture of favor, sacrifice and love.
Lk. 24:36 "If you are the king of the Jews save yourself"... "Don't you FEAR God?" I am really moved by this one criminal's humilty and reverance for Christ as he says (on a bloody cross), "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." What faith? What a grande request? What amazing trust and grace... Jesus gives the promise of paradise in the middle of freakn' chaos!
Lk. 24:15
Women bowed down... Peter, like Abe ran with great anticipation!
X = death = resurrection = crazy happening where God shows up and moves people's hearts to burning posture of awe, mystery and revolutionary kind of love...
For me, these stories are about God displaying His possibilities and promises in impossible and unpromising situations. Thus, it is about us - followers of Jesus - diving into the Sovereing One, becoming faithfully and eagerly reverant, fearing the Lord and acting in covenental obedience. This means we need to be less inward focused and look at the community at large, locally and globally. This changes our requests and conversations. This changes our posture on a Sunday morning and a Monday morning. This allows us to really look beyond our nose with not only a greater intellect, but with a greater will power, heart and strength!
This makes us run toward Jesus b/c he's just that GOOD...
shalom
Ryan
- Intercession
_ Faith and CHUTZPAH
-ZEAKAH-crying out
_SEED=blessing
"Interseed"....hehe
GOD WORKS WITH WHAT WE HAVE: Oil in IIKings and the ram
The oil would have kept flowing if there would have been more jars...are we really willing to recieve?
"We ask for a grain of sand, God gives us a beach."-Scott....yeah
Genesis1813-15
Why did Sarah laugh? She loved the Lord but was sarcastic in her response to His promise? That is what I do so often. I laugh and make jokes because it keeps things lighter when you are dealing with a subject that has brought pain. Sarah, I would assume, as a woman, at a time had been in pain about the fact that she had not had children. It was easier maybe for her to, “laugh it off” and just secretly in the quietness of her heart hold on to hope that that word was really from the Lord. Maybe the response here is a picture of the same correction I have felt in my Spirit when I respond to things with sarcasm.
2Kings 4: 1-37
Goodnes…the beauty of this scripture. This beautiful woman with such raw faith and grief. The scripture says she said, “Didn’t I tell you, don’t raise my hopes?” The pure agony of that response is heart wrenching. Just crying to God’s servant (to God)…please tell me you have not made me this promise to crush my heart. Please, I cannot bear it. Oh Lord, have I been there?!? I can feel her heart in my soul. I LOVE her honesty. She did not have pretty words to offer, just a Mother’s heart with a Mother’s fight! Get out of my way people, I have to get my son to Jesus! Today, I cry that again to The Lord KNOWING He will answer me. He Has answered me EVERY time I have cried out to him on behalf of my son. And today, as we approach this trial, God’s presence is rich and near to me. I have peace, and yet still, I run, full steam ahead to lay Matthew at the foot of Jesus…I do not bother with the details around me. I just need Jesus. My family needs Him. Matthew lives because of His promises for his life. And what an intimate picture of His beauty that Elisha laid on him to literally breathe life in to him. I have said before, Lord, I cannot breathe, I need you. His breathe is ALWAYS life giving. Oh God, breathe on me today, on my son, your child, MATTHEW JOSIAH GARRISON. I bet this woman NEVER imagined her yearning for a son would look like this. Life and then death and then life again. Isnt that rhythm beautiful though? Isnt it a picture of salvation. WE are born by God’s grace a physical birth. WE must DIE to our flesh and Sin so that we may again be BORN into Gods family and His Kingdom.
Vs. 35 – Why is Elisha pacing? Is he praying? Scared? Freaked out that this was actually working? Listening? It is probably something much more Holy than all of the above, but I think it’s interesting!
Oh my gosh, why did the oil stop flowing?!?! How often does the Lord have abundantly more blessing than we are even prepared to handle?!? Jesus, prepare our hearts to receive the fullness of your blessing.
I found an excerpt from the chapter on Abraham: Climbing Mt. Moriah in The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson most helpful this week.
He ends the chapter by summarizing:
The Akedah strikes us as outrageous, the God of promises and covenant acting totally out of character. But maybe not to Abraham. Sacrifice was the motif by which he had lived for years, the letting go, the leaving behind, the traveling light. Faith, repeatedly tested by sacrifice, was a way of life for Abraham. Each sacrifice left him with less of self and more of God. Each service abandoned something of self on an altar from which he traveled onward with more vision, more promise, more Presence. In the command to leave Ur, Abraham had abandoned his past. He has been learning how to do that now for thirty-five years or so, losing nothing in the process. Now he is asked to abandon his future. By now he has a lived history in which God has provided for him in unanticipated, unexpected ways. Maybe by now he is used to living trustingly in the seemingly absurd, that which he could not anticipate, that which is beyond his imagining. Maybe he is accustomed by now to the operations of providence. If we arrive at Mount Moriah without having prayerfully and imaginatively participated in the decades of Abraham’s testing, God seems to us to behave outrageously out of character. But not to Abraham. He is by now a veteran in the way of faith that is at the same time the way of the faithful God. He is not nearly as surprised as we are. Mount Moriah is the centerpiece of a life of faith that is completed in Jesus, who absorbed the Akedah in his Gethsemane prayer, “Not my will but thine…”
Perhaps learning to abandon living in the past or the future allows us to receive the promise of resurrection life today.
Blessings
Debbie
Increasingly this is becoming the place that I am learning most powerfully about G-d through His text in your words and lives. Thank you.
Okay here are some of my notes.
Gen 18:2
Did Abraham know that the three men were heavenly beings?
How did he know?
3 men...Father, Son and Holy Spirit? (v. 22)
Gen 19:2
Lot also recognized the men as heavenly beings. How? What was it about those men that told Abraham and Lot that they were heavenly beings?
Gen 21:1-7
Normally when I read this story I think about Sarah's disbelief and am somewhat upset at her for it. But this time I saw it a different way. Sure there was doubt but God is not without humor. He too loves laughter, He created it. I think the name Isaac would have brought joy not only in the meaning of the name but also in the remembrance of what God did.
Gen 22:1-10
I have always wondered what was going through Isaac's mind during this. Was he scared, angry, traumatized...?
When I read through the story this time I saw something more than the sacrifice of Isaac. It was about a sacrificial lifestyle. Abraham had given himself fully to the Lord. He withheld nothing. He was completely humble and completely obedient.
2 Kings 4:16
Hope? The power of hope vs. the devastation of disappointment. The hope of a promise. The fear of disappointment.
2 Kings 4:23, 26
Did the boys father not know he had died? Why did the servant lie to Gehazi?
2 Kings 4:28
I don't deny her deep and utter pain at the death of her child, but what has happened to her hope, her faith in the promise? Do we too at the first sign of trouble, give into defeat and forget the promises of the Lord? Oh, but how I love her honesty and the reality of her pain before the Lord. For if we deny our pain and our true feelings, whatever those feelings might be, how can we receive healing?
Luke 1:38
Sacrifice, complete surrender. Mary sacrificed her desires, she humbled herself and surrendered herself to the Lord. She believed in His promises.
Conclusion:
Complete surrener, complete sacrifice, and faith vs. doubt. What would it be to live like that?
Shema,
Michelle Bondanza
What stands out.
Obedience.
The 13 references to Angel or angels.
The "zombie likeness" of the mob outside of Lot's house...especially after the angels struck them blind.
The only utterances of the Shunnamite woman being
"It is well" in spite of how opposite of that her circumstances seemed. Why didn't the LORD tell Elisha? Could it be that it prompted Elisha to act out of a desperation to not let the hopes fall of the woman who had begged him not to get them up in the first place?
The 3 impossible "if not for God" conceptions of
Sarah, Elizabeth and Mary. Whether it was amusing, full of recompense, or utter amazement, God was there.
In many ways they all seem to speak of "provision."
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