Isaac And Ishmael

by Lindsay, J. | Category: Types And Shadows In Genesis | Jul 1955

Many of our readers who are following the study of the representative men as recorded in Genesis may be asking the question, Why go back to these ancient types and shadows when we have everything so plain in the Gospel narrative and in the epistles? Why stop to contemplate a picture when we have the original?

To these questions many reasons might be given. In these types and shadows God was preparing the minds and hearts of men for the full blaze of light which was to come through Jesus Christ. We cannot read the Gospels and epistles without realizing how obscure, if not unintelligible, much of the language would be if not read in the light of these types and shadows.

If the New Testament is necessary to a right understanding of the types, for in it the Holy Spirit sheds the light of truth on what, to Old Testament saints, must have appeared as merely the story of family life, then the types are equally necessary to a right understanding of the New Testament.

The types occupy a place in divine revelation from which they cannot be spared. Much poverty of thought may be traced to neglecting these living pictures, or at least taking leave of them ere we have drawn out the truth and instruction contained therein.

The story of Isaac carries us back to Genesis 15. where the LORD gave to his pilgrim friend Abram the promise of a son.

"And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to tell them : and He said unto Him, So shall thy seed be.

"And he believed in the LORD; and He counted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15. 5, 6).

This is the first time we come across the great gospel word, "believe."

The use made by the Holy Spirit in Romans 4. of this remarkable incident is most instructive.

The apostle had been declaiming at the close of Romans 3. that, far from the doctrine of justification by faith making the law void, as his Jewish opponents claimed, it had actually established the law.

To confirm this he finds a remarkable proof text to hand in the verses already quoted from Genesis 15.

In Romans 4.8, we are told that "Abram believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness." This righteousness, enjoyed by their great progenitor, was imputed righteousness apart from works. It was the same righteousness which David celebrated in the words of Psalm 32. when he wrote of the blessing of the man unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from

works (Romans 4.5).

Then Paul asks the question: When was this righteousness imputed? When he was a circumcised or an uncircumcised man? The answer is, It was imputed to Abram in uncircumcision; at least 13 years before the rite of circumcision was instituted.

In these events, at least in their historic sequence, Paul sees a divine purpose and reads a divine lesson, and so in verse 14 he completely turns the tables on his Jewish opponents by claiming, "For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect " (verse 14).

The Jewish figment of justification by works" made faith void"

-the faith by which Abram received the promise at first: and the very promise itself made to faith is "made of none effect," so that Paul's objectors were cutting themselves off from the promise made to Abram, and actually shutting themselves out of the Covenant of Promise.

Abram, when the promise was given, looked fairly at the human side, the seeming impossibility of this word of promise from God being fulfilled. A weaker faith might have wavered, torn this way and that by doubts and fears, but of Abram we read, "Yea, looking into the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God" (Romans 4.20). He laid hold on God "who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as though they were" (Romans 4. 17). God gave to that unborn baby a name and an existence in promise long before he was born.

If we regard Isaac as the child of promise we see in him a beautiful type of the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised One. In the Scriptures, a book of divine promises, the great promise is the coming of Christ. This first promise, made by God in Eden's garden, was the fountainhead of all prophecy. Almost coincident with the fall of man, the LORD God, instead of abandoning our first parents, as Satan may have thought He would do, gave the 'promise concerning the Seed of the woman.

Like many of God's promises this did not take shape immediately. Many centuries passed before One appeared among men whose every word and act declared Him to be the Promised Seed.

Few Old Testament scenes bring the Cross before our minds so vividly as the scene recorded for us in Genesis 22. in which we have the story of the offering-up of Isaac, and the receiving of him back "in a parable "~(Hebrews 11. 19) from the dead.

It is interesting to notice that in Genesis 22.2 is the first mention in the Scriptures of the word love, and this after 2,000 years of the world's history had passed. Here it is the love of Abraham to Isaac, the love of the father for the son, typical of the love of God, the love of the Father for His Son.

The Son of God witnesses to this love in those precious words of John 17. uttered a few hours before the cross. As we listen to the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, we seem, in spirit, to stand on the threshold of that home of light and love from which He had come, and to catch the very atmosphere of heaven.

"Thou loved'st Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17.24).

The Eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ is stamped beyond controversy on this verse. To whom is He speaking, and of whom? This is clearly answered in the opening word of the verse, "Father." It is surely doing no violence to the verse to read as follows : "Thou (the Father) lovest Me (the Son) before the foundation of the world."

Who can measure the exquisite anguish of Abraham's heart, as, obedient to the voice of his God, he took that dearly loved son of promise to go to Moriah's heights to offer him as a burnt offering to God?

Little is revealed by the Holy Spirit of that dread journey, save the picture of Isaac bearing the wood, the father carrying the fire, and the sacrificial knife, the question of Isaac, "Where is the lamb ? and the father's answer, "God will provide Himself the lamb." Perhaps no picture is sweeter than the picture conveyed to our minds in the words,

"They went both of them together" (Genesis 22.6).

We reach the place of sacrifice and watch the solemn preparation as Isaac (the willing and obedient sacrifice) is bound and laid on the altar.

"He that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son" (Hebrews 11. 17). In that solemn moment Abraham was still laying hold on his God as he had done when he "gladly received the promise," for he reckoned on God being able to raise up even from the dead, "from whence he did also in a parable receive him back."

As Abraham stood with the sacrificial knife poised to strike the fatal blow, we know how his hand was divinely stayed and a ram caught in the thicket by its horns was provided as a substitute.

No more vivid picture of Calvary has ever been portrayed than this solemn scene.

The giving of Isaac reminds us of that wondrous statement describing how God gave His Only Begotten Son, for whom there could be no substitute.

"The Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1 John 4.14).

The anguish of Abraham's heart pales into insignificance as we think of what it cost God to give His Son.

Perhaps there never was a moment when Abraham's love for Isaac was so great as when the knife was in his hand to deal the fatal blow.

The Holy Spirit has drawn our attention to the intensity of God's love for His Son as He watched that willing Victim staggering out from before Pilate on His way to the Cross, in the Son's own words, spoken earlier, "Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life.... I lay it down of Myself" (John 10.17, 18).

As Calvary comes before our hearts in all its divine and superabundant efficacy, we can only bow in worship and repeat,

"What was it, 0 our God,

Led Thee to give Thy Son,

To yield Thy Well-belov'd

For us by sin undone ?

'Twas love unbounded led Thee thus

To give Thy Well-belov'd for us."

Following the story of the offering of Isaac we get the beautiful narrative of the wooing of Rebekah on the behalf of Isaac.

Arriving at the well the servant prayed that the wife chosen of the LORD for his master's son should appear, and in response to his request for a drink of water should offer to give drink to his camels also. While he was praying, "before he had done speaking" (Genesis 24.15), Rebekah appeared.

Rebekah was very fair to look upon, and acted as the servant prayed she should. He then adorned her with a golden ring and two bracelets exclaiming joyously,

"The LORD hath led me in the way to the house of my master's brethren"

(Genesis 24.27).

How well the servant must have told her the story of his master's wealth, of his "flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and menservants and maidservants, and camels and asses"! (Genesis 24.35). Above all he told of the miraculous birth of Isaac. He told of Abraham's desire to find a wife of his own people for his beloved son, Isaac; and of how all Abraham's wealth had been given to Isaac, reminding us forcibly of the Scripture,

"The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His

hand" (John 3.35).

How well the servant must have spoken of his master to induce Rebekah to fall in love with a man she had never seen, to leave her home and to take that long, hazardous journey to become Isaac's bride!

We think of the meeting between Rebekah and Isaac. Expectant Isaac was out meditating in the field at eventide when he saw in the distance the camels coming. At the same time Rebekah lifted up her eyes and saw Isaac for the first time afar off. She enquired who he was, and the servant replied, " It is my master."

What a meeting between the bridegroom and the bride now that the desert is past! We read, "And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (Genesis 24.67).

When we consider that the wooing and winning of Rebekah for Isaac followed the scene on Moriah's heights we surely see in this a picture of another Bride. We are reminded of the words in

Ephesians: "Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for it; that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5.25-27).

"Sing the Son's unbounded love,

How He left the realms above

To rejoin the Father's side

With a blood-bought spotless Bride."

The meeting, "all the desert past," surely reminds us that our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is waiting, with keen, expectant gaze, the moment when He shall call us to His side; it may be near, that moment of supreme joy for Him. May all our hearts be kept looking and longing for that time!

Interwoven in the story of Isaac is that of Ishmael. Here, again, we see the force and value of allegorical teaching.

Ishmael was born of the bondwoman, Hagar, at least 13 years before Isaac was born of the freewoman, Sarah.

We are told that these two women are two Covenants; Hagar speaking of the old Covenant, and Sarah speaking of the New Covenant.

It is worthy of note that although Hagar, who speaks of Israel under law, is blessed with children before Sarah, yet Sarah was Abraham's wife long before this.

Would this not remind us of God's present purpose of grace, as seen in "the Church which is His Body"? Albeit it appears after the old Covenant, yet this had existed in the heart of God from all eternity, for the saints were chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1.4). What a place this gives to the Church, the subject of divine choice in Christ in ages past, and the vessel in ages to come through which God's brightest glory shall be displayed! (Ephesians 3.21).

The mocking by Ishmael of Isaac as recorded in Genesis 21.9 is interpreted as "he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now" (Galatians 4.29).

The Lord has no need to wait until evil develops. He can and does reveal it even in its earliest stages. That cynical smile on the lips of a lad of thirteen was but the precursor of what the Scripture would afterwards reveal. "The mind of the flesh is death." That bitter, cynical smile would lead one day to the murder of God's beloved Son. Even Paul, as he thought of going to Rome, was facing the same persecution when he went to Jerusalem from those who were of the flesh. He desired that saints would pray that he "might be delivered from them that are disobedient in Judea" (Romans 15.31).

Although there was a time when Hagar and Ishmael occupied a place in Abraham's tent, yet the time came as the result of Ishmael's mocking when they both had to be cast out. They could not live in the same tent with Sarah and her son.

So to-day the Law and what it produces has been set aside. The Covenant of grace is now in operation, and we can truly say, as we think of spirit-born men and women today,

"For more are the children of the desolate than of her which hath the husband" (Galatians 4.27).

As we think of the foreknowledge of our God, declaring in these types and shadows His eternal counsels and purposes, we bow and worship the God who has been "declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done: saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure" (Isaiah 46.10).

Lindsay, J. | Jul 1955
Types And Shadows In Genesis