While things may have looked really bad on Good Friday, in three days, Jesus would be raised from the dead in accordance with the Scriptures. In this sermon, we look at several examples in the Old Testament where God does resurrection things on the third day, and how these point to how Christ would be raised from the dead on the third day.
In this passage, we see that Jacob deceitfully takes the blessing from his old and blind father Jacob, while his brother Esau receives a kind of anti-blessing. Yet it was God's good plan that "the older shall serve the younger." This doesn't mean that God approves of this deception, but that God can use even human deception to accomplish His redemptive plan, ultimately culminating in the Person of Jesus Christ, who was betrayed and condemned to death, bearing the curse on our behalf, so that we might receive His blessing.
In this passage, we don't encounter anything new. Everything that happens in this chapter to Isaac has already happened in the previous chapters to Abraham. Thus, Isaac's life is a parallel to the life of his father Abraham. Each of us is passing on a legacy to the next generation, are we passing on a legacy of faith?
In this passage, we see that God, in His sovereign grace, chooses what is least in the world to be His victorious people, ultimately culminating in Jesus who “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) to be the Seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.
In this passage, we see the providential hand of the Lord in providing Rebekah as His appointed bride for Isaac in order to continue the line of the seed of the woman. In His covenant faithfulness the Lord has provided the church as a Bride for His Son, Jesus Christ. Though it may seem like the church is losing, we can confidently entrust our existence to the Lord's providential care.
In this passage, we see the beginning of the fulfillment of God's promise to give Abraham and his offspring the Promised Land. Even when it looks like evil and injustice are at home on this earth, we can have confidence that God will fulfill His promise to provide His people with a homeland, "a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13).
In this passage, we see that God tests His people for our good and for His glory. We don't tend to think about tests in this way. But we can be comforted by the fact that the God who tests is also the God who provides. The question is: Will we trust and obey Him?
In this passage, we see a series of three seemingly disconnected stories. But what the birth of Isaac, and what God's protection of Hagar and Ishmael, and what Abraham's treaty with Abimelech reveal to us is that we can take comfort in the fact that God will do what He has promised.
In this passage, we see that God is faithful to keep His promises, not because of His people, but in spite of His people. Though old sins will rear their ugly heads in our lives from time to time, our hope is in Jesus who will keep us to the end.
Even though the city of Sodom has been destroyed, the spirit of Sodom is alive and well, even in God's people. In this passage, we see that God isn't content to just take His people out of Sodom, but that He is also taking Sodom out of His people.