Isaac, in one sense, is like a sequel in Abraham’s life. The author of the Bible writes that Isaac’s life was not due to the absence of the original idea, but the author wants to affirm the most important news that can also be found in Abraham’s life. That is, God that can be trusted for fulfilling His own promise, and the sequel wants to affirm that God’s promise will always be valid to the next generation. And in the next generation, the different character in the different challenge, in the different context that how God’s promise can be valid that the generation of God’s people can respond and learn from their parents, and how they can respond properly. And surely how their failures in confronting the challenges, and also sins from their parents can be passed that still cannot be let go of their own limitations. But more importantly, we can see on how God’s promise in human’s limitation can still be valid dan God that can be trusted to fulfill their own promise to the next generation until their ultimate promise fulfilled in Christ until Christ comes for the second time.
Verse 26 begins with famine. The author of the Bible writes that famine has not occurred for the first time, in which Abraham had gone through famine in his time. Isaac has encountered the same situation as his father Abraham, that is when he was in Gerar that he was scared of getting killed due to the beauty of his wife, Rebecca. This was not the baseless fear experienced by Isaac. However, that was not also Isaac’s greatest fear – but how God can be trusted to fulfill His promise to protect Isaac. Isaac has fallen to his sin, that he was thinking on how he can protect himself. Protecting himself becoming more important than to obey God’s will. Isaac has forgotten on how God has saved him at the time Abraham was about to stab Isaac at Mount Moria. Isaac was already a teenager at that time, he already knew that incident and he already knew that he will be killed in the next second as his father Abraham has fulfilled his desire to sacrifice his only child Isaac as a sign of his father’s willingness to obey God. But God’s angels have appeared and told Abraham to abandon it as they knew that Abraham loves God more than his own son. Isaac was supposed to learn on how his father Abraham obey God and how God protects him from his father’s knife that could kill him in the next second, and sheep was provided for sacrifice in place of Isaac.
This story of Isaac portrays on how we have fallen into our own sin, how frequent have we took the safest path but full of sin as to protect ourselves for our own sake of comfort and benefit? We have becoming forgotten on how God saved us in the past from difficulties and challenges that we took the safest path to protect ourselves. We have also becoming forgotten of our loyalty to God, just like Isaac did. We have also becoming forgotten on God’s love that provided us with God’s sheep to replace us. Because of these, we became worried and anxious and began to think of ourselves to take steps full of sin to protect ourselves for our own sake. If we think about ourselves for own sake, benefit and comfort, they will produce many fears in our life. Furthermore, it will cause us to think negatively about other people. The worst part of thinking about ourselves which produce many fears, is that they did not take God into their account in the situation that they are currently facing. Did you pray whenever you are facing difficulties and challenges? Did you involve God in the situation that you are currently facing? Where is God when you are in feud? Where is God when you are facing difficulties and challenges?
Our fear to God signifies that we are bound to follow and submit to please God, fear of disobeying God’s commands. We sometime forgetting important things when we come to God. We can learn from Isaac’s failure in his loyalty to God, that he learned to be loyal to God. To be known to God cannot be based on foreign factor in our lives, however it has to come from the way we think on what we do, what has become our plan in all aspect of our lives. To be known to God must cover all aspects, that we can then unite with God.
