Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 3

Chapter Three — Beyond Babel

Now that people had scattered all over the earth, there were civilizations everywhere. One big city was Ur. It was a city where people worshipped all kinds of other gods. It was the city that Abraham lived in. God asked Abraham to move away from his family and the city he was living in. God wanted to separate him from all the pagan influences that he knew so well. God wanted Abraham to get to know Him and love him. He made lots of promises to Abraham. He promised to make Abraham a great nation, to make him famous, and make him a blessing to all the families on earth. God made these promises before Abraham did anything at all. So Abraham believed God and left his family and his hometown. He took his wife Sarai—later called Sarah—with him. God told them their descendants would be so many that they would outnumber the stars in the sky! 

In order to have descendants, you need to make babies, so Abraham and Sarah tried to make babies, but none came. Year after year after year they tried to have a baby until finally they were way to old to become parents. Imagine your great grandfather and great grandmother having a baby! 

Everybody knows that old people like that can’t have children and even if they did, they would not have the energy to raise them. Eventually, Abraham and Sarah gave up on the idea of Sarah having a baby. But GOD DID NOT GIVE UP! You see, God was waiting to perform a miracle. When Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, they had a baby and named him Isaac. “Isaac” means laughter. Hahahahaha! Maybe Isaac would be THE ONE who would restore Eden. Do you think? 

When Isaac was about 12 years old, God came to Abraham and told him to go high up on a mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac. When you sacrifice something, it means you have to give it up forever. In the Old Testament, people sacrificed animals. They would take the animal and kill it and drain out all its blood and then burn it on an altar. It was a horrible bloody mess. Many times they had to sacrifice lambs and sometimes the children had become very fond of those lambs—kind of like today when children are fond of their pets. But they had to watch their daddies kill the lambs and then burn them. God said if the people would do this, he would forgive their sins. Someday God was going to send another Lamb who would die in place of the people and they would never have to kill another lamb again. When the people sacrificed their lambs, they were showing that they believed in God’s promise. 

But now God asked Abraham to kill his own son! This was terrible, but not unheard of in that day. Back then pagan people who did not worship the true God would sacrifice their children to idols. The idol gods were evil and the people tried to win their favor by killing their children to prove that they loved their gods more than their own kids. The truth is—they were just afraid of the idol gods. The true God is good and he was not going to let Abraham kill his son. He was just giving him a test to see if he loved God more than his son. Just as Abraham was about to kill Isaac, an angel stopped him dead in his tracks! He said it was just a test and Abraham passed! God spared Isaac because of his grace. 

Abraham and Isaac

Do you think you could pass a test like that? 

Do you love God more than everybody else? 

Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac

When Isaac grew up he married Rebekah.

Rebekah at the well

The Bible says that Isaac told some big lies because he did not trust God to protect them. So he wouldn’t be the one to restore Eden. But Isaac and Rebekah had two babies at the same time! Surely one of them might be "the one". The twins were named Esau and Jacob. Esau despised God and Jacob turned out to be a liar and a deceiver. But God loved Jacob anyway and after a very long time when Jacob was middle-aged he finally came to trust in God’s promises. When that happened, God changed his name to Israel. Did you notice that Jacob did not deserve God’s love any more than Esau did? Jacob the liar was loved by God IN SPITE OF his sins. 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS! 

IT’S SCANDALOUS! 

IT’S…GRACE.

Jacob had two wives and two concubines. His two wives were Leah and Rachel and he loved Rachel but didn’t care much for Leah. Leah had lots of baby boys and one little girl, but Rachel only had two boys and she died when the youngest boy was born. The concubines belonged to Leah and Rachel and they were slaves. They each gave Jacob some baby boys too. In all there were 12 boys and one girl. These 12 boys later married and had families and when the families grew and grew they became the 12 tribes of Israel. 

Evidence of God's Grace to Me: