Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #7 of Genesis, chapter 25, and we are going to read Genesis 25:21-23:

And Isaac intreated JEHOVAH for his wife, because she was barren: and JEHOVAH was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of JEHOVAH.  And JEHOVAH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we looked at several verses involving a barren woman, and we read about Sarai in Genesis 11; here, it is Rebekah; and there is Rachel in Genesis 29; we read of Hannah in 1Samuel 2; and we read of Manoa’s wife, in Judges 13, who was barren and then bare Sampson.  Then we went to the New Testament, and we saw that Elisabeth, Zacharia’s wife, was barren and very old when God blessed her with a son, John the Baptist.

We looked at all these cases.  You know, when you search the Bible and you see these very important Biblical figures, these are some of the most important and well-known people in the Bible.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all had wives that were barren.  Isaac was born after his mother Sarah was barren.  Jacob was born after his mother Rebekah was said to be barren for a period that we know was 20 years.  Then there was Hannah who gave birth to Samuel.  Of course, Samuel was a very well-known, famous and significant man in the Bible.  I already mentioned that Sampson’s mother was said to be barren before she gave birth to Sampson.  He was also a great Biblical figure.  Then there was John the Baptist.

First of all, the women themselves are important and significant figures in the Bible.  Their husbands (in most cases), like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were very much involved in the whole Biblical story, the true and faithful story of the Bible and the plan of God’s salvation and judgment programs that we see worked out on the pages of the Scriptures.  Of course, John the Baptist was a very significant individual who would proclaim that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, had arrived.

Then we went to Psalm 113, and I want to read it again, in Psalm 113:9:

He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye JEHOVAH.

He makes the barren woman to keep house.  That is, God is the one who makes the barren woman to keep house and to become the joyful mother of children.

We went to another Psalm that declared that children are the fruit of the womb, in Psalm 127:3-5:

Lo, children are an heritage of JEHOVAH: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

Here, God is drawing a parallel and relating the birth of children to bearing fruit: “…the fruit of the womb is his reward.”  I think that is part of the key to understanding why these women were barren for such a long time, and then finally gave birth.  For example, Sarai was barren, and she gave birth to Isaac, and we know that Isaac was a great type of Christ.  If we look at the history of the world from the creation, God created the world.  The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, had already died and risen from the dead at the foundation of the world, a point in eternity past, and He then spoke and brought the world into existence.  So God created the world in 11,013 B. C.  Of course, time and the course of history had to unfold all the way down to the (first) coming of Christ, in order for us to get that date of 11,013 B. C.  Adam and Eve did not mark a calendar, so to speak, and realize and note that the world was just coming into existence and it was the year 11,013 B. C.  For them, it was “year 1,” and the next year was “year 2.”  And that is one way of calculating time.  But in order to relate the Biblical history and the timelines we read about in the Bible, we have to tie it in to our calendar, and our calendar dates things from the birth of Christ and forward into our time; we call it “A. D.”  And, supposedly, there is a “year zero,” but there was not, so that was a mistake.  Then there was another mistake in calculating the birth of Christ and it caused the calendar to be off by seven years because Jesus was born in 7 B. C. and not in “year zero” or “year one,” but in 7 B. C.  Anyway, our calendar is based on the idea that we start counting from the birth of Christ up to our present time, and we can trace two thousand plus years back to the birth of Christ.

What about the time before Christ?  That is when they came up with the idea of “B. C.” dates, and that is the reason we speak of creation as 11,013 B. C., as we trace it back in relationship to our calendar.  We talk about dates that are “B. C.” when we talk about dates on the other side of the cross in the Old Testament.  So it was 11,013 B. C. when God created the world.  And almost right from the start after the fall of man into sin, God gave promises regarding the seed of the woman.  Do you remember that?  I will read it, in Genesis 3:15:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

It is the seed of the woman, ultimately, because Christ can trace His earthly lineage back to Adam.  Of course, all human beings descend from Adam and, therefore, Mary would be able to trace her lineage back all that way.  And Mary was the young woman that God used to conceive by the Holy Spirit to infill her womb with the Lord Jesus Christ, and she gave birth to Him. 

Of course, it should never be said that she is “the mother of God.”  That is impossible, and it is a terrible thing to say because Jesus is Almighty God, the everlasting God of the Bible and the great I AM.  He is from eternity past, so He had lived eternally before Mary.  That is the reason He said to the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am.”  Abraham was born in 2167 B. C. and Jesus was born in 7 B. C., 2,160 years after Abraham’s birth and, yet, the Lord Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”  Of course, the Jews were just astounded, and they said, “Thou art not yet fifty years old.”  By the way, that is probably a clue that they realized that Jesus was born in 7 B. C., which was a Jubilee year, and a Jubilee year comes every fifty years, and it was not yet time for the next Jubilee year.  So that was stuck in their minds and they said, “Thou art not yet fifty years old – you were born in a Jubilee year, but it is not yet the next Jubilee year.”   And that is when Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” indicating that He is the Ancient of Days.  He not only existed back to the birth of Abraham in 2,167 B. C. over two thousand years earlier, but he was before Abraham.  God does not need to get any more specific than that, but if we search the Bible, it was much before Abraham because Jesus is the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  And the Word was made flesh, and He is the ever existent One, that glorious, unfathomable, mysterious Being, unknown to us unless He reveals these things to us, as the Bible does reveal to us that He is the great GOD. 

So from the creation of the world, God already knew what He would do in time and history, and He declared early on in Genesis 3 that the seed would come, the seed of the woman who was the Lord Jesus.  Remember that regarding Sarai, that was a big part of the promise, if we go to Genesis 17 where God was speaking to Abraham, He said in Genesis 17:7-8:

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

In Galatians 3, God makes a point of spelling out an important grammatical fact, in Galatians 3:16:

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

The seed is singular because it points to Jesus.  As we have discussed many times, the elect are in Christ.  It also says in Galatians 3:29:

And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

So Sarah received the promise, historically, in what was really a “type and figure” because Isaac was not the promised seed, singular.  We just saw in Galatians that it was Christ, but he is a great typology, and we know that Isaac would be the one that God commanded Abraham to lay upon an altar and slay him and offer him up has an offering (because he was a great type of Christ).  And then God stopped him, and he did not go through with it, but that is another story. 

So Sarai was barren.  She was a barren woman.  The promise of the seed we can trace to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the body of Christ, the whole company of the elect that are counted for the seed in Jesus.  Do you see how the barrenness takes on a completely different focus if we only look at the Bible in a plain, literal and historical way as the seminaries teach and as the pastors, elders, deacons and priests dutifully obey as taught by the seminaries rather than the Word of God?  And they could have some encouraging messages, but probably just one or two, because they cannot go much deeper, so their messages have to be short.  That is why they also teach in the seminaries: “Do not go much more than 15 or 20 minutes.”  And that was when I went to seminary back in the late 80s and early 90s.  They have probably shortened it to five or ten minutes now.  “Do not go beyond a few minutes because people have a short attention span.”  And, of course, that is true when they are teaching such a “wooden, dead thing” regarding the literal, historical meaning.  It has no life to it.  It has no spiritual meaning to it because you must compare spiritual with spiritual, Scripture with Scripture, to get the Holy Spirit’s teaching, which is the deeper spiritual meaning of a verse or a passage.  But they deny all that.  They reject all that. 

They refuse all that, so they are left with a good morality teaching and nice stories to tell their congregations: “Listen, dear congregation, if you have been married and maybe you have been trying to have a baby for a couple of years, take heart!  Let us go to the Bible and we will read of Sarah.  She was a barren woman that was 90 years old.”  Or, in the case of Rebekah, they might say, “She got married and she was 20 years with no child, but they did not give up and Isaac entreated JEHOVAH for his wife.”  Then they address the husbands: “Now, you husbands, you have to pray for your wife.  Pray that the Lord will bless and have faith, but you have to wait on God.”  Here, they will talk about waiting on God, but they do not do that in the case of requesting salvation – that is “instant pudding” to them.  Now that is an interesting comparison.  For spiritual fruit of salvation to become born again, there is no waiting: “It is up to you.  Snap your fingers.  Make your decision.  Walk down the aisle, and we can get you that certificate.  Be baptized and if you are a member in good standing, all is well with you and God – you are saved.”  That is how easy they think it is to be born from above and, yet, they recognize that when it comes to the physical birth of a child, it is in God’s hand.  They would say, “Wait on God, and maybe He will bless you with a child.”

When it comes to the more physical aspects of the teachings, they teach more faithfully that the truth is that one must wait upon God.  If only they would take that information and apply it to the spiritual realm.  But, of course, they cannot because when things must be spiritually discerned, they have no ability.  They are natural-minded individuals, according to 1Corinthians 2, regarding the tares that populate the churches at this time.  Remember, God has already separated the wheat from the tares, leaving the tares bundled for the burning, as we are experiencing the spiritual fires of Judgment Day at this time.  Anyway, they teach the natural understanding of the Bible, and as these people are sitting in their congregations, they say, “It is true.  Sarah was barren and Abraham and Sarah had to wait a long time,” and they get a few moral lessons.  They got in trouble when Sarah gave her handmaid, the Egyptian Hagar, and they got into trouble because they were not fully trusting in the Lord and waiting on God.”  Yes – it is a nice moral teaching, but you better end the sermon after about 15 minutes because the yawning will start.  I know I would be yawning, and it is a shame because the Bible is an exciting book.  It is filled with drama and mystery and all kinds of wonders that God has hidden in His Word.  It is rich treasure and, yet, instead of getting out the “pick and shovel” and digging to try to unearth the “silver and gold” that is certainly there if they plumbed the depth of the Word to find truth, they settle for what is on the surface.  They use the plain, literal, historical and grammatical method of understanding Scripture.  It is “fool’s gold.”  It is that gold that prospectors in the West would see lying on the surface or in a stream of water, and they would laugh at those who would gather it up.  It was not gold.  It had a shiny look to it, but it is not worth anything.

You have to dig.  You have to work to get the real gold.  So God tells us, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

The whole point is that from creation and early on, God was promising the seed, just as He had done to Abraham and Sarah.  And, again, the time of Abraham and Sarah was over two thousand years, and from creation to the first coming of Christ, it was over 11,000 years.  From 11,013 B. C. to 7 B. C. is 11,006 years, and then the Lord Jesus entered the world via the Virgin’s womb into the human race and began to live and walk among men.  And God fulfilled His Word, and the Lord Jesus went about His ministry, demonstrating the atonement performed at the foundation of the world.  So, you see, it had been 11,000 years, but the promise was way back in Genesis 3.  Who knows how long it was from creation to the fall of man, but almost immediately upon that fall, God gave the Messianic promise of the seed.  So for thousands of years, all the people of God would have been looking for the seed of the woman.  In Revelation 12, referring to the great red dragon who is Satan, it says in Revelation 12:4-5:

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron…

And that gives away the identify of the “man child.”  It is the Lord Jesus Christ, just as it says in Revelation 19:15 where He is ruling the nations with a rod of iron.  Then it says in Revelation 12:5:

…and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

And this is a “spiritual woman” that is pointing to the fulfillment of the promise that was given right from the start and handed down through the millenniums.  It was reiterated to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and then to Jacob and Rachel, and so on, down through the ages until, finally, a Virgin conceived by the Holy Ghost, and a Holy child was born.  Jesus was born.  A Saviour had come to the City of David.  Of course, that is also sounding the trumpet that God had been born into the world.  It was not that He was coming into existence, but He was coming into the world.  The Word ,who was God, became flesh, and this is the “fruit of the womb.”  Jesus is the fruit of the Old Testament.  The early righteous rain of Joel 2 had come. (There would be three periods of rain and three periods of fruit.) Christ was the fruit that came as a result of the “early righteous rain” that fell over the entire Old Testament period until He appeared.  So that is the beautiful reason why God caused an old woman to give birth to a baby in her old age to reflect and describe His intention to bring forth the Lord Jesus Christ after such a long time.