The 5 Masculine Instincts - Lesson 6

Genesis 17:16–19 KJV (WS)

16 And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. 17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? 18 And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! 19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

Introduction

If you stand still, you fall backwards. You cannot stand still, because the world moves away from you, if you stand still. There’s no stasis; there’s only backwards. And so, if you’re not moving forwards, then you’re moving backwards. Perhaps that’s more of the underlying truth of the Matthew principle: to those who have everything, more will be given. From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. It’s a warning: do not stand in one place.

Entropy

Part of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Systems never decrease in complexity.

They always expand towards maximum entropy, maximum chaos.

Everything gets more complicated with time.

The longer we live, the more we sense this trend towards chaos.

Man’s story is often described as a campaign against decay.

Keep building.

Keep innovating.

Keep struggling.

Keep trying to hold onto the things we created.

As the winds and waves of time endlessly erode our work, we fight to keep it.

In human history, this endeavor has even encroached upon the religious practices of different cultures.

Men worship gods that promise to order the chaotic.

Men search for ways of appeasing these gods.

We are desperate for a means of exerting control over the chaotic experiences of life.

Today we turn to technology and super-computer’s offer to afford us a new level of control over the world.

Organisms organize…we sort the mail, build sand castles, solve jigsaw puzzles, separate wheat from chaff, rearrange chess pieces, collect stamps, alphabetize books, create symmetry, compose sonnets and sonatas, and put our rooms in order…not only do living things lessen the disorder of their environments; they are in themselves, their skeletons, and their flesh, vesicles and membranes, shells, leaves and blossoms, circulatory systems and metabolic pathways — miracles of pattern and structure. It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our purpose in the universe.

Is this ordering of the chaos what God meant when he called Adam to subdue and have dominion over the creation?

Due to the fall, this work is increasingly complicated and messy.

There is always waste.

Always unintended circumstances.

What we order leaves a trail of disorder in it’s wake.

We make progress in one area, always at the cost of regression somewhere else.

The longer we live the more we recognize this is true.

What is a man to do against this relentless deterioration?

Shakespeare described the final stage of man’s life by depicting his change in voice.

His big manly voice, turning again towards childish treble, pipes and whistles in sound.

There is no shout left to confront the storm.

The world is now too wide to push back against.

AS we age we feel the full weight of the world’s complexities.

The fight in us begins to dim.

Entropy takes it’s toll not just on creation but on our energy to go on engaging the world’s complexity.

Having mounted our best attempts to control it, we come to understand how little of life can actually be controlled.

Things we build fall apart.

Your life’s work is erased by a single decision of your replacement.

Problems you thought you solved in your youth resurface later in life.

Society grows more perplexing and frustrating.

Gradually we disengage.

We content ourselves with little hobbies, little enclaves of control, little lives clutching at little comforts.

Too many men allow the inevitability of death and deteriorating abilities push them to increasingly detach themselves from the world.

A new instinct develops.

We grow increasingly apathetic to the world outside our control.

We just want to be left alone.

Nothing left but to laugh.

Abraham was 99 years old when he received the promise of a son.

He had packed up his family and had become a pilgrim in search of God’s better future.

Most people during his time would live and die within a few square miles of where they were born.

Abraham had wandered across horizons.

He fought battles.

He negotiated with kings.

He survived famines.

He bore the pain of his wife’s barrenness.

Through it all he had earned a reputation for faith.

For too many of us, faith is a soft and clean word.

It really only finds accuracy when it has been dirtied up a little bit.

Abraham’s faith was not some subtle optimism that allowed him to travel through life’s challenges on a cloud.

For Abraham, faith was the battle to go on believing, to keep himself engaged with the full complexities of calling and hope.

All while the world around him was constantly trying to tear apart all that he had built.

At the center of this desperate fight for faith was a promise.

God had promised Abraham a son.

Abraham was to be the father of a nation that would outnumber the stars.

Abraham had been standing under the stars when God called him.

How many times had Abraham slipped out of his childless tent to look up again at those same stars?

Sarah’s barrenness made the promise of a child seem more painful with each passing day.

Their turning grey made it seem more of a joke than a promise.

Their had been Lot.

Their had been Ishmael.

At 99 years of age, Abraham must have been tired.

They had traveled so many miles.

They had faced so many challenges.

They had born so many disappointments and heartaches.

What did Abraham do when God spoke to him again and told him that Sarah would not remain barren but would still bear him a son?

Abraham laughed.

Genesis 17:17 “17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?”

God kept talking.

Genesis 17:19 “19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.”

Isaac’s name means laughter in Hebrew.

Laughter is always a response.

It’s never the first act but a reply.

Laughter requires some form of engagement with the world and its unpredictable ways.

Real laughter always involves surprise and participation.

Humor is, in fact , a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

A faith which can no longer laugh too often signals a faith that has been emptied of life.

Two ditches

There has been some research to suggest that as we age we laugh less.

Do we become more serious or just less amused?

This trend towards apathy and disengagement is often associated with age.

It can affect men of all ages.

An inability to cope with the complexity of life, the collapse of confidence in our own control, a deepening pessimism has led many men to withdraw from life.

Sometimes faith is more vulnerable to the subtle attacks of apathy than it is to the big threats of tyranny and temptation.

Apathy is not usually seen as the grand sin that robs us of our faith.

But, if little pleasures and trivial diversions can stunt belief, all the easier.

C.S. Lewis said, “Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Far more men have lost the vitality of their faith to the obsession of their hobbies and the security of their recliners than to the grotesque sins of violence or lust.

Society seems most concerned about male aggression.

Masculine stereotypes are seen as the ultimate problem with modern men.

To warn only about man’s aggression is to imply that disengaged, passive men are the ideal.

Our culture promotes the idea that passive men are safe and virtuous.

Agatha Christie was the one who said, “A weak man in a corner is more dangerous a strong man.”

Disengagement and apathy have produced more destruction in the lives of men than aggression and violence.

Beneath the tree.

Isaac was eventually born.

Abraham’s faith did not fail him.

The promised son was finally born and Abraham and Sarah laughed with joy.

Abraham must have looked at those same old stars, now with the sound of a child’s laughter behind him in the tent.

Genesis tells us that Abraham was rich.

He had managed to sign treaties with the surrounding kings.

He was entering a time of peace.

Genesis records in Genesis 21:33–34 “33 And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. 34 And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.”

That tree was a testament, a milestone, a monument.

The verse seems to be a concluding transition from the life of Abraham to the life of his new son and heir.

Abraham had arrived.

He was finally settled in the land that God had promised him.

He had prospered in his work and faith.

He was now over 100 years old.

Nothing left to do but enjoy all that God had given him.

Things do not resolve so neatly for Abraham.

They don’t for us either.

Immediately we read in Genesis 22:1 “1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.”

The progress of man

A common modern myth is that man is progressing.

That our acquisition of knowledge has allowed us to evolve into something more than we used to be.

A lifetime spent learning lessons and acquiring skills leaves us thinking that we have achieved something, become something.

But, what if life is not a trajectory towards better things?

Surely we get better.

Surely we have improved ourselves.

Abraham’s story is not an accumulation of faith that builds towards that final remarkable example of its accomplishment.

The test Abraham finally faced challenged his entire understanding of faith and any sense of progress.

The promise had for so long sustained him—the promise of a son— would be put to the test.

What he had hoped for, he would now be called to sacrifice.

It is unnerving, particularly at Abraham’s age.

Had he not proved enough?

The Genesis story does not allow us to imagine that time or age somehow exempts us from such challenges.

The dreaded ambiguity of a test.

God came to Abraham with a command in Genesis 22:2 “2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

Abraham had two options.

Obey or disobey.

It’s a terrify situation.

Generations of Bible students have struggled to contend with the implications of this command.

The purpose of a test is always more than a grade.

A test reveals what can too easily be assumed.

A teacher, having lectured, can’t guarantee that the students have been paying attention.

They can’t assume they have been heard.

A test exposes what is there and what isn’t.

A test reveals what is true.

The simplicity of God’s command left endless room for the truth of Abraham’s life to form its own answer.

Might he negotiate with God as he had for Lot?

Might he scheme with Sarah for some clever loophole?

Could he find some way out or should he mindlessly obey?

What Abraham could not do was be apathetic.

The test forced him to act.

Abraham’s task seems simple.

Take your son and kill him.

The word for burnt offering left some room for ambiguity.

It could mean something like going up or it could mean burnt sacrifice.

Was God asking Abraham to prepare Isaac to bring him up to the place of sacrifice, or to offer him as a burnt offering?

How did Abraham understand the command?

Ambiguity may be the point.

Abraham was forced into decision.

We aren’t given any clues to the thinking of Abraham.

His words and actions seem to form a contradiction.

He moves without protest toward his task.

He arose early.

He took the knife.

He gathered the wood.

He led his son up the mountain.

He bound his son and placed him on the wood.

As he lifted the sacrificial knife, he was unflinching.

But, is this what he expected?

He had told the servants to wait at the bottom of the mountain until he and his son returned.

When Isaac had asked where the sacrifice was, what did Abraham say?

Genesis 22:8 “8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.”

The most striking detail of the story is what is missing.

The angel stayed Abraham’s hand.

Abraham looked up and discovered the ram caught in a nearby thicket.

Genesis 22:13 “13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”

What is missing from this story is surprise.

Imagine the relief of Abraham.

Imagine the relief of Isaac.

Not a word of surprise, not a single emotion of surprise in the story as written. Why am I surprised and Abraham and Isaac are not.

This trip was a three day trip for Abraham, but it cannot be understood apart from a hundred years of road-tested faith that comprises the Abraham story.

What is this clarity of faith that allows Abraham to act in the midst of such conflict?

Hebrews tells us.

Hebrews 11:17–19 “17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: 19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

That word “even” is fascinating.

It implies more than a simple yes or no situation.

Abraham anticipated so many ways that God could work, even resurrection.

Abraham was prepared to act, not knowing at what point on that spectrum the test would be passed.

Abraham is not a character of disengaged apathy.

Not old age nor the weathering crucible of divine ambiguity could erode his resolve.

Abraham acts by faith.

Abraham’s faith was not simply a doctrinal position.

His faith kept him engaged in the complexity and mystery of life, living and acting before God.

An endless, living sacrifice.

As men, we are stereotypically obsessed with being in control.

We refuse to ask for directions.

We refuse to read the instructions.

We refuse to let anyone else operate the remote.

We fear what we can’t control, can’t conquer, can’t beat.

We refuse the test we can’t pass.

If we can’t win, we’d rather not play.

Maybe it’s fear of not being in control that begins to hollow out our faith.

Faith implies ambiguity.

Ambiguity implies complexity beyond our control.

When we come up on this we balk.

We want faith to be something we simply sign in agreement, not something that is put to the test.

Faith is always proved through sacrifice.

The greatest evidence of our faith is not what we receive but what we can afford to lose.

Sacrifice forces us out of our complacency and apathy in ways receiving cannot.

To avoid sacrifice is to starve our faith.

In refusing to sacrifice, you expose your own desperation for control.

Following God is not a gradual trajectory toward comfort and retirement.

Often, the tests of sacrifice increase.

More is asked of us.

Just when you’re ready to put your feet up and take the load off, he asks you to sacrifice that hard earned possibility of ease.

He does this not to frustrate us but to free us, to keep us living.

Left to our own instinct for apathy, we disengage and risk the very things we care most about.

The test forces us back into life; it forces us back into our truest self.

Left to our own way, we die long before our bodies do.

Don’t despise the test.

James 1:2–3 “2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.”

Each moment or test of faith is both an arrival and an invitation to more.

A sacrifice unseen.

Often the tests of faith we face are not nearly as dramatic as Abraham’s.

Our sacrifices may seem much smaller, but that doesn’t make them easier.

Sometimes it’s the littles sacrifices—unnoticed, undramatic, and seemingly inconsequential—that are the hardest to make.

It was never Isaac’s life that was at stake, it was Abraham’s life.

The greatest threat to your faith probably isn’t you abandoning it.

It is that you would grow lifeless and still as you find ways to escape the complexity of what you currently face.

The sacrifices you want to avoid are the gifts that you most need.

To sacrifice is to live.