The God of my Fathers

Reading through the comprehensive genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:23-38, I began considering all that God had accomplished through the list of men mentioned. And, as I thought about this, I realized that the God that did such great wonders through all the patriarchs mentioned throughout the ancient history of Genesis is the same God that continues to work in my life today.

He is the God of Adam - God created him in his own image and likeness, gave him dominion to rule over the animals, and to establish a kingdom of priests to guard the Garden and worship the Lord forever.

He is the God of Seth - He was the next offspring to be born after Abel had been murdered, giving hope to Adam and Eve that the One to bruise the serpent's skull would one day come to renew all that had been lost. It was at this time that people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

He is the God of Noah - God transferred him from the "world that then existed" into the world that now exists by delivering him safely through the flood waters by means of an ark. Noah built an altar and made an offering to the Lord, where God covenanted that while the earth remained, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, would never cease.

He is the God of Shem - Shem honored his father Noah, covering his drunken nakedness, and was consequently blessed with the bestowal of God's personal, holy name on his posterity. It would be within "the tents of Shem" that the nations would be blessed.

He is the God of Abraham - Called from a pagan people to dwell in a land and be the father of many nations, Abraham greeted the promise of an eternal inheritance from afar, understanding and believing that God would provide an Offspring that would fulfill the covenant God made with him. This was counted to him as righteousness, so that all that might believe in Christ afterward would forever be referred to as "Abraham's offspring."

He is the God of Isaac - Delivered up to be sacrificed on the altar by his father Abraham, at the last moment he was divinely delivered and replaced by a ram caught in the thicket - a typological foreshadowing of the great unblemished Lamb that would take all our places on the altar of sacrifice, the cross at Golgotha.

He is the God of Jacob - The deceiver and thief was blessed beyond belief, following his night-long struggle with the mysterious, angelic figure. He was given the name "Israel," bringing forth twelve sons who would usher in a theocratic nation, a kingdom of priests. They would later serve as an example for us, that we might begin to grasp the still greater blessings God has in store for us in Christ Jesus.

In closing, as we remember the God of our fathers, let me leave you with this statement from Jesus - "But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him" (Luke 20:37-38). The One who reveals himself as "the God of Abraham..." is the unchangeable, eternal covenant God who blesses, loves, encourages, and protects his people, and whose favor does not suddenly stop when a person dies but goes with that person beyond death.(1)

(1) William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Luke, pg. 907.