SILENCES

Shalom Valentin We praise God We praise the Lord for an excellent fund raising dinner for the new Messianic Centre in Melbourne on Friday evening. This wonderful opportunity to reach out to His people will be finished well before the end of next year. Prayer Requests A special request for comfort and prayer for Rita Ivenskis family and friends and for Celebrate Messiah’s whole Russian Ministry. Rita was talking in front of 200 people at the Melbourne Simcha on Saturday when she said “I feel like the Holy Spirit is upon me … I feel like I am going to fall”. She then collapsed and literally went to be with the Lord.   Upcoming Events: Chanukah Celebration We will be celebrating Chanukah slightly early this year, on Friday night the 20th of December our final meeting we will remember what God has done. Please invite your friends.   Silences Three extraordinary silences are recorded in this week’s parashah. They start right after the binding of Isaac (his near sacrifice), which is one of the most significant passages in Torah. Abraham was asked to sacrifice the promised and long awaited son, the son of the covenant. Because of that event we must ask ourselves what happened to Isaac after the near sacrifice? Please read the text Genesis 22-25 and you will see that as soon as the Angel of the LORD stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac drops out of the picture completely. In Genesis 22:19 we read that “Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and they went together to Beer-Sheva; and Abraham dwelt at Beer- Sheva.” Abraham returned to the two servants without the son of promise, Isaac. From that moment on they walked apart. This is the first silence in our text. A second silence in connection with Isaac is after the death of his mother Sarah. In Judaism the mourning is traditionally led by the oldest son, however in Genesis 23 it is not Isaac but Abraham who makes all the arrangements for the burial. Isaac does not appear once in the chapter indicating that he was not there. In one Jewish tradition it is the near sacrifice that brings about the death of Sarah, as if to say that these two stories are intertwined and one caused the other. A third silence comes in chapter 24 where Abraham instructed his chief servant to find a wife for his son. Did Isaac know what Abraham had organised and did he even agree to have an arranged marriage? Since his brother Ishmael had taken a wife (s) from the local women, why would he not do the same? There is no verse indicating that Abraham checked in with his son or asked for his opinion. There is not even a hint in any verse that Abraham informed Isaac of the plan. These silences ‘speak loudly.’ It is only after the chief servant brings the woman, Rebecca,that we read about Isaac. Genesis 24:63 states that ‘he meditated’ שׂוח (shuach). The precise meaning of the word is unclear. Rashi says the word means ‘prayer,’ while Strack and Billerbeck think it means to ‘to wail’ or ‘lament.’ The same word is used twice in Psalm 55 in verses 2 and 17 where it means to ‘moan,’ while in Psalm 142:2 it is translated as ‘complain.’ These differences help us understand that the meditation was a prayer of lament. With this understanding Genesis 24:67 makes more sense, for there we read that Rebecca “became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” The pain caused by his near death experience, the death of his mother and the separation from his father now start to ease because his wife comforted him. These three silences help us frame the story. The near sacrifice, the death of his mother and the choice of a wife for him, all suggest a great separation between Isaac and his father, but once Isaac had Rebecca by his side a restoration took place. The biblical text also tells us that both Isaac and Ishmael stood together at Abraham’s grave (Genesis 25:9). This restoration foreshadows what is happening today between Jews and Arabs. Just as the near death of Isaac foreshadowed the death of Messiah, so too their reconciliation was not only foreshadowed but also accomplished by Messiah (2 Corinthians 5:18). One lesson I draw from all this is that silences are ok. Let the comforter (John 14:26) comfort us and let us be like Isaac. Let us meditate and pour out a lament before the Lord about those things in our life that seem to have died so that He might restore all things. Shalom in Yeshua’s grace Paul   Recordings of Previous Sermons