AGEING WELL: THE PATRIARCHS
Scripture Readings:
Introduction
The American evangelist Billy Graham lived to be 99. His wife Ruth had died a number of years earlier. During the time he was a widower he said, “As Christians we are well prepared for death, but not for old age.”
When my father-in-law was in his eighties, he spent the last years of his life looking after my mother-in-law who had Alzheimer’s. At one point, when we asked how he was coping, he replied, “I have discovered that old age is not for sissies!”
The father of a friend of ours put it very well when he said, “Everyone wants tobecomeold, but no one wants tobeold.” Some though seem to cope better than others.
In the recent blockbuster movie about Barbie, she escapes from Barbieland into the real world. Early on she finds herself in a bus shelter. She shares the bench with an old lady who has grey hair and deep wrinkles etched all over her face. Barbie cannot help but stare at her and examine her features. She has never seen anyone that old before. Finally, Barbie speaks. She says, “You look beautiful.” And the old woman replies, “I know.” There were no people that real in Barbieland.
An older colleague of mine once said: “There are three kinds of old: the young old, the middle old, and the old old. The young old are from 65 to 75; the middle old are from 75 to 85; and the old old are 85 and over.” I have since discovered that in Australia the average life expectancy for a woman is 85.6 years and for a man it’s 81.9 years. That means that on average a woman just makes it into the “old old” category, while the men only make it into the “middle old” group. But there’s more to it. Overall, the life expectancy score for Australia is 83.7 years, and we rank tenth in the world. Our Kiwi cousins aren’t far behind. They have an average life expectancy rate of 83.2 years, and they rank eighteenth in the world.
But even though we are doing so well on the global stage, it’s not easy to retire in Australia. Earlier in my retirement I remember saying to an older and wiser friend, “To retire well, you really need three things. You need to be in good health. You need to still have one another as a married couple. And you need to have enough money. And who in their old age has all three of those?”
Then my friend said, “You’re right, Steve. But I would also add a fourth. You also need a purpose.”
Was my friend onto something? Is having a purpose the secret to ageing well and living long? Does a clear purpose help us not to be sissies and to cope with all the challenges of getting older?
With these questions in mind, I wondered if the Bible could help us. What does the Bible have to say about old age? Does it throw any light on the subject? As I searched for answers, I discovered sixteen Bible characters who are described as ‘old’, some more than once. So I thought that today I would pick out some of the earliest of these old people and see what we can learn from them. Let’s begin with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who have been called “the patriarchs of the faith”. All up, they are referred to seven times as being ‘old’.
- Abraham
Abraham’s life was a remarkable journey. He lived about 4000 years ago in the city of Ur, which today would be in southern Iraq. Ur was a great city with a high standard of civilization. It was a fertile place, watered annually by the flooding of the Euphrates. But there was another aspect to it as well. Let me explain.
The office of the Anglican scholar, Stuart Barton Babbage, had a special feature. On the wall behind his desk, there hung four photos of open desert. Those photos were virtually identical. This would arouse a visitor’s curiosity. Why did Babbage display those four photos side by side? He would reply that he had once visited the site of ancient Ur. Standing on the ruins of that ancient city, he had aimed his camera toward the north, the east, the south and the west. Beyond Ur the endless desert stretched on and on. No matter which way you looked, the prospect was bleak.
But Abraham could see beyond the bleakness. So he left Ur for greener pastures. With his wife, his father, and his nephew he moved to Haran in Turkey. From there the Lord told him to go the land that he would show him. Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran. God promised Abraham that if he went to Canaan, “I will make you into a great nation” (Gen 12:2). From Ur to Canaan via Haran was a huge distance and would have taken months. It would have been a bit like coming to Australia from England on the First Fleet. It was at the other end of the known world.
But when Abraham finally arrived in Canaan, nothing happened. How could he become a great nation if he didn’t have children? Abraham and Sarah were getting older and older, but still nothing had happened! At last, when “Abraham and Sarah were already old and advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing” (Gen 18:11), God made Abraham another promise: “About this time next year, your wife Sarah will have a son” (Gen 18:10). By this time, the Bible says, Abraham was “as good as dead” (Heb 11:12). In fact, Abraham was 99 years old, and Sarah was ten years younger. Sarah laughed at the thought, but Abraham’s faith held firm. God had made the promise and Abraham believed it. He knew God could be trusted (Heb 11:11). When his son was born, Abraham was 100 years old, and when Sarah gave birth, she was 90!
But Abraham’s faith would be tested even further. When his son was still a boy (of perhaps ten or twelve), God told Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love. . . Sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Gen 22:2). Have you ever thought what a terrible request that was?How inhumane! How cruel! Is this the same God who would later tell the Israelites never to practice child sacrifice? Would he now ask Abraham to do such a monstrous thing? Besides, this is Isaac, the son of promise. God had promised Abraham, “I will establish my covenant with Isaac as an everlasting covenant with his descendants after him” (Gen 17:19). Was God now going back on his word? Was he not going to keep his promise? Could God no longer be trusted?
When they reach the mountain, Isaac begins to sense what is going on. So he asks his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (Gen 22:7). Abraham gives a remarkable answer. It sounds almost prophetic. “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Gen 22:8). Even as he is about to sacrifice his son, Abraham is still speaking the language of faith. A ram caught in a thicket is sacrificed instead of Isaac.
But there’s more to it than that. Remember how God had said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love. . .” (Gen 22:2). Who should that remind you of? Who is God’s son, his only son, whom he loves? Shouldn’t that remind us of Jesus? He is God’s one and only Son, whom he loves! And he is even more than that. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Where God told Abraham to stop, God himself would have to go on. Jesus was sacrificed so that our sins might be forgiven. Somehow by the eyes of faith Abraham could see that: “God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice, my son” (Gen 22:8). Just as the ram took Isaac’s place, Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of his people. He took their place.
All of this happened on Mount Moriah, the mountain where God had told Abraham to go. What took place there gives us a glimpse into the very heart of God. Those strange events point forward to an even greater event that would occur in the future:
- Mount Moriah points to the hill of Calvary where Jesus was to be crucified. About 1,000 years after Abraham, Solomon built God’s temple on Mount Moriah (2 Chron 3:1). For all Israel it was to be the place of sacrifice.
- The ram that was sacrificed foreshadows Jesus who was offered up for the sins of his people.
- Isaac was the one for whom the ram was slain. That animal took Isaac’s place. On the cross Jesus took the place of all of us who believe. So Isaac foreshadows us.
- Abraham points to God. Abraham had to face the prospect of slaying his one and only son but was held back at the very last moment. It would have been agony. We can’t begin to imagine what went through the Father heart of God when he saw his beloved Son suffer and bleed and die. It must have been a gruelling experience of cosmic proportions!
So when God told Abraham to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice Isaac his one and only beloved son, it pointed to the far greater sacrifice in the future. It happened about 2000 years later when Jesus died on the cross. It all ties together. Now this whole mysterious story begins to make sense:
Mount Moriah points to Calvary.
The slain ram points to Jesus.
Abraham points to God,
And Isaac points to all of us who believe.
Abraham was the father of Isaac. Abraham is also the spiritual father of all who believe. Abraham was promised as many descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore. Isaac was the first of those descendants and each person who has Abraham’s faith belongs to that multitude of descendants that God promised he would have. By faith we are all children of Abraham.
But Abraham’s faith was tested, especially in his old age:
- When Abraham was 75, God told him to leave Haran and migrate to another country. No doubt there are a number here today who migrated to this country. But at 75! That’s a tall order in anyone’s language.
- Then when Abraham was 99, God told him that in about a year’s time his wife Sarah would give birth to a son. As unlikely as that seemed, his faith did not waver.
- About another decade later, God asked Abraham to do the most difficult thing of all - to sacrifice his only son. Abraham was prepared to do even that, believing that, if need be, God could raise the dead.
So there’s the Bible’s first requirement for ageing well. Have faith. Have faith like Abraham. Trust God to do what is right. Trust God to keep his promises. Believe that when Jesus died on the cross, he took your place and made you right with God.
That kind of faith is God’s best gift to us in our old age. And it makes all the difference in the world. By faith you know that your sins have been forgiven. By faith you know you have a future and that the grave is not the end. By faith you know that the best is yet to come.
But you should also expect that in your old age your faith may be tested, as Abraham’s was. Sometimes it’s when our lives are nearly over that our faith is tested the most. As our health gets worse, as our social circle gets smaller, as our lives and bodies shrink, we may be tempted to think that God doesn’t care anymore, that he has let us down, or that he has forgotten us. When that happens, don’t give in to despair. Remember, “old age isn’t for sissies.” So, don’t give up hope. God always does what is right, and for his children God always does what is best.
So the first person, where the Bible makes a big deal about how old he was, is Abraham. And it commends him for his faith. It may surprise us, but faith is the Bible’s first essential for ageing well. So, let me ask you: Do you have faith? And when, like Abraham’s, your faith is tested, do you stand firm?
- Isaac
Like his father Abraham, Isaac was also a man of faith. This is seen especially in the way he blessed his sons. As we read earlier, “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future” (Heb 11:20). Although he was the younger twin, Jacob received the greater blessing. Esau, his older twin brother, received the lesser blessing. Here is part of the blessing that Isaac pronounced on Jacob:
May nations serve you
and peoples bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers,
and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed
and those who bless you be blessed. (Gen 27:29)
This sounds very much like the promise God originally made to Abraham back in Genesis 12:
I will make you a great nation
And I will bless you . . .
I will bless those who bless you,
And whoever curses you I will curse;
And all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you (Gen 12:2-3).
Back in those days it was the custom that a father would bless his oldest son. Often these blessings would be little more than a wish list that the Dad had for his son. But when Isaac blessed Jacob, it was far more than a wish list. Isaac was echoing the promise that God had made to Abraham. Isaac believed the promise himself and now he had the faith to know that God would keep the promise through Jacob and his descendants.
- Jacob
Jacob in turn shared the faith of his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham. Again, as we read earlier, “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff” (Heb 11:21). This time we have a patriarch blessing not only his sons, but two of his grandsons. “May God bless these boys,” he says. “May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth” (Gen 48:16).
Again this blessing echoes the promise that God made to Abraham, when he said: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you” (Gen 12:2). This blessing was passed on from generation to generation. In each generation there was someone who believed God’s promises for the future. In this case it was Jacob propped up on his deathbed, and at a very advanced age, passing on God’s blessing to the next generations. With the eye of faith Jacob could see God’s future dawning on the distant horizon and he could foresee his descendants as part of that future.
Conclusion
In closing we must ask: How does all this apply to us? Are we to bless our children the way these patriarchs did? As we get older and ever closer to death should we be laying our hands on them and pronouncing blessings over them? Well, you can try! But I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that we are to be like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those heroes of faith who “were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (Heb 11:16). These people never received what was promised but they believed. They held onto their faith until a ripe old age, right up to the time they died. Isaac was blind. Jacob could barely get out of bed. But they aged well because they had faith.
And when you have faith, you will be a blessing to others:
- A blessing to your children.
- A blessing to your grandchildren.
- A blessing maybe even to your great-grandchildren.
- A blessing to the people around you.
- A blessing through your prayers.
- A blessing through your kindness.
- A blessing because you can lend people a listening ear.
- A blessing because of your hope in God for eternal life!
