Help us find our rest in your.
This week we look at how one the promises to Abraham start to come true; the land of Canaan belonging to the descendants of Abraham. As you know the story we'll look at two of the obscure references to this.
The first was the sons of Noah. If you look back at Genesis 9:24,25 Noah was not very happy with Canaan, his grandson, the son of Ham. He pronounced that Canaan (the tribe and/or the land he owned) would belong to Shem and Japheth. The Land of Canaan has always had its problems. As it was situated at the crossroads between Egypt, Mesopotamia (Syria, Babylon and Assyria) and Greece it has always been the 'centre of the world'. The Land of Canaan has always been a dangerous place to live, but as mentioned above its very location has made it very important. And the fact that God chose it makes it doubly so.
The other issue from the above is that it was a joining together of peoples. Both Shem and Japheth would have a claim to it. At the time of Noah, everyone spoke one language and lived together as one group as this was prior to the fall of Bable. If we look closely at the account in Genesis we see that Japheth gets a double blessing; to dwell in the tents of Shem and to have Ham (and Canaan) as his servant. If we look at where the tribes went after the time of Noah we see Japheth went North West (towards Europe), Shem went North East (towards Mesopotamia) and Ham went South (towards Egypt and Africa). So what we have is that the descendants of Japheth will be offered shelter by the descendants of Shem. This is exactly what is offered to us; we are offered shelter in the family of God, but it is only through Jesus that this will be achieved. (The Jews are descendants of Abram, and if you look at Gen 11:10-32 it shows his lineage to Shem.) Jesus will shelter us if we come to him. (Have a quick look for references to disciples of Christ being offered shelter after his return.)
The second was that Abraham had more than one son. This was a perfect example of man (or in this case a woman, Sarai) trying to do God's job for him. She was impatient for a son so gave Hagar to Abram in order to have an heir. And as we saw with Jacob and Esau a similar situation arose. We have more than one brother fighting for the right to own the land. The conflicts in the middle east all stem from this family relationship. All claim Abraham as their father and say the promises apply to them.
Unfortunately the point is that we can only come to God through Jesus. Fighting is pointless as God will decide. Then we really can rest in the tents of Shem.